May 3 - 7, 2009
Orange County Convention Center - Orlando, FL

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The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest), present COLLABORATE 09, Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community. As an educational conference, COLLABORATE 09 helps users of the full family of Oracle business applications and database software gain greater value from their Oracle investments. Created by and for customers, COLLABORATE 09 offers an expert blend of customer-to-customer interaction and insights from technology visionaries and Oracle strategists. Expand your network of contacts by interacting with Oracle customers, solutions providers, consultants, developers and representatives from Oracle Corporation at COLLABORATE 09.

This year, TUSC was privileged to have twenty (20) presentations accepted for Collaborate '09:

The ABCs of AIA - (Application Integration/Master Data Management Track)
This presentation will review the Oracle Application Integration Architecture from both a management strategy and technical perspective. Attendees of this presentation will walk away with an understanding of what the Applications Integration Architecture is, and how to start leveraging it to achieve E-Business Suite integration. This presentation will help non-technical users understand how to deploy the Applications Integration Architecture within an overall E-Business Suite strategy.

Aces in the Hole II: Learning More Advanced SQL Techniques from the OTN Forum Pros - (Database Track)
Hot on the heels of last year's Aces in the Hole presentation comes even more advanced SQL solutions from the volunteer experts and Oracle Ace contributors on OTN's SQL and PL/SQL discussion forums. The Forum experts raise query writing to an entirely new level that needs to be seen to be believed. Oracle professionals at any skill level will find the Forums packed with a treasure trove of tips, tricks and techniques. With over 75,000 topics and 400,000 posts, it's the mother lode of SQL and PL/SQL education from recognized experts worldwide. In this new Aces session, the powerful techniques of advanced query authoring are explored by reviewing real-world Forum threads and the unique solutions posted by gurus. The resident experts solve problems using a combination of analytic functions, slick hierarchical query "loops", CUBE and ROLLUP operators, Regular Expressions, new 11g options and much more.

Authoring Best Selling Stories in OBIEE - (Business Intelligence / Warehousing Track)
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) has the ability to describe business performance and business issues in ways that are easy for all users to understand. The key is to connect with users of OBIEE by utilizing the different Dashboard tools effectively. This presentation will walk through the different visualizations and "portlets" that OBIEE offers in its Dashboards component. This discussion will also focus on real-world examples of effective use of the Dashboards, as well as detailing some lessons learned.

The Best Oracle Database 11g New Features - (Database Track)
This presentation will look at which 11g new features should be investigated for use. Most of the features that will be covered will be related to the DBA, but there will also be a few outside that realm.

The Best Oracle Database 11g New TUNING Features - (Database Track)
This presentation will look at which 11g new TUNING features should be investigated for use. Most of the features that will be covered will be related to the DBA, but there will also be a few outside that realm. This presentation will include detailed examples.

BI Publisher: Lessons Learned, Tips, and Tricks - (Developer Track)
How can I convert an Oracle Report to BI Publisher without spending all day long looking at documentation? What is the easiest way to create a Rich Text Format Template? Where is the best place to find out answers to my questions? See how to do conditional formatting in a cross-tab layout. What if I want to customize graphs or charts? Learn the quickest way to find your answers to your BI Publisher questions.

Creating Your First Web Service - (Developer Track)
Web Services are the foundation of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Being able to create web services from your existing applications can be steep technical challenge, however. Web Services make use of numerous technologies (such as Java, XML, SOAP, et al) that many Oracle developers are not familiar with. This presentation will explain what web services are, how to create them easily using both Oracle and commercial tools and how to begin constructing your Service-Oriented Architecture environment.

Don't Fear These Acronyms! Get Interactive with AJAX and APEX - (Developer Track)
Oracle Application Express ("APEX"), Portal and other web-based infrastructures are commonly constructed with content typically updated through a refresh of an entire page. However, in an environment with interactive dashboards, complete page updates may negatively impact the end-user experience. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML ("AJAX") grants a developer the ability to dynamically request and update the content of a web application through a mechanism transparent to the viewer. With this new technology comes the challenge of designing and implementing an AJAX-based system that can easily integrate into APEX, Portal or other infrastructure toolsets while efficiently and flexibly supporting the myriad of content found within the web application. Attendees of this session are offered an overview of the power of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML ("AJAX") in web-based business intelligence dashboards and portals. Introductory AJAX is discussed as well as the complexities of creating a JavaScript-based AJAX engine and embedding this in Oracle Application Express.

Exceptional Leadership; Be the Uncommon Leader! - (Professional Development Track)
This presentation will change your life. It is a non-technical refreshing break to relax your mind from the technical sessions. The IT leader is now the pivotal position in an organization's business plan. This talk will focus on the attributes that the leader must have from a character perspective to combine with a technical prowess. To be a leader that builds a truly great organization, you must build into the team: Integrity, Moral Courage, Physical Courage, Tact, Loyalty, Unselfishness, Initiative, Enthusiasm, Knowledge, Respect, Self Control and Humility. The result will be the Fortitude of an organization to handle any and all challenges. This presentation will teach you how to refine attributes of character and become an Uncommon Leader.

Getting Started with SOA - (Middleware Track)
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been identified by Oracle as a key technology for the future. Oracle's latest versions of the Application Server have all included SOA technologies and its specifications for Oracle Application Server 11g all indicate that Oracle is committed to SOA. As Oracle's development tools (JDeveloper, Application Express, Portal) focus more and more on Web-centric implementations, the Application Server will become a staple in most organizations committed to Oracle technologies. As such, understanding and being able to implement SOA-based solutions will become a prerequisite for developers, administrators and system architects. This presentation will explain Oracle's SOA implementation and how to use it effectively when architecting Web-based solutions.

