Oracle Pro Tips, Trends & Technology eXTRA Pinnacle Publishing http://www.pinnaclepublishing.com Issue 3.13 August 13, 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1) Pop Quiz (answer at the end) 2) Oracle News 3) Tech Industry News 4) References 5) Answer to the Pop Quiz --------------------------------------------------------- 1) POP QUIZ (answer at the end) --------------------------------------------------------- What are Web Services, and does Oracle support them? --------------------------------------------------------- 2) ORACLE NEWS --------------------------------------------------------- Oracle's application server, Oracle9iAS, contains the Apache Web server for handling Web traffic. It can also execute Java and PL/SQL program modules. Recently, Oracle announced that it has included a single sign-on module for Oracle9iAS. Single sign-on simplifies password management by having one single account for access to all relevant resources. There is quite a bit of cost savings with single sign-on. According to one sample calculation, an organization with 10,000 employees, with each employee having four password resets, can result in approximately $560,000 in savings. After all, it costs money (administrator's time) if you forget the password and need to ask someone to reset it. This is only one advantage of having single sign-on. Other advantages are as follows: * Enhanced user-friendliness because a user no longer needs many multiple accounts and passwords * Tightened security because there's only one single source of usernames and passwords Find out more at the following link: http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/ias/sso/index.html?content.html --------------------------------------------------------- 3) TECH INDUSTRY NEWS --------------------------------------------------------- According to a recent news article, tech firms may be suffering from the worst slump ever, but they are awash in cash. Microsoft, for instance, has US $38.7 billion. Oracle is not too shabby either with close to US $6 billion. The question is that they need to decide what to do with the money. Apparently, the options are somewhat limited. Microsoft, for instance, is boosting its R&D by US $5.3 billion, and CISCO plans to buy back its own shares. The good news is that they won't be short of cash to operate their business anytime soon. Find out more at the following link: http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020804/tech_cash_3.html * * * * * Speaking of money, here's the latest SEC filings from Oracle. Compared to the numerous failures in the tech industry, Oracle is, in fact, doing quite well: http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/o/orcl.html --------------------------------------------------------- 4) REFERENCES --------------------------------------------------------- My fellow editor Karen Watterson gave me this useful link for DBA articles. http://www.dbatoolbox.com/Content/dbamisc_wp.htm Also, if you go to the main site, http://www.dbatoolbox.com/, there's a link to articles on data warehousing with emphasis on Oracle technology. Happy reading! P.S. You can always read Pinnacle's journals as well. --------------------------------------------------------- 5) ANSWER TO THE POP QUIZ --------------------------------------------------------- The Oracle9iAS documentation provides a good summary of what Web Services are: "Web Services are a set of emerging standards that describe a service-oriented, component-based application architecture. Web Services enable loosely coupled, reusable software components that semantically encapsulate discrete functionality and are distributed and programmatically accessible over standard Internet protocols. Web Services, as they stand today, comprise of open Internet standards like WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI. WSDL is used to describe the Web Service; UDDI is used to publish and query Web Services described in WSDL; and finally SOAP is used to invoke the Web Service." While Microsoft is pushing the .NET initiative as its answer to Web Service integration, Oracle is extending its existing product suite to support Web Services, in particular, the Java J2EE Web Services processing model. The main page for Oracle Web Services resource is: http://technet.oracle.com/tech/Webservices/content.html. A good starting point would be to peruse their technical papers. The main link is: http://technet.oracle.com/tech/Webservices/techinfo.html. The architecture document is located at: http://technet.oracle.com/tech/Webservices/pdf/Webservices_twp.pdf. The URL below shows the standards supported by Oracle: http://technet.oracle.com/tech/xml/htdocs/standard.html. In terms of integration, you can do it at the application server level -- that is, Oracle9iAS: http://technet.oracle.com/tech/Webservices/documentation.html. You can also integrate it in Oracle Reports: http://technet.oracle.com/products/reports/content.html. After you feel you've read enough, you can try out the tutorials: http://technet.oracle.com/tech/Webservices/htdocs/series/content.html. Note that some of these tutorial downloads take quite long. Let me know if you've any insight you'd like to share with the fellow subscribers. --------------------------------------------------------- Well, that's it for this week. I welcome your feedback, input, tips, suggestions, Web sites, and other Oracle- related news. If you send me something, please let me know whether I can use your name with your comments. I apologize in advance if I don't respond personally to each of your questions or suggestions, but I'll get to as many as I can in the eNewsletter if not personally. Garry Chan, Editor Database Architect mailto:GChan@ProcaseConsulting.com This eNewsletter is brought to you compliments of Pinnacle Publishing, Inc. Copyright(c) 2002 http://www.pinnaclepublishing.com All rights reserved.