In this in-depth review, a tester for IndependentTraveler.com concludes that Vayama.com is "well worth a look before your next international trip, particularly if you're headed for exotic destinations like Africa or South America, or if you're the type of traveler that's willing to take a train to a less convenient airport to save $50 or $100."
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| By Megan K. Scott, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK — Planning a winter vacation? Sure, you can go online to one of the biggies like Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity for hotel, rental car and air fare. But there's a whole new collection of websites for savvy travelers. Some are aggregators, following the successful model of Kayak.com, which pulls data from a variety of sources so you can compare airfares. Others combine social networking and consumer reviews, such as VibeAgent.com. Some are improved versions of old favorites, like OrbitzTLC Traveler Update, which allows travelers to share information about conditions at more than 40 airports in the U.S. Here is a guide to some of the new or reincarnated sites, with one important caveat: Some of these sites do not yet offer the comprehensive database of reviews and information available on older sites like TripAdvisor. So don't be surprised to find minimal listings and reviews for some destinations, especially obscure ones, as you explore what's new in the next generation of travel websites. boo.com (no connection to the defunct fashion website): Offers travel reviews from consumers, search capabilities for 2,500 destinations in 170 countries, comparison hotel prices, and booking through boo or hotel websites. Includes restaurants, bars and other interesting things to do in chosen destinations. vayama.com: An online booking agency for international air travel with flight and fare options to about 190 countries. Allows travelers to enter preferences for connecting airports and travel time. Also has information about obtaining visas, passports and immunizations. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Delta | Facebook | Continental | Expedia | Sidestep | Tripadvisor | Kayak.com | Offers VibeAgent.com: Combines user-generated reviews, meta-search capabilities, and social networking (think TripAdvisor plus Kayak plus Facebook) for personalized hotel recommendations and booking at the best prices. Personalizes hotel searches via three categories: "Ambience," "Activities," and "Recommended For," such as a romantic hotel near the beach for gays and lesbians. Users can create custom groups, or become members of existing groups, such as marathon travelers, to exchange stories, tips and recommendations. Connects you to the website with the best price for booking from among 120,000 hotels. YELLOWPAGES.travel: Searches up to 12 travel websites, including Orbitz, Kayak, Expedia and SideStep. Users click on each site's logo at the top of the page for the results. SearchBoth.com, a subsidiary of YELLOWPAGES.travel, allows users to search two travel sites at the same time and places the results from the sites on a split screen. ProfessionalTravelGuide.com: Offers reviews of hotels and restaurants from professionals — journalists and expert reviewers from the travel industry — including insider tips and specific, detailed information about more than 159,000 hotels. These reviews are more like what you would find in a guidebook than in an anecdotal consumer review. Also has a customized guide for users who are traveling to several cities. yapta.com: Stands for Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant. Enables travelers to tag flights from several airlines, including American, United, Delta and Continental, and alerts them when the fare drops. But unlike farecast.com, which predicts whether prices are rising or dropping, yapta can continue tracking prices even after you purchase the ticket. If you booked directly with the airline and the price drops below what you paid, you may be eligible for a refund or credit from the airline. (Other rules may apply — for example, some airlines charge a re-booking fee to capture the travel credit, so check the details.) TripIt.com: Organizes travel plans into one master online itinerary. Forward flight, hotel, rental car, and other confirmations to an e-mail account, and TripIt will e-mail travelers with the link so they can see and manage the itinerary. Includes weather, maps and city guides. Users can customize the itinerary with additional information, such as directions to a restaurant or tourist attraction. Orbitz.com: Offers a new social networking component — OrbitzTLC Traveler Update — with real-time updates from travelers about security wait times, traffic and parking, taxis, etc. at more than 40 airports. Travelers can post the information on the website or send a text message. Orbitz encourages people to send information by giving out perks to people who send in tips and updates, such as a free pair of airline tickets. BestTripChoices.com: Matches travel personalities with best destinations. Travelers take a test and are classified into one of six travel personalities, ranging from "Venturers," people who are extreme risk takers, to "Authentics," people who want a relaxing, lazy vacation. The site recommends travel destinations based on the results. The destinations have been rated by travelers with similar personalities who have visited those places. fabsearch.com: For the fashion-conscious traveler. Fabsearch features blurbs on hip restaurants and trendy hotels from media mentions in sources ranging from Vogue and Town and Country magazine to DailyCandy.com, the Financial Times and Wallpaper. Saves the mentions in a "my clippings" file. Yahoo! Trip Planner (travel.yahoo.com): Helps travelers create a personalized guide for an upcoming trip, with information on hotels, attractions and restaurants, and share the details of their trip with friends and other travelers. Coming soon: Yahoo! Travel will