ORA-12705: Cannot access NLS data files or invalid environment specified

Yesterday I got to "help" a colleague out with the aforementioned ORA-12705. I had never seen it before and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of information out there, especially in regards to OBIEE.

Here's the definition from the docs:

Cause:
Either an attempt was made to issue an ALTER SESSION command with an invalid NLS parameter or value; or the environment variable(s) NLS_LANG, ORA_NLSxx, or ORACLE_HOME was incorrectly specified, therefore the NLS data files cannot be located.

Action:
Check the syntax of the ALTER SESSION command and the NLS parameter, correct the syntax and retry the statement, or specify the correct directory path/values in the environment variables.

This would occur when trying to import tables into the RPD (OBIEE). First thing that pops up is the Select Data Source screen:



Then this beauty would pop up:



Ultimately the solution that, sort of worked, was here.

Windows - The NLS_LANG must be unset in the Windows registry (re-named is best). Look for the NLS_LANG subkey in the registry at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE, and rename it.

We tried changing it to what I had in my registry: AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252

That didn't work.

Tried renaming it as the article suggested, that didn't work.

Finally, my colleague (without prompting from me), cleared the key (didn't delete, just blanked it)...and voila!

Oracle OpenWorld 2010 - Free Passes

Last year my post on how to obtain free passes to Oracle OpenWorld usually ended up at or near the top of Google results, I figured I'd do it again for this year's event.

Almost 2 weeks ago I received noticed that I would be attending via the Blogger program. I promise, no theatrics (not going, going, not going) from me this year, I am going. I may be using a service like airbnb (h/t Jake via TechCrunch), I don't really care. I am going.

So, it's not too late to register but if you want to go free (like me), here's what you can do:
- Blogger Program - I don't see any mention of it being closed yet, so give it a go.
- Nominate Your Company for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards

Hey! Do you use any of these products?

*Oracle application grid products
*Oracle SOA Suite
*Oracle Identity Manager
*Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Applications
*Enterprise 2.0

If so, nominate your company for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards! If you win, you'll get all of these great prizes:

*FREE pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco for select winners in each category. Special honors at Innovation Awards ceremony, held during Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco.
*13 meetings with Oracle executives during Oracle OpenWorld 2010
*Oracle Middleware Innovation Award Winner Plaque
*And lots more

- 'Enable the Eco-Enterprise' Awards - added 7/8/2010, h/t IOUG

Is your company using Oracle products to help protect the environment while reducing costs? For example, you may be using Oracle Self-Service E-Billing for paperless invoicing, Oracle Advanced Compression for reduced disk space and power usage, or Oracle's Sun servers for energy efficiency. If so, submit this nomination form for an 'Enable the Eco-Enterprise' award. These awards will be presented to selected customers and their partners (system integrators, consultants, ISVs, etc.) who are using any of Oracle's products to not only take an environmental lead, but also to reduce their costs and improve their business efficiencies by using green business practices.

Added 07/26/2010 h/t leight0nn
- There's now a way through MOS to receive a free pass.

This year, we’re offering a chance to win a free conference pass to Oracle OpenWorld as your reward for sharing documents. Creating a document to share in My Oracle Support Community enters you in the drawing and the information you share will help other members succeed! Write up of the best practices you defined for new implementations based on your past experience, show someone how to avoid a tricky situation, or lay out how you plan for successful upgrades. Areas that are familiar territory for you can be new for your peers. And if you are blazing new trails at your company, someone else may upload just what you’re looking for as a shared document. Amaze us all with your knowledge; see your document become one of the most popular or have another member reward you with a comment about how you helped resolve an issue.

Added 07/28/2010 h/t @surachart (via LinkedIn Updates email) and @brhubart
- Oracle Video Challenge

Convince your peers why you should be selected to win a FREE conference pass to Oracle OpenWorld, JavaOne or Oracle Develop!

Put together a short video convincing your peers why you should get a FREE conference pass to Oracle OpenWorld, JavaOne or Oracle Develop. Is it because of the great Java, SOA, Oracle Database, or Oracle Solaris sessions? Or are you a diehard OTN Night partygoer? The community will pick the top five finalists in each category: Oracle OpenWorld, JavaOne, and Oracle Develop. Then a panel of Oracle judges will pick one winner from each category to receive a full conference pass to that event.

