My Oracle Support

On a related (migration to MOS) note, I just subscribed to 'Metalink my headlines' via MOS. But all the links in that email take you to old metalink.

so, what happens after Nov 6th ?

RJ

They should correctly point to the knowledge browser in My Oracle Support

Dear Richard,

I've read a lot about how Oracle are "listening" to their users. I regret it doesn't appear to be that way to me - after many pleas not to remove "Classic" Metalink, or at least give an ability to access it in reduced format for those of us in a non-Flash environment, it appears that Oracle just went ahead and did what they felt like anyway.

In the process of the migration over this last weekend, my SSO details appear to have been lost, so I've wasted all day so far getting a new id created, which now no longer has my bookmarks accumulated over 7 years, and I can't filter my SR's to show just "mine" of course. Hopefully this will be resolved before long.

I managed to get Flash installed on the client I use at work, but this might be removed before long, as Flash is not encouraged at our site. In the meantime, although it is stated that there is an HTML option to access the new support site, that isn't accessible if you have Flash on your pc.. So how do I access it to test it, make sure it works, etc? Why isn't the option there?? It's very presumptious to assume that because Flash is available we want to use it!

Moving items around the dashboard is cumbersome, slow, and unpredictable at best, and changing font size rendered all the buttons unreadable.

All I want to do is read the text articles, search for them, download the odd patch, and maybe raise an SR or two from time to time, none of which requires Flash or animations. Metalink was perfectly adequate for this, and I could guarantee that almost whatever browser or its age, or whatever plugin policies of where-ever I worked were, I could use it. Now, I'm not so sure, and this move seems like a triumph of form over content to me.

I know from your blog entry that you separate concerns over the content of the articles etc from the design and implementation of the support site, which is entirely valid - but I don't think I am alone in believing that the time spent in making all these changes could have been used to improve the quality of some of the articles in the Knowledge base; eg the RAV articles that still need fleshing out, better examples, better English, etc etc.

Simon

It is tough to tell what issues belong to the application and what issues belong to the support personnel. I recently had to change the CSI number I support. When I finally get to log in to MOS, the changes were lost and my profile reverted to the job I had three jobs back.

Eventually, I'll recover the new CSI number and re-edit my profile ... but I will depend less and less on Oracle support for authoritative, definitive solutions and answers.

Now would be a great time to tell us how you guys are addressing the most current issues. Granted, I realize you might be a tad busy. =)

I'm not sure about how the rest is using MOS, but in my case, all I need is to do some searches in the knowledge base. I have over 1 minute delays, several clicks, waits, clicks, waits, eye candy bouncing stupidly around the screen, in order to get to any info I need. I also need to download a humongous SWF file that I´m not going to use, be subject to a lot of "alerts" and tons of noise that I don't need and I´m not interested in.

Using the old metalink, I used to log in, search, done. Now my experience with the site is totally appalling. The lack of support of browser bookmarks, under supported tabs, is unbelievable at this age. You are dealing with IT professionals here, this is not Facebook.

You REALLY need usability tests and figure out the different usage patterns for your users. Your "everything but the kitchen sink" approach helps nobody. It creates a lot of confusion, delays, and unnecessary waste of time : KISS.

So how is it different now? (maybe you were still trying when migration was happening?)
You sign in, type your search in the top right and press search.

Does it still take over 1 minute to return results?
I can do this with one click (into the search field).
It takes me about 10 seconds to sign in with my password, about 10 seconds to load the application, and while loading I typed in my search and it returned in about 6 seconds. Subsquent searches were less than 3 seconds. Try this and let me know what results you get from your part of the world?

If you have "lots" of alerts (maybe again because of migration), maybe those are gone now.
If you don't really do anything else, collapse all of the regions on the dashboard.

So when you come in next time, they won't even try to get any info, and that should shave a few seconds off.

And what is not bookmarkable for you? Articles can be bookmarked in the product (the star), you can also bookmark using the browser, or even open an article in a new HTML window and bookmark that. Let me know how you are bookmarking and what is not working!

