My Oracle Support

In a previous blog entry we wondered aloud whether there were specific components or product areas that had problems or issues that were found to be more difficult to diagnose. One main point of discussion that arose from those comments were related to the difficulty of assessing issues in EBS when patching was involved.

However, the point was also brought up that everyone is good at what they do…a DB person will find DB issues easier to diagnose, and EBS person EBS issues, and so on.

But we dare ask again…what DB issues are DBA’s struggling with the most? What’s the hardest thing for a middleware guy or gal to diagnose? What do HRMS or Financials gurus struggle in implementing? Are diagnostics for each of these areas roughly the same….or does performance stand out in one whereas full-blown errors and stoppages stand out in another? Let us know!

Oh yeah, almost forgot, Happy Friday!

We’ve all been there: late nights, wondering if you were going to make it to commencement; the excitement of leaving the books behind and embarking on real-world journeys; and the ocean of possibilities that extended beyond the doors of that higher-learning institution...

The My Oracle Support Team understands the meaning of "support" outside of IT and would just like to say Congrats to all of the recent grads and especially to the parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends that continue to support the most recent Class of 2009!

And, in the face of uncertain times, we offer this thoughtful quote:
“Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.” – Paul Getty

Feel free to comment on your/your child’s success or even give a “shout-out” to the institution...

Happy Friday!

The My Oracle Support Team would like to believe that diagnosing problems is a uniform experience across the Oracle tech stack in your IT environment but we know that might not be the truth.

Some say diagnosing issues for the Database is considerably more difficult than diagnosing issues for Middleware or Apps, and some say it depends on which App and version you’re talking about (say, R12 Financials) and others still say that there is no one product or family of products that stands out.

So we dare ask, what do you find to be the most difficult issues to diagnose?

Logging Service Request’s while leveraging the My Oracle Support Config. Manager (OCM) can offer a lot of benefits such as saving time – but do you know what’s being collected and passed along with your SR?

Some of you might know exactly what’s going in, others might just have an idea, and others still might not even be aware that the question could be asked – in any case, NOTE 728985.1 should help answer any questions you have regarding exactly what target information is being collected.

The Good News: we’re always listening to users on what they feel should be collected, so do let us know if you find yourself scratching your head and asking “Why don’t they collect [blank]?”

Happy Friday

As I mentioned in a previous post, the brand-new OCM Companion Distribution is now available for download from My Oracle Support. One of the primary drivers for releasing this bundle is to make available a tool for mass deployment of the OCM collector software.

One of the most common issues that we've heard from customers is that OCM is a great concept, but the effort required to roll it out on any kind of enterprise scale is a bit too much. Consequently lots of customers would end up using it on a very small scale, not expanding beyond the test and validation phases. The Mass Deployment tool that's part of the Companion Distribution changes the game: using it, there's no longer such a heavy effort required for individual deployment of multiple OCMs. Instead, you can create a list of all the Oracle Homes that you want to push OCM into, kick off the tool, and let it do all the work across the entire enterprise.

Even better, the tool also has a status-checking mode. In other words, you can feed into it a list of homes and have it report back what the OCM situation is in each: these homes don't have OCM at all; these other homes have OCM software installed but unconfigured; this third set of homes have OCM up and running already (for example). Then you can take that output from the status mode and feed it back into the tool in deployment mode, instructing it to install plus configure the OCMs in the first category and configure those in the second category.

Since this is our first OCM mass deployment release, I encourage all users to give us your feedback on what you think of it, any features you like or dislike or wish it had...

This past weekend, Oracle Global Customer Support released the OCM Companion Distribution -- available now for download from the "Collector" tab on My Oracle Support. What's in the Companion Distribution? Two new components: the OCM Mass Deployment Tool and the OCM Repeater. These are exciting developments that allow the OCM collector software to really be a feasible and effective option in larger-scale, enterprise class deployments. I'll be posting more info on each of those two components, so stay tuned for the detailed scoop on how each one works and how to best take advantage of them.

Imagine: it’s Monday morning and you’ve barely had time to listen to your colleague go on about her amazing weekend when –suddenly- you realize something is wrong with the performance of the Oracle database that you’re in charge of monitoring.

No big deal, you think to yourself: I’ll just go to Oracle’s Support website and log an SR to see what the deal is.

But wait… after logging the SR and uploading the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR), Oracle is asking you to upload even more information (say, the OSWatcher for instance).

Maybe you’re tired and confused at this point. Maybe you wished there were some way to get Oracle the information it asks for the first time you log the SR. Maybe you feel this is a waste of time OR… maybe, just maybe, this is no big deal at all and you proceed to upload the OSWatcher (or some other) data as requested.

So, how would you really feel in this situation? How could Oracle make uploading information during SR creation easier and painless for you?

How does the Oracle Configuration Manager tool help you do this (or what would you like it to do?)

Let us know! As always we look forward to your responses…

(PS: You can also checkout Note: 742215.1 on for additional help with uploading files with your SR)

You've just finished a hard day's worth of work and are ready to pack up and go home when something goes wrong with your Oracle Weblogic environment. As you set down your bag and get ready to diagnose, you wonder: Why isn't there a way to know this would happen ahead of time?

Well, what if I were to tell you...there is a way?

Enter Oracle Guardian, a tool that many support customers have been curious and asking about.

This tool, which is supported for Oracle Weblogic Server version 8.1 and later, analyzes configurations in order to detect potential issues based on what are called "Signature Patterns" (commonly known as either Signatures or Patterns)

These patterns are based on several sources of system configuration knowledge: actual SR's, bugs and defects, critical path updates, and also customer discoveries and best practices.

Checkout this related post in the My Oracle Support Community:

To Download and learn more, go to the Oracle Guardian Resource Center in My Oracle Support (Note 749952.1)

For even more info, you could also checkout this link

Want even more? Got something to say? Well, there’s even a Guardian blog available for you to share your thoughts.

Isn't it great to solve problems before they occur?

The site formerly known as Metalink has undergone some major changes and if you wish you had someone to talk to about how to get the most of the new interface and all the new features that are available, wish no more:

The “Using My Oracle Support” Community is available and now you can talk to other users and to the people who are building the tools that shape your Oracle support and configuration management experience.

Just click on the “Communities” tab and click on the “Using My Oracle Support” community on the left hand side (under My Oracle Support).

Feel free to checkout other communities as well such as Diagnostics and Community Feedback.

Speaking of which, what else would you like to see out of these Communities?

This morning, I logged on to My Oracle Support and immediately dragged the “Knowledge Articles” region back to the top because I knew I would be using it often. I moved the“Getting Started” region to somewhere in the bottom since I wasn’t really using it anymore. Then I started wondering: how do other people organize the regions on their Support Dashboard? How more efficient does this make us?

A friend of mine here at Oracle says he keeps Knowledge and Targets (filtered to show only his “Favorite” Targets) on the top of his page since he rarely logs actual SR’s and already knows enough about his systems.

How do you organize/customize your dashboard? How does it make you more efficient? What’s your favorite (or least favorite) customization feature?