Everyone who submits a valid video entry will be given a discount code to pay the Early Bird price at time of registration. This is a savings of $400 or more over the onsite price. See FAQ page for details*.

Added 09/01/2010
Calling All Student Developers: Get into JavaOne and Oracle Develop for FREE!

Students: Want to see the future of Java? Want to network with the geekiest of the geeks? JavaOne and Oracle Develop are offering Discover Passes FREE to ' qualifying students. You must be enrolled in an accredited nonprofit institutions of learning during the Fall semester/quarter of 2010, taking a minimum of six (6) units, and you must be at least 18 years old.

What Students Get: Admission to any session in the Java Frontier track for students (schedule below), JavaOne, Oracle Develop and OpenWorld keynotes, three Exhibition Halls and the Mason street tent (more info below). Space permitting, you can also attend any JavaOne and Oracle Develop technical sessions, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions (BOFs), and Hands-on-Lab (HOL) sessions.

That's all I have so far, but I'll keep the list updated as I find more.

OBIEE: Parse NQQuery Log

It's been quite some time since I've dabbled in Java, thankfully JDeveloper makes it pretty easy for me.

I've been annoyed at how often I have to go dig through the NQQuery logs lately. Yes, I know about Session Manager and the ability to view logs there.

So I decided to write a quick and dirty java program that will pull the physical SQL out of the file. I believe there are 7 log levels in OBIEE, this is done at level 5 so no guarantee it will work on anything but 5.

I'll be putting the source code up soon and will update as appropriate. For the time being, here it is:

package oraclenerd;
import java.io.*;

public class ParseSQL
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    ParseSQL run = new ParseSQL();
    String query = new String();
    int i = 0;
    try
    {
      FileInputStream file = new FileInputStream( "/opt/projects/oraclenerd/classes/oraclenerd/test.log" );
      DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream( file );
      BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( in ) );
      String strLine;
      while ( ( strLine = br.readLine() ) != null )
      {
        if ( strLine.startsWith( "-------------------- Sending query" ) )
        {
          i = 1;          
        }
        else if ( i == 1 )
        {
          if ( strLine.startsWith( "+++" ) )
          {
            System.out.println( "***************" );
            System.out.println( query );
            System.out.println( "***************" );
            query = "";
            i = 0;
          }
          else
            query = query + "\r\n" + strLine;
        }
      }
      in.close();
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
      System.err.println( "Error:  " + e.getMessage() ); 
    }
  }
}

Obviously you'll need to change the path unless you have that exact path at home. You can find the log I used here.

There are 17 physical SQL statements in the log file. You should get 17 back.

The 17 SQL statements I retrieved are here (via console).

The source code is up above...until I get unlazy enough to put it under source control (Google Code). If you do make it pretty or add some functionality to it, please let me know, I'd love to include it.

OBIEE: Hillbilly RPD Source Control

No, this isn't a reference to @hillbillyToad.

During all the hullabaloo the other day and me fretting that I might have irrevocably destroyed the metadata, Frank Davis showed me a cool little trick.

In the Admin tool go the BMM layer, right click on the model you want and select "Duplicate with Presentation Catalog."



You'll then be prompted to name your new BMM and Presentation layer.



Enter in the new names



And you now have a copy of your BMM and Presentation layer



What good is this you ask?

Well, it will allow you to do metadata development without affecting what any report writers are doing. It will also allow you to blow things up, quite easily if you wish, without major repercussions. That's nice to have.

OBIEE: Gotcha #4

Database Features

This may have been self inflicted, there is really no way to know. This is somewhat related to Gotcha #1.

The Problem

We kept tipping over the development database with only 10 or so people on it. The DBAs said we weren't including the date predicate on any of our tables. How could that be? (Quick aside, this problem is compounded; in that we have no summary tables and close to 2 billion records in the fact table). So instead of pulling back say, 100K records, we were pulling back 23 million. Yikes.

I started to pour through the query logs and confirmed that none of the physical SQL statements had any date predicates. Ouch.

But wait, reviewing the BI Server execution plan, the date filter was there...the catch was that the BI Server was filtering. Not good. The BI Server is not built to filter on some 23 million records. Most of us know that we should filter as much as possible, with Exadata pushing that concept down to storage.

