Welcome to 5 Minute Briefing: Oracle, an information resource prepared by Database Trends and Applications Magazine and published in cooperation with the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). To subscribe, click here.

Oracle Releases Oracle Site Hub Master Data Management Solution

Oracle has released Oracle Site Hub, a new Oracle Master Data Management solution focused on site and location mastering. Oracle Site Hub is intended to help organizations enhance operational efficiency and improve decision making by offering a hub for mastering, consolidating, cleansing, governing and sharing site-specific information throughout the entire lifecycle of an organizational location. The new solution is an extension of Oracle’s existing master data management (MDM) software, Pascal Laik, Oracle vice president of MDM, tells 5 Minute Briefing, with Oracle now offering a comprehensive MDM solution with individual solutions for centralizing customer, product, financial, and site data.

With Oracle Site Hub, Laik says, “We are really focusing on two major business objectives.” The objectives are to work on the overall efficiency of sites-driven businesses and also to improve the decision making around site management and locations. To help organizations consolidate site-driven information, Oracle Site Hub provides pre-defined as well as user-defined attributes. The solution includes a mapping feature that enables organizations to map and view their sites in Google Maps, and to enable organizations to create a single view of their site-specific inventory, assets and property lease information, Oracle Site Hub comes pre-integrated with standard Oracle products such as Oracle Property Manager, Oracle Enterprise Asset Management (eAM), and Oracle Inventory Management. Out-of-the-box web services enable Oracle Site Hub to manage integration and share geographic site data across organizations. By sharing this single view throughout the enterprise, “everybody can have the same level-set and understanding of the right information about locations,” explains Laik.

Vertical industry deployments for Oracle Site Hub include retail, financial services, and the public sector, such as postal departments. For example, the solution allows retailers to manage real-estate portfolios with a consolidated view of their stores, franchises, competitors and prospective stores. It provides a framework for store lifecycle management starting with site prospecting, selection, operation, and remodeling through to site closure. “This information is critical for many of the departments working and operating on this data,” Laik says. For instance, he notes, the marketing, real estate operations, the finance department, procurement department, facilities and the operations department are all dependent on this data to operate their processes. The Site Hub provides them with “clean and up-to-date and centralized information about sites and locations to support those processes across the enterprise.” For more on Oracle Site Hub, go here.

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GoldenGate Software Announces the Availability of GoldenGate Version 10.0

GoldenGate Software, a provider of high availability and real-time data integration solutions, yesterday announced the availability of GoldenGate version 10.0, a transactional data management platform which enables real-time business operations. The heterogeneous platform support was a major focus for version 10.0, Chris McAllister, senior director of product management, GoldenGate Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. With this release, “we have added a lot of new databases—either a new database that we did not support before or one that is a new version,” he notes. The new release also provides improved performance and manageability, and offers new data integration functionality with Java Message Service (JMS) integration to support event-driven architectures (EDA) and service-oriented architectures (SOA).

GoldenGate v10.0 offers Oracle 11g support in addition to archive-log only GoldenGate capture for RAC in 11g, 10g and 9i which allows deployment on a separate server and zero impact on the source system database. With GoldenGate v10.0, customers also now have more flexibility for data integration with the ability to provide a JMS feed from heterogeneous source systems. GoldenGate can publish events from production systems to messaging systems in real time.

Additional GoldenGate v10.0 capabilities include specific performance and manageability enhancements to the core platform, which are available across all database platforms. Highlights include the Event Marker Infrastructure, which allows a customer to act upon a specific operation or transaction in the GoldenGate trail file. GoldenGate v10.0 also offers a feature known as Delayed Apply, which allows the target database to be updated with a user-defined delay, and keeps the secondary system at an earlier point in time than the primary system. A configuration such as this would provide enhanced data protection by avoiding replication of erroneous or malicious operations to the secondary system, as well as the ability to take snapshots or data reports at specific points in time.

