Some Fast Footsteps to Create Secure Passwords

Why are the passwords significant?
We use passwords every day to access our e-mail accounts, bank accounts, Facebook and Twitter accounts and hundreds of other services. There is great temptation to use one password for all accounts and to make it short and easy to remember. However, this has devastating effect on our security and privacy. If you think that you have nothing to hide, think again. In most cases the passwords are cracked not from mere curiosity but with malicious purposes – to use your computer as spam bot, to steal some of your money, to infect your computer with computer viruses and spyware and so on.
What makes a password weak and easy to crack? In most cases the attacker does not try to guess your password manually. Instead, he uses an automated computer program that tries many passwords in very fast succession in order to find a match. Here are some examples of weak passwords: 
  • Generic passwords and default passwords. Examples: admin, administrator, user, guest, pass, password, etc. These are the first passwords that are tried by the password cracking software.
  • Meaningful words or names. Examples: sandbox, NY, lion, john, mary, USA, etc. Easily cracked by the dictionary-assisted cracking tools.
  • Words or names with added numbers. Examples: john123, pass123, 123456, number1, etc. Easily cracked by the automated cracking tools.
  • Personal names, birth dates or similar information. These are used a lot as passwords and are very easily cracked. For example, if the password is a birthday, there are only hundreds or few thousands (if the year is included) possible combination’s, which is very weak for a password.
As you can see, all easy passwords are not safe. But how to choose safe passwords? The most important thing is to avoid using the same password for different computers or services. If you follow this rule, even if one of your passwords is cracked or otherwise compromised, the other passwords will be safe. The above rule will not do you much good if all your passwords are weak and easy to guess. It is hard to come up with hundreds completely different and strong passwords and it is even harder to remember them.
What makes a password strong?
Basically, the password strength depends on the number of possible combination’s, which must be tried in order to guess (or crack) the password. For example, the standard 4-digit PIN codes are weak passwords, because there are only 10000 possible combination’s. This is not a big problem for ATM machines because the PIN code is useless without the card and most ATM machines block when the password does not match more than 2-3 times. However, in many other cases it is possible to use automated password cracking tools, which can try thousands or even millions passwords per second, so any weak password will be cracked in a matter of seconds or minutes.
The number of possible combination’s depends of the symbols, which are used in the password and the password length.
How to generate strong random passwords?
The difference between the level of security provided by weak and strong passwords is huge. The question remains: how to create random strong passwords? Lets look at the alternatives.
  • Choosing “randomly” letters and numbers. It appears random but only at first sight. Numerous research studies have proven that humans are not very good at random picks – they always try to spread the things too evenly, which is not random behavior.
  • “Random” typing on the keyboard with closed eyes. This is slightly better than random choosing but still nowhere random enough.
  • Online random password generators. Much better than the previous two alternatives but have 2 major drawbacks. The first is the possibility that the generated password may be saved on the website with malicious purposes or someone may eavesdrop on your connection and intercept the generated passwords. The second major problem is the quality of the random number generators, which very often is not up to the task. Many of them are naively implemented and provide a lot fewer combination’s than theoretically possible (no more that tens or hundreds of millions, which is not strong password by any means).
  • Specialized random password generator programs. The best option as long as they are implemented properly and come from trusted source.
I think now you know about the need of creating secure passwords.. 🙂
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What is Oracle Apps (ERP) : Basic Concepts

Lets take an example. Suppose you are running a small grocery shop, so the typical operation as a shop owner is you basically buy groceries from some big seller and stock it in your shop. Now people come to your shop for day-to-day needs and buy stuff from your shop at a slightly higher price than what you originally bought and stocked it in your shop.
Occasionally you may not be carrying items or run out of stock that people ask for so you make a note of it and promise the person to come back tomorrow and they will get their item. So far so good, now lets name some entities before we proceed and things get complicated. The big seller from whom you buy stock is called as Vendor, the people who come to your shop to buy things are known as customers, the stock in your shop is known as inventory.

