Migration to Oracle Databases - Are you thinking about it?

Businesses are always looking at ways to remain competitive especially in the current financial climate. Part of remaining competitive, is making sure you are using the right IT resources to maximise your investments and control costs.

Databases play a major role in IT efficiency. Making sure you are using the right DBMS is essential for a successful business. But is your business using the best one? Most people have the assumption that migrating databases is very time and money consuming and can cause disruption to the overall business.

Quantix, offer the opportunity to enable your business to harness the power of an oracle database platform. Whether you are considering migrating to a newer version of Oracle database or considering migrating from a completely different database platform to Oracle, Quantix has the best service for you.

As an Oracle Certified Advantage partner, Quantix have the full set of knowledge and skills required to be able to migrate your current database systems to Oracle. Our Oracle DBA’s have over 250-man years of experience and knowledge ensuring your databases are in the best hands possible.

The Quantix migration service steps include:

• Back-up of existing systems in case of any problems during duration.
• Install new version.
• Import / Export of data.
• Copy & Migrate
• Run upgrade scripts.
• Testing – we provide full support throughout the testing stages

The benefits of working with Quantix, not only means that you will be working with a market leader in database support services, but you are also ensuring that your business has access to a pool of Oracle resources which would be near impossible to recruit.

Our migration service includes the following benefits:

• Professional migration by an Oracle Certified systems engineer
• Copy and migrate
• Latest software patches installed
• Documentation on how the system has been configured
• Run upgrade scripts
• Testing – we provide full support throughout the testing stages

If you would like further information about our Oracle Migration service, please visit the Quantix website or call us on 0115 983 6200

Oracle Database Security and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Oracle Database Security and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Oracle Database security provides powerful data protection and access control solutions to address PCI-DSS 1.1 requirements.

Oracle Database Vault prevents highly privileged users from accessing the credit card information and helps reduce the risk of insider threats with separation of duty, multi-factor authorization and command rules.

Oracle Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) provides the industry's most advanced database encryption solution, enabling encryption of credit card numbers with complete transparency to the existing application.

Oracle Audit Vault consolidates and protects database audit data from across the enterprise. Oracle Audit Vault reports and alerts provide pro-active notification of access to credit card information.

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides secure configuration scanning to insure your databases stay configured securely.

Oracle Label Security extends user security authorizations to help enforce the need-to-know principle.

See following link for more details

http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/database-security/oracle-pci.html


If you would like further information regarding the above services or any of the Quantix range, please feel free to visit the Quantix or contact us on 0115 983 6200

Orakill

The orakill utility is provided only with Oracle databases on Windows platforms. The executable (orakill.exe) is available to DBAs to kill Oracle sessions directly from the DOS command line without requiring any connection to the database.

In the UNIX world, a DBA can kill a shadow process by issuing the kill –9 command from the UNIX prompt. UNIX is able to provide this capability given that the UNIX operating system is based on processes that fork other processes. All processes can be listed by using the ps UNIX command. The Oracle background processes will be listed separately from all of the Oracle sessions since they have their own process.

Unlike the UNIX operating system, Windows systems are thread-based. For each instance, the background processes and sessions are all contained within the oracle.exe executable. These processes are not listed in the “Processes” tab of Windows Task Manager. Each session creates its own thread within oracle.exe and therefore, is not exposed to the Windows user. Killing the oracle.exe process in Windows would crash the entire database.

The orakill utility serves the same purpose as kill –9 in UNIX . The command requires the instance and the SPID of the thread to kill. The utility will display exactly how to obtain the SPID in the event the command was entered without parameters:

C:\oracle9i\bin>orakill

Usage: orakill sid thread

where sid = the Oracle instance to target
thread = the thread id of the thread to kill

The thread id should be retrieved from the spid column of a query such as:

select spid, osuser, s.program from
v$process p, v$session s where p.addr=s.paddr

If the statement suggested by Oracle (above) to retrieve the Thread ID is executed, the results below are displayed:

select a.username, a.osuser, b.spid
from v$session a, v$process b
where a.paddr = b.addr
and a.username is not null;


USERNAME OSUSER SPID
------------------------------ ------------------------------ -----
SCOTT Scott 3116
AMOORE Alex 4760
DMOORE Dave 768

With the SPID for each user listed above, the session for any user can be killed.

C:\oracle9i\bin>orakill ORCL92 4760

Kill of thread id 4760 in instance ORCL92 successfully signalled.