Being responsible for the metadata, I naturally assumed this was somehow my doing.

So my colleague, Frank Davis, fired up a GoToMeeting session and we poured over the logs and anything we could find. We spent a few hours last night to no avail.

With a partial nights sleep, I began to use one of Frank's methods to further eliminate the offending table (possibly). Since it was the date predicate, I started with Time.

First, I pulled in Fiscal Year and created a filter for 2010. Ran the report, checked the log and the filter was in the physical SQL.

Next, Fiscal Week. Followed the same process, added the column, the filter and checked the log. It was there.

Finally, I brought over Calendar Day, created the filter, ran the report and checked the log. It wasn't there. WTF? I could see it in the execution plan, but not in the physical SQL.

Then Frank and I got back on a shared session and Frank had an idea...

The Solution

Frank wondered aloud about the database features, specifically, which were turned on.

If you aren't familiar with that, in the property section of the physical database, under the Features tab, you'll see the list of values, like this:



See the ones I am pointing to? DATE_LITERAL_SUPPORTED? Yeah, that was turned off. Quite a few were turned off in fact. Frank found the guide for setting up the features on our particular database (Neoview) and we went through and turned everything on that was recommended.

I reran my small test and voila! The date predicates were being pushed to the database. Ran some of the other offending reports and verified that they too were passing the date predicates.

I don't know if I somehow reset the database features or if someone else did. I'll never know in fact (yes, bigger problem). Thankfully it was only in a development environment so the impact was minimal.

Why I Love Email

This has been on my mind for...a long time. It was accelerated by John Piwowar's sharing of this article on Coding Horror about voice recognition.



I could really care less about voice recognition, the thing that I got from the article, is that most people understand the written word better than the spoken word. In particular, this passage hit home:

In my experience, speech is one of the least effective, inefficient forms of communicating with other human beings. By that, I mean...

• typical spoken communication tends to be off-the-cuff and ad-hoc. Unless you're extremely disciplined, on average you will be unclear, rambling, and excessively verbose.
• people tend to hear about half of what you say at any given time. If you're lucky.
• spoken communication puts a highly disproportionate burden on the listener. Compare the time it takes to process a voicemail versus the time it takes to read an email.

Say it again!

One of my colleagues is super-bright, Ivy league educated...but I don't understand a word he's saying sometimes. We do joke back and forth that it's my measly state school education holding me back, but it is a real problem, for me. I've been working with him so that we can meet somewhere in between, but it's difficult. He uses a lot of 3 syllable words and my brain just can't handle that.

When he writes, it's better...but there's still a gap. I won't blame him for all of it. :)

I've had the problem in the past...one of my former Arch Nemesis(es?) sat right next to me, but could barely speak a word of English (no, it's not what you think). The running joke in the company was that this person had their own special brand of English (not American English either). The writing however, was slightly better.

It's not just limited to email either, IM will suffice since you can save that stuff and read it again later.

It's also not a CYA (cover your ass) thing...it's just that, well, people don't communicate very well. I'm probably guilty of this as well. I am not extremely disciplined (in spoken word) and I have a tendency to go (way) off topic (like telling dirty jokes). Email/IM are perfect.

There's also the added (CYA) bonus of having it there to digest later, perhaps multiple times, which I often do. I'll flag a particular important email and reread it 10s of times.

Is this unacceptable to you? Should you be able to come up to me and just say, hey Chet, I need such and such, and assume you are done with it?

SOUG: APEX 4.0

The much anticipated APEX 4.0 release is coming soon...in that spirit, Dan McGhan [blog|twitter] will be presenting on the new features. You might remember Dan, he's the one that constantly interrupted me during my first presentation ever, on APEX. We followed that up with a "joint" (by joint I mean I "let" him do all the work) presentation a few months later.

The event goes from 6 until 8 with the first half hour dedicated to eating and greeting. From 6:30 to 8 will be Dan's presentation.

You can read the event details here. Or I can just put it all here to save you a click (you're welcome):

Dan McGhan, our resident APEX expert, will be bringing us up to speed on the recent new release of Oracle's Application Express. APEX 4.0 is expected to be the biggest release in the product's history.