So far we have identified few entities that play an active role in your day-to-day operations. As time goes by, your business expands and now you take orders over the phone and provide service to deliver the items to your customers, so you hire people to help you out in maintaining the inventory, do the delivery part and all the necessary stuff to keep the business running smoothly. The people you hire are known as employees.
So in this small shop, you typically manage the bookkeeping activities by hand using a notepad or something similar. Now imagine the same setup on a larger scale where you have more than 10,000 customers, have more than 1000 vendors, have more than 1000 employees and have a huge warehouse to maintain your inventory. Do you think you can manage all that information using pen and paper? Absolutely no way! Your business will come to a sudden stop sign.
To facilitate big businesses, companies like Oracle Corporation have created huge software known in the category of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) as Oracle Applications. Now coming to think of it, Oracle Apps is not one huge software, instead it is a collection of software known as modules that are integrated and talk to each other.
Now what is meant by integrated? First let us identify the modules by entities. For e.g Purchasing and Account Payables deal with the vendors since you typically purchase from vendors and eventually have to pay the dues. Oracle Purchasing handles all the requisitions and purchase orders to the vendors whereas Oracle Accounts Payables handles all the payments to the vendors.
Similarly Oracle Inventory deals with the items you maintain in stock, warehouse etc. Dealing with customers is handled collectively with the help of Oracle Receivables and Oracle Order Management. Order Management helps you collect all the information that your customer is ordering over the phone or webstore etc whereas Receivables help you collect the money for the orders that are delivered to the customers.
Now who maintains the paychecks, benefits of the 1000 employees? right! it is managed by Oracle Human Resources. So you get the idea by now that for each logical function there is a separate module that helps to execute and maintain that function.
So all the individual functions are being taken care but how do I know if I am making profit or loss? That’s where integration comes into play. There is another module known as Oracle General Ledger. This module receives information from all the different transaction modules and summarizes them in order to help you create profit and loss statements, reports for paying Taxes etc.
Just to simplify the explanation, when you pay your employees that payment is reported back to General Ledgers as cost i.e money going out, when you purchase inventory items the information is transferred to GL as money going out, and so is the case when you pay your vendors. Similarly when you receive items in your inventory it is transferred to GL as money coming in, when your customer sends payment it is transferred to GL as money coming in. So all the different transaction modules report to GL (General Ledger) as either money going in or money going out, the net result will tell you if you are making a profit or loss.
All the equipment, shops, warehouses, computers can be termed as Assets and they are managed by Oracle Fixed Assets. Initially Oracle Applications started as bunch of modules and as time passed by they added new modules for different and new functions growing out of the need for today’s internet world.
So if you come across a module that you are trying to learn and work on, first try to understand what business need is it trying to fulfill and then try to understand what the immediate modules that it interacts with. For e.g lets say you come across Oracle Cost Management module, you will learn that it helps to maintain the costs of items in your inventory and the immediate modules that it interacts with are Oracle Inventory (ofcourse), Oracle Bills of Material, Order Management and so on..
(Source: http://www.appsbi.com/what-is-oracle-apps-erp)
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Transaction/Journal Migration

The migration of transactions & journals from legacy to oracle is the most difficult part of data migration. You should migrate all the GL balance for the current year periods, all the last year periods and the ending balance of ‘Y-2’ to oracle. You need to do a proper reconciliation of GL balances after migration of open AP/AR invoices to the current period.
AP Open Invoice
The charge and tax amounts of the open AP invoices already exist in the legacy system. You need to make sure that you don’t account them again in oracle.
Accounting entries in Legacy
Charge A/C Dr
Tax  A/C Dr                            Supplier Liability A/C Cr
Instead of the liability account use a clearing account(Liability) while transferring the journals to oracle GL. Make the below changes while transferring these journals to oracle GL
Charge A/C Dr
Tax  A/C Dr                            Migration Clearing A/C (Liability) Cr
When you transfer the AP invoice from legacy to oracle. Use the above migration clearing account as charge/tax/freight A/C
Accounts created in oracle AP
Migration Clearing A/C (charge)
Migration Clearing A/C(tax)                       Supplier Liability A/C Cr
Transfer these accounts from AP to Oracle GL. After posting all these journals in the current period the YTD balance of migration clearing A/C should be zero.
AR Open Invoice
Similar to AP open invoice in AR invoice we use a clearing account (ASSET) instead of the receivable A/C in legacy. The revenue and tax amounts of the open AR invoices exist in the legacy system. You need to make sure that you don’t account them again in oracle.
Accounting entries in Legacy
Receivable A/C Dr
                                    Revenue A/C Cr                           
                                    Tax A/C Cr            
              