SQL> select a.username, a.osuser, b.spid
2 from v$session a, v$process b
3 where a.paddr = b.addr
4 and a.username is not null;


USERNAME OSUSER SPID
------------------------------ ------------------------------ -----
SCOTT Scott 3116
DMOORE Dave 768

2 rows selected.

Notice that SPID 4760, user AMOORE is gone.

Why does Oracle provide a utility to kill sessions from the DOS prompt, when a DBA could kill a user session from within Oracle? The following command will also kill the user session:

alter system kill session(sid, serial#);

The sid (session ID) and serial# above can be obtained from the v$session view. There are a couple of reasons a DBA might use orakill instead of the alter system kill session command.

1. The alter system statement will not clear any locks that exist. Instead, the session will remain connected until it times out, then the session is killed and the locks are released. The orakill command will kill the thread and the locks instantly.
2. A DBA may be unable to gain access to a SQL prompt due to a runaway query consuming all database resources. In this case, the session can be killed without ever logging in to the database.

If you would like more information on any of Quantix's Oracle product range then please visit the Quantix website or contact us on 0115 983 6200

Oracle Acquires ClearApp

On September 2, 2008, Oracle announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire ClearApp, a leading provider of application management solutions for composite applications. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second half of 2008. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.

Today, businesses rely heavily on agile SOA applications to automate key business processes. These environments are often developed and managed by different teams, and the high level of abstraction that makes these architectures attractive also hides key application component relationships creating an "IT visibility gap".

ClearApp addresses the IT visibility gap by discovering and modeling the functional dependencies inherent in SOA environments. With the ClearApp solution, customers are able to discover and model end-to-end business services and component dependencies in runtime, monitor business service performance, and diagnose performance issues quickly. ClearApp’s capabilities are expected to extend Oracle’s application management solutions to provide visibility of transactions across all application components.

Oracle Enterprise Manager and ClearApp products, combined with recently acquired products from Moniforce and Auptyma, are expected to provide customers with a top-down application management solution that provides comprehensive management of their standards-based applications and integrations, delivering greater value to the business. Customers are expected to see enhanced service levels, reduced down time, and improved return on their SOA investments.

After the close of the transaction, we anticipate that Oracle partners will benefit from working with a single vendor to address customer needs for complete SOA governance and application management solutions. ISV partners are expected to gain broader opportunities for development integrations. System Integrators should be able to expand implementation and service offerings related to Oracle Enterprise Manager. Value-added resellers are expected to gain expanded opportunities to provide solutions. All partners can take advantage of Oracle’s worldwide resources and enablement through the Oracle PartnerNetwork program

Quantix, a Oracle Certified Advantage partner, offer a wide range of Oracle products and services to suit the needs of any business in any vertical market. If you would like information on any of our oracle products or services, please feel free to visit the Quantix website or call us on 0115 983 6200

Oracle Support

Dear MetaLink Customer,

Oracle is committed to consistently improving your customer support experience. In the fall of 2008, MetaLink will have a new user interface. To help you prepare for the transition, you may now preview MetaLink's new user interface and provide valuable feedback about its features.

What's new?MetaLink's new user interface offers several benefits including:
Improved Service Request creation which can be up to 15% faster in the new user interface and up to 40% faster when created from a configuration using Software Configuration Manager
Improved Knowledge Management and Guided Search capabilities enabling you to locate relevant knowledge articles and information quickly and efficiently.

Combining the new user interface with Software Configuration Manager is even more powerful:
Proactive problem avoidance with personalized and proactive patch advice, health checks, security and product alerts that help you address potential issues before they impact your operations.

Faster problem resolution with integrated service request work flows and detailed, dynamic system configuration data, shared with Oracle Support in real-time
Improved systems stability with proactive advice, targeted issue notification and personalized Oracle best practices, pushed to your desktop to help drive maximum systems availability
Simplified configuration management with a single, comprehensive and personalized dashboard of configurations, projects and inventory.

Important Technical Pre-RequisiteAdobe Flash 9 is required to view the new user interface. If you do not already have Flash 9 installed, you will be prompted to install it upon navigating to the Software Configuration Manager tab. Simply accept the install prompt to begin using the enhanced interface. If you are unable to install Adobe Flash 9, be sure to give us feedback using the feedback button in the upper right corner of MetaLink.

To Preview The New User Interface To preview the new user interface, simply login to MetaLink and select the Software Configuration Manager tab and begin using the new Service Request and Knowledge screens. You can use the new user interface for your most common support tasks such as creation and updating of Service Requests and Knowledge searching.

More InformationFor more information about upcoming new MetaLink features click here, or for additional details, view our frequently asked questions.

