As Published In September/October 2006

One-Stop Support Now Includes SAP R/3

In coordination with SYSTIME, an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner, Oracle now provides support and maintenance for SAP R/3 applications through Oracle's One-Stop Support program. Oracle will also establish a dedicated solution support center for providers that support SAP R/3 applications running on Oracle databases.

The One-Stop Support program provides qualified independent software vendor (ISV) partners with support infrastructure and special access to Oracle engineering resources. In the past, the program provided seamless support for ISV applications and the Oracle technology they run on; now, ISVs will also be able to support SAP R/3 applications that coexist with Oracle-based applications.

"Ninety-four percent of R/3 customers have not upgraded to new SAP versions, and the vast majority of those companies run Oracle as well," explains Oracle President Charles Phillips. "There are also many customers who have purchased mySAP licenses but haven't yet installed them. With the help of SYSTIME, we're focused on ensuring that these customers have a superior ownership experience around all of their applications."

Web Locator NetApp compliance solution SYSTIME Oracle Validated Integrations AppWorx Perceptive Software Oracle PartnerNetwork Solutions Catalog BIAS CISCO Innowave Technology Sierra Atlantic SkillNet CWD4ALL for Oracle SQL Developer Wipro Infotech

Oracle Partners Validate Integrations

Oracle has validated many partners' integrations—and many more validations are in progress. Validation acknowledges that the software has been thoroughly tested to enable seamless integration and optimal performance with Oracle products. Many partners provide validated integrations with more than one Oracle application product line. Two partners of note:

AppWorx, an Oracle Certified Partner and a provider of business process automation software, has had its AppWorx Version 7 validated with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Release 10. AppWorx offers a single interface to monitor and manage enterprisewide asynchronous processes, enhancing the functionality of Oracle Concurrent Manager. AppWorx was already validated with Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise applications.

Perceptive Software, developer of ImageNow document management software, has had its product integration validated with Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration, and PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management Solutions product suites. The validated integration establishes a link between documents stored in ImageNow and records in the enterprise applications.

Oracle PartnerNetwork Upgrades Solutions Catalog

The new Oracle PartnerNetwork Solutions Catalog launches in October 2006, giving customers and prospects an enhanced and faster way to connect with Oracle's more than 17,500 partners. Powered by Oracle Fusion Middleware, including Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Portal, the new catalog better serves Oracle's growing community of partners and provides an improved experience for users seeking a solution.

Now available in 13 languages, the catalog can help customers shorten IT procurement cycles by instantly locating partner solutions or services that meet their needs. Extensive new search functionality allows searches by solution type, product, hardware platform, operating system, expanded geographic specifications, and more. Companies can also locate partners who have solution integrations—between the partner products and Oracle's applications—validated by Oracle, as well as partners using leading technologies including service-oriented architecture and grid.

Partner Spotlight System Integrators Embrace Oracle BPEL Process Manager Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is simplifying process integration and saving companies money by providing a standard for assembling discrete services into an end-to-end process. Below are five Oracle System Integrator partners that are building solutions using Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle's infrastructure for creating, deploying, and managing business processes: BIAS used Oracle BPEL Process Manager to integrate systems between the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Hamilton County Jail System in Tennessee. CCA's system is used for booking and processing more than 200 inmates per day, and CCA plans to use the BPEL integration with other systems in the coming years. CISCO, Inc., used Oracle BPEL Process Manager to create a way for Farmers Mutual Hail, a provider of crop insurance in 15 midwestern states, to allow its agents and policyholders to access policy information online with a self-registration process. Manual processes, modeled using Oracle BPEL Process Manager human workflow, take over only if the self-registration process determines it's necessary. Innowave Technology used Oracle BPEL Process Manager to integrate Data Select Systems' COBOL-based CLCS III application with an Oracle database. Data Select's CLCS III systems service 40 percent of U.S. construction loans. Seamlessly extracting and loading COBOL data into an Oracle database without altering the CLCS III system was critical for the company's continued success. Sierra Atlantic provides engineering change order (ECO) management for new and modified products in the form of adaptable, preconfigured business workflows. Built using Oracle BPEL Process Manager, the company's solution can handle a range of ECOs, from routine documentation changes to end-of-year product phase-outs. SkillNet's StoreHub solution, created with Oracle BPEL Process Manager, addresses common retail challenges such as stockout. In order to offer customer retention options, the process must be streamlined in the context of a Substitute-Delay-Leave framework. StoreHub orchestrates the stockout business process across point of sale, inventory, catalog, and customer relationship management in near real time.

