Episodes

  • MySQL Security - Part 2

    MySQL Security - Part 2
    Feb 4 2025
    Picking up from Part 1, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham continue their deep dive into MySQL security with MySQL Solution Engineer Ravish Patel. In this episode, they focus on user authentication techniques and tools such as MySQL Enterprise Audit and MySQL Enterprise Firewall. MySQL 8.4 Essentials: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/mysql-84-essentials/141332/226362 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:25 Nikita: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi everyone! Last week, we began exploring MySQL security, covering regulatory compliance and common security threats. Nikita: This week, we’re continuing the conversation by digging deeper into MySQL’s user authentication methods and taking a closer look at some powerful security tools in the MySQL Enterprise suite. 00:57 Lois: And we’re joined once again by Ravish Patel, a MySQL Solution Engineer here at Oracle. Welcome, Ravish! How does user authentication work in MySQL? Ravish: MySQL authenticates users by storing account details in a system database. These accounts are authenticated with three elements, username and hostname commonly separated with an @ sign along with a password. The account identifier has the username and host. The host identifier specifies where the user connects from. It specifies either a DNS hostname or an IP address. You can use a wild card as part of the hostname or IP address if you want to allow this username to connect from a range of hosts. If the host value is just the percent sign wildcard, then that username can connect from any host. Similarly, if you create the user account with an empty host, then the user can connect from any host. 01:55 Lois: Ravish, can MySQL Enterprise Edition integrate with an organization’s existing accounts? Ravish: MySQL Enterprise authentication integrates with existing authentication mechanisms in your infrastructure. This enables centralized account management, policies, and authentication based on group membership and assigned corporate roles, and MySQL supports a wide range of authentication plugins. If your organization uses Linux, you might already be familiar with PAM, also known as Pluggable Authentication Module. This is a standard interface in Linux and can be used to authenticate to MySQL. Kerberos is another widely used standard for granting authorization using a centralized service. The FIDO Alliance, short for Fast Identify Online, promotes an interface for passwordless authentication. This includes methods for authenticating with biometrics RUSB security tokens. And MySQL even supports logging into centralized authentication services that use LDAP, including having a dedicated plugin to connect to Windows domains. 03:05 Nikita: So, once users are authenticated, how does MySQL handle user authorization? Ravish: The MySQL privilege system uses the GRANT keyword. This grants some privilege X on some object Y to some user Z, and optionally gives you permission to grant the same privilege to others. These can be global administrative privileges that enable users to perform tasks at the server level, or they can be database-specific privileges that allow users to modify the structure or data within a database. 03:39 Lois: What about database privileges? Ravish: Database privileges can be fine-grained from the largest to the smallest. At the database level, you can permit users to create, alter, and delete whole databases. The same privileges apply at the table, view, index, and stored procedure levels. And in addition, you can control who can execute stored procedures and whether they do so with their own identity or with the privileges of the procedure's owner. For tables, you can control who can select, insert, update, and delete rows in those tables. You can even specify the column level, who can select, insert, and update data in those columns. Now, any privileged system carries with it the risk that you might forget an important password and lock yourself out. In MySQL, if you forget the password to the root account and don't have any other admin-level accounts, you will not be able to administer the MySQL server. 04:39 Nikita: Is there a way around this? Ravish: There is a way around this as long as you have physical...
