Oracle E-Business Suite News from OpenWorld 2012

I always followed all Oracle OpenWorld happenings through blogs, but this is the first OpenWorld that I physically attended. The blog post from Michael Abbey on tips for OOW first timers was a godsend for me. This helped me to navigate OOW like a pro.

Being a Oracle E-Business Suite DBA for almost 10 years, My primary focus was Oracle R12 related sessions. But the System Administrator in me swayed me into a Solaris Roadmap Session as well.

As Pythian representative at Oracle E-Business Suite ATG Customer Advisory Board, I got to meet Steven Chan, Lisa Parekh, Elke Phelps, Vishal Gupta, Santiago Bastidas, Kevin Hudson, Max Arderius and many other key personalities in Ebiz field, on Saturday at ATG CAB Meetup. We got a glimpse of what’s coming up in R12.2, but the Oracle Team was tight lipped about the R12.2 release dates.

Steven Chan left a teaser at Ebusiness Suite SIG meeting on Sunday saying you might hear something tomorrow, when people asked him about R12.2 updates persistently.

Another session to remember on sunday was, Southern Ontario OAUG meeting. Len Taylor, who chaired it, made it a fun way to network with fellow Canadians. His tips on how to spot good Ebiz sessions were awesome. If we are looking for EBiz release dates, then we need to look for “Cliff Godwin”. If we are looking for upcoming features, then search for “Roadmap”.

The opening keynote was amazing. One of my fellow OOWer commented, it’s movie time! Indeed It felt like a IMAX Movie. Larry’s witty jokes on Oracle Sales guys ready to make a deal and belittling EMC VMAX throughput numbers with Exadata X3 numbers, were fun. I was thrilled to see Pythian Folks’ tweets on the big screen at the end of Welcome Keynote.

I went into Cliff Godwin’s EBiz Roadmap presentation, on Monday, with the hope of hearing about R12.2 release dates, but was disappointed to hear no news about it. All we got is 1 year Exception Support for 12.1 and 11.5.10 customers, which basically a 1 year extra Extended support. You can read more about it here. But the Endeca integration with Oracle Ebusiness Suite demo was highlight of this session.  Got to see more Endeca in action at Osama Elkady‘s session.

Another Important Session on Monday was Ebiz Future directions: Deployment and System Administration by Max Arderius. This session gave more insight into R12.2 Installation, filesystem, patching & cloning aspects.

Kevin Hudson’s session on Online Patching is another highlight for Ebiz at this OpenWorld. It gave more technical details on to how Online Patching works in R12.2 using Editioning Views, Cross Edition Triggers & Editioned Data Storage. I am planning to do a more detailed blog on R12.2 architectural changes & Online patching in coming weeks.

Elke Phelps promised a simplified documentation for EBiz Integration with OAM for upcoming release 11.1.2, In her session on Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Identity Management Solutions. I couldn’t agree more with her, the current OAM integration document is too complex to comprehend.

While i was strolling through the Exhibition halls, I ran into couple of my x-colleagues. It was wonderful meeting them after so many years. The overall Technical quotient of Ebiz sessions is good. But Openworld is all about Networking of bright minds ! See you Soon with more R12.2 Blog posts !