Oracle Generative AI Strategy and Options

The software industry continues to innovate and iterate upon AI capabilities, and Oracle is clearly investing heavily in this space as well, with very exciting developments being announced recently.

Below are highly informative strategy updates that you may want to review relative to Oracle’s AI strategy and recent developments.

• Oracle Generative AI Strategy Update - Oracle Generative AI Strategy Update (youtube.com)
• From Greg Pavlik (SVP, Oracle AI) - Posted 2 weeks ago
• Highly recommended to watch, includes an interview with Deloitte's global head of Oracle and AI, also includes a brief conversation with Miranda Nash (GVP App Dev and Fusion AI at Oracle)
• First Principles: Exploring the Depths of OCI Generative AI Service: https://youtu.be/TOPaqzM7u5s?si=rUJIF5Toq7h0XCVG [youtu.be]
• From Pradeep Vincent, SVP Chief Technical Architect, OCI
• Cohere and Oracle Partnership Brings Generative AI Solutions to Customers | Oracle Cloud World 2023 (youtube.com)

The below graphic shows Oracle's AI Technical Stack and where recent investments have been made:

Click on the image to maximize it

These AI services are the same used by Oracle internally to develop AI capabilities in the Fusion applications and Fusion analytics, etc. now exposed for customers to utilize as well.

Something that Greg mentions in the first video, is the GenAI Agents beta recently launched, that is a service that allows you to have a conversation with your data within your autonomous database. Also, there's a new feature now called "Autonomous database select AI", also seen above, here's a GREAT blog about it: Introducing Select AI - Natural Language to SQL Generation on Autonomous Database (oracle.com)

I think that both the GenAI Agents and the Select AI feature should be considered as part of any modern Data Strategy, particularly when the data sources are Oracle applications (such as ERP & HCM), once your Autonomous Datawarehouse (ADW) has the Fusion data in it via BICC, you can use these features there without moving the data to a third-party tool to do similar operations (which can increase your cost of ownership and decrease technology technical stack harmony (meaning using too many vendor products unnecessarily)).

Imagine transforming part of your workforce from writing reports to being able to have conversations with the data without A) Having to move it elsewhere B) Having to spend a lot of time writing complex queries and designing intricate reports. Their workload could shift from designing and building reports, to tuning the data model and talking with the data, and this could then be expanded to end users over time, where internal teams would then focus on data model tuning, and everyone else is just talking with the data.

Additionally, this would all be happening within the secure boundaries of your OCI tenancy, reducing concerns around privacy and security that often worries the mind!

Real life examples for those using ERP and HCM that could be made possible in the near future:

%sql

SELECT AI how many invoices are past due

SELECT AI how many suppliers do we consistently not pay on time, and what are the reasons

SELECT AI how many expenses will be past due by next week

SELECT AI how many people under my organization may retire over the next 5 years

SELECT AI how many people under my organization will lose vacation by end of year

No more reports, just conversations with the data..!

Oracle Fusion Cloud - BIP Performance Tuning Tips and Documentation

During the early days of Oracle Cloud being adopted relative to SaaS technologies like ERP and HCM, it was quite common to develop extracts and reports using complex custom sql data models that would either be downloaded by users or scheduled to extract data and interface it to external systems. Overtime, Oracle has released guidelines and best practices to follow, and efforts like the SQL guardrails have emerged to prevent poor performing custom SQL from impacting environment performance and stability. To that end, I have been aggregating useful links to documentation around this topic from our interactions with Oracle Support over the past few months, which are consolidated in this post.

Links to Documentation:

• Optimize Performance of Multi-Thread Processes (oracle.com) [docs.oracle.com]This deals with multi-threading in HCM, this configuration will allow jobs to allocate more threads in the environment and therefore run faster.
• OTBI & BICC PSR Technote (2679006.1 [support.oracle.com]) and OTBI self-service [cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com] monitoring
• The OTBI self-service dashboards can be downladed and installed in your environment so that you can see usage and monitor it. Some of the reports may not work after imported and could require modifications.
• BIP PSR Technote (2800118.1 [support.oracle.com]) and BIP self-service [oracle.com] monitoring
• Similarly to OTBI, there's BIP self-service reports that you can use to monitor performance and activity, and act upon those findings.
• BIP Datamodel validation enhanced with Saffron SQL pattern checks, available to customers in BIP Administration UI
• For custom BIP SQLs, Saffron [saffron.subnet1ad3phxsu.psr4saas01phx.oraclevcn.com] output along with the ref. to BIP Technote (2800118.1 [support.oracle.com]), that describes reported patterns in more details
• Fusion Applications BI Publisher : How to control BI Publisher Data Model time out (Doc ID 1921393.1 [mosemp.us.oracle.com])
• Fusion Applications BI Publisher : How To Configure And Use Audit In BI Publisher For Fusion SaaS Cloud Customers? (Doc ID 2059102.1 [mosemp.us.oracle.com]) to schedule monitoring of the health of your BI jobs.
• This is a key piece to proactive observing which Reports are nearing a critical threshold or identifying a sudden variation in runtime.
• Saffron report with tuning suggestions can be provided or you can use the new feature DM Validate (SAFfron results in Data Model UI) and fix the detected pattern by reviewing the Tech Note 2800118.1 [mosemp.us.oracle.com].
• For custom BIP SQLs, Saffron [saffron.subnet1ad3phxsu.psr4saas01phx.oraclevcn.com] output along with the ref. to BIP Technote (2800118.1 [support.oracle.com]), that describes reported patterns in more details
• Fusion Applications - BI Publisher Memory Guard Best Practices (Doc ID 2472630.1 [mosemp.us.oracle.com])