We're confident that you will experience a more streamlined customer support experience and more efficient use of online support tools and resources as a result of these changes. We look forward to your participation and feedback.

Oracle is making changes to the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) Program to better mirror the types of companies they do business with. The requirements for membership are intended to align with their partners’ business models and offer benefits that support the growth of the partner network.

Why do I think they have made the changes?

They are looking to improve the Partner Network and ensure that it supports the partner community, are wide-ranging and flexible enough to allow new partners join Oracle and Offer tools and resources to help our partners develop their Oracle portfolio and deliver more services to clients. Looks like a good thing to me.

Quantix achieved the highest Oracle partner status (Certified Advanatage Partner) in 2005 and have since go on to be nominated for numerous awards including 'Oracle Technology Partner of the Year' at the end of 2007.

This goes to show the high quality of Oracle Services that Quantix is able to offer to a wide range of clients but also emphasises the status Quantix has within the Oracle Partner Network.

Amazing Oracle data compression benefits

In an outstanding Oracle paper titled “data compression in Oracle, Oracle employees Poess and Potapov deliver one of the most comprehensive tests of Oracle OLAP data compression using industry recognized TPC test case techniques.

This Oracle whitepaper describes some very important details on using Oracle data compression for very large Oracle databases:

http://www.vldb.org/conf/2003/papers/S28P01.pdf

Among the findings is the important suggestion that using Oracle table compression may actually improve the performance of your Oracle database:

“The reduction of disk space using Oracle table compression can be significantly higher than standard compression algorithms, because it is optimized for relational data.

It has virtually no negative impact on the performance of queries against compressed data; in fact, it may have a significant positive impact on queries accessing large amounts of data, as well as on data management operations like backup and recovery.”

This compression paper also suggestion that using a large blocksize may benefit Oracle databases where rows contain common redundant values:

“Table compression can significantly reduce disk and buffer cache requirements for database tables. Since the compression algorithm utilizes data redundancy to compress data at a block level, the higher the data redundancy is within one block, the larger the benefits of compression are.”

The article also cites evidence that Oracle table compression can reduce the time required to perform large-table full-table scans by half:

“The fts of the non-compressed table takes about 12s while the fts of the compressed table takes only about 6s.”


If you require further support with your Oracle Applications or if you would like to know more about our Oracle Support solutions then please visit our website or call us on 0115 983 6200.

UKOUG 2008

Have you registered your interest for UKOUG 2008?

The dates to mark in your diary are 1st-5th December 2008, when in excess of 100 exhibitors are expected over four exhibition days, and more than 450 agenda sessions over five days serving Oracle Technology, Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, Stellent, BEA and Hyperion communities at the ICC, Birmingham. This year we also have ‘The Big Secret’ being revealed at the Conference, make sure you do not miss out.

Guest speakers include:
Tom Kyte, Oracle Corporation Vice President
Jesper Anderson, Senior Vice President, Oracle Applications
Andy Mendlesohn, Senior Vice President, Oracle Server Technologies
Jürgen Rottler, Executive Vice President, Oracle Customer Services
Sergio Giacoletto, Executive Vice President of Europe, Middle East & Africa

Please click here to register your interest and you will be entered into a prize draw to win a Dell Inspiron Laptop. For further details about the Conference are available at: http://conference.ukoug.org/

Oracle Critical Patch Update July 2008

The Oracle Critical Patch Update for July 2008 was released on July 15, 2008. We strongly recommend that you apply the Oracle patch as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes the list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities for each product suite, and links to other important documents. Supported products that are not listed in the "Supported Products and Components Affected" section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied. If you require further help regarding Oracle Support, then please visit the Quantix website.

Also, it is essential to review the Oracle Critical Patch Update supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available at the following location:
Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm
The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

* October 14, 2008
* January 13, 2009
* April 14, 2009
* July 14, 2009

If your organisation is looking for Oracle Support or Oracle Managed Services, then please visit the Quantix website, where you will be able to find information on Oracle Consultancy, Oracle Solutions aswell as our full portfolio of the latest Oracle Technology.

Oracle Outsourcing

I’ve been in the managed service industry and IT consultancy profession for almost 15 years and I've seen the process first hand of using outside firms to manage and deliver work normally performed within a organisation — although managed service contracts are a familiar concept to larger companies, smaller companies miss the trick of routinely outsourcings their noncore critical business disciplines, of which IT is one.

Why — maybe because they belive there is little or no choice? Larger companies use outsourcing to reduce/control costs and improve productivity.

Having a strong background in database technologies and working to provide services such are Oracle consultancy and Oracle support, it is easy to see how cost effective outsourcing can be for both small and large organisations.