How Oracle Came to Rule the Database World - (Database Track)
This is a break from the technical presentations, but not too much of a break. Sit back and listen to the history of the relational database go by. Find out the crucial moves that Oracle made at critical junctures of their history. See what drove the product from inception, over the rocky road and eventual to the top of the mountain. Learn what made Oracle the product a success, but also find out the attributes that made Oracle the company a font of technological wizardry. This talk will reveal several seldom heard facts and some unknown secrets of Oracle's success.

Identity Manager Fundamentals - (Middleware Track)
Identity Manager enables enterprises to manage use identities across all enterprise resources. A good understanding on Identity Manager fundamentals and basics is essential to make a successful rollout. An enterprise user provisioning solution can provide a mechanism for implementing the user management aspects of a corporate policy. It can also be a means to audit users and their access privileges. This session will focus on Identity Manager fundamentals and explain the different components of identity management. This seesion gives a simple solution to security concerns in small and large enterprises. It shows, how you can manage end-to-end lifecycle of user identities across all enterprise resources, deploy application faster and safer and apply the most granular protection to your business. The presenter is a Senior Database Administrator with over 10 years experience in Oracle products and solutions.

Integrating Oracle Applications for Product Profitability Insight - (Hyperion)
Smart organizations are becoming laser-like in their decisions to deploy capital and reduce costs by focusing attention on the profitability components of sales and operations. Firms need to move from general ledger analysis to an environment that allows for clearer understanding of product and customer performance. Learn how one company used Oracle's data warehousing, business intelligence, and enterprise performance management applications to build a next generation profitability analysis platform.

JDeveloper: Not as Scary as You Think - (Developer Track)
Oracle JDeveloper has become Oracle's flagship development tool. It covers so many Web-based technologies that it can be overwhelming to learn and understand. Oracle has, however, made it relatively easy to get started using the product by incorporating sophisticated "under-the-covers" technologies. These technologies make it easy for developers to create relational data-driven applications in Oracle JDeveloper while writing a minimum of code. The presentation will outline those technologies along with the EVA paradigm that will allow organizations to start building Oracle JDeveloper applications immediately.

OBIEE in Active Directory Environments - (Business Intelligence / Warehousing Track)
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) provides a comprehensive suite of enterprise BI products that delivers a full range of analysis and reporting capabilities. In many modern IT environments Microsoft's Active Directory is the central authentication and authorization authority. This presentation will focus on the real world examples of a global Active Directory environment and the unique steps required to configure OBIEE to interoperate with Active Directory including Direct authentication, Single Sign-on integration and Active Directory Group utilization.

Oracle Development Tips and Tricks You Must Know - (Developer Track)
Throughout my 15 years working with Oracle, I have accumulated a list of tips and techniques that assist with the development of Oracle based custom applications. These tips and tricks can be used to improve application performance, to streamline code, and to create higher quality applications. The speaker will describe each topic in detail as well as provide real world examples of how to use them.

Raise Your SAT Score and Expand Your BI Competency - (Business Intelligence / Warehousing Track)
This session will focus on how you can expand your Business Intelligence Competency. It begins by introducing you to the process of planning, starting and carrying out a successful BI program in your organization. It continues with information regarding how you can start your own internal BI Competency Center, ensuring the success of your subsequent BI projects. Finally, this talk finishes with a discussion on the Oracle BI tools, including a working demo of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) Suite Plus, and highlights of Oracle's Packaged BI Applications and other data warehousing and BI tools.

Rich Text Reporting: Integrate HTML into BI Publisher Reports - (Business Intelligence / Warehousing Track)
You have HTML WYSIWYG editor in your web application for input. How do you create printable reports with this rich text and other data from the application? You have a How-To guide on your web site. How do you create a printable version, complete with a table of contents and index? In this presentation, you will learn how easy it is to create BI Publisher reports from HTML text. BI Publisher allows the creation of PDF reports; using methods from this presentation, you can create rich text reports using HTML as input. This presentation will show how to validate and convert HTML to XHTML using the open source library, JTidy. It will discuss how to convert XHTML to XSL-FO using BI Publisher and XSLT. Lastly, you will learn how to generate the PDF report from the XSL-FO document using BI Publisher.

Smart Navigation Bar for your Portal - (Content Management Track)
The audience will learn the advantages of this Custom Dynamic Navigation Bar that considers Portal Permissions, Oracle Applications and other Preferences. Those Preferences can be easily defined on the Portal Interface and include sorting the links, link behavior, color and others. They will also learn about the development environment and the technology used to accomplish those and other desired features.

When A Good Cluster Goes Bad - (Architecture and Infrastructure Track)
This presentation will address the ecosystem needed to support Clustering technologies. The primary focus will be on Oracle Real Application Clusters but will also touch on VERITAS Cluster Services, HP Service Guard and several other cluster solutions. When implementing a clustering technology, what key criteria from an operations perspective, skill perspective need to be taken into consideration? Additionally what is the un-communicated Service Level expectation? Going beyond what the SLA or SLO may have been documented; Clusters can do wonderfully visible bad things. Though it is intend to aid in infrastructure stability, when not implemented correctly Clustering can have unanticipated results.