Oracle Magazine March - April 2006 Features Departments Technology, Developer & Comment Sections—    Articles and Columns

FEATURES

The Face of Intelligence By David Baum Business intelligence used to be for high-level analysts who did complex financial reporting. No more. Today information consumers of all kinds are learning how to leverage their organization's BI investments to make savvy decisions at all operational levels. The result: better information, better outcomes, and a better bottom line. Find out how companies are making their data meaningful. Put Some Muscle in Your Business By David A. Kelly With the need to store and retrieve ever-increasing amounts of data, many businesses find that their mission-critical operations depend on very large databases. See how some organizations achieve the performance, availability, and scalability they require. Process Portals: A New Way to See Business By Alan Joch Portals are used to aggregate information on a Web site, but when a workflow engine is added, business processes are automatically initiated. Learn how a new generation of process portals plays a key role in data integration.

DEPARTMENTS

From Our Readers Readers tell us what they think. Confessions of a Collector By Tom Haunert OOW Tokyo Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo 2006 AT ORACLE Events Find out about current and upcoming industry events. OTN Community Bulletin Learn what's happening with Oracle's most dynamic online community. Oracle News Briefs Oracle News Oracle redefines identity management for application centricity and SOA with an expanded Oracle Identity Management product family. CHANNELS Partner News BEA, F5 Networks, IBM, NetApp, Check Point, Juniper Networks, Autodesk, Bottomline Technologies, FileNet, InforSense, Spotfire, Tom Sawyer Software, UGS, Waters, Amcom Software, ARGO Data Resource, Business Objects, Computrition, Fair Isaac, FAMIS Software, Micro Focus, Park City Group, PCI Geomatics, Pegasystems, Sensitron, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Unisys, Sun Microsystems, and FormScape Peer-to-Peer Kent Graziano, Shyam Prabhudesai, Amar Kumar Padhi Cutting Edge Holographic storage, high-powered laptops, and cordless Skype

TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPER SECTION—ARTICLES & COLUMNS

TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY STANDARD Standards-based Fusion By Marta Bright Oracle Fusion standards make applications hot-pluggable. BI Learn and Predict By Ron Hardman Explain your data and explore results, using predictive analytics. ASM Commanding ASM By Arup Nanda Access, transfer, and administer ASM files without SQL commands. PERFORMANCE Faster Batch Processing By Mark Rittman LOG ERRORS handles errors quickly and simplifies batch loading. PL/SQL PRACTICES On Variables, Moving, and Meaning By Steven Feuerstein Apply best practices to cursor variables, bidirectional cursor access, and error messages. ASK TOM On Deduping and Ordering By Tom Kyte Our technologist deletes duplicates, gives trigger orders, and explains how SELECT locks.

ORACLE DEVELOPER FRAMEWORKS Using Bind Variables By Steve Muench Ensure maximum query performance—now and in the future. ODP.NET Following the Changes, Part One By Mark A. Williams Use database change notification with ODP.NET and Oracle Database 10g Release 2. BROWSER-BASED Surveying Your Application Needs By Raj Mattamal Oracle Application Express builds a quick survey application.

COMMENT IN THE FIELD Riding the Mobile Wave By Ari Kaplan Mobile applications are coming. Are you ready? ANALYST'S CORNER Connecting People and Processes By David Baum Enterprise portals let you build a UI, manage interactions, and integrate business services.