The Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 has been released with Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing V2.4. This release includes new functionality and updates to existing functionality and will be progressively released across the Oracle Utilities applications.

The release is quite substantial with lots of new and exciting changes. The release notes shipped with the product includes a summary of the changes implemented in V4.2.0.0.0. They include the following:

• Configuration Migration Assistant (CMA) - A new data management capability to allow you to export and import Configuration Data from one environment to another with support for Approval/Rejection of individual changes.
• Database Connection Tagging - Additional tags have been added to the database connection to allow database administrators, Oracle Enterprise Manager and other Oracle technology the ability to monitor and use individual database connection information.
• Native Support for Oracle WebLogic - In the past the Oracle Utilities Application Framework used Oracle WebLogic in embedded mode, and now, to support advanced configuration and the ExaLogic platform, we are adding Native Support for Oracle WebLogic as configuration option.
• Native Web Services Support - In the past the Oracle Utilities Application Framework supplied a servlet to handle Web Services calls and now we offer an alternative to use the native Web Services capability of Oracle WebLogic. This allows for enhanced clustering, a greater level of Web Service standards support, enchanced security options and the ability to use the Web Services management capabilities in Oracle WebLogic to implement higher levels of management including defining additional security rules to control access to individual Web Services.
• XML Data Type Support - Oracle Utilities Application Framework now allows implementors to define XML Data types used in Oracle in the definition of custom objects to take advantage of XQuery and other XML features.
• Fuzzy Operator Support - Oracle Utilities Application Framework supports the use of the fuzzy operator in conjunction with Oracle Text to take advantage of the fuzzy searching capabilities within the database.
• Global Batch View - A new JMX based API has been implemented to allow JSR120 compliant consoles the ability to view batch execution across all threadpools in the Coherence based Named Cache Cluster.
• Portal Personalization - It is now possible to store the runtime customizations of query zones such as preferred sorting, field order and filters to reuse as personal preferences each time that zone is used.

These are just the major changes and there are quite a few more that have been delivered (and more to come in the service packs!!).

Over the next few weeks we will be publishing new whitepapers and new entries in this blog outlining new facilities that you want to take advantage of.