What is an "under supported tab"? Let me know! You have my curiousity peaked!

The interface still seems a little slow. Allow me to elaborate.

I type "10.2.0.5" in the the knowledge browser search tool. In the "Refine search" pane on the right, I click "Oracle Database Products"; the "Refine Search" pane scrolls up and then I see a busy signal while my search results are narrowed down. I would prefer that if (and this is a questionable if) the right-hand pane were to roll up, it be much faster. It feels like the actual work of refining my search does not happen until the pane is 100% scrolled. Next I click on the first article that appears - the entire left-hand pane/region immediate reduces the size of the text, then the pane slowly squeezes to the left while a new pane slides in from the right. I prefer that either it simply snap, or that the animation endure a total of .2 seconds (or less).

And still the "back" button does not work. It scrolls through the history of URLs, but it does not actually take the visible page back at all.

The Product list when creating the SR is better; instead of thousands of products, now I see 30 or 40. Is there anyway to customize that list? What if I only want to see one product? Or 5? What if I only ever want to create an SR on a total list of 2 platforms?

Hello Mr. Miller:

I need to use the HTML version, but searches (even advanced search) return no results (IMP-00019) or very limited results (3 records for ORA-00600). Why is the search feature so severly restricting what it returns?

Thank you,

Laura Sallwasser

I don't know anything about the HTML version. I will have to check and get back to you. Ok, I checked. I am going to guess that there is a filter on the right of the box which is set to something other than "Oracle Products". Try setting that. Of course there is nothing in the UI to tell you this filter was set, nor any way of changing the filter once the search is completed.
But I am guessing this might work for you to fix the issue..

Would also be curious why you "need to use the HTML version". I woudn't mind hearing your issues/reasons. Cheers.

Yes we could speed up the transition a bit. I think it is set to about .5 so you have time to see that your list is persisting, but I do what you mean. It looks like the next query is waiting on the list to scroll up and THEN run the query. I don't even want the thing to go up and down, it should just "change" its contents. But I will check and make sure the query goes first if it doesn't already.

Looks like Back when in the article is a bug. I think you should file it (coming from a customer). I am pretty sure they know about it because I see the URL changing to do the right thing (change the article ID), but it is not actually going back.

Our thought eleswhere was to just keep track of recently used products, like we do in patching. This can also be extended to platforms, again like we do in patching. Maybe this would be what you needed? Let the list be customized automatically be your use?

The platform recent list would also solve this. It would put the recently used items first before the long list of platforms. So you just choose the first or second item. Would this work well for you?

Fair enough.

I think we are all experiencing performance and sign in issues at least sporatically.
They are working to fix queries, bumping up hardware, and even we are looking to change the UI to limit some queries.

For example, the patching engine really doesn't like searching for a bug ID without a platform. This is returning a lot of results, and probably even too many for most customers.

The idea was to allow this so that someone downloading a patch for one release could very easily also grab them for other releases.

I think we are going to go back to restricting the basic patch ID search to require a platform.
This and some other tweaks like that (like making sure that a release is specified in advanced search and not letting "All Releases" be used) would help everyone.

But we would also make sure you can still multiple select platforms and keep your recent list, so if you always download a patch on two or three specific platforms, you can still do that.

Of course, I would like to hear what customers think of this! please thread!

Richard wrote "Would also be curious why you "need to use the HTML version". I woudn't mind hearing your issues/reasons."

I don't know what Laura's reasons are, but mine are exemplified by today's headline over at computerworld.com - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140768/Flash_flaw_puts_most_sites_users_at_risk_say_researchers

If I can possibly avoid using Flash, I would very much prefer to do so.

Many DBAs expressed concerns about this prior to go live. Jared Still's poll was probably the most widely publicized, but there were tons of comments on oracle-l and various blogs, expressing real concern about the security implications of this choice - as well as on OTN, on the Oracle blogs, etc.

I have not yet heard the reasons behind the choice of Flash as a development platform. To me the reasons for this choice are not obvious - this system is to support people who are technically literate, who have high levels of access to highly sensitive systems, and who tend to be risk-averse as a function of what they do and what they have to protect.