Make the below changes while transferring these journals to oracle GL
Migration Clearing A/C (Asset) Dr
                                                             Revenue A/C Cr                           
                                                              Tax A/C Cr           
When you transfer the AR invoice from legacy to oracle. Use the above migration clearing account as revenue/tax/freight A/C (use transaction type in auto accounting and put the clearing accounts in transaction type)
Accounts created in oracle AR
Receivable A/C Dr
                                    Migration Clearing A/C (Revenue) Cr                           
                                     Migration Clearing A/C (Tax) Cr            
Transfer these accounts from AR to Oracle GL. After posting all these journals in the current period the YTD balance of migration clearing A/C should be zero.
Fixed Assets
Transfer all the assets from legacy to oracle with Accumulated depreciation till the current period. Oracle ‘ll not create any depreciation for previous period. System ‘ll create below journal entries when you close & transfer the journals for the first asset period
Addition Journals
Addition Cost A/C Dr.
                                  Addition Cost Clearing A/C  Cr.
All these assets are present in legacy GL and transferred as a part of GL migration. You need to reverse all these journals in current period
Depreciation Journals
System‘ll create the depreciation journals for the current period.
All the past period depreciation & acc. Depreciation amounts are transferred through GL migration.
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Oracle Data & Migration

The sets of data required by Oracle Applications can be broadly classified in to 4 categories

  • Master Data : Item, Customer, Vendor, Bank Accounts, etc.
  • Opening Balances: On-Hand Quantity of Items, GL Balances, etc.
  • Open Transactions : Open Purchase Orders, Open Sales Order, Open Invoice etc.
  • Set-up Data :  Item Categories, Stock Locators

Similary source of data can be classified as

  • Existing Applications : DB2, Tally, SMS, etc.
  • Electronic Data : Comming through EDI in formats of Excel, Word, etc.
  • Hard Copy Data : In Registers
  • Non – Existent : Equipment Master, Collect and then migrate

The above diagram depicts the high level Data Migration approach from Legacy to ORACLE.
At a minimum, the data migration from Legacy to ORACLE consists of these tasks:

  • Extracting the data from Legacy data base.
  • Loading the extracted data into staging area.
  • Mapping and transformation of source data.
  • Migrating source data from staging area into target data base.
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Important APIs/Open Interfaces

Customer APIs
hz_party_v2pub.create_organization
Org Contact Role Hz_party_contact_v2pub.Create_Org_Contact_Role
Relationships HZ_CUST_ACCOUNT_V2PUB.CREATE_CUST_ACCT_RELATE
Customer Profile HZ_CUSTOMER_PROFILE_V2PUB. create_customer_profile
Customer Profile Amount HZ_CUSTOMER_PROFILE_V2PUB. create_cust_profile_amt
Customer Credit Rating HZ_PARTY_INFO_V2PUB.create_credit_rating
Sales Person JTF_RS_SALESREPS_PUB.CREATE_SALESREP
Sales reps Territories JTF_RS_SRP_TERRITORIES_PUB.CREATE_RS_SRP_TERRITORIES
Customer contacts HZ_CUST_ACCOUNT_ROLE_V2PUB.CREATE_CUST_ACCOUNT_ROLE
Customer Contact Role HZ_CUST_ACCOUNT_ROLE_V2PUB.create_role_responsibility
Vendor APIs
Procedure : AP_PO_VENDORS_APIS_PKG.INSERT_NEW_VENDOR
Procedure=> AP_PO_VENDORS_APIS_PKG.INSERT_NEW_VENDOR_SITE
Procedure=> AP_PO_VENDORS_APIS_PKG.INSERT_NEW_VENDOR_CONTACT
Item Import
You must import items into the Item Master organization before you import items into additional organizations. You can accomplish this by specifying only your Item Master organization on a first pass run of the Item Interface. Once this has completed, you can run the Item Interface again, this time specifying an additional or all organizations.
Populate these tables first..
MTL_SYSTEM_ITEM_INTERFACE
MTL_ITEMS_REVISIONS_INTERFACE
MTL_ITEM_CATEGORIES_INTERFACE
Always set the TRANSACTION_TYPE column to CREATE, to create an item record (true when both importing a new item and assigning an already existing item to another organization). This is the only value currently supported by the Item Interface.Set the PROCESS_FLAG to 1 (Pending), so that the Item Interface can pick up the row and process it.The program sets the PROCESS_FLAG to 7 (Import succeeded) or  4 (Import failed) or  3 (validation failed). A row is inserted into the MTL_INTERFACE_ERRORS table for all failed rows.When the Item Interface imports an item, it also assigns the item to the mandatory category sets based on the item defining attributes. The default category for each category set is used. The Item Interface also allows you to assign items to other category sets and categories, when there is data for item category assignments in the MTL_ITEM_CATEGORIES_INTERFACE table.
Run Import Items Report :
Indicate whether to run the interface for all organizations in the item interface table. If you choose No, the interface runs only for the current organization and interface table rows for other organizations are ignored.Parameter Create or Update Items..
1 Create new items.
2 Update existing items.
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