This session will break down many of the exciting new features that everyone has been looking forward to, including Websheets, Dynamic Actions, and Plug-ins, just to name a few. With APEX 4.0, development should be faster and easier than ever.

Dan McGhan has been a long time member of the SOUG. Dan is an Oracle Application Express expert and advocate. In addition to his "day job" with SkillBuilders.com, he is one of the top 10 contributors to the APEX forum, maintains his own Oracle and APEX blog, and has been a speaker at the New York Oracle Users Group, New England Oracle Users Group, and Suncoast Oracle Users Group events.

Exadata Learning Resources

In a year or 2, this will be worthless as everyone will probably be sitting atop Exadata, aka the Oracle Database Machine (ODM), aka Oracle Exadata Storage Server.

Here's a list of some resources (mostly, ok, all blogs) if you're interested in reading up.

Kevin Closson [linkedin]
Occupation: Performance Architect at Oracle

Kevin by far, is the most detailed and prolific writer on Exadata. I won't link to individual posts because that would take to long so I'll just point you to his Exadata index.

Platform, Storage & Clustering Topics Related to Oracle Databases

Greg Rahn [twitter|linkedin]
Occupation: Principal Member of Technical Staff, Real-World Performance Group at Oracle Corporation

You may remember Greg from my Pithy Tweets post a couple of months ago. I've tried to keep up with him...he's just too pithy.

Structured Data (Exadata)
* X2-2 and X2-8

Dan Norris [twitter|linkedin]
Occupation: X-Team Member at Oracle

NULL

Unfortunately Dan doesn't blog much anymore on technical matters. I would assume that's because of his current position on the Exadata team at Oracle. Sucks for us.

Luis Moreno Campos [twitter|linkedin]
Occupation: Principal Sales Consultant at Oracle

I found this one today (not sure how I missed it).

ocpdba weblog on Exadata

Glenn Fawcett
Occupation: Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems Oracle, Inc.

I found Glenn's blog through the OraNa feed recently, specifically the Open Storage S7000 with Exadata… a good fit ETL/ELT operations. post.

I don't think he's quite transitioned all of his articles from his Sun site, so you can find some Exadata articles there. His new site is hosted on Wordpress.

Kerry Osborne [linkedin]
Occupation: CIO at Enkitec

I've read Kerry's blog previously, just missed him. Thanks to the famous John Piwowar [blog|twitter] for reminding me.

Kerry Osborne’s Oracle Blog (on Exadata)

(Have you ever seen Half Baked? Jon Stewart has a cameo as the "Enhancement Smoker" who has to do everything, "on weed." It's pretty funny. To me.)

The Data Warehouse Insider
Author(s):
   Jean-Pierre Dijcks
   Keith Laker

Lots of good information here.

Exadata SIG

I attended the COLLABORATE SIG back in...April I think. This is headed up by Shyam Varan Nath [linkedin]. He's running the Exdata (IOUG SIG) group on LinkedIn as well. (He's everywhere!)

Oracle Exadata

The main site for Oracle Exadata. Tons of great information here.

Following links provided by Robin [blog|twitter] via Cleese [blog] (and I'm awfully s   l   o   w   :

• Oracle Database Machine homepage
• Oracle Exadata homepage
• FAQ: Sun Oracle Database Machine
• Data sheet: Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server
• Data sheet: Sun Oracle Database Machine
• Whitepaper: Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server and Database Machine
• Whitepaper: Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression
• Whitepaper: Backup and Restore for Sun Oracle Exadata and Sun Oracle Database Machine
• Whitepaper: Exadata Smart Flash Cache and the Sun Oracle Database Machine
• Whitepaper: Migration to Exadata

OTN Exadata Forum h/t Dan Norris

I just returned from reading a few threads in that forum...a great resource. If you want to "talk" or ask questions to some of the people mentioned on this page, that's the place to go.

Tyler Muth [linkedin|blog]
Occupation: Solution Architect (at Oracle)

I've first read Tyler's stuff on AskTom a long time ago.

- Space Saved With Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression
- Exadata Cell Offload Processing
- Exadata Intelligent Storage
- Physical I/O Saved With Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression

h/t John Piwowar [blog|twitter]

Pythian
A grand tour of Oracle Exadata, Part 1 by Marc Fielding

Frits Hoogland [blog|twitter]
Exadata Archive

There are definitely others out there, I know I didn't get them all. Feel free to link up a few in the comments and I'll make sure they get in this post.