An entire industry has evolved to serve companies' outsourcing needs and Quantix the UK's premier IT Managed Service provider is at the forefront of providing it.

Still not many businesses really understand the benefits of Oracle outsourcing. It's true that outsourcing can save money, but that's not the only reason to do it as Quantix who have implemented successful outsourcing relationships have discovered.

Capital costs Benefit. Cost-cutting is only one reason to outsource, but it's certainly a factor.
Outsourcing converts fixed costs into variable costs, releasing capital for investment elsewhere in the company. Outsourcing can also make a company more attractive to investors.
Resource efficiency. Businesses that do the whole thing themselves have much higher resource costs, higher research costs, increased limited staff developmenmt and logistical expenses, all of which have to be recovered. Using an outsourcing partner such as Quantix provides a cost structure and allows for economy of scale to can give your firm an important competitive advantage.

Manage labour costs. Recruiting, developing and training staff for short-term or peripheral projects can is inefficient and expensive, and contratct staff don't always have the same levels of commitment to an organisation. Outsourcing lets you focus your resources where they are a benefit to you business.

Oracle databases over the years have developed and grown and from an organisation's point of view, managing such a powerful database requires manpower, which can cost thousands of pounds. What Quantix has been able to do is save both small and large businesses from having spiralling costs by providing excellent Oracle Support packages to suit every business. Leading the way, in the IT managed service industry, Quantix has been able to help organisations see the true benefits of outsourcing.

Mentioned above are only a few of the benefits of outsourcing, so why don’t more SME outsource?

To find out how you can reduce your costs and become more efficient, please visit the Quantix website.

Oracle Critical Patch Update - April 2008

The Oracle Critical Patch Update for April 2008 is now available. Applying this Oracle patch is strongly recommended as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes the list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities for each product suite, and links to other important documents.

Supported products that are not listed in the "Supported Products and Components Affected" section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied. Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available at any of the following locations: Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

July 15, 2008
October 14, 2008
January 13, 2009
April 14, 2009

If your organisation is looking for Oracle Support or Oracle Managed Services, then please visit the Quantix website, where you will be able to find information on Oracle Consultancy, Oracle Solutions aswell as our full portfolio of the latest Oracle Technology.

Oracle 11g New Features

Back at Oracle Openworld 2006, Oracle announced some exciting new features of Oracle 11g, and they promise almost 500 new Oracle11g features. The most exciting relates to tools that automate the well-structured DBA tasks, freeing-up the DBA to pursue more challenging work, sounds great?

Oracle 11g grid is the next personification of Oracle's database management system, noted as probably the most flexible and robust data storage platform in the world.
Many of the Oracle11g new features are enhancements to automation of the inherently complex Oracle engine.

Oracle 11g has over 500 new features which include:

· 11g SQL new features
· 11g language & PL/SQL new features
· 11g DBA features
· 11g RAC new features & enhancements
· 11g performance features
· 11g security new features
· 11g Enterprise Manager (OEM) new features

For further information regarding Quantix Oracle Support and Oracle Database Managed Services please visit the Quantix website.

Quantix nominated for 3 Oracle Awards

For the third year running Quantix has been nominated for the prestigious "Oracle Technology Partner of the Year" award. In addition, Quantix has also been nominated for “Best Technology Partner – General Business” and “Continuous Investment in People & Learning”, with the final results due to be announced at the Oracle Partner Awards in February 2008.

These nominations cap another very successful year for Quantix as an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner. High demand for its market leading range of Oracle Support Services has driven contract revenues upwards by 35% to over £4m, whilst the trend of substantial revenue growth from all Oracle solutions looks set to continue. Since completing an MBO in early 2007 Quantix has invested substantially in additional Oracle personnel & technology, so that its dedicated Enterprise Applications Practice now numbers over 30.

Simon Goodenough, Sales Director of Quantix, commented:
"Our partnership with Oracle continues to go from strength to strength and we are extremely proud to be nominated in three separate categories. Not only do these nominations endorse the customer focused approach that we take to delivering Oracle solutions but they also recognise our commitment, expertise and experience.”

About Quantix:
Quantix, an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner and Microsoft Gold Partner, specialise in the provision of enterprise applications support and managed services to the Mid Market. Incorporated in 2002, Quantix has seen consistently strong growth in its range of support services and can now lay claim to a managed services contract base of over £4m. Quantix has a turnover of £7m and currently works with over 400 clients across numerous vertical markets, including Finance & Banking, Transport, Public Services, Business Services, Retail, Utilities and Telecoms.