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    16 mins
  • MySQL Security - Part 1

    MySQL Security - Part 1
    Jan 28 2025
    Security takes center stage in this episode as Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham are joined by MySQL Solution Engineer Ravish Patel. Together, they explore MySQL’s security features, addressing key topics like regulatory compliance. Ravish also shares insights on protecting data through encryption, activity monitoring, and access control to guard against threats like SQL injection and malware. MySQL 8.4 Essentials: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/mysql-84-essentials/141332/226362 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:25 Lois: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me today is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hey everyone! In our last episode, we took a look at MySQL database design. Today is the first of a two-part episode on MySQL security. Lois: In Part 1, we’ll discuss how MySQL supports regulatory compliance and how to spot and handle common security risks. 00:55 Nikita: Joining us today is Ravish Patel, a MySQL Solution Engineer at Oracle. Hi Ravish! Let’s start by talking about how MySQL supports regulatory compliance. 01:06 Ravish: Some of the most important international regulations that we have surrounding data and organizations include the GDPR, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, the UK Data Protection Act, and the NIS2. Although each regulatory framework differs in the details, in general, you must be able to comply with certain key requirements and all of which are enabled by MySQL. First, you must be able to monitor user activity on the system, which includes keeping track of when new users are created, when the schema changes, and when backups are taken and used. You must protect data, for example, by ensuring that databases that are stored on disk are encrypted at REST and ensuring that only authorized users have privileges to access and modify the data. You must have the appropriate retention policies in place for your data, ensuring that backups are held securely and used only for the purpose intended. You must be able to audit access to the data so that you can trace which users gained access to records or when they were modified. All of these facilities are available in MySQL, either as part of the core community edition features or made available through enterprise features. 02:21 Lois: What kind of risks might we encounter, Ravish, and how can we address them? Ravish: As your system grows in complexity, you're likely going to have more risks associated with it. Some of those risks are associated with the human factors that come with any computer system. These might be errors that are introduced when people perform work on the system, either administrative work on the environment or database or work that developers and testers perform when working on a changing system. You might even have malicious users trying to exploit the system or good faith users or support staff who make changes without proper consideration or protection from knock-on effects. At the foundation are the necessary components of the system, each of which might be vulnerable to human error or malicious actors. Every piece of the system exposes possible risks, whether that's the application presented to users, the underlying database, the operating system or network that it works on, or processes such as backups that place copies of your data in other locations. More complex environments add more risks. High availability architectures multiply the number of active systems. Consolidating multiple application databases on a single server exposes every database to multiple vectors for bugs and human error. Older, less well supported applications might give more challenges for maintenance. Engaging external contractors might reduce your control over authorized users. And working in the cloud can increase your network footprint and your reliance on external vendors. 03:53 Nikita: What are risks that specifically impact the database? Ravish: The database server configuration might not be optimal. And this can be changed by users with proper access. To mitigate this risk, you might enable version control of the configuration files and ensure that only certain users are authorized. Application and administrator accounts might have more data privileges than required, which adds risk of human error or malicious ...
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    14 mins
  • MySQL Database Design

    MySQL Database Design
    Jan 21 2025
    Explore the essentials of MySQL database design with Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, who team up with MySQL expert Perside Foster to discuss key storage concepts, transaction support in InnoDB, and ACID compliance. You’ll also get tips on choosing the right data types, optimizing queries with indexing, and boosting performance with partitioning. MySQL 8.4 Essentials: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/mysql-84-essentials/141332/226362 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me today is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week, we looked at installing MySQL and in today’s episode, we’re going to focus on MySQL database design. Lois: That’s right, Niki. Database design is the backbone of any MySQL environment. In this episode, we’ll walk you through how to structure your data to ensure smooth performance and scalability right from the start. 00:58 Nikita: And to help us with this, we have Perside Foster joining us again. Perside is a MySQL Principal Solution Engineer at Oracle. Hi Perside, let’s start with how MySQL handles data storage on the file system. Can you walk us through the architecture? Perside: In the MySQL architecture, the storage engine layer is part of the server process. Logically speaking, it comes between the parts of the server responsible for inputting, parsing, and optimizing SQL and the underlying file systems. The standard storage engine in MySQL is called InnoDB. But other storage engines are also available. InnoDB supports many of the features that are required by a production database system. Other storage engines have different sets of features. For example, MyISAM is a basic fast storage engine but has fewer reliability features. NDB Cluster is a scalable distributed storage engine. It runs on multiple nodes and uses additional software to manage the cluster. 02:21 Lois: Hi Perside! Going back to InnoDB, what kind of features does InnoDB offer? Perside: The storage engine supports many concurrent users. It also keeps their changes separate from each other. One way it achieves this is by supporting transactions. Transactions allows users to make changes that can be rolled back if necessary and prevent other users from seeing those changes until they are committed or saved persistently. The storage engine also enables referential integrity. This is to make sure that data in a dependent table refers only to valid source data. For example, you cannot insert an order for a customer that does not exist. It stores raw data on disk in a B-tree structure and uses fast algorithms to insert rows in the correct place. This is done so that the data can be retrieved quickly. It uses a similar method to store indexes. This allows you to run queries based on a sort order that is different from the row's natural order. InnoDB has its own buffer pool. This is a memory cache that stores recently accessed data. And as a result, queries on active data are much faster than queries that read from the disk. InnoDB also has performance features such as multithreading and bulk insert optimization. 04:13 Lois: So, would you say InnoDB is generally the best option? Perside: When you install MySQL, the standard storage engine is InnoDB. This is generally the best choice for production workloads that need both reliability and high performance. It supports transaction syntax, such as commit and rollback, and is fully ACID compliant. 04:41 Nikita: To clarify, ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. But could you explain what that means for anyone who might be new to the term? Perside: ACID stands for atomic. This means your transaction can contain multiple statements, but the transaction as a whole is treated as one change that succeeds or fails. Consistent means that transactions move the system from one consistent state to another. Isolated means that changes made during a transaction are isolated from other users until that transaction completes. And durable means that the server ensures that the transaction is persisted or written to disk once it completes. 05:38 Lois: Thanks for breaking that down for us, Perside. Could you tell us about the data encryption and security features ...