Oracle Partners can simply and securely publish their solution profiles and manage leads, all within the same portal interface. Straightforward, unique URLs now make it easy to find partner solutions via Web search engines.

Ikan Adds Modeling Capability to Oracle SQL Developer

Ikan, an Oracle Certified Partner, has released CWD4ALL for Oracle SQL Developer, a modeling, mapping, and diagramming tool that complies with the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). Oracle SQL Developer is Oracle's graphical tool for creating and browsing database objects; CWD4ALL for Oracle SQL Developer gives Oracle SQL Developer full entity-attribute-relationship modeling facilities. CWD4ALL for Oracle SQL Developer provides relational and physical mapping and diagramming of Oracle databases, with full data definition language generation. CWD4ALL for Oracle SQL Developer also allows exporting to Oracle Analytical Workspaces, and supports forward- and reverse-engineering capabilities to and from Oracle8i Database, Oracle9i Database, and Oracle Database 10g from within Oracle SQL Developer.

CWD4ALL for Oracle SQL Developer simplifies and accelerates the complex aspects of analyzing, designing, and implementing data models, business intelligence environments, and business processes. It supports online transaction processing, data marts, and data warehouses for online analytical processing. It bridges ODBC and JDBC to enable direct catalog capturing.

Wipro Infotech and Oracle Deliver Real-Time Stock Exchange Surveillance

Wipro Infotech and Oracle have implemented the first phase of a new market surveillance system for the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Called the BSE Online Surveillance System-integrated (BOSS-i), the new system monitors trading data in the exchange's derivatives and equities (cash) markets.

BOSS-i monitors all major exchange parameters in real time, looking for suspicious activity. Using rules-based advanced analytics, its alert-generation engine notifies a surveillance console when such activity is detected. Real-time monitoring of the exchange's more than 5 million daily transactions, as well as management of generated data, are made possible through Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, a memory-optimized database that manages data in memory and optimizes data structures and access algorithms accordingly, resulting in fast response time and throughput.

Deloitte and Oracle Prepare Multifactor Authentication Solution

In October 2005, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued new guidance for U.S. banks, advising them to implement multifactor authentication, layered security, or other controls when risk assessments reveal that single-factor authentication isn't adequate. To answer this need, Deloitte's Audit and Enterprise Risk Services practices, in partnership with Oracle, are developing an FFIEC Multifactor Authentication solution. Slated to be in place by the end of 2006, the solution leverages Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Virtual Directory, and Oracle Web Services Manager as well as partner solutions and applications.

Multifactor authentication generally requires users to provide two of three types of credentials: something they know, such as a password; something they have, such as a token or card; and something they are, which can include biometrics. Financial institutions are advised to provide more than single-factor authentication, especially when customers are moving funds or performing other high-risk transactions involving customer information. Deloitte's new FFIEC solution balances the need for multifactor authentication with customers' desire for ease of use.

Deloitte
www.deloitte.com/us

Enterprise Grid Computing with Oracle By Brajesh Goyal and Shilpa Lawande Oracle Press ISBN: 0-07-226280-X Ready to take full advantage of the agility, reliability, and cost savings of grid computing? Enterprise Grid Computing with Oracle provides a road map for implementing Oracle enterprise grid technology. Coauthored by Brajesh Goyal, former principal product manager for Grid Computing at Oracle, and Shilpa Lawand, former principal developer at Oracle, the book discusses the technologies and practical methods involved in moving toward the grid model at every layer of the IT stack—storage, servers, databases, middleware, and applications. You'll find out how to grid-enable existing IT infrastructures, reduce islands of computing resources, and share IT resources across the enterprise. Topics include building and managing a data center based on the Enterprise Grid Alliance reference model; lowering total cost of ownership and improving responsiveness and flexibility at various layers of the IT stack; and sharing storage capabilities systemwide using storage virtualization and provisioning. The Relational Database Dictionary By C.J. Date O'Reilly Media ISBN: 0-596-52798-5 Looking for a quick database reference guide? This pocket-size dictionary defines nearly 600 terms and concepts used with relational databases, including Oracle. As more and more people turn to databases for both large systems and small Web-based applications, misunderstandings arise about the precise meaning of database-related terms, such as foreign key, join, instantiation, table, and view. These misunderstandings can affect the design, programming, and use of database systems. The Relational Database Dictionary provides a single, compact source where designers, programmers, database administrators, and students of relational database systems can find a glossary of precise definitions. Author C.J. Date is a founder of relational database theory. At IBM, he developed the relational model based on E.F. Codd's initial definition, was a DB2 designer, and wrote An Introduction to Database Systems. Browse for Oracle books at oracle.com/technology/books/10g_books.html.