Most of the public comments I saw from actual DBAs had security, speed, and simplicity at their top criteria. Personally, to me, getting those right is far more important than being pretty or cool.

Would you be willing to share with us the WHY of this platform choice?

bugs are bugs. Most of them (almost all of the ones we see in production) have nothing to do with Flash. It is back-end. We just happen to use Flash on the front-end (and yes there are bugs in the UI, but this not why we are having this migration and stability problems).

Read the security article carefully. it is not flash per se, it could be any site with javascript or other scripting. Again, it is not a flash issue. There seems to be a lot of push to "blaim" the technology, but frankly we should put blame in the right places. Right now our fault during the migration - you bet... but not Flash.

The choice of flash was partially because we were asked to drive innovation, the choices for shipping development environments which supported the requirments, and had to be compatible with IE 6. And IE 6, even today, is the largest percentage of our customers, and hence limited our options otherwise most customers would have to upgrade. Even today (Nov 2009) with IE 6 as a requirement, it is tough to define a long set of technologies. Older ADF 10 and HTML DB are very limited (or impossible) for Web 2.0 type interactions (and if we can get past the production bugs, I think you might find these new features valuable!). While newer tech stacks didn't support IE 6. Or in one case, like going with straight Ajax/HTML, we would kill outselves with cross platform testing and bugs. And to be frank the original development team was very very (very) small. And it wasn't practical from testing perspecting.

Also, historically My Oracle Support grew up from a skunk works project to deal with the more interactive world of managing configurations. And we build this in Flash because we had high developer productivity, fast build cycles, plenty of innovation, plus basic stuff, and flash was found in a much large percentage of customer environments than some of the options (that excluded IE 6). Funny enough, we probed customers about the IE 6 requirement and I do recall one customer telling us not to even ask, because they would have to recertify all (6000) applications in their company for a new platform and that wasn't happening any time soon. But when we asked for a new version of Flash to be installed and would that impact certification? They answered No. Because we are one of the first to use Flash in the enterprise, so some (some, maybe not you ;->) are able to get Flash installed easier than if you had to upgrade to IE 7.

But times will change, platforms will change, and hopefully we can deliver on speed and simplicity (I think we are doing pretty good on security, even with that inflamitory article) sooner than later.

And to be fair to those who say we don't eat our own dog food. We do! The entire middle tier, back-end, call center, etc... are all Oracle stack products.

Hi Richard -

You're not hearing me, and I would guess probably not hearing most of the DBAs expressing concerns.

First, yes, Flash really is the issue. I did not have Flash enabled on my work PC AT ALL until you indicated it was required for MOS - and it required special dispensation to get permission to load it.

It is a vulnerable technology. Many DBAs cannot get permission to load it because its use is forbidden in their organizations.

Flash security risks are published weekly. I cringe every time I get one, because I now don't have the option of turning it off. I gave you one example of a Flash vulnerability - I could post a hundred here.

Vulnerabilities are a huge issue with DBAs - a compromised DBA computer is handing the keys of the kingdom over to the bad guys.

If you asked 100 DBAs their design criteria for their support portal, from 0 to 10, where 10 was vitally important and 0 was who cares, I would be willing to bet large sums of money that security, speed, and simplicity will be near 10.

Web 2.0, for me and I believe for most DBAs, would be ZERO.

What a lot of us are saying is that we don't care about the Web 2.0 stuff.

We'll live with it if we have to, but it doesn't provide us with benefits and we really don't want Flash or any other vulnerable technology. Most Web 2.0 technologies are quite vulnerable re security AND ARE THUS INAPPROPRIATE FOR DBA PORTALS.

I don't care about or need the special features. I have no idea who drove the requirements for the bells and whistles, but it was not from feedback from the organized DBA groups, chats, email lists, or blogs.

I'm not sure who pushed the configuration management feature, but again, it doesn't appear to have come from DBAs. It has pretty darn limited value, which limitations Oracle could have found out if they'd talked to a wider cross section of DBAs.

