Welcome to the ApplTop Solutions April 2004 Newsletter

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April 2004 – Issue 6

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Welcome to the 6^th issue of the ApplTop Solutions newsletter, we hope you find the content of interest and we are always pleased to hear any feedback you may have regarding its content. To send feedback or to make suggestions for future content then please email to newsletter@appltop.com.

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In this issue

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1. ApplTop News

2. Product Updates

3. Oracle Tips

4. Oracle News

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=== ApplTop News ===

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For all the very latest ApplTop news, articles and information, please checkout our latest news and media coverage sections on our website.

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New Product Announcement - CS*Rapport

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We are pleased to announce the worldwide availability of CS*Rapport, our latest productivity tool for the Oracle E-Business Suite 11i. CS*Rapport provides the ability to Rapidly create fully Integrated and Interactive Reporting solutions for the Oracle E-Business Suite.

For more information, please visit our website at http://www.appltop.com/ourproducts.php.

Also, see the media coverage for this product launch over at the Oracle Knowledge Base.

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New, Lower, Simpler Pricing & Licensing

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We have lowered and simplified pricing for all of our products as from this week. For more information, please see our current price list which you can download direct from our website at www.appltop.com.

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New Fresh Look

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To go with our new product and pricing, we have a brand new look. We have completely revamped our website which is now online. This new fresh look better reflects our fresh approach to software solutions for Oracle E-Business Suite. Our new look includes...

New logo

New website

New brochures/datasheets

More new articles

Much more...

Check it out today at www.appltop.com.

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UKOUG Business Intelligence & Reporting Tools SIG

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ApplTop Solutions will be presenting at the UKOUG Business Intelligence & Reporting Tools SIG Meeting on May 13th 2004. The presentation introduces the concept of Ri2 Reporting using CS*Form and CS*Rapport.

Bacrest Group, an 11i user and also a user of CS*Form (and CS*Accelerate) will be joining us on the presentation to give their view of CS*Form and how it is helping them get more out of the Oracle E-Business Suite. The presentation finishes with a live demonstration of Ri2 Reporting using CS*Rapport.

We look forward to seeing you there.

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UKOUG Reporting Tools Special Event - Update

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This special event organized by the UK Oracle User Group was a great success for all involved. We would like to thank all those that took time out to speak to us on our stand.

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Pricing/Licensing Guide

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Our price lists are now available online directly from our website. Price lists are available in GBP, Euro and USD. Download them now at http://www.appltop.com/downloads_request.php.

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=== Product Updates ===

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CS*Rapport

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Our new product released this week is a subset of the functionality provided by CS*Form. CS*Rapport focuses on additional 11i reporting needs, from simple, single screen reports to full blown multiple drill down reporting mini applications.

Current Version

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v2.3.2

Note: CS*Rapport is a subset of CS*Form/R2i and as such each new release of CS*Form/R2i brings a new release of CS*Rapport.

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CS*Form/R2i

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We are continually improving and adding to the product and work closely with clients in this regard. If you would like to see something added or have any suggestions for future improvement then we would like to hear from you. Please email your suggestions and ideas to aslform@appltop.com.

Like CS*Form/R2i, CS*Form/R1, for Oracle Applications 11.0.3 is constantly improving. The latest release (v1.6.0) is now available for download from our support centre and it includes a number of great features that have been ported from R2i.

Current Versions

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CS*Form/R2i (Apps 11.5.1 – 11.5.9): v2.3.2 – 11^th March 2004

CS*Form/R1 (Apps 11.0.3): v1.6.0 – 29^th January 2004

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CS*Accelerate

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We are continually improving and adding to the product and work closely with users in this regard. If you would like to see something added or have any suggestions for future improvements then we would like to hear from you. Please email your suggestions and ideas to aslaccelerate@appltop.com.

Current Versions

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CS*Accelerate/R2i (Apps 11.5.1 – 11.5.9): v2.2.3 – 10^th March 2004

CS*Accelerate/R1 (Apps 11.0.3): v1.5.1 – 8^th March 2004

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CS*Enterprise – DBA/Tuning Pack

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This product is currently in development and is progressing very well. We hope to have more information about this product including pricing very soon.

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CS*Application

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This sub-product for CS*Form and CS*Rapport is currently in development and we hope to be able to bring you more information over the coming months.

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=== Oracle Tips ===

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To have your own Oracle tips published in our newsletter, please email your tips to newsletter@appltop.com. If we think it is suitable we will consider publishing it in a future newsletter.

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ROLLBACK on a What?

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At sites in the past we have witnessed developers using the rollback command to empty global temporary tables that use the "DELETE ON COMMIT" method. The developers understood that the global temporary table would be cleared out at the end of the transaction and conceptually it made more sense for them to use ROLLBACK to achieve this.

The problem with their ROLLBACK approach is that before the end of the transaction Oracle has to work out how to undo any work done and then undo it. This can involve a lot of work. Upon COMMIT Oracle in layman's term simply 'forgets' the contents of the table. No work is done.

Here are some example stats for a commit after inserting 15000 rows into a global temporary table:

call count cpu elapsed disk query current

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total 2 0.00 0.00 0 0 1

Lovely - hardly any work required at all. And here are the stats using rollback to empty the table:

call count cpu elapsed disk query current

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total 2 0.30 0.30 0 156 31559

That's a significant amount of work.

So in summary, don't go out of your way to use ROLLBACK to empty global temporary tables. ROLLBACK should only be used when something untoward happens that requires other work in a transaction to be undone.

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Append an Insert

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If you have a process that needs to insert many rows into a table then consider using the APPEND hint. This hint can often bring huge performance benefits because it can dramatically speed up the time it takes to complete an insert. It works by asking Oracle to use its direct-path mode that can skip much of the DB’s overhead normally associated with creating new rows in a table. Using this hint is simple, here is an example...

INSERT /+ APPEND */ INTO my_table

SELECT * FROM my_other_table;

Note however that all transactions written using the APPEND hint are not written to the REDO log.

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=== Oracle News ===

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In this issue, rather than a couple of headlines of Oracle news, we list a few links to good sites that cover Oracle news. Check them out...

Oracle Knowledge Base

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An excellent source for all things Oracle.

http://oracle.ittoolbox.com

UK Oracle User Group

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Online presence for the UK’s very own User Group.

http://www.ukoug.org/

News Now

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News portal site that collects news from over 16,000 sites worldwide.

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=Oracle+Corporation

Next Month

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We hope you have enjoyed this month’s issue of the ApplTop Solutions newsletter and we look forward to issue 7.

Next months issue will contain more product updates and offers as well and hints and tips with a little industry news. We will be including hints and tips for various Oracle products including, SQL, PL/SQL, Forms, Reports and Oracle E-Business Suite.

For more information about ApplTop Solutions, our products and services please visit us on the web at www.appltop.com.

For general enquiries please email info@appltop.com.

To cancel your newsletter subscription please email to newsletter@appltop.com.

If you feel you have received this email in error then please accept our sincere apologies and to ensure you are completely removed from all future announcements please email to remove@appltop.com.

CS*Rapport, CS*Form, CS*Accelerate are trademarks of ApplTop Solutions Limited.

Oracle, Oracle Applications and Oracle E-Business Suite are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation.

Any other names are used for reference and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

We make no warranties as to the accuracy of any information contained within this newsletter other than what is specifically related to ApplTop Solutions Limited.