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    17 mins
  • Installing MySQL

    Installing MySQL
    Jan 14 2025
    In this episode, Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham discuss the basics of MySQL installation with MySQL expert Perside Foster. Perside covers every key step, from preparing your environment and selecting the right software, to installing MySQL, setting up secure initial user accounts, configuring the system, and managing updates efficiently. MySQL 8.4 Essentials: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/mysql-84-essentials/141332/226362 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:26 Nikita: Welcome back to another episode of the Oracle University Podcast. I’m Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services with Oracle University, and I’m joined by Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi everyone! In our last episode, we spoke about Oracle MySQL ecosystem and its various components. We also discussed licensing, security, and some key tools. What's on the agenda for today, Niki? 00:52 Nikita: Well Lois, today, we’re going beyond tools and features to talk about installing MySQL. Whether you're setting up MySQL for the first time or looking to understand its internal structure a little better, this episode will be a valuable guide. Lois: And we’re lucky to have Perside Foster back with us. Perside is a MySQL Principal Solution Engineer at Oracle. Hi Perside! Say I wanted to get started and install MySQL. What factors should I keep in mind before I do that? 01:23 Perside: The first thing to consider is the environment for the database server. MySQL is supported on many different Linux distributions. You can also run it on Windows or Apple macOS. You can run MySQL on a variety of host platforms. You can use dedicated servers in a server room or virtual machines in a data center. Developers might prefer to deploy on Docker or Kubernetes containers. And don't forget, you can deploy HeatWave, the MySQL cloud version, in many different clouds. MySQL has great multithreading capability. It also has support for Non-Uniform Memory Access or NUMA. This is particularly important if you run large systems with hundreds of concurrent connections. MySQL storage engine, InnoDB, makes effective use of your available memory. It stores your active data in a buffer pool. This greatly improves access time compared to reading straight from disk. Of course, SSDs and other solid state media are much faster than hard disks. But don't forget, MySQL can make full use of that performance benefit too. Redundancy is very important for the MySQL server. Hardware with redundant power supply, storage media, and network connections can make all the difference to your uptime. Without redundancy, a single point of failure will bring down the server if it fails. 03:26 Nikita: Got it. Perside, from where can I download the different editions of MySQL? Perside: Our most popular software is the MySQL Community Edition. It is available at no cost for mysql.com for many platforms. This version is why MySQL is the most popular database for web application. And it is also open source. MySQL Enterprise Edition is the commercial edition. It is fully supported by Oracle. You can get it from support.oracle.com as an Oracle customer. If you want to try out the enterprise features but are not yet a customer, you can get the latest version of MySQL as a trial edition from edelivery.oracle.com. Because MySQL is open source, you can get the source code from either mysql.com or GitHub. Most people don't need the source. But any developer who wants to modify the code or even contribute back to the project are welcome to do so. 04:43 Lois: Perside, can you walk us through MySQL’s release model? Perside: This is divided into LTS and Innovation releases, each with a different target audience. LTS stands for long-term support. MySQL 8.4 is an LTS release and will be supported for several years. LTS releases are feature-stable. When you install an LTS release, you can apply future bug fixes and security patches without changing any behavior in the product. The bug fixes and security patches are designed to be backward compatible. This means you can upgrade easily from previous releases. LTS releases come every two years. This allows you to maintain a stable system without having to change your underlying application too frequently. You will not be forced to upgrade after two years. You can continue to enjoy support for an LTS release for up to eight years...