From the outside, it appears to be the boy scout dragging the little old lady the wrong way across the road.

DBAS HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS. FLASH DOES NOT MEET THOSE NEEDS - IN FACT, IT COMPROMISES THEM BY BEING AN INHERENTLY INSECURE PLATFORM.

I am hearing that over and over again, louder and louder, from my peers - but it's like you all just can't hear what we're saying because you have a preconception of what we want.

If you'd like to see more Flash vulnerabilities - 48 pages of links to them - you could check at http://search.securityfocus.com/swsearch?sbm=%2F&metaname=alldoc&query=flash&x=0&y=0

Lisa, I do hear you. And you have plenty of good thoughts. But I do think some of this is unfair to flash. First the link you sent is very cool, but a) almost all of those are for old versions of flash which are fixed, and b) javascript has twice as many of those postings, java 3 times as many!. If security is really your issue for the web support site (which is not the same as security of your database), we should be pushing for a desktop version of the application. And funny enough, with Flash we could do a desktop version of the app. This would elminate the javascript issues (which I assume must apply to you?), and flash/browser issues - since we are in a protected space. Would this be an option (putting asside your dislike of Flash, just for a moment and focusing on security?)

We do know that a few My Oracle Support administrators (recall we support more than just DBAs) have had to get the same special dispensation that you had to request. Sometimes it is because it is "new" or "different", sometimes it is because the perception of Flash, is well just because it is flash (and has a history of being used for annoying ads and such), and sometimes folks are truely concerned with security, in which case we expect they don't allow javascript to run on the machine either (and becomes a real problem for pretty much every web application in and outside of the company). And we do see the final kind - which is the "bunker" folks, who run their DBs inside of a closed environment with no Internet connectivity at all. And obviously we can't run there no matter what. But in 95% of cases, we start off "ok". And this was and still seems a smaller barrier to entry then if we had requested IE 7 as a minimum platform (but I don't want to discuss that thread again! ->)

I totally agree speed and simplicity should be a 10. But I can only push others on speed, and hope that those get fixed so we can focus on better usability. We generated an action plan of over a dozen performance improvements (beyond the obvious SQL tuning and query issues), and many of those are in production. Almost all of these have nothing to do with Flash - that is they are not issues with the front-end. When we do find front-end issues, we also fix those (and typically those are easy to fix).

Maybe you can explain why a "concept" like providing feedback from other DBAs around issues with a patch, or validating that a patch will install before downloading the file, or providing a merge patch for a conflict between an installed patch and needed new patch with one click are "special features". We have talked to DBAs (not you, obviously) and they almost universally bent over backwards around these features. All of this goes beyond the basic search, type, and download.

I assume you don't use configuration manager. But even with these "rants" - I would appreciate why the value is not there (one click compare, priority handing of SRs, patch recommendations, merge patch validation, etc...)? Again a seperate issue... but one I still would be interested in hearing from you (or others who are following the blog).

But I would like to say I am personally sorry for all of this headache. I do feel your pain (otherwise I would not be spending this time listening to you). I am NOT on the services team, and my job is to learn from customers. And Oracle did listen and provide an HTML version for those "basic" use cases of search, SR and download.

What I mean by under supported tabs should be totally unsupported tabs in modern browsers. There are no HTML links at all in the site that can be bookmarked/shared with coworkers/saved for the future/opened in new tabs. That alone makes the site a pain to use and unpractical.

Bookmarks in the site itself are slow, and don´t integrate with my daily workflow ( browsers features such as bookmark organization and tagging don´t work at all). You assume a totally linear way of using the site, which constantly slows the user down.

You write that "Older ADF 10 and HTML DB are very limited (or impossible) for Web 2.0 type interactions (and if we can get past the production bugs, I think you might find these new features valuable!)."

There is a HUGE assumption about the way we work in that statement.

Web 2.0 has it's place. Even with Support.

But not all of us need, want, or can benefit from Web 2.0 The problem is that Web 2.0 makes assumptions about the way we want to, or need to, work. And that means the design team is pigeon-holing the user community.

