Coopers Consulting Solutions Limited

This is a brief summary on a couple of items of interest to Payroll users that are out in the latest RUP4 for EBS 11i. This information was presented at this year’s OHUG in Las Vegas. I have also posted this (as my first post) on the Oracle Contractors Network Blog

Generate Run Balance and Retro-Notification Report Performance

The first item is on the performance of the “Generate Run Balance” and “Retro-notification Report” processes, both of which have had their fair share of bad press on the performance front, especially with large payroll customers. The change is quite subtle: There is the addition of range PERSON_ID functionality which is designed to improve the performance of the cursor that generates the assignment actions. By enabling filter-at-source there is a reduction in the processing overhead in downstream processing.

This option is only activated via a parameter in PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS. The parameter is RANGE_PERSON_ID which needs to be set to Y to enable the option. This makes its implementation quite neat, as it allows users to experiment to see whether performance gains are made. It also allows customers with multiple payrolls, of varying sizes, to target only their larger payrolls by use of Action Parameter Groups.

Balance Feed Purge

A couple of enhancements to the “Balance Feed Purge” concurrent program have been made. Firstly the purging operation run through the concurrent program has been made multi-threaded.

Secondly, a new parameter has been added to the program. The parameter is “Assignment Batch Size” – The default value is 1000. It has been provided to allow customers to specify the batch deletion commit unit size.

Retro Notification Report

An additional parameter has been added to the “Retro Notifications Report (Enhanced) – PDF”. The parameter is “Generate Report”. It provides a ’switch’ to prevent generation of the actual report!

This has been introduced to improve overall performance of the retropay activity when only the processing of the retro elements is required and that there is no requirement to analyze or review the data to be processed (by the report).

I did say it was a brief summary

I would like to thank and Acknowledge Brian Bellamy, Senior Director EBS Payroll and Localizations in Oracle, for providing the information in the first instance

This harps back to an earlier blog about being spoilt for choice regarding which laptop i was going to take with me on my jaunt to Vegas (ostensibly to attend the Oracle HCM User Group).

Anyway, through various methods of deduction, i had opted to take my Dell Vostro – a behemoth of a machine running CentOS, loaded to the gills with development tools and a full install of Oracle EBS R12.

However…I have been thinking about this during the week. I think i will not get as many opportunities to do some development work as i thought i would, principally because the OHUG agenda is chock-full of interesting sessions to attend.

So, i have had a late change of mind. How late? Well its 21:15pm the night before i fly.

I have decided to bin the heavyweight development box and instead travel with one of my Acer Aspire One’s. I shall take the HDD one (which has 2 flavours of unix) rather than the SSD version. The main reason being the SSD version is not as sturdy (i’ve had the OS go AWOL on it a few times in recent months – each time has required a full restore).

Anyway. I’ll still be able to Blog, Tweet and email

Until next time.

Oh the dilema of choice!

In just under 2 weeks time i am flying out to Las Vegas to attend this years Oracle HCM User Group conference (OHUG). I’m planning to take one of my many laptops with me so that i can do some of the following:

• Keep on-top of my email
• Keep an eye on the HRMS Aces forums (as an Admin)
• Keep my Blog up-to-date
• Download and view any photo’s that i happen to take with my camera
• Work!

The last point is the stickler. The conference runs for 4 days, plus a 5th-day invitee-only CAB day (to which i am invited). As i shall be out there for 7/8 days i am bound to have some downtime (ie non-attendance of conference sessions). I’m sure that some of this ’spare’ time will be taken up with activities such as:

• Sleeping
• Drinking Socializing with my fellow conference attendees
• Shopping – although probably not too much
• Sight-seeing – again probably only on my last full day
• Relaxing by the pool in the Hotel

Whilst i do not have any ‘client-funded’ work to do during this time, i do have significant amounts of ‘non-funded’ work to be done, some of which will hopefully lead to funding, and some of which will simply be to further my own corporate cause. It is therefore this point that causes the ‘travelling hardware’ dilema.

