OUGN16 - Call for paper

The biggest conference for Oracle users in the Nordics is not far away. Be there as a speaker and attendee. Sure you have a war story or another experience worth sharing. Last year OUGN received 250 abstracts, please, do it again!

Follow this link to submit your abstracts:

http://c4p.ougn.no/

Deadline is November 15.

See you on the ship (which is a boat with other boats on it, according to Millsap)!

To a junior DBA

At UKOUG Tech conference in Liverpool last year I had an interesting talk with a DBA that had two years of experience. Being 23 years the DBA naturally stood out from the crowd. I talked about my thoughts on what is important for a DBA, and since I spend way too much on user group activities and conferences I argued that going to such events are useful for a DBA, and continued with other ramblings about what I think is important for a DBA to do. I hope I stopped soon enough, but stop talking and start listening is an art. Anyway, I decided to write down a list of recommendations for a new DBA. This is what I think is important.

Backup and recovery stands out. The database is your responsibility, that is why you are hired as a DBA. In the database, which in earlier times also was called a databank, the data is the money.  If you can't get the database back after a disaster they will blame you and no other. In fact if you can imagine one reason why you in some situation will not be able to recover the database you should mail it to your manager now. The concept of backup and recovery should be easy to grasp, but realities are that many different scenarios exist and how to deal with them depends on the situation. There are plenty of stuff written on this from masters of Recovery Manager (RMAN) to people more dedicated to risk management. This subject is more than just getting the database back running, it is also about keeping the system available, guard against data loss and testing systems for faults.

• Have a fire drill once in a while to test your routines and skills.
• Get some clear policies in place like, how much data are you allowed to lose, and how much time (downtime) do you have to recover your database. 

The costs and implementation will depend on  this. If you cannot lose any data and management starts talking about 99.999% uptime a simple backup is not enough. "How much data can you lose?" Is a phrase that can freak people out, but if you can't lose data, is your system  and routines really prepared for that?

Tuning and Optimisation is by many thought of as your problem and your problem only. Reality is that when a system is not performing it is usually not the DBA's fault. Obviously, a badly configured database will not work well, but the Oracle database performs remarkably well with default configurations.  Your database depends on the server it is running on, the network between the database and connected clients, and so on. But most frequently you will discover this: the reason for bad performance is bad design.

Design as in "invented by a developer who is a single user on his own PC with lots of CPU and memory, but little data and load to reveal bad algorithms". Tuning is a word looked down on by some in the community since it came from an era where quick fixes and esoteric queries would reveal problems in the database; with the right secret revealed to you, you could do some magic and have everything run perfectly. Still some people are tempted by black magic, so be critical to what Google brings you.

Optimisation on the other hand is taking what you have, see where the time is wasted, and take away as much as you can (or want) by replacing one or a few parts of the job by something that runs better. Often a redesign is necessary, or if you are lucky, fiddling with an index may do the job.

My best advice is to find a way to identify where time is wasted and zooming in on that. This means profiling in some way and work from there. By having some methods ready to detect waste or a time sink, you can stop spending time improving on what is already working reasonably well. In other words, stop the parameter tweaking (nobody changes the db_block_size these days), take one step back and ask, what is going on here. What you learned in computer science at the university may come very useful here. To put your mind on the right track I cannot think of a better place to start than to read through the papers at Method R, especially Thinking Clearly About Performance.

Get involved in a user group and go to conferences, meetups or whatever is easy for you. Many companies have many developers or IT-workers, but only one or two DBAs. In the community there are people who love to talk about their work, they will share experience with you, and tell you what is not in the manuals. If your manager won't send you to a conference, here are some arguments you may try:

• One course covers one subject, but a conference covers many, during one intensive conference you can get inputs and learning in many fields.
• Problems you may have at work can be discussed by others at the conference. Chances are that what you are going through is interesting and valuable input to others and you are likely not the first one to go through this.
• Make friends and discover that you are not alone. Getting friends and contacts outside your pool is possibly the best part of it. Meeting people IRL and being in touch on many channels is priceless to me.
• Many conferences are run by the community, meaning that a demand for a profit margin is lower at conferences than at a course delivered by a company. It translates to more learning for the money than at most other places.

Find a social network that works for you and become visible. Twitter works well for me, I meet likeminded people there and discover other things we have in common besides Oracle tech. Most of my friends I have now come from the Twitter community.