Think of it this way - Web 1.0 is command line, web 2.0 is GUI. GUI is 'friendly'. Command line is 'efficient'.

There is a significant amount that can be done with Web 1.0. And much of that can be done faster and at a MUCH lower costs to both your side and ours.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 can coexist, just as command line and GUI can coexist.

In many cases, WE, your user community, have NO CHOICE about whether FLASH is available or not on our systems. Corporate Policy makes that decision. We are risking our jobs by countering corporate policy or risking our positions by 'asking for special dispensation' - you can only ask for favours so often.

(You seem to assume it's a small percentage of users. Yet, at least 30% of every Oracle class I teach raises that concern.)

The problem is not so much Flash on your site. It is that having Flash installed because of your site that we become more vulnerable to other sites. Which means additional scrutiny or steps or processes.

Oracle's decision about the importance of going Web 2.0 is backing us into a corner.

You have the choice to use the html version. It is a small percentage of users (a few %) who at this point do not have flash installed at all, and a very small number who have flash but should be on a more recent version. Granted those who don't want are vocal, and have some valid concerns too! And hence the html version is there.

Yes - funny you mention that. We have discussed something similar. I would think customers would prefer friendly and efficient. Especially given the large number of new customers to Oracle.

And we do hear from folks who effectively ask for My Oracle Support to be command line, in one way or another. If it was my choice with unlimited resources, I would probably do a command line UI. We are looking at, for example, allowing one to search for patches on the GUI, maybe stick them all in a plan (collect up the ones you want), but generate a Wget script so you can go into your data center, or on the box, or somewhere else and ge the patches (rather than the GUI which would download to your desktop or mounted drive).

Although I think it would be tough to search for articles via a command line (I am sure someone out there will want to prove me wrong!)

So maybe some "hybrid" approaches might work for some specific use cases?

All articles, bugs, patches have the option for HTML links. I do see your problem. Some work... like right click on an article and copy URL or open in a new (HTML) window.

Copy URL to share with co-workers, and Open in a new window can be bookmarked.
The site is supposed to all be working with deep bookmarking (so you can bookmark any page and share it). You can even right click when viewing an article and "Bookmark this page"

BUT, I do see plenty of places where bookmarking is not working for sharing purposes.
Ouch!

Guillermo, Maybe you can email me offline and I can watch your workflow, catalog your issues and file some bugs to get them fixed? I want to see what your tagging is. I totally see some of this issues as being annoying. richard dot miller at oracle dot com

>You have the choice to use the html version

Do we? How? I wasn't able to find an option to do so.

If your system doesn't have flash that is what you would be signed into.

Otherwise https://supporthtml.oracle.com

Dear Richard,

When I use https://supporthtml.oracle.com and click on the Knowledge link, the helpful opening page has a number of embedded links that are either obsolete (point to Metalink3) or not accessible to customers (myorionkm.oraclecorp.com, my.oracle.com, ouweb.us.oracle.com)

Fell free to drop this note and simply report it to the people who need to look at this.

I suspect that my non-tech SR will be lost in the flood and this specific one has a bad appearance. ('help' links to the newbies that are broken).

I going to leave it in case others see it, so they don't have to report this again.
I have
a. Send this on to the html folks (I don't know anything about this UI)
b. Going to see how we can make sure that this feedback gets internallized into bug fixes (for this comment and the others which come in via a discussion thread).

Thanks

Thanks Richard.

On the positive side, I have noticed a definite improvement in performance on both the Flash and HTML side.

(And I have started comments in my own blog. I'll be concentrating on end-user usability and functionality, with the emphasis on 'acceptance'.)

I appreciate the open consideration. There is a large community here in Oracle who REALLY do want to provide world class service. I think we all know that we did not get off to a good start, but PLEASE do help us learn from all of you concerning usability and functionality. Hans, cross post your blog! I want to follow it!

> Hans, cross post your blog! I want to follow it!

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Hans+Forbrich+Blog yields ...

http://hansforbrich.blogspot.com

:-)