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    22 mins
  • Introduction to MySQL

    Introduction to MySQL
    Jan 7 2025
    Join hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham as they kick off a new season exploring the world of MySQL 8.4. Together with Perside Foster, a MySQL Principal Solution Engineer, they break down the fundamentals of MySQL, its wide range of applications, and why it’s so popular among developers and database administrators. This episode also covers key topics like licensing options, support services, and the various tools, features, and plugins available in MySQL Enterprise Edition. ------------------------------------------------------------ Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services. Nikita: Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you for joining us as we begin a new season of the podcast, this time focused on the basics of MySQL 8.4. If you’re a database administrator or want to become one, this is definitely for you. It’s also great for developers working with data-driven apps or IT professionals handling MySQL installs, configurations, and support. 01:03 Lois: That’s right, Niki. Throughout the season, we'll be delving into MySQL Enterprise Edition and covering a range of topics, including installation, security, backups, and even MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud. Nikita: Today, we're going to discuss the Oracle MySQL ecosystem and its various components. We’ll start by covering the fundamentals of MySQL and the different licenses that are available. Then, we’ll explore the key tools and features to boost data security and performance. Plus, we’ll talk a little bit about MySQL HeatWave, which is the cloud version of MySQL. 01:39 Lois: To take us through all of this, we’ve got Perside Foster with us today. Perside is a MySQL Principal Solution Engineer at Oracle. Hi Perside! For anyone new to MySQL, can you explain what it is and why it's so widely used? Perside: MySQL is a relational database management system that organizes data into structured tables, rows, and columns for efficient programming and data management. MySQL is transactional by nature. When storing and managing data, actions such as selecting, inserting, updating, or deleting are required. MySQL groups these actions into a transaction. The transaction is saved only if every part completes successfully. 02:29 Lois: Now, how does MySQL work under the hood? Perside: MySQL is a high-performance database that uses its default storage engine, known as InnoDB. InnoDB helps MySQL handle complex operations and large data volumes smoothly. 02:49 Nikita: For the unversed, what are some day-to-day applications of MySQL? How is it used in the real world? Perside: MySQL works well with online transaction processing workloads. It handles transactions quickly and manages large volumes of transaction at once. OLTP, with low latency and high throughput, makes MySQL ideal for high-speed environments like banking or online shopping. MySQL not only stores data but also replicates it from a main server to several replicas. 03:31 Nikita: That's impressive! And what are the benefits of using MySQL? Perside: It improves data availability and load balancing, which is crucial for businesses that need up-to-date information. MySQL replication supports read scale-out by distributing queries across servers, which increases high availability. MySQL is the most popular database on the web. 04:00 Lois: And why is that? What makes it so popular? What sets it apart from the other database management systems? Perside: First, it is a relational database management system that supports SQL. It also works as a document store, enabling the creation of both SQL and NoSQL applications without the need for separate NoSQL databases. Additionally, MySQL offers advanced security features to protect data integrity and privacy. It also uses tablespaces for better disk space management. This gives database administrators total control over their data storage. MySQL is simple, solid in its reliability, and secure by design. It is easy to use and ideal for both beginners and professionals. MySQL is proven at scale by efficiently handling large data volumes and high transaction rates. MySQL is also open source. This means anyone can download and use it for free. Users can modify the MySQL software to meet their needs. However, it is governed by the GNU General Public License, or GPL. GPL outlines specific rules for its use. MySQL offers two major editions. For developers and small teams, the Community Edition is available for free and includes all of the core features needed. For large enterprises, the Commercial Edition provides advanced features, management ...
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    26 mins
  • Best of 2024: Autonomous Database on Serverless Infrastructure

    Best of 2024: Autonomous Database on Serverless Infrastructure
    Dec 17 2024
    Want to quickly provision your autonomous database? Then look no further than Oracle Autonomous Database Serverless, one of the two deployment choices offered by Oracle Autonomous Database. Autonomous Database Serverless delegates all operational decisions to Oracle, providing you with a completely autonomous experience. Join hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Oracle Database experts, as they discuss how serverless infrastructure eliminates the need to configure any hardware or install any software because Autonomous Database handles provisioning the database, backing it up, patching and upgrading it, and growing or shrinking it for you. Survey: https://customersurveys.oracle.com/ords/surveys/t/oracle-university-gtm/survey?k=focus-group-2-link-share-5 Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Rajeev Grover, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started. 