OTN TechBlog

So here
it is, the first of our install guides using Oracle
Enterprise Linux as the OS platform of choice.

In
this case you will install Oracle RAC and Oracle EL on a VMware virtual
machine, providing a fairly painless (and free) means of evaluating RAC
on Linux.

Thanks to Vincent Chan for putting this
guide together!

We have just externalized the OTN Semantic Web (Beta) discussed at length in previous posts!

Being a beta, it's a little rough around the edges - but an awesome experiment nonetheless. As time goes on, you will see ongoing UI enhancements as well as improvements to the taxonomy. We hope to see feedback from you about any and all issues in this discussion forum.

Keep in mind that this is not intended as replacement for OTN; far from it. Rather, it is the first of what we hope are several alternative "skins" that allow you to access OTN content in interesting new ways.

See the OTN Semantic Web FAQ here; I'll also be posting a screencast tutorial shortly.

As you may know, Daylight Saving Time (DST) will arrive early this year, thanks to an Act of the US Congress. But you may not know that this change can wreak havoc on your systems unless you prepare them for the change.

Rich Niemiec, CEO of TUSC and formerly president of the IOUG, has graciously provided a write-up on this subject based on work completed by his DBA team; it contains links to Tech Notes on MetaLink as well as patch information. (As usual, use at your own risk - his advice was not validated by Oracle.)

Blogs.oracle.com blogger Steven Chan has also provided detailed information about DST impact on Oracle E-Business Suite.

Thanks, Rich and Steven!

I'd just like to point out that my wife's cousin, Bryce McGlone, is a professional LEGO builder. And that in fact there is a technical journal published for other such professionals. (Wow.) This community is solely focused on how to combine LEGOs in new and interesting ways, not on the LEGO itself (which is inherently simple and "standard").

Witness also the emergence of a cottage industry focuses on mashup development (eg, Mashup Camp). Can "Mashup Magazine" be that far off?

As standard technologies become increasingly strategic (eg, historically, what's turned out to be more strategic than XML?), integrations become increasingly trivial. For that reason, Oracle professionals need to spend serious time and effort to looking beyond the database - if you thought Web 1.0 was fertile ground for Oracle-based applications, just take a closer look at Web 2.0!

Update: Soon after posting the above, Google News pointed me to this new press release about the fact that the bebo.com social networking site (the most popular one in the UK, Ireland, and NZ apparently) runs on Oracle.

Anyone else know of any other examples?

As you know, we published an Oracle DBA Toolbar for IE last fall. (A FireFox version is still in the works, but not too far off.) You may also be interested in installing a custom OTN button for the Google Toolbar.

The Google Toolbar is a great way to customize your browser any way you like; you can create and add your own buttons to your heart's content.

Speaking of Google, you should also check out the new JDeveloper extension for the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) - create your own GWT applications in JDev! There's a great introduction to using GWT with JDev available here.