Take notes and start a blog Starting as a DBA today must be different from how it was 10-20 years ago. As you go, take notes and post it on your own blog. Even mistakes; DBAs are busy, if other can learn from your mistakes it is a valuable contribution. The problems you have now may be more relevant for another junior DBA than a beginner's post written many years ago. And, you will be surprised how useful your procedures will be later when you have to go back and perform a task you haven't done for a while.

If you are a senior DBA reading this, maybe you should blog about what you learned and want to pass on? I think many have had an experience that stood out, something that put their mind on the right track. Blog about it!

Why was my abstract (not) accepted?

You know, this is my blog, but I am aware of my role in our user group. The opinions here are mine; I haven't stolen them. Selecting abstracts for our conference is done by many in our board, but I wanted to clarify how I look at the task, what speakers I look for to our conference.

Thursday this week we sent out emails to 71 people who will present on our next conference that starts March 12. Another group received a more disappointing email. Some have questioned why they did not make it (again).

As a user group I think we have some community duties. These came to my mind now:

• Be there for our members, independent from any vendor, but still cooperating with Oracle and others.
• Enlighten and show new stuff to our members.
• Help them finding solutions to problems they may have at work - share experiences.
• Networking; remind DBAs and other professionals that may be alone in their day job that they are not alone in the community.
• Also network related: There are a lot of experts inside and outside Oracle worldwide that believe in what they are doing, and are willing to help. The community needs to know about them.
• Assist in recruiting new people into our fields of technology; more members and new colleagues. 
• Help new speakers into giving presentations, develop the community with even more good speakers.

This post is mostly about that last bullet point.

I have my heroes among the speakers. First I discovered Tom Kyte, and when he started blogging I discovered the Oaktable Network. From that group I can mention Cary Millsap, Jonathan Lewis, Christian Antognini, Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman and Douglas Burns, to name a few.  They always attract a lot of people. And I really enjoy the company of these, really smart, yet levels with you every time. The community is even more than the Oaktable, there are plenty of people who just love what they are doing without carrying any reward for it.

Many of these speakers have been rewarded for their community contributions through the Oracle Ace Program.  OUGN could never have staged such a good conference without the support from Oracle through the ACE program,  we have several ACEs every year and the ACE program covers a substantial amount of expenses. So if someone from OTN is reading this: Thank you!

In this program the best (according to some metric) are rewarded with status ACE Director (ACED). Before they got that far some started as ACE, this year the new entry level is ACE Associate. Now, according to someone's logic we should go through the list of submitted abstracts and pick all the ACEDs first, right?

Not according to mine. I think we have a duty in helping new speakers to the stage. One of the most uplifting experience I have in the community is to discover (new) people that spend time on becoming good at what they are doing through hard work, lots of lab testing, and blogging. The presentations that gave me most came from people who really care about what they talk about (call it passion, if you insist), not from a very slick and polished presentation.

This is one way we in OUGN can give back to the ACE program and the rest of the community: help the not so famous or people who aspire to become an ACE to get better at presenting their stuff. 

I like to think that some of those new ACEs became an ACE because they presented at our conference. One of our Norwegian members came to me after a conference was finished and said one certain presentation made the whole conference for him. It was delivered by one I invited to speak, he was not an ACE then, but is now. It is a lot of work to become an ACE, more then one conference experience, of course, but still I think we can contribute to it.

In addition to this group of speakers who I personally care much about, here is a list of others I look for:

• Product managers and others in Oracle who shares and cares about the community. PMs for SQL Developer, APEX, among others, are the best ambassadors for Oracle.
• People who are in the front with new trends and technologies.
• Famous people who attract attendees, because we need them.
• Really hard-core nerds that may not appeal to many, but makes the conference for the ones that go to the deep-dive session.

So, if your abstract did not make it, it means among other things:

• We were blessed with lots of submitted abstracts (over 250 this year, not counting people who said they was going to submit, but forgot about it.)
• We have to choose from different groups of speakers.
• Something else happened. (This is the miscellaneous bucket including faults on our side.) 

If you made it, it means that we literally want you on board and that you will succeed. You may have the best experience after your presentation from introverts who want  to know more about what you are doing. And the last night while sailing back to Oslo and you will have no presentation to worry about, you will understand why quite a few want to come back to the OUGN Spring Seminar, aka The Boat Conference :-)

By the way, the worst thing about abstract selections is not to say no to the pros (ACEDs), they can handle it, I assume, but there are some less experienced people that deserves to be speaking, but we couldn't find slots for them.

