CM priority vs. new manager

At my production environment we have a complete customized module called PoS (Point of Sale) which we use to sale our products and it is integrated with oracle apps financials and CRM modules, among of this customized module we have a lot of customized concurrent requests related to sale process and printing contracts. Those requests mainly related to customer service for ex. If the customer buys a product a concurrent request to print the contract will run when the user submit the sale. we faces an issue at the begging of each month that when the financial users run the journal import and end of month requests which they are many requests by the way. Those requests took a lot of time to run and in turn affect the customer which has to wait until his contract got processed by the CM which is busy handling other request. I hope I described the issue clearly since it is difficult to write.

Anyway to solve this issue I create a new stander manger just for the point of sales module, but I found out that when there is no point of sale requests this manager will stay ideal while the other manger that handle all the other request is busy which is not correct. So I deleted this new stander manager and changed all the PoS request priority to a higher priority, now when every a PoS request run it run first because it has higher priority than the stander request and by this I managed to solve my issue.

To do that I went to system administrator->concurrent->program->define->query the requests and change all its priority to 30.

(0 is highest priority and 100 is the lowest and the default priority value 50)

Please leave a comment if you have better way to solve the issue.

Small issue with workflow email notifications

Well been busy last week and couldn't update the blog, before a couple of days tow users called me complaining that they stopped receiving emails informing them that they have a new notifications that needs their approval, well to be honest I thought I have a serious issue because both users called in different time at the same day, I check the workflow email server setup and it is working fine, after a little investigation I find out that in some how both users preferences got changed, so I change it back as follow

-Once logged into Applications, go to preferences link in the Home page . - At the bottom of that page is the Header - Notifications, Email Type - Select HTML Mail (It was empty)

And every thing back to normal.

Fadi

New credentials for oracle applications

Oracle has lunched a new certification programs after they have changed their apps dba OCP program then new certifications are as follow:

-Oracle 11i System Administrator Certified Expert. (1Z0-232)
Exam Number:
1Z0-232
Duration:
120 minutes
Associated Certifications:
TBD
Number of Questions:
87
Exam Price:
$195 USD
Passing Score:
60%

-Oracle 11i Workflow Certified Expert. (1Z0-231)
Exam Number:
1Z0-231
Duration:
90 minutes
Associated Certifications:
TBD
Number of Questions:
72
Exam Price:
$195 USD
Passing Score:
59%


If you pass any of the above exams you will consider an expert neither an ocp nor oca. Also both exams doesn't require any pre-requests exames.

Fadi

To be a good oracle dba qustion

Well, I recived the following email through an oracle email list the qusiton is quoted below

" Gurus, We all hear about Oracle books and manuals that we should read. What about non Oracle things we need to know to be a DBA? For eg couple of days ago David Litchfield posted a link to an Oracle paper on log buffer internals. The paper had lots of C code in it. Do I have to learn C to become a good DBA? What is the best place to start?
"
And I was reading the answerer for that question and I had to say that one of the users on the list replied with a great answer and apply for every thing in this life, the answer is quoted below
"
Not a guru, but I think one of the most important things for a DBA to know is how to learn - quickly, and just as important for long term success is to have a natural desire or drive to learn. Databases and all the interrelated technologies change so fast that you have to be willing and able to constantly learn, and to be happy with life as a DBA, you have to enjoy that challenge. By knowing how to learn, I mean being able to quickly identify what it is you need to know, where to go to get the necessary knowledge, how to quickly sort through all the BS to zero in on the key concepts that you need, and then how to apply the knowledge to your specific situation. There certainly isn't any fixed set of topics that a DBA needs to know. The label "DBA" describes many different roles in real life and in my particular position, knowing C doesn't really do me any good because I never look at C code. Rather than knowing any specific language, it is more important to understand the concepts of coding and then you can take that skill and pick up the specifics of any language as needed. Obviously you need to be comfortable with the SQL syntax and at least familiar with the procedural code for the RDBMS you are working on. You just have to be as intimate as you can with all the pieces of whatever environment you find yourself responsible for. It is a huge plus to have as much understanding as you can of the operating system and all applications running against your databases, as well as anything else running on the same server. Even an understanding of the hardware and network you are running on can be very helpful. A good understanding of the business you are supporting is always useful too. I think you really have to be a jack of all trades and master of at least one in order to be a really good DBA.

Regarding where to start - there are many paths to enlightenment :-) so just take your pick. Some start as application admins (like me), some as sys (OS) admins, some as developers - all tend to end up with different strengths and weaknesses but I don't think one is inherently better than the others, just different. Whichever path you pick, just try to pick up as much of the others as you can along the way.

Regards,
Brandon
"
To be honest I liked his answer and it gave me a motive

Fadi

Easy tool for building ER diagrams

I was searching for an easy free tool for building ER diagram, and found this amazing tool (DBDesigner 4) below is a screenshot, you can download it from here and it also build oracle scripts for you.