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi everyone! We hope you’ve been enjoying these last few weeks as we’ve been revisiting our most popular episodes of the year. Lois: Today’s episode is the last one in this series and is a throwback to a conversation on Autonomous Databases on Serverless Infrastructure with three experts in the field: Hannah Nguyen, Sean Stacey, and Kay Malcolm. Hannah is a Staff Cloud Engineer, Sean is the Director of Platform Technology Solutions, and Kay is Vice President of Database Product Management. For this episode, we’ll be sharing portions of our conversations with them. 01:14 Nikita: We began by asking Hannah how Oracle Cloud handles the process of provisioning an Autonomous Database. So, let’s jump right in! Hannah: The Oracle Cloud automates the process of provisioning an Autonomous Database, and it automatically provisions for you a highly scalable, highly secure, and a highly available database very simply out of the box. 01:35 Lois: Hannah, what are the components and architecture involved when provisioning an Autonomous Database in Oracle Cloud? Hannah: Provisioning the database involves very few steps. But it's important to understand the components that are part of the provisioned environment. When provisioning a database, the number of CPUs in increments of 1 for serverless, storage in increments of 1 terabyte, and backup are automatically provisioned and enabled in the database. In the background, an Oracle 19c pluggable database is being added to the container database that manages all the user's Autonomous Databases. Because this Autonomous Database runs on Exadata systems, Real Application Clusters is also provisioned in the background to support the on-demand CPU scalability of the service. This is transparent to the user and administrator of the service. But be aware it is there. 02:28 Nikita: Ok…So, what sort of flexibility does the Autonomous Database provide when it comes to managing resource usage and costs, you know… especially in terms of starting, stopping, and scaling instances? Hannah: The Autonomous Database allows you to start your instance very rapidly on demand. It also allows you to stop your instance on demand as well to conserve resources and to pause billing. Do be aware that when you do pause billing, you will not be charged for any CPU cycles because your instance will be stopped. However, you'll still be incurring charges for your monthly billing for your storage. In addition to allowing you to start and stop your instance on demand, it's also possible to scale your database instance on demand as well. All of this can be done very easily using the Database Cloud Console. 03:15 Lois: What about scaling in the Autonomous Database? Hannah: So you can scale up your OCPUs without touching your storage and scale it back down, and you can do the same with your storage. In addition to that, you can also set up autoscaling. So the database, whenever it detects the need, will automatically scale up to three times the base level number of OCPUs that you have allocated or provisioned for the Autonomous Database. 03:38 Nikita: Is autoscaling available for all tiers? Hannah: Autoscaling is not available for an always free database, but it is enabled by default for other tiered environments. Changing the ...
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    17 mins
  • Best of 2024: Developing Redwood Applications

    Best of 2024: Developing Redwood Applications
    Dec 10 2024
    Redwood is a state-of-the-art graphical interface that defines the look and feel of the new Oracle Cloud Redwood Applications. In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald, take a closer look at the intent behind the design and development aspects of the new Redwood experience. They also explore Redwood page templates and components. Survey: https://customersurveys.oracle.com/ords/surveys/t/oracle-university-gtm/survey?k=focus-group-2-link-share-5 Developing Redwood Applications with Visual Builder: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/developing-redwood-applications-with-visual-builder/112791 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started. 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for this Best of 2024 series, where we’re playing for you our four most popular episodes of the year. Nikita: Today’s episode is #3 of 4 and is a throwback to another conversation with Joe Greenwald, our Senior Principal OCI Instructor. We asked Joe about Oracle’s Redwood design system and how it helps us create stunning, world-class enterprise applications and user experiences. 01:04 Lois: Yeah, Redwood is the basis for all the new Oracle Cloud Applications being re-designed, developed, and delivered. Joe is the best person to ask about all of this because he’s been working with our Oracle software development tools since the early 90s and is responsible for OU’s Visual Builder Studio and Redwood course content. So, let’s dive right in! Joe: Hi Lois. Hi Niki. I am excited to join you on this episode because with the release of 24A Fusion applications, we are encouraging all our customers to adopt the new Redwood design system and components, and take advantage of the world-class look and feel of the new Redwood user experience. Redwood represents a new approach and direction for us at Oracle, and we’re excited to have our customers benefit from it. 01:49 Nikita: Joe, you’ve been working with Oracle user interface development tools and frameworks for a long time. How and why is Redwood different? Joe: I joined Oracle in 1992, and the first Oracle user interface I experienced was Oracle Forms. And that was the character mode. I came from a background of Smalltalk and its amazing, pioneering graphical user interface (GUI) design capabilities. I worked at Apple and I developed my own GUIs for a few years on PCs and Macs. So, Character Mode Forms, what we used to call DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) screens, was a shock, to say the least. Since then, I’ve worked with almost every user interface and development platform Oracle has created: Character Mode Forms, GUI Forms, Power Objects, HyperCard on the Macintosh, that was pre-OS X by the way, Sedona, written in native C++ and ActiveX and OLE, which didn’t make it to a product but appeared in other things later, ADF Faces, which uses Java to generate HTML pages, and APEX, which uses PL/SQL to generate HTML pages. And I’ve worked with and wrote training classes for Java Swing, an excellent GUI framework for event-driven desktop and enterprise applications, but it wasn’t designed for the web. So, it’s with pleasure that I introduce you to the Redwood design system, easily the best effort I’ve ever seen, from the look and feel of holistic user-goal-centered design philosophy and approach to the cutting-edge WYSIWYG design tools. 03:16 Lois: Joe, is Redwood just another set of styles, colors, and fonts, albeit very nice-looking ones? Joe: The Redwood platform is new for Oracle, and it represents a significant change, not just in the look and feel, colors, fonts, and styles, I mean that too, but it’s also a fundamental change in how Oracle is creating, designing, and imagining user interfaces. As you may be aware, all Oracle Cloud Applications are being re-designed, re-engineered, and re-rebuilt from the ground up, with significant changes to both back-end and front-end architectures. The front end is being redesigned, re-developed, and re-created in pure HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript using Visual Builder Studio and its design-time browser-based Integrated Development Environment. The back...