Cheers to everybody.

OOW 2014

There is one night every year I can stay up as long as I can manage without fearing the next day. Because, on that particular day I can sleep as much as I want on the plane, trying to fool my body into GMT-8, better known as PDT or  Pacific Daylight Time. Yes, it is Oracle Open World again, in the second nicest city in the world, only beaten by Rio de Janeiro.

It is also an opportunity to blog at an unusual hour (at least for me). Though it is not like many have inquired about my travel plans, but it feels good to put it down in writing that I am happy to see Oracle friends again, some I only see in SFO.

Since last OOW, I became an Oracle ACE Associate, and more than ever I am looking forward to meet friends in the OTN Lounge, and that party, you know.

What else... OUGN is paying for most of my expenses and my employer is letting me go, so I'll try to give them both some satisfaction back. Mostly I will try to target and convince some speakers to come to our conference next year, increasingly known as the Boat Conference. If you are reading this and are curious, please interrupt me whatever I'm doing (mostly).

I've learned a few lessons and so far not overloaded my agenda. This week I will go to the global user group leaders meeting (IOUC) on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday morning until 2 pm I'll be at the EMEA user group stand. I will go to different sessions at the Oaktable World, hang out on different social events and of course a bunch of sessions.

Somewhat related, Tim Hall, aka Oracle-Base blogged this today. Surely he will feel reinvigorated after the Bloggers' Meetup and the small talk with Oracle Nerds from all over the world looking for freebies in the OTN Lounge.

The easiest way to get in touch during OOW next week, is probably on Twitter.

Yours,
@OyvindIsene

PS. I did not know how to spell reinvigorated, the spell checker helped me.
PS2. Come to think about it, there are probably a few more late nights without anxiety the following day. But I can't find a better opening right now.