End User Response Time

Inspired by Robin's [blog|twitter] Measuring real user response times for OBIEE, I remembered a wonderful APEX nugget: DEBUG

Robin's post was the continuation of a discussion between himself and Alex Gorbachev [blog|twitter] about...something. I'm pretty sure I glossed over much of it.

The reason I glossed over it is because I immediately thought about APEX and how easy it was to measure end user response time. OK, a little fib there, the data is there, some enterprising young APEX developer would just need to figure out how to get it.

OBIEE has cruddy instrumentation...wait, no instrumentation, from an end-user perspective.

But APEX does. (BTW, we should lobby to get some from the APEX team to show the OBIEE team how they do it).

 0.00:
0.00: S H O W: application="104" page="1" workspace="" request="" 
session="2529775339668942"
0.01: Language derived from: FLOW_PRIMARY_LANGUAGE, current browser language: en-us
0.01: alter session set nls_language="AMERICAN"
0.01: alter session set nls_territory="AMERICA"
0.01: NLS: CSV charset=WE8MSWIN1252
0.01: ...NLS: Set Decimal separator="."
0.01: ...NLS: Set NLS Group separator=","
0.01: ...NLS: Set date format="DD-MON-RR"
0.01: ...Setting session time_zone to -04:00
0.01: Setting NLS_DATE_FORMAT to application date format: MM/DD/YYYY
0.01: ...NLS: Set date format="MM/DD/YYYY"
0.02: NLS: Language=en-us
0.02: Application 104, Authentication: CUSTOM2, Page Template: 1260921800703249
0.02: ...Determine if user "CJUSTICE" workspace "1122708729156622" can develop 
application "104" in workspace "1122708729156622"
0.02: ...ok to reuse builder session for user:APEX_PUBLIC_USER
0.02: ...Application session: 2529775339668942, user=APEX_PUBLIC_USER
0.02: ...Determine if user "CJUSTICE" workspace "1122708729156622" can develop 
application "104" in workspace "1122708729156622"
0.02: ...Check for session expiration:
0.02: Session: Fetch session header information
0.02: ...Metadata: Fetch page attributes for application 104, page 1
0.02: Fetch session state from database
0.03: Branch point: BEFORE_HEADER
0.03: Fetch application meta data
0.04: Setting NLS_DATE_FORMAT to application date format: MM/DD/YYYY
0.04: ...NLS: Set date format="MM/DD/YYYY"
0.04: Computation point: BEFORE_HEADER
0.04: Processing point: BEFORE_HEADER
0.04: Show page template header
0.05: Computation point: AFTER_HEADER
0.05: Processing point: AFTER_HEADER

That's just the header section.

Now OBIEE can fire off multiple queries for a single report and for that you would probably use the built-in Usage Tracking data...but you still wouldn't have a end-user experience there.

I created a simple APEX page with two reports. One is querying a 10 record table and the other is querying a copy of DBA_OBJECTS.

Check out the instrumentation surrounding the region:



That's the small table and it's pretty quick.

Now let's look at the big table:



You might be able to see up at the top of that last image, the 0.13 IR:Binding...then the 0.17: Printing rows

That'll give you an idea of how long each region takes to run (0.04) which would help you to identify slow parts of your web page. I've used this in the past and it's very nice.

Finally, you have the footer section:

 0.17: Computation point: AFTER_FOOTER
0.17: Processing point: AFTER_FOOTER
0.17: Log Activity:
0.18: Execute Count=0
0.18: End Show:

Basically, the page took 0.18 seconds to load. Start capturing that data (i.e. snapshot), make your changes and then re-evaluate. Alex put it very nicely in the comments:

In this case, it’s a project of migrating from one platform to another. While load simulation provides results (and that’s been done), end users experience (response time) is the only thing that counts.

Without measuring it, users have full control on how they relay their experience to you and there is nothing you can prove or disprove.

Measuring it gives all the answer (and lots of power!).

Job: Infrastructure Technical Architect

Just drop me a note at chet@oraclenerd.com if you are interested. I'll pass you along.