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    21 mins
  • Best of 2024: Preparing to Extend Oracle Fusion Apps Using Visual Builder Studio

    Best of 2024: Preparing to Extend Oracle Fusion Apps Using Visual Builder Studio
    Dec 3 2024
    What do you need to start customizing the next generation of Oracle Fusion Apps? How do you create new pages for business processes? What level of expertise do you require for this? Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham as they get answers to all these questions and more from Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. Survey: https://customersurveys.oracle.com/ords/surveys/t/oracle-university-gtm/survey?k=focus-group-2-link-share-5 Develop Fusion Applications Using Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/develop-fusion-applications-using-visual-builder-studio/138392/ Build Visual Applications Using Oracle Visual Builder Studio: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/build-visual-applications-using-oracle-visual-builder-studio/137749/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started. 00:26 Lois: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi there! You’re listening to our Best of 2024 series, where over the next few weeks, we’ll be revisiting four of our most popular episodes of the year. Lois: Today’s episode is #2 of 4, and we’re throwing it back to another episode with our friend and Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald. This episode is all about extending Oracle Cloud Applications that are being built using Visual Builder for the front-end. 01:04 Nikita: Right, Lois. We began by asking Joe to explain what’s happening with the redesign and re-architecture of Oracle Cloud Applications using Visual Builder Studio, or VBS. Joe: That’s right, Niki. Oracle is redesigning and rebuilding its entire suite of Fusion Cloud Applications, over 330 different products, utilizing over 60,000 engineers — that is “60,” not “16”—at Oracle to develop the next generation of Oracle Fusion Applications. What’s most exciting is that the same tools the engineers are using to accomplish this are available to our partners and our customers to use to extend the functionality and capabilities of Fusion Applications to meet their custom needs and processes. 01:45 Lois: That’s pretty awesome! We want to use this time today to ask you about extensions, the types of extensions you can create, and how to use Visual Builder Studio to create those extensions. Nikita: Yeah, can we start with you telling us what an extension is? I’ve gotten the sense that Oracle uses the term extension as both a noun and a verb and that’s a bit confusing to me. Joe: Yeah, good catch, Niki. Yes, Oracle does use the term extension in two ways: both as a noun and a verb. As a noun, an extension is a container for the code changes that you make to your applications. Basically, it’s a Git repository that Oracle creates and manages for you. So, the extension container holds the code changes you make to your page layouts: the fields, their positioning, showing and hiding fields, that sort of thing, as well as page functionality. These code changes you make are stored in the extension and it is this extension with your code changes that is merged with the main Git branch eventually and then deployed using continuous integration/continuous deployment jobs defined in Visual Builder Studio, which manages the project and its assets. Your extension is a Git branch that is an asset of the project. Once your extension code is merged with the main branch and deployed, then the next time someone brings up the application, they’ll see the changes you’ve made in the app. 02:59 Lois: And as a verb? Joe: As a verb, extension means to extend the functionality and the look and feel of the application, though I prefer the term customization or configuration to describe this aspect, as the documentation does, and to avoid confusion, though I’ll admit I’m not always consistent about the terms I use. 03:16 Lois: What types of customizations, or extensions, and I’m using the verb now, are available for Fusion Apps in Visual Builder Studio? Joe: There are three different ways Fusion Apps can be customized effectively, configured, or extended. The first way is what we call a basic extension, where you’re rearranging hiding, or showing, or moving around fields and sections on the page that have been set up to be extendable by the Fusion Application development teams. Things like ...
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    21 mins