42 Reasons to join me at #OUGN14

1. Oracle User Group Norway (OUGN) organizes the biggest Oracle user conference in Scandinavia.
2. As of March 28, 341 DBAs, developers, managers, sales people, and more have figured out why. Read on for more reasons if you have not registered yet.
3. This year we are breaking many of our own records, for example we have 66 speakers from 15 different countries.
4. We have added another track with a total of 8 different tracks.
5. Our conference, also known as the Boat Conference is getting famous worldwide. The call for paper this time resulted in more than 200 submitted abstracts, from more speakers than any time.
6. We  start even earlier to cram in more sessions - it is hard to say no to all good speakers out there, we have never had so many sessions, more than 100 in total.
7. This year we have two roundtable sessions - meet the experts and join the conversations.
8. Something completely new: Women in Technology - WIT. See the abstract here http://bit.ly/OVrwgR If you have been to conferences before you know why this is important.
9. Meet Oracle’s coolest product manager, for SQL Developer Jeff Smith, check his blog here http://www.thatjeffsmith.com/ and you get the idea.
10. Are you a DBA and wonder why Java? Do you code in Java and wonder “What now, Oracle?” Meet Oracle’s PM on Java, Bruno Borges. Coming all the way from São Paulo, Brazil to talk about Java and more.
11. The Java track has never been better, with more Norwegian speakers, including Aslak Knutsen from Red Hat. Markus Eisele (who knows everybody in the Java community) will be there too.
12. We can’t of think any better place in Norway to mend the sometimes broken relationship between Java coders and DBAs.
13. How is your system performance? Learn optimization from the expert Cary Millsap.
14. DBAs blame developers for bad design, developers blame the database for being old and not scalable. Who is right? Learn how these groups can work together from the same man.
15. Have you been to an Oracle presentation and been so entertained that you lost sense of time? You will after going to one of Connor McDonnald’s presentations. Last year his presentations received record high scores on content and delivery.
16. Still confused about fusion? The middleware track will help you and your future will look green.
17. How often have you googled for a solution and ended up with a nice write-up at oracle-base.com ? Now you can meet the man who wrote all of it, Tim Hall aka Oracle Base, look for a man in an Oraclenerd T-shirt.
18. Not sure if Norway is big enough for Big Data? Surely Big Data Solutions Director Luis Campos from Oracle PT will tell us.
19. Software projects are difficult, get off with a good start and a good data model in this presentation with Heli (the world has only one Heli like Heli, so first name is OK, we think).
20. Do you like Scottish mood and complicated humour? You’ll be able to read 10053 trace files backwards before you understand all his jokes, which make his presentations never boring. Meet OUGN best supporter and a long-time friend, Doug Burns.
21. Do you usually wait three years after release of R2 before you upgrade? You will have no reason to wait after you’ve got all the details in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to  Oracle Database Upgrades
22. With 12c PL/SQL is stronger than ever, according to Bryn in his presentation P133.
23. Some worried that Oracle would kill MySQL once they bought it. They were wrong, our MySQL track is full of good content from Oracle’s own developers and users out there. Meet attendees and Oracle staff and ask about MySQL (Care for an meetup btw? We’ve got an open slot for you.)
24. Has everybody moved to Linux? Check out this presentation on Sparc and LDOMS.
25. The apps track is back!
26. You too are late learning APEX? Don’t worry, check out this.
27. Several managers have signed up. If you manage DBAs and other techies this is your opportunity to see them in their preferred habitat, and you can exchange experience with other managers.
28. Do you have challenges in your job? Alone with a new design, or maybe you have learned something unusual? Share your experience and discuss it with other techies. Learn what is not in the documentation.
29. Introverts and control freaks have no better place to socialize then on a user conference. Not tired of discussing RMAN configuration? You will not be alone on this ship.
30. Have a question for Oracle sale, pre-sale, technologists or someone from the C-level? Oracle Norway, US, DE and more are sending several to support us, and they don’t mind sitting down for a talk, be it in a bar or in the Boardroom. Who knows what can happen in international waters. Just don’t mention licenses on the dance floor, that is bad mojo.
31. This year we have a new native app for smartphones. It will work even when you are offline. Make your own agenda and share it on Twitter.
32. One of two frequent feedback from speakers and attendees is that the conference is well organized. Thanks to Color Line and the venue the conference is usually a smooth sailing. Actually we can’t think of any better venue, so we will probably use the same setup for many years.
33. The other feedback is that the food is quite good. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served in a restaurant with excellent standard. More info about the ship here.
34. Being on a ship, people stick around and socialize with other speakers and attendees. Not too big and not to small. This is a fantastic networking opportunity; you’ll always find someone, when you’ve had enough you can always retreat to your cabin or a calm restaurant.
35. The weather forecast looks quite promising, with sun, no rain and 4º C the Oslofjord will be a nice scenery going and returning.
36. Tax free...
37. Though we have wifi in the conference area, you may actually enjoy being offline sometimes. It is a good excuse to not read email and check whatever addiction you have when we are going through Skagerrak.
38. If you come from abroad and want to know more about the Norwegian market you get to meet a variety of large and small customers.
39. Actually more attendees from outside Norway has registered than any time before.
40. Forgot to mention the cloud. Surely, someone will mention it on the conference. There will probably be more clouds in the sessions than in the sky, because we will have no-cloud weather during the conference.
41. We also have many presentations with tons of no-hype stuff, proven work from experienced people.
42. Seeing first-time speakers freak out when the ship starts moving is priceless.

If you are still reading this, it may be to late. Ticket sale ends Monday March 31, 09 hs CET. Mail us if you are desperate.

Kurs med Cary Millsap i Oslo dagen før #OUGN14

Vårens store høydepunkt er OUGN sitt vårseminar. Her er programmet og her kan du melde deg på. Drar du til Oslo for å delta på konferansen anbefaler jeg at du flyr inn dagen før for å bli med på et annet stort høydepunkt, nemlig et dagskurs med Cary Millsap i Oslo.

Dette er et kurs både for utviklere som integrerer mot Oracle database og for Oracle DBA-er. En bedre presentasjon av kurset finner du på påmeldingssiden.

Personlig så ser jeg på det som et skille i karrieren min, mellom før og etter at jeg lærte metodene til Cary. "Tuning" som det ofte kalles er ofte forbundet med myter og råd som baserer seg på prøving og feiling, sjelden effektivt i komplekse systemer. Ved å bruke SQL trace og de riktige verktøyene til å finne frem til hva som tar tid, kommer man raskere frem til målet. Målet er altså å optimalisere responsen til en transaksjon mot databasen, en tung rapport, interaktiv bruk fra en web-side, osv.