Position:
Infrastructure Technical Architect 105-110k

Location:
North Dallas/Richardson, TX, USA

Summary
Information Technology Infrastructure Architect needed to review, architect and develop solutions, and to drive project delivery across all infrastructure domains for a premier provider of fire, communications and security products and services.

The successful candidate will:
Develop and manage high-level technical design plans and implementation within the business-delivery technical IT architecture. The IT Architect will have a broad understanding of the technical and applications architectures. Expertise may be applied in a general area or focused on a specific technical area. The incumbent is responsible for coordinating the research, strategy, design, implementation, documentation and management of the IT infrastructure architecture. This includes operational and strategic planning on day-to-day operations, R & D, compliance, disaster recovery, and business continuity. Collaborates with IT infrastructure services colleagues (voice & data networking, data center & servers, IT security, desktop & service desk, web services) and application groups (internet, intranet, corporate and business unit application development) to provide a secure, reliable, scalable, flexible, maintainable and efficient infrastructure to meet current and strategic business objectives.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Formulates strategic IT plans and strategies for the enterprise, factoring in a strong knowledge of the future vision of the organization. Uses this information to significantly influence future IT strategy. Prepares enterprise-wide architectural strategy and gap analysis recommendations, commensurate with business direction, for presentation to senior IT management.
• Sets strategic direction and provides technical leadership and mentoring to project teams.
• Provides recommendations and assessment of development/test/production environments for interrelated areas (server, storage, database, desktop, network, security) design, implementation, documentation (standards, processes, controls) and operational management of infrastructure related products and services.
• Serves as expert in multiple leading edge technologies and provides leadership in planning for the future of a technology area.
• Works across the enterprise as a visionary with an understanding of corporate strategy, to proactively assist in defining the direction of future projects.
• Maintains understanding of industry best practices across all platforms.
• Drives out inefficiencies and cost savings in platform, product and operational areas.
• Plays an active role in the development of services and standards to satisfy IT security requirements.
• Develops highly sophisticated technology plans and cost-benefit analysis that require the integration of multiple technologies and the interrelationships of multiple systems serving diverse customer areas.
• Provide senior level expertise on decisions and priorities regarding the enterprise’s overall systems architecture.
• Brings technical knowledge from external sources and incorporates those ideas into IT.
• Tracks industry trends and maintains knowledge of new technologies to better serve the enterprise’s architecture needs.
• Develops strategies and direction for systems and solutions using current and emerging technologies.
• Leads design efforts on technical solutions for the most complex projects, entailing high levels of risk, integrating multiple technologies, and with broad, strategic impact across multiple customer areas. Performs project management of infrastructure and strategic technology projects.
• Provides oral and written presentations on current and emerging technologies, in order to educate key stakeholders regarding technical issues.
• Mentor, train, and develop junior staff
• Team lead and supervisor to junior staff (when assigned)
• Approves and modifies design and architecture to ensure compliance; evaluates and recommends new products.
• Performs as an internal consultant, advocate, mentor, and change agent.
• Provides advanced multi-disciplinary knowledge, skills and experience in technical architecture and design.
• Collaborates, defines and maintains effective and efficient designs to optimize performance.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Education:

• Four (4) year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related IT discipline (advanced degree preferred).
• Applicants must either possess a current U.S. Government personnel security clearance at the level of Top Secret or be eligible to possess a Top Secret security clearance (United States citizens).
• Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

Experience:

• This is an enterprise position and requires experience in a similar role. The successful candidate would be expected to have 12-15 years in the infrastructure space.
• Previous experience creating a Technical Architecture Road Map in the infrastructure space
• Provisioning of Technical Architecture services to a MidCap or larger company or within a consulting organization to such a company for 3 years
• Broad technical knowledge across all infrastructure domains including Network, Security, Operations, and Server/OS platforms including AIX & Windows 2008, Enterprise storage (SAN, NAS, VTL), Oracle and MSSQL databases, and virtualization.
• In depth experience with enterprise applications including, but not limited to, Oracle EBS, MS Sharepoint, PeopleSoft HRMS and .NET, as well as with methodologies and frameworks such as ITIL v3, SOA, EDI and messaging.
• Deep knowledge of IT architecture and infrastructure standards with the proven ability to design hardware and software solutions, systems options, and risks analyses in order to successfully integrate solution with business requirements.
• Experience with IT Security.