If it were simply the case of Blogging, photo-viewing, web-mail reading etc, i could probably get away with taking one of my Acer Aspire One netbooks; I have 2 of them – one has 1.5GB RAM and the 8GB SSD, still running the standard Linpus install but with XFCE as the desktop client. The other has 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD and is dual-booting (with either custom Linpus Lite or Ubuntu Netbook Remix). Both of these are capable of meeting most of my requirements.

However by throwing “work” into the mix, i am forced to consider a wider range of hardware options:

• Dell Inspiron c/w 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD
  This is my “Windows” workstation – its running XP SP3, and has a full install of Oracle EBS 11.5.10.2, plus Workflow builder and JDeveloper 10g. Plus the usual MS Office suite thrown in for good measure.
• Dell Vostro c/w 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD (dual 250GB drives)
  This is my main Linux machine – its running CentOS 5.3, has a full install of Oracle EBS 12.0.2 (as previously blogged here), plus is running OO3, Zend Studio Developer IDE, XAMP. Its also got JDeveloper 10g installed (but i’ve yet to get it to work). And just for good measure i also have Sun’s VBox VM software with a full Windows XP VM
• Finally i have the machine which i am currently sat at writing this Blog. Its my aging, but trust, HP Pavilion. This has 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD (which is fairly full i’m sorry to say)
  This is running XP SP3, Zend Studio IDE, JDeveloper 10g, plus a whole host of other net tools etc. It also houses my Photoshop CS2 install and my document reference library.

I can probably discount the HP Laptop for starters. It’s over 4 years old, so the battery does not run for much more than an hour before giving up the ghost. In addition, its my main corporate machine, so is packed to the gills with all my company paperwork, spreadsheets, invoices etc etc. Its also my main email archive machine, so have Outlook PST files with email data running back over 15 years (you never known when you might need that Oracle 8i tuning tips email). It’s like an old friend, and is safer staying at home.

So that just leaves me with the 2 Dells.

If i were after total compatibility and comfort, i’d probably plump for the XP Inspiron. Its a smaller machine physically (its not the 17″ widescreen Behemoth that the Vostro is), and is likely to fit in with any wired/wireless networks i’m likely to encounter whilst travelling. However, it does not contain half the web-development toolkit stuff that i have mainly because its essentially my Oracle EBS 11i development and demo system. The full install does not leave much room for much else.

So we are looking at the Vostro then. Its big, its shiny black with a humongous widescreen pannel. It does have most of what i need, but does have its foilbles…

• It’s much happier running wired network (it has a Gigabit Ethernet card) than wireless. The wireless drivers are a bit hit and miss – i often have problems at home with it.
• It runs very hot when in use – again this is because the OS does not fully support the Active Power Management hardware properly – and when i say hot i do mean hot hot hot.
• The trackpad is not to my liking (even though i’ve tweaked its setting to the best i can).
• The powerpack is a bit of a brick

So it does look like the Vostro edges it.

Thank you for listening, i’m glad i had the opportunity to talk this through with you.

This was not my idea. Not my idea at all. If i’d had my way i would steer clear of social networking altogether.

It was an idle (almost throw-away) suggestion by my better half that i should set up a Twitter account so that i could “Tweet” whilst i’m on my jolly attending the OHUG Conference in Las Vegas in June. That way she would know that i was not gambling the night away in a beer-fuelled frenzy with my respected peers

On the face of it, it’s probably not such a bad idea after all. I mean i will be armed with my laptop during the 8 days i’m out there as i do have some work to do, however firing it up in order to hand-craft some length blog posts about the various conference sessions i’ve attended may not be that practible in reality. Whereas armed only with my Blackberry, i could provide regular bursts of 140-character summaries of the days events, as they happen.

So this is what i have done. I’ve created myself a Twitter account, and (heaven forbid) even gone as far as linking it into here (my blog). All that is left to do is to test the tweet-by-SMS facility (which i will do as soon as i A-think of something to tweet about, and B-go somewhere other than home that has a decent mobile signal! UPDATE: Using the Blackberry equivalent of the iPhone AppStore i’ve found an excellent app called Ubertwitter – essentially a twitter app right here on my blackberry! Works a treat too!

Anyway, enough said – things to do…