As Published In September/October 2004

OTN Community Bulletin

Learn what's happening in Oracle's most dynamic online community.

Community News

From the Editor Interactivity is quickly becoming a hallmark of the Oracle Technology Network Web site. Within the past two months, we have introduced three services that add a new dimension to our continuous dialogue with members: Oracle HTML DB Studio (read more about this collaborative work area in this issue), BetaBooks downloads and discussions, and the new Oracle Java Developer e-mail newsletter (more information on these new programs below). Here's the best part: As usual, they're all free. Visit us at otn.oracle.com to learn more! Justin Kestelyn, OTN Editor in Chief justin.kestelyn@oracle.com

RAC It Up

It's not often we choose to highlight a specific piece of content on the OTN Web site. But this excellent technical article—provided by Jeffrey Hunter, an Oracle Certified Professional and Java Development Certified Professional who works as a senior database administrator—offers extremely detailed instructions for building your own Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) on Linux and FireWire technology for less than US$1,500 in most cases. (Need we add that this environment is intended for development and testing purposes only?) Thanks to Hunter's efforts, it's now feasible for you, using nothing but off-the-shelf components and software that is freely available from OTN, to experiment with Oracle RAC at a relatively low cost.

You can read his article today at the Linux Technology Center.

Open Source

There are few better sources of tips, tutorials, and advice about designing and building J2EE-based Web services and service-oriented applications than Oracle's own Oracle JDeveloper team. Members of that group have taken it upon themselves to share that advice with the Oracle developer community online at the OTN Web site as well as via a new e-mail newsletter.

The JDeveloper Product Center on the OTN Web site now includes a robust "How-To" area where development managers such as Brian Duff, Jonas Jacobi, Duncan Mills, and Chris Schalk offer detailed, step- by-step information about JavaServer Faces 1.0 development, adding custom JSP 2.0 tag libraries to Oracle JDeveloper, working with XML Schemas, getting started with HttpUnit and Oracle JDeveloper, troubleshooting Oracle JDeveloper on Mac OS X, and several other tasks.

Much of the information described above is now also available via the new Oracle Java Developer free e-mail newsletter, published exclusively for OTN members. It contains tips, tricks, and techniques involving Oracle's entire J2EE stack, from JDBC to Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) to Oracle JDeveloper. Subscribe online at the Java Developer Center.

Now in Beta: Books!

BetaBooks, provided by Oracle Press exclusively for OTN members, are advance chapters of selected technology books in progress that you can download, review, and discuss in an interactive forum with other members or with the authors themselves. The objective is to elicit feedback from the Oracle customer community sufficiently early in the publishing cycle to ensure that the final product reflects the interests of the reader.

Most Popular* Content on OTN For DBAs/Sysadmins: 1."Oracle Database 10g: The Top 20 Features for DBAs" (series), by Arup Nanda 2. "SQL In, XML Out," by Jonathan Gennick 3. "Writing Better SQL Using Regular Expressions," by Alice Rischert 4. "Guide to Linux File Command Mastery," by Sheryl Calish 5. "New Life for Old Microsoft Access Data," by Marcel Gagné For Developers: 1. "Cleaning up PL/SQL Practices," by Steven Feuerstein 2. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to PHP" (series), various authors 3. 3. "Install Oracle, PHP, and Apache on Linux," by Robert Clevenger 4. "Build a PL/SQL Web Service," by Jason Price 5. "Facing Forward with JSF," by Budi Kurniawan *For the three-month period ending May 31, 2004

Our first BetaBook selections are Chapter 9 ("Storing XML Data") and Chapter 14 ("Building an XML- Powered Web Site") from Oracle Database 10g XML & SQL: Design, Build & Manage XML Applications in Java, C, C++ & PL/SQL, by Mark Scardina, Ben Chang, and Jinyu Wang, who are members of the Oracle XML development team. You can download the two Oracle Database 10gXML & SQL chapters now at oracle.com/technology/books/betabooks.

Future BetaBook titles include Oracle Database 10g Linux Administration, by Oracle Linux development chief Wim Coekaerts. Look for advance chapter downloads this fall.

New Columns

"Manageability: What's In It for the DBA"
with Sushil Kumar
Oracle's director of product management for database manageability offers answers.

"Mass Software Deployment with Oracle 10g"
with Sudip Datta
Learn about mass software-deployment strategies enabled by Oracle 10g.

New Tech Articles

For DBAs/Sysadmins

"Build Your Own RAC Cluster on Linux and FireWire"
by Jeffrey Hunter
Learn how to set up and configure an Oracle Real Application Clusters for less than US$1,500 (for development only).

"Understanding System Statistics"
by Jonathan Lewis
Understand the optimizer's use of system statistics in Oracle Database 10g.

"Guide to Linux System Command Mastery"
by Sheryl Calish
An introduction to system commands for newcomers to Linux.

"Exploiting Parallel Operations with Real Application Clusters"
by Kevin Conlon
Learn to use parallel operations within an Oracle Real Application Clusters environment to exploit all the server hardware in your cluster architecture.

For Developers

"Use Location Information in Enterprise Reporting"
by Justin Lokitz & Madeline Alameda
Create dynamic maps that make relationships between attribute- and location-based information transparent.

OTN Locator OTN home Software downloads Technology centers Technical articles Sample code Discussion forums

"Creating JSP 2.0 Tag Files"
by Andrei Cioroianu
Learn how to build reusable Web templates and database scripts using JSP, JSTL, and SQL.

"Scaling Oracle and PHP"
by George Schlossnagle
Learn techniques for writing manageable, scalable, and fast PHP code that directly relates to using Oracle Database.

"Five XSLT 2.0 Features that Simplify XML Document Transformations"
by Jinyu Wang
Learn how to overcome the limitations of XSLT 1.0 with these 2.0 features.

New Sample Code & Tutorials

Virtual Shopping Mall Sample Application Using ADF Business Components
This sample application demonstrates how the Oracle ADF framework implements J2EE design patterns.

New Oracle Application Server TopLink 10g How-To Documents
Learn how to use TopLink to build high-performance applications that store persistent data in a relational database.

Servlet Basic Sample Applications
These sample applications demonstrate how to use the fundamental features of servlets.

Servlet Advanced Sample Applications
These sample applications illustrate advanced features of servlets.