Demonstrated Skills (provide examples):

• Ability to establish a trusted leadership working relationship across the IT and business sectors. Perceived internally and externally as expert in the function.
• Ability to present and communicate technical concepts with options to IT and business executives
• Ability to identify infrastructure milestones for project and program level activities.
• Ability to coordinate across multiple BIS applications and infrastructure project teams and schedules.
• Leading edge knowledge of concepts and theories in own discipline.
• Ability to apply leading edge knowledge to drive strategic direction of the function and the business in partnership with senior leaders.
• Recognition as a thought-leader.
• Understanding of integration points and interfaces, and ability to ensure that next generation technology allows for seamless integration.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Strong understanding of ITIL or similar service management process standards
• Strong Project Management skills
• Good organizational skills
• Good interpersonal skills
• Strong leadership skills

Job: Senior DBA

Just drop me a note at chet@oraclenerd.com if you are interested. I'll pass you along.

Position:
Sr. Database Administrator, IT 100-110k

Location:
North Dallas/Richardson, TX, USA

Summary:
Conceptualizes, designs, constructs, tests and implements business and technical IT solutions through application of appropriate software development life cycle methodology.

This position is primarily responsible for direction, support and maintenance of the Company’s Oracle e-Business Suite and supporting databases. It requires strong analytical and problem solving skills plus the ability to communicate effectively with a diverse audience which includes senior management, business stakeholders and IT team. An in depth knowledge of Oracle’s Enterprise RDBMS, e-Business technology stack and Oracle Applications is needed.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Manage and maintain all development, test, and production databases.
• Develop and support standards and physical data storage design, as well as maintenance, access, and security administration; perform backup and recovery on Database Management Systems (DBMS) and configure database parameters and design prototype logical data model.
• Define data repository requirements, data dictionaries, and warehouse requirements; consult with and advise users on access to various databases, as well as, work with users to resolve data conflicts and inappropriate data usage.
• Assist management with the development of database strategies that support the organization’s needs and requirements.
• Possess the ability to optimize database access and allocate/reallocate database resources for optimum configuration, database performance, and cost.
• Manage the maintenance and use of the corporate data dictionary.
• Develop and establish guidelines and processes to manage demand and performance, as well as work with peers across other departments to manage demand, performance, and capacity processes.
• Conceptualizes, designs, constructs, tests and implements business and technical IT solutions through application of appropriate software development life cycle methodology.
• Interacts with Business Delivery Teams to gain an understanding of the business environment and technical contexts.
• Participates in business and technical IT solution implementations, upgrades, enhancements, and conversions.
• Understands and uses appropriate tools to analyze, identify and resolve business and/or technical problems.
• Prepares system documentation establishes and maintains security, integrity, and business continuity controls and documents. Provide leadership and mentoring to jr. level technical teams.
• Contributes to the strategic direction of the function.
• Advises senior management on issues as they pertain to larger organizational issues/business initiatives.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Requirements:
Applicants must be resident citizens of the United States, who have or who are eligible to possess a U.S. Government personnel security clearance at the level of Top Secret. Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

Education:
Four (4) year degree or equivalent experience

Experience:
7+ yrs

• Minimum 7 years experience with Oracle database administration in a business environment including installing, patching, cloning, upgrading and restoring/recovering databases (Oracle 9i, 10g and 11g).
• 5+ years experience as an Oracle e-Business (11i or 12i) Application DBA which encompasses installing, patching, cloning, upgrading, and supporting
• Oracle application software and associated Oracle technology stack in a multi-tier environment including database server, applications server, web server, concurrent processing server, reports server, forms server, admin server and discoverer sever environment. Experience with Oracle’s PeopleSoft application a plus.
• Extensive knowledge of underlying Oracle Application database architectures, file system structures, schemas/products, tables, views, packages, procedures, functions, triggers, sequences, indexes and constraints is a must.
• Knowledge of Oracle’s Mobile field Service (WebToGo), Informatica PowerCenter, Solix EDMS suite and Microsoft SQL Server is a plus.
• Experience using Oracle’s Metalink support environment is a must.