For additional information about the new version and a list of all supported databases, go here. GoldenGate v10.0 is scheduled to be generally available in December 2008.

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Lumigent Launches Application GRC

Lumigent Technologies has introduced the AppGRC suite, an application GRC control suite for business applications. AppGRC for PeopleSoft Financials is one of the first products available in the suite, says John H. Capobianco, who has been named president and CEO of Lumigent. Capobianco, who had most recently held the position of chairman at Lumigent, joined the company earlier this year.

According to Lumigent, this launch and recent announcements about new customers as well as company executives, are reflective of “a new Lumigent led by a proven management team.” With a heritage rooted in data monitoring at the tools level, the company says, it is now dedicated to serving the application GRC market and to helping CFOs, controllers, and other business users seeking to drive down the costs of meeting governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) requirements for their primary business applications, while improving governance-driven productivity and profitability.

“The thought for this comes from a personal experience. About two years ago, I took a company public,” Capobianco tells 5 Minute Briefing. In facing the related “costs of compliance,” Capobianco says, he saw the number of people in the company’s finance group increase dramatically, while costs escalated as well. With Lumigent, which had been a log reading and auditing company, says Capobianco, it became evident that "because of the richness of the application capabilities of Lumigent, what we could do is actually create a business application which the CFO and the finance group could use to exercise controls and visibility on the primary business applications," helping to drive down companies' cost of regulatory compliance.

Using automated, continuous controls monitoring at the database layer, AppGRC aims to enhance the integrity of financial reporting and decision-making by providing persuasive, source-level information. AppGRC complements solutions from other vendors in the GRC ecosystem, like Oracle and SAP, as well as Paisley, MetricStream, Approva, AXENTIS,according to Lumigent. Through its proven methodology, Lumigent discovers business processes and the supporting information that need monitoring, creates an application baseline to quickly identify application changes, and implements continuous controls to ensure data integrity and ongoing compliance.

Currently, in addition to AppGRC for PeopleSoft Financials, AppGRC for Deltek Costpoint is now available. Going forward, the company will work in collaboration with its customers and ISVs to develop AppGRC solutions for both packaged and custom-built applications that use Oracle, as well as IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, or Sybase databases. “A lot of the ones we are starting with are financials applications because it is where a big part of the pain is,” said Capobianco. There is a “huge need” in the healthcare field as well, he added. For more information on Lumigent, go here. For more information on AppGRC suite, go here.

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Obtain a Solid Return on Your Investment at COLLABORATE 09 – IOUG Forum

What exactly will you gain from COLLABORATE 09 – IOUG Forum, taking place May 3-7, 2009 in Orlando, FL? Education, networking and access to leading Oracle executives and top Solution Providers needed to quantify a solid return on your investment. Register today to:

• Attend IOUG education sessions that relate to your job role in the following tracks:
  
  • Architecture and Infrastructure
    
  • Business Intelligence/Warehousing
    
  • Database
    Development
    
  • Middleware
    
  • Professional Development
    
  • Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC)
• Learn from hundreds of other sessions, presented by the Oracle Applications Users Groups (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest), COLLABORATE 09 co-hosts, in these tracks:
  
  • Asset Lifecycle Management
    
  • Customer Relationship Management
    
  • Financials
    
  • Human Capital
    
  • Manufacturing
    
  • Master Data Management/Application Integration
    
  • Oracle Services
    
  • Order Management
    
  • Project Management
    
  • Supplier Relationship
    
  • Supply Chain
• Hear from top Oracle executives and experts during keynote sessions
  
• Discover the latest products and technologies from more than 250 top IT Solution Providers
  
• Access IOUG exclusive offerings like the Tuning Oracle Coffeehouse, SIG Welcome Reception, University Seminars* and more

Download the IOUG Forum training proposal to let your manager or supervisor know the value of this event.

Register today. Make sure to book your housing after registering, as rooms are available to registrants only on a first-come, first-served basis.