Kurset begynner kl 10 og holder til i Bjørvika, det blir dermed mulig å fly inn til Oslo på onsdag morgen før kurset.

Har du spørsmål rundt kurset ta gjerne kontakt på Twitter, email eller telefon. Kurset arrangeres av Method R.

Upcoming conferences

OSL - CPH - SFO. Starting on my route in a few hours. Really look forward to see tweeps and a bunch of people from the worldwide Oracle community. Lots of good presentations of course, but also bloggers' meetup, Oaktable world, RAC Attack, Anchor Steam, and more.

I'll speak at the Bulgarian Oracle User Group conference  22nd to 24th of November. I have heard from many that this is a good conference. First time in Bulgaria means this will be a triple excitement; giving a presentation about something I have thought a lot about, seeing a new country and meeting a possibly different culture.

The UKOUG Tech conference starts the week after. That is another conference I've never been to (strangely enough since it is rather close compared to OOW).

If you happen to be at one of these conferences, please say Hi!

OUGN Spring Seminar 2013

Last week's conference is the second since I joined the board of our user group. Never been more worried, but it turned out better than ever, in my not so humble opinion.

I was really proud of our agenda, we had several new speakers with top content. 

Cary Millsap from Method R gave a keynote and two excellent presentations. This was his first time in Norway, but judging by the feedback we got he will be back soon. Actually having him here at our conference was a goal I committed to last year. Thanks, Cary, for excellent content and presentation!

Last OOW I met Connor McDonald at the blogger's meetup that Pythian organizes at OOW every year and I thought it would be cool if we could have him at our conference. After some severe lobbying with the rest of the board we decided on a plan to make it happen. Actually I had never seen Connor present before, but when he did his Odds and Ends presentation I understood what everybody was talking about. I think it is awesome that we can get the best, even if they come from the other side of the earth. We have not processed the feedback forms yet, but the impression so far is that Connor and Cary is sharing first place on content and presentation.

Tom Kyte, Bryn Llewellyn and Joel Goodman were back too. Always popular, each has his public (overlapping I assume) and genuinely dedicated. I am thankful for all the good publicity they are giving our conference.

There was also time for some psycho analysis and after a few beers Doug Burns and me discovered we are more or less soul mates. Always good to see the man and his presentations, he was mildly shocked when I showed up on one of his presos in stead of the one Cary was giving at the same time (confession: I had already seen the one Cary was giving). I learned a lot this time too. Good stuff! And thanks for the feedback, motivation and interests for our user group. You will always be on our MRU list. 

We have two areas where we have to improve; Java and MySQL. Markus Eisele helped us to get speakers for the Development/Java track in addition to speak himself. We have work to do on Java, and the same goes for MySQL, it is a different group of people. I know Oracle and many in the community have a lot of good stuff on Java and MySQL, but first we need to appear on those users'  radar and have them come to our table.

I spend much of my digital social life on Twitter. When I go to OOW or MOW I get to meet people whose Tweets and blogs I've been reading for a time. It is always a nice experience. This year two Twitter friends came to our conference; Philippe Fierens from Belgium (check out his nice post about the conference) and Jan Karremans from Netherlands. In fact the whole group from Netherlands was quite impressive.


It is a lot of hard work to organize a user group conference, the agenda requires a lot to get in place. For me it is the best networking opportunity, it is the place where I get to know what is not written in any manual or book, and meet friends IRL. Here is one, Martin Nash, and the whole Martin cluster.

The cruise part of Spring Seminar 2014 will start 2014-04-03, with a possible conference day in Oslo the day before. But first I'll take a short vacation next week, going to MOW2013.

Oracle Open World - lucky me

Last year was my first time at OOW. I made a write-up every day on my blog, but this year I will maximize, meaning it will be little time for blogging while being there. It is now less than four two one hours before I start on my trip OSL-SFO. Writing about what I plan to do seems like a great way to kill time. Also I'm doing some proactive jet-lag prevention research, may be staying up late will make the transition from CET to PT easier (or is it CEST and PST now?).

I have a schedule packed with interesting stuff, but based on experience from last year, I expect to feel some conference fatigue setting in around noon at Wednesday. I may just as well see Mogens in his office.