roll out a revamped version of My Travel with an interactive world map that will allow travelers to mark the places they have been and the places they want to go and connect users with others who share similar travel interests. americanexpress.com: Click on Travel, then Local Color, a one-stop shop for travel information. Combines Lonely Planet Guides, IgoUgo reviews and Travel + Leisure magazine articles to give travelers "local color" about a place. (Travel + Leisure is published by American Express Publishing Corporation). travelocity.roadtripwizard.com: Helps travelers plan U.S. road trips, with maps and step-by-step directions. The site gives the 411 on shopping, restaurants, festivals and other attractions, with directions on how to get there. Online booking of air, car, hotels and attractions is provided through Travelocity Partner Network. cfares.com: Bills itself as the Costco of travel. Searches airline and travel websites. Users can purchase a platinum membership for $50 a year, which provides access to the site's best priced wholesale fares and special fares from the airlines. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
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12:46 PM
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| E-ORACLE:10g Master Performance Solution for Oracle 10g | |||||||||||
| SOLUTION 201049233: E-ORACLE:10g Master Performance Solution for Oracle 10g SPECIFIC TO: Enterprise Peoplesoft , Oracle 10g ISSUE: Oracle 10g Performance Solution SOLUTION: INITIAL TRIAGE --------------------- 1] Check Certification Page to ensure that the environment is Certified URL - http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/iou/platforms/platforms_supported.jsp 2] Check Operating System, RDBMS & Additional Component Patches Required for Installation . This page is initially created during Testing before product ga and is updated as and when we find out about parameters/patches required for our application. For any performance problem after confirming that the environment is certified, this should be the next place to check URL - http://www4.peoplesoft.com/psdb.nsf/CommByTopic?OpenView&Start=1&Count=30&Expand=4#4 RECOMMENDATIONS ------------------------------- Following recommendations and workaround were helpful to many customers. Tesing on a demo environment is strongly recommended before making changes to your Production. Some of these parameters may already be recommended either in the Red Paper or the Third party required patches document. 1] Init.ora Parameters _UNNEST_SUBQUERY=FALSE 2] Dynamic Sampling - Since most of PeopleSoft programs use %UpdateStats to manage statistics of our temporary tables so we recommend to turn this parameter off by setting the following: OPTIMIZER_DYNAMIC_SAMPLING = 0 3] OCI Bind Issue Summary: Oracle 10.2.x.x.x client regression causing severe performance issues(up to 100% regression) with Enterprise PeopleSoft versions supporting Oracle 10gR2. Description: Severe performance degradation issues being experienced by our customers who have upgraded to Oracle 10gr2. This is caused by a behaviour regression of OCIHandleFree of OCI_HTYPE_BIND OCI calls issued against Oracle 10.2 client. Execution of these calls by the Enterprise PeopleSoft against prior versions of the Oracle client did not exhibit this performance behaviour. Solution: Patches are now available on all Enterprise PeopleSoft supported platforms for Oracle versions 10.2.0.2.0 and 10.2.0.3.0. Customer Connection has been updated to reflect the necessity of the patch for all PeopleSoft installations using Oracle versions 10.2.0.2.0 and 10.2.0.3.0. Solution ID: 201050932 4] Analyze v/s DBMS_STATS for Online Programs Starting 8.48 %UPDSTATS metasql uses DBMS_STATS to collect statistics. DBMS_STATS is the recommended way to collect stats, If you suspect that DBMS_STATS is causing performance degradation of your AE process, you can review your AE trace, and look for statements that used the - RECSTATS - Command: Once you confirm that using DBMS_STATS to update statistics is causing a lot of overhead when compared to Analyze with estimate- when using %Updatestats, you can revert %Updatestats to use the Analyze command by doing the followings: Check Oracle 10g Performance Red paper for instructions on how to make this change. 5] DBFLAGS This parameter in the Application Server and Process Scheduler files controls secondary database connection which is used for a CRM function, because of sporadic performance problems reported along with deadlocking its recommended to set this parameter to 8 6] DESC Indexes Third Party required patches document has been updated with Patches required for the use of DESC Indexes, without these patches you may experience ORA-03113 errors, Incorrect Rows being returned. 7] Oracle 10g Red Paper Oracle 10g Red Paper can be found at the following location on customer connection. http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/doc_archive/red_paper/rp_e_perf_10g.jsp WORKAROUND: KEYWORDS: Oracle 10g, Oracle, 10, Performance, Hang, Slow , Hints, SPOTLIGHT | |||||||||||
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9:03 AM
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| E-ORCL: Data Mover with Ignore_dups command in Oracle 10 runs very slowly | |||||||||||
| SOLUTION 201014244: E-ORCL: Data Mover with Ignore_dups command in Oracle 10 runs very slowly SPECIFIC TO: Enterprise, Oracle 10 ISSUE: Running a Peoplesoft delivered data mover script with has the command coded in it set ignore_dups; on the Oracle 10 database. Is observing that the script is running terribly slowly and wondering if this will ever finish? SOLUTION: This is reported in incident 1463561000. The WORKAROUND for the ignore_dups problem in Oracle 10g: delete statistics from the following data dictionary tables sys.CDEF$ , sys.CON$ and sys.USER$ KEYWORDS: SPOTLIGHT, ORACLE 10 | |||||||||||
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8:56 AM
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