*IOUG University Seminars are not included within your conference registration. They are available for additional fees.

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Calling all BI, Warehousing and Analytics Professionals

If you are a Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics professional, you can’t afford to miss BIWA Summit 2008, December 2-3 in Redwood Shores, CA. Registration to this only international conference focused exclusively on BIWA guarantees:

• 65+ sessions corresponding to three tracks: BI, Data Warehousing and Analytics
  
• Hands-on workshops covering topics like: Oracle BI EE, Warehouse Builder ETL and Data Quality, BI Publisher Essbase, Smartview, Visual Explorer, OLAP, Data Mining, Text Mining, Discoverer
  
• Keynote speakers, including Jeanne Harris, Accenture, co-author of bestseller Competing on Analytics and Usama Fayyad, Former Chief Data Officer/Executive VP Research & Strategic Data Solutions, Yahoo!
  
• Solutions Showcase and Solution Providers Sessions, enabling you to learn about the latest products and services that can enhance your business

Register today!

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Attend Free Webinar Tomorrow on Enterprise Data Insecurity

How do data managers and professionals perceive the issues around database security?
Do they feel enough is being done to protect against internal data breaches or incidents?

According to a recent IOUG study conducted by Unisphere and sponsored by Oracle, IOUG members believe not enough is being done to address the risks of enterprise data, with one in five expecting a data breach during the coming year. Join the IOUG, Oracle and Unisphere for a one-hour webinar, Enterprise Data Insecurity - Are Organizations Prepared for the Threat Within?, taking place tomorrow, November 20 from 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. CT, which will discuss the survey results, and learn what measures organizations can take to protect their data.

Presented by Ian Abramson, IOUG President, Michelle Malcher, IOUG Director of SIGs, Joseph McKendrick, Unisphere Analyst, and Roxana Bradescu, Senior Product Director, Oracle Database Security Product Marketing, this webinar:

• Identifies key areas of database security risk from the recent IOUG study
  
• Reports on efforts to reduce risk by peer organizations
  
• Sets the background for a dynamic, live question-and-answer session

Every attendee will receive a complimentary white paper outlining the major findings from the IOUG study and currently available security solutions.

Reserve your seat today, as space is limited.

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Have Your Questions Answered by Oracle Senior Vice President, Application Development

Steve Miranda, Oracle Senior Vice President, Application Development, is holding an open Q&A, tentatively scheduled for Monday, December 8. Please submit your questions for Steve in advance.

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Register for Free Webinar on New Imaging and Process Management Features and Integrations

Join Sancho Pinto, Product Management Director for Oracle Content Management, on Thursday, December 18, from 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. CT, for this overview of recent product enhancements to Oracle Imaging and Process Management 10gR3.

This webinar will provide an overview of new functionality and a product demo that showcases how new E-Business Suite integrations for Payables and iExpense help to streamline back-office operations by leveraging a new application extension framework that harnesses the power workflow functionality of Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager.

Click here to register, as space is limited.

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Founded in 1993, the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) (formerly International Oracle Users Group) is a user-driven membership organization for Oracle technology and database professionals serving more than 15,000 database administrators, developers, architects, technical managers and other Oracle professionals throughout North America and worldwide. The IOUG empowers its members and the broader Oracle community through their technical publication, SELECT Journal, Web site resources including more than 3000 papers, tips and articles and networking with other users through online discussion forums, Special Interest Groups and a network of regional Oracle user groups. For more information about the IOUG, please visit the IOUG Web site.

Database Trends and Applications, published by Unisphere Media, provides timely coverage of the technology and intelligence needed to conceptualize, plan, initiate, implement and manage large-scale integrated information projects. Unisphere Media also publishes 5 Minute Briefing: Data Integration, a summary of news, trends, and insights addressing crucial data integration challenges and 5 Minute Briefing: MultiValue, a review of news, technical tips and insights for the MultiValue database community. Visit our Web site here.

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