23 September 2003

Mark Van De Wiel and Ali El Kortobi put together a presentation for Oracleworld on the data quality features in Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g. It covers the name and address cleansing and match-merge features, the new debugging facility and the module snapshot feature. What's particularly interesting about the new features is the match-merge facility, which allows you to set up 'fuzzy logic' rules to determine whether one or more records are actually logically the same, and merge them in to one record for storing in the warehouse. Unlike the name and address cleansing feature, it doesn't require external data files from companies such as Trillium, and from looking at the paper, seems fairly intuitive to set up. From what I actually understand, some of these features were actually introduced with OWB9.2 which is already available for download from OTN, so if you're interested in trying out the new features, take a look at this version for a preview of what's coming with 10g. 2:18:18 PM

There's an excellent set of Web Services how-to documents now available on OTN. The subjects covered are; JAX-RPC Web Services • Writing an RPC literal Web Service using top down approach • Writing an Document literal Web Service using top down approach   Oracle Application Server 10g Web Services • Writing a Document Style Web Service • Accessing Oracle9iAS Java Web Service from a .NET Client • Using OC4J JSP tags for accessing a Web Service  • Writing a Web Service Client • Working with complex types in Web Services   2:02:38 PM

An update to the story posted on 19th July about Oracle's Mark Jarvis and George Roberts resigning. Jon Wilkinson points out an error in Reuters description of Charles Phillips, who is described in the article as a former star software analyst at Morgan Stanley. In fact, according to Jon, "Charles Phillips (or Chuck as he is more commonly called) was a financial analyst (not a software analyst) commenting on trends and players in the software market. Prior to working at Oracle he worked for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and was ranked No 1. financial analyst by "The Street" in 2000. Check out this link if you want a bit more info." Jon also pointed out a typo later in the article; "The other "big hitter" who left around the same time as Ray Lane was Gary Bloom not Mark Bloom." Unfortunately, the Reuters link doesn't work any more so it's not possible to refer back to the original article. Lastly, with regard to the CNET article regarding the departures of Ray Lane and Gary Bloom, Jon points out that the article is mainly about the departure of Mark Jarvis and George Roberts. However, right at the end is the interesting bit; "Oracle has seen the departures of several high-level managers in the past few years, fueling speculation that Ellison's management style has spurred some of them to leave. Oracle President Ray Lane left in June 2000 to join powerful Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Executive Vice President Gary Bloom resigned in November 2000 to become chief executive of Veritas Software. Jay Nussbaum, executive vice president of Oracle Service Industries resigned in 2001." Thanks for the feedback Jon. 1:58:02 PM