"If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances." - Albert Einstein, The Reporter, 18 November 1954

 

If your company is starting to think about upgrading to Release 12, one of the most important first steps is to try out the upgrade. TruTek's Oracle E-Business Suite R11i/R12 Technical Upgrade class is a 5 day hands-on class where you'll upgrade the Release 11.5.10.2 Vision instance to Release 12.0.6. And no, it's not rocket science. But sometimes it feels like it is.

How hard can it be? We'd like to think we've taken some of the agony out of upgrading by publishing a book, the little r12 upgrade guide, that takes you through the steps. Our guide - and the class - include additional patches that you'll need to apply, plus an assortment of "gotchas", with their solutions.

The class size is limited to 4 to 6 students to allow plenty of instructor attention for dealing with problems that arise, and questions that students have. Each student uses a quad core Linux server with 4-8 GB of memory and 1 TB of disk space to perform the upgrade.

 

We've got our first feedback from a reviewer:

I read the through the WHOLE BLESSED THING, and I have to say that this is incredible!  An incredibly thorough, detailed, and (near as I can tell) complete 165-page, step-by-step cookbook. Great work, Mike!

 

Tim Gorman

 

Don't miss Mike's upcoming training class, Oracle E-Business Suite R11i/R12 Technical Upgrade in Albany, NY, August 3-7, in Fullerton, CA, September 14-18, in Seattle, WA, September 28-October 2, and in St. Louis, Missouri, November 30-December 4th.

Other Articles About Upgrading to Release 12:

• News from the Trenches - An E-Business Suite R12 11g Implementation - Jerry Ireland, Mark W. Farnham

I am just back from the latest ODTUG (the Oracle Development Tools User Group) Kaleidoscope conference, this time in Monterey, California. It was, as usual, a very well-run and successful event (their attendance actually grew from 2008, which is saying an awful lot given the state of the global economy).

It is easy to pick out the highlight of the conference for me: the ODTUG board of directors very graciously bestowed upon me their first Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, I can prove it to you with (what else?) Twitter: http://twitter.com/odtug/status/2273902345

[ How did we ever get by without Twitter? Aw, just kidding. I do without Twitter every single day of my life. :-) ]

Anyway, back to the seriously wonderful stuff: I was very honored by ODTUG and deeply appreciate the award, except I have to wonder if the "subtext" of the award is "Enough already, Steven. Time to chill out and let other people have their way with PL/SQL."

Maybe, maybe....I will give it some thought - after I finish the next edition of Oracle PL/SQL Programming (due out in October at Oracle Open World), implement object type support for Quest Code Tester, wrap up my best practice video series on PL/SQL Obsession, and come back from my Asia-Pacific summer tour (Australia, Singapore and Seoul).

Of course, I don't like ODTUG just because they treat me so nicely (oh, and they have also agreed to let me publish a regular column named "Confessions of a Quick and Dirty Programmer" in their magazine). This is my favorite user group organization precisely because of its focus on developers. At a time when Oracle barely seems to remember that it has this great programming language (excepting the PL/SQL dev team, Oracle Magazine and OTN, of course), ODTUG offers an annual love fest for PL/SQL developers.

Hmmm, actually two love fests: the general ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference (it covers much more than just PL/SQL) and the annual Oracle PL/SQL Programming conference (it covers nothing but PL/SQL). OPP2009 will take place on Nov 10-11 in Atlanta. It will feature an expanded agenda, which means that, more than ever before, if you are looking for an intensive training in PL/SQL, OPP2009 is the best place to spend your scarce training dollars.

Enough shameless promotion of a conference for which I am technical co-chairperson.

So....thanks once more to the ODTUG board and its many fantastic volunteers, as well as Your Conference Connection, which does the on-the-ground organization of ODTUG events. Special kudos to Jeff Jacobs, Kaleidoscope conference chairperson, Mike Riley (ODTUG president, and husband of the very delightful Lisa Riley, with whom I had several excellent conversations) and Kathleen McCausland, ODTUG executive director.

If you've never attended a Kaleidoscope or OPP conference and you are a PL/SQL developer, I strongly urge you to get them on your calendar ASAP.

Other Papers by Steven Feuerstein:

• Coding Therapy for Developers
• Automated Testing Options for PL/SQL
• Why You Should Care About Oracle11g - Right Now

Confio builds performance management software that improves the effectiveness of IT systems and the people who run them. The Confio Igniter Suite currently includes products that help Oracle DBAs, managers, and developers continuously monitor the performance of databases and the applications that depend on them, isolate specific problems, and identify solutions in production systems.

accesses, joins, and physical table layout, as well as how to read and recognize inefficient SQL execution plans.