Besides all these good presos I am really looking forward to two events. One is the Oaktable World (formerly called Oracle Closed World; guess what happened). Good thing it is early in the week from Monday to Tuesday. Those guys are not giving out 101-courses, and will demand my attention.

The second event is the Bloggers Meetup organized and held by Pythian. This may very well be the best networking opportunity at OOW :-) Last year I met a bunch of people I have known virtually through Twitter and their blogs for years. Nothing beats a conversation in person. You will be surprised how many nice people there are out there that share our somewhat narrow interest.

I'm always interesting to talk to potential speakers at our annual conference. If you have any questions regarding our user group (Oracle User Group Norway) or our conference, please get in touch. Btw, here is our call for paper

Paying slightly attention to Twitter, I just noticed a link to the kick-off for the IOUG Big Data SIG. Think I want to check it out too. Not sure what I can make out of this Big Data thing, but it seems to attract a lot of smart brains.

Luggage is ready, and it includes a cool t-shirt from Method-R, Oaktable World will be a nice occasion to wear it.

OUGN 2012 Day 2 - Wrap up

The last day started with a master class Key features of redo by Jonathan Lewis. You need quite a good reputation to gather a large crowd to listen on such a subject. Well prepared with good slides, lots of real-world experience together with questions from the crowd made it to a time well spent in the auditorium. He didn't get through all the slides, but that did not matter since we had two hours filled with entertaining learning.

At 11:30am I attended the presentation Falling in Love all over again - OEM 12c Performance Page Enhancements; you can guess by reading the title who gave the presentation. Clearly this was a presentation Doug loved to give, and he praised the new improved functionality and interface. He made some comparison to other methods of tuning/analyzing a performance problem; a subject I still find interesting. The presentation was for the most part a live demo with SwingBench and virtual machines, no Death of PowerPoint after three hours of sleep. The only problem I have with these features is that many customers around here do not purchase the managements packs needed for all the fun. But I hope more people will understand the necessity of having this software. I had to leave the presentation early because of a board meeting, really a lunch with the sponsors. Doug, if you read this, now you know why two of us left early, not because you did less than splendid.

After lunch there was a talkshow with the main sponsors and with Jonathan Lewis, Maria Colgan, Stephan Janssen, and VP of EMEA Andrew Sutherland, hosted by board member Alice Rossman. Alice does this very well, by now it has probably dawned on her that she will have to do this every year. I like to hear stars in the Oracle sphere talk about what matters outside the office. Andrew Sutherland was the other Scottish funny guy. Think we should make sure that we have at least two of them every year, it is something with their humor; their special love for the Brits and that accent.

Staying up late with good company several nights in a row makes you tired. I attended only one session after lunch. Using PL/SQL Hierarchical Performance Profiler with Bryn Llewelyn. I'm not writing much code these days, but knew this is useful and something I want to know about when I need it. Bryn speaks very clearly in his presentations and easily engage in discussions afterward.

The feedback we received throughout the conference was vey nice, the level of the sessions and choice of content. Making a program like this is much more than sending emails to a lot of famous people. We need to find a variation on subjects, verify against feedback from last year and also have content that pushes the members forward. Making the program in itself takes a lot of effort, but clearly paid off.

This year we had hands-on labs. Not all where successful, others had a great turn out like RAC Attack. We learned a lot from this, and I believe that a one day conference in Oslo before the main conference will be repeated. We also invested in the new Java track; it was a good start, made some new ground we can build on further.

I had a great conference and feel pride that so many foreign speakers want to come and present at OUGN. Since we are not scaling back I expect to see most of them again together with other genius. We might have some logistic challenges like a larger ship.

Personal ambitions for next year is convincing the rest of the board that we need to find some way to have Cary Millsap from Method R, and one or more from Pythian (like Gwen, Alex and Yury). We also need to encourage more Norwegians to present user cases.

Finally, I want to thank my employer Keystep Consulting for letting me spend many hours otherwise billable in order to prepare for the conference. I am proud of the team there and being part of it.

OUGN 2012 Day 1 - At sea

This is my first conference as a board member, and going to a presentation for every slot is not possible. I did go to Doug Burns presentation on SQL Plan Management in 11g though I had actually seen it at OOW 2011, probably because I like Doug's presentation style. This preso does not go into very much detail on SPM, but takes us on a travel through the subject and leave it to us to actually get some experience on it. It does look interesting, and the only thing that keeps me from getting much experience on it is that the current customer is lagging behind on the upgrades to 11g; the few we have on 11g are small and have not presented any problems with plan instability.