Skills:

• Demonstrates advanced knowledge of principles, concepts, and theories in own discipline, and has extensive knowledge of principles and concepts in other functions.
• Demonstrates advanced business knowledge and analyses the impact of emerging industry trends.
• Demonstrates leading edge knowledge of concepts and theories in own discipline.
• Perceived internally and externally as expert in the function.
• Teaches others the technical and functional knowledge and skills needed to achieve results at the optimum level of performance.
• Applies leading edge knowledge to drive strategic direction of the function and the business in partnership with senior leaders.
• Recognized as a thought-leader.

Competencies:

• Customer Focus
• Drive for Results
• Ethics & Values
• Peer Relationships
• Conflict Managerment
• Continuous Improvement
• Business Acumen
• Functional/Technical Skills
• Decision Quality

Other:
This position is local and does not include relocation. Only candidates who possess the above minimum requirement will be considered.

Kevin Closson: DIY Exadata-level Performance?

Kevin Closson of the Oracle Systems Technology Group is looking for votes for his Oracle OpenWorld session over on Mix.

Title

Do-It-Yourself Exadata-level Performance?

Abstract

Oracle and Sun combined offer a tremendous array of hardware and software technologies. Would it be possible to open the product catalogue and assemble enough gear to offer Exadata-like performance? This is the presentation for the true DIY spirit in all of us. Come listen to Kevin Closson (Performance Architect, Oracle Server Technologies) tackle this notion with more fact than faith.

About Mr. Closson

Kevin is a Performance Architect in Oracle Corporation’s Server Technology Group. His 20 year career has included Engineering, Competitive Benchmarking, Support, and Application Development on high-end SMP and Clustered platforms. His work prior to Oracle at HP/PolyServe, Veritas and IBM/Sequent was focused on scalability and availability of the Oracle server. His Oracle port-level work at Sequent led to his U.S. patents in SMP/NUMA locking and database caching methods. Kevin speaks frequently at Oracle conferences and is a member of The OakTable Network. Kevin is also an Oracle Employee Ace. In addition to book collaborations, his written works have appeared in Oracle Magazine, Oracle Internals Magazine, IBM Redbooks and SELECT.

You can vote for his session here.

OBIEE: Gotcha #3

I received this wonderfully informative error this evening:



Value[nQSError: 36006] Promotion of checkout lock on Value to exclusive failed.

Lacking an Oracle Support login...I ventured to Google. Just like the error, it was wonderfully uninformative.

Log files?

Nothing.

This halted all development for me. Not all, I could make one change, check it in (save) and then I would get that error again. Wonderful.

From what I could piece together, and this is the purest form of speculation, it had something to do with naming.

I had a Physical database named "LOV"
I had a couple of columns (different tables) in another database with the same name.
These were all combined into one subject area.
Therefore that had to be the issue.

Or not. Who knows?

How did I fix it?

Shutdown the BI Server, opened up the RPD in read-only mode, did what I had to do and saved it...no error. Sweet.

Fired up the BI Server, opened up the RPD...you can only open this in read-only mode. WTF?

Let's try this again.

Shutdown.

Start.

Login. Success!

I almost followed the universal Windows rule of rebooting 3 times...almost.

Thank You?

More of a rant than anything.

I once teamed up with a co-worker to collect all the crazy-long email signatures people use. I think the longest we ever collected was around 10 lines, complete with pictures (a logo) and an alphabet soup of titles earned. Email address was included...which I still have a hard time figuring out why. Perhaps someone will print it? I guess those people still exist.

Anyway, the other day I noticed this (not the first time, just the first time I thought to write about it...plus, I have nothing else useful to say so maybe this will clear the bit of block I am having right now).

Thank You,

First Name Last Name
Title
Phone Number(s)

Thank You? Is that just to save time and keystrokes as Sten Vesterli [twitter|blog] notes:



I understand the efficiency part...but what if there is no actual "Thanks" required? Just seems a bit...weird to me.

I will end my email communiques with one of the following:
* Thanks
* Regards (probably a UK influence there)
* Sincerely

With my name, "chet" following a couple of lines below.

It's not that much extra typing, for me. I'm in the 70 WPM range...and maybe that's where the difference is. Who knows?

Just needed to get this off the chest.