For scheduled reports, Oracle recommends the following guidelines:

• Having a temporary backlog (wait queue) is expected behavior, as long as the backlog get cleared over the next 24 hours.
• If the customer expect the jobs to get picked up immediately, submit via ‘online’ and wait – as long as they not hit 500 sec limit.
• If there are any jobs that need to be processed with high priority (over the rest), it's advised to mark reports as ‘critical’ so that they picked up by the first available thread.
• Oracle advises customers to tune their custom reports so that they complete faster and not hold threads for long time.
• Oracle advises customers schedule less impactful jobs during off-peak or weekend hours – manage scheduler resource smart.

Additionally, note the following:

• With Release 13 all configuration values including BI Publisher memory guard settings are preset based on your earlier Pod sizing request and cannot be changed.
• For memory guard the Oracle SaaS performance team has calculated and set the largest values that still provide a robust and stable reporting environment for all users to meet business requirements.
• The BI Service must support many concurrent users and these settings act as guard rails so an individual report cannot disrupt your entire service and impact the business.

Ultimately, effective instance management is critical for ensuring that your Cloud HCM system is running smoothly and effectively. Allocating resources based on the usage and demand will require co-ordination with various teams. There is a common misunderstanding that each HCM tool such as HDL, HCM extracts, or manual ESS job submissions operates on its own pool of threads. However, in reality, they all share the same ESS pool of threads. It is, therefore, advisable for customers to properly maintain and optimize their runbook to avoid overburdening the system and creating resource constraints.

Lastly, depending on the size of your pods, you have the option to allocate pods for specific tasks. For example:

• BulkLoading/ Performance testing/Payroll parallel runs: Pod with highest threads is a good candidate be utilized for bulk data loading, payroll parallel runs, and similar resource-intensive tasks such as performance testing.

The below graphic shows how ESS Threads are consumed, to exemplify the statements made prior:

Oracle Redwood Migration and Adoption

Oracle continues to migrate, re-design and implement new features utilizing their Redwood design system, and HCM continues to be a big focus relative to these efforts in the coming releases (it already has been, but it's really picking up steam now with the end in sight!). In yesterday's office hours for HCM Redwood adoption, hosted by Oracle, it was clear that Redwood will likely become fully mandatory by 25B, for HCM, and Oracle was clear that if you haven't opted in by then, that they would move you!

In this post we won't go into a lot of details relative to what Redwood is, but in short, it is a modern design approach, bringing an updated UI that leverages AI and ML very well, while delivering a more modern and engaging usability experience for the users. Instead, we will focus on key points relative to adoption that you will want to make note of.

We already covered that full adoption is planned for 25B (around the April 2025 timeframe), however, there's accelerated adoption points that need to be considered, meaning, you don't have until 25B to opt in for the below:

• Redwood Learning self-service mandatory for learners and managers (along with other select pages being enabled) - 24B
• Checklists and Onboarding replaced by Journeys (Redwood) - 24D
• Time and labor will transition to Redwood (24D), meaning features like timecards will have a new look and feel, etc.

The guidance right now is that current live customers start building an adoption roadmap and select lower environments to start enabling Redwood in desired areas to start performing impact analysis, and learning. There's also guidance for new implementations and in-flight implementations, and basically the message is to adopt Redwood to the maximum extent possible, to avoid significant changes soon after your Go-Live.

Oracle also urges clients to inventory their assets, and they list the below, as areas of consideration:

• Page Composer personalizations
• Transaction Design Studio personalizations
• AutoComplete rules: Defaulting and Validations
• Approvals and Notifications

To the above I would add your fast formulas (which it's not entirely clear whether significant impact is to be expected, and the question remains), and your visual builder extensions, particularly those built using the HCM embedded VB Studio capability. They also mentioned that security is the cause for 50% of reported issues with Redwood, because Redwood may require new security privileges, meaning, test your custom access and roles. Additionally, Oracle mentions that a tool will be released soon that can be used as a starting point to catalog assets and potential impacts, in the way of a report that you can run on your environment, the tool is called the "Redwood Adoption Analysis Tool". Make sure to monitor Cloud Customer connect for when that is announced, as it surely will come in very handy. On the topic of Cloud Customer connect, you can submit questions and request help there in the "Ask a Question" area, make sure to use the Redwood tag, and also, monitor the site for events such as webinars and office hours.

If you are a current live client (HCM), not utilizing Redwood yet to great extent, I recommend you dedicate an environment and go enable as much as you can there, then build a roadmap with milestones, and a test plan, etc. Additionally, change management will be very important, communications, trainings, job aid's, demos, because it is a significant change from a user experience standpoint.

Lastly, below are several useful resources relative to Redwood:

• MOS article on enabling redwood pages- HCM Redwood Pages with Profile Options – My Oracle Support Doc ID 2922407.1
• Fusion HCM: Redwood Required Steps for Environment Provisioned on Release 24A - Doc ID 2997123.1
• Extending Redwood Applications using Visual Builder Studio - Doc ID 2991662.1