Maria Colgan's presentation on how to collect statistics was a big hit. A colleague stated this was perhaps the best presentation he had been to ever. Very entertaining presentation and packed with useful take aways. Yes, I did go to the same presentation at OOW 2011 as if I'm unwilling to expose my brains to something new. But in fact I learned something new, and I still have something to try out, for example next time I encounter a database that uses partitioning, sigh.

The RAC Attack team set up in the public area and a couple of enthusiasts insisted to complete the lab from Day 0. The intention was not only to have a lab on board, but also a place where people could come and go, and ask questions on RAC in particular and about life in general. Think it worked well, but obviously the hands-on lab was competing with the sessions, and most concluded that lab was something they could try at home later.

The feedback we got after Day 1 was great, but I'll save that to the wrap-up.

OUGN 2012 Day 0 - The Martins

23:48, so tired that a Twitter message would be more appropriate. But, just wanted to make it for the record that today turned out to be a very pleasant day. I had the responsibility to host track #5, which started with Martin Büchi on Information Lifecycle Management in OLTP DBs with Partitioning. ILM is a subject that many postpone because it is too complicated. In Martin's presentation he showed a reference model, illustrated various scenarios with alternative solutions. He then showed how partitioning can be used to archive data that has been aged out. I cannot possible make justice to his presentation, but since I write about it here I'm sure I'll remember to come back to it, download it and digest it. If Mr Büchi reads this, he has it on record that he did well. Hope he'll be back again.

Two hours later, two other Martins took the stage. Martin Paul Nash and Martin Bach introduced RAC Attack for the first time in Norway. I've been excited about RAC Attack since I took the courage to recommend it for the OUGN Board, and after getting the approval, inviting them over. They did not disappoint at all! The turnout was quite good; 20 people filled the room and started to hack on VirtualBox, VMware and Oracle. After lunch a few wearied off but the rest continued to the end. We where the last to leave the conference area and we got plenty of positive feedback on this. I think I've been tweeting enough on #RACATTACK lately, it was a great experience.

Actually OUGN was blessed by a fourth Martin, Martin Widlake. I couldn't go to his presentation, but head counts and feedback showed his presentation went very well. I did have the pleasure to talk to him during the dinner later. The picture of the Martins where taken at Holmenkollen just before the dinner. Martin's smile on his face pretty much sums up the mood after Day 0. Loved it.

OUGN 2012 Day -1

Tomorrow is the big day. For the last 4 years our annual conference has been on a cruise ship from Oslo to Kiel and back. That is two days with presentations, fun and stuff. A big success we are not going to change at least this year. But, for this conference, we sent out too many invitations to Very Important Presenters and got an impressive positive response; we run out of slots pretty fast. (Let's say we are not really #1 when it comes to logistics in this country.) So we decided to extend the conference with one day in Oslo before we board the ship on Thursday. Someone called it a pre-conference, which is unfair to the presenters since they are giving real meat tomorrow. Someone called it a whole-day conference, eh, as opposed to the other days? Anyway. tomorrow we'll have lots of hands-on labs, master classes and what I'm really excited about, RAC Attack.

Tonight we met at the top floor of the conference hotel as some kind of pre-conference beer meetup. I suspect the guys that showed up didn't really know they took part in a meetup, they just went to the nearest bar with the coolest view in the city. As always, it was nice to meet some of the invited guests: Maria Colgan, Christian Shay, Kuassi Mensah, Bryn Llewelyn, and Holger Friedrich, together with the rest and beers.

Some came with a late flight from UK, like the two Martins responsible for RAC Attack. Not sure where Doug is, he is not on tomorrow AFAIK, but he will be very welcome when he shows up. Btw, Maria told me they have the same humour in the presentations. I agree, those two can fool anyone into studying statistics.

More details on the conference here: http://ougn.no/program-2012. Let the party begin.

Today

I have made a few changes to my blog... think I want to blog again.

So far this year in a few words; new job at Keystep - smart move, if you try two years in the wrong company it is time to move on; met quite a few smart oracle folks at the yearly conference of Oracle User Group Norway - got elected as a board member; met more smart guys at Miracle Open World in Denmark the week after. And been thinking about moving back to Brazil quite a lot lately.