OpenWorld Day 2…

I know it’s all a bit mixed up because I’ve already blogged about events last night, but it’s my blog and I’m allowed to alter the time-line. 🙂

I’ve decided only to blog about stand-out points for me, so here goes…

I went to the DBA 2.0 session by Tom Kyte (and others) in the No Slide Zone. This was a stand-up competition between the command line (DBA 1.0) and Enterprise Manager (DBA 2.0), which not surprisingly DBA 2.0 won. This type of presentation is really great because it feels far less scripted, it’s visually more appealing and you get the see the problems. 🙂 A few people have mentioned that once you attend a few of these presentations, the traditional PowerPoint shows seem really boring. I must admit I’m starting to feel this way. It’s hard for the presentations not to seem rather homogeneous. I think I’m going to alter my schedule and ditch a whole bunch of stuff and just seek out the “less standard” fair for the rest of the week.

I went to the Carry Millsap presentation on “Why You Can’t See Your Real Performance Problems”. He’s a really relaxed and natural speaker, so it was really enjoyable.

Later in the day I went to the “Install Fest”. Those who follow my website will know I spend a lot of time installing Oracle on Linux, so it was not instantly apparent, even to myself, why I would want to go the an event where you got to install Oracle on Linux… There was a large mix of ability, and it was very noisy (see later anecdotes), but it was quite good to hear the range of questions being asked. It gives you a better sense of your audience. The talk by Wim Coekaerts was cool, but I’ve already blogged about that. All in all, a cool event, even if I did miss the party happening next door… Doh!

I mentioned previously the Install Fest was rather noisey. At one point the doors opened and there was a lot of noise. I caught myself saying under my breath something about going away and procreating, just at the point Chris Muir sat down in the row in front of me. He then turned round, said sorry and proceeded to move. I hastily explained my comment wasn’t directed at him. Very embaressing, and a good advert for keeping your gob shut! 🙂

Fun fun fun…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I got 4 hours sleep last night. I woke up about 04:00 this morning. I’m going to start seeing pixies and walls of fire if I don’t get my sleeping pattern back soon…

11g Downloads?

It looks like the new 11g downloads have been taken off OTN. The plot thickens… See here.

Update: They’re back again this morning!

I was reading the list of new downloads off the page to Laurent Schneider and Lutz Hartmann and the page looked fine. About 1 hour later I was talking to Andrew Clarke and I went to page and it had reverted to the previous options. I refreshed the page and everything. Andrew is my witness… 🙂

I guess it doesn’t matter now…

Oracle VM…

Currently listening to a talk by Wim Coekaerts on Oracle VM. Just a few points of interest:

  • Oracle VM installs directly on the empty hardware, not onto an existing full Linux host install. There is a very small Linux footprint, like the enterprise Xen system and similar to the top of the range VMware stuff.
  • You can run the whole of it on a single box, but you only have a command line interface to configure the VMs. If you want the GUI manager you need to run a separate machine with some Oracle software installed on it (OC4J etc).
  • It’s all open source and free, provided you don’t want support. If you want support you need to pay.
  • Some benchmarks substantially out perform the top of the range VMware stuff, but these are probably never going to get published.
  • It’s going to be available on Wednesday.
  • It sounds cool. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OpenWorld arrival and Day 1…

Let me start by saying Vikki Lira and Emily Yip are superstars! They are the people that organized just about everything for me this year. This has been the most painless and effort free trip I’ve ever been on, and it’s entirely down to their organizational skills. You deserver a very big thanks and a pay raise.

I got in to San Francisco about 21:10 local time on Saturday, which was 1 hour late, but the limo was waiting and I got to the hotel about 22:00 I guess. Unfortunately, I was so tired I couldn’t sleep, so I lay awake until about 01:00 the next day. Never mind.

Yesterday was the first day of work for me. I had the Oracle ACE Directors meetings all day. It was good getting to see everyone face to face. A time to meet some new people, and touch base for the first time since last year with others. After all the meetings, it was off to the Larry Ellison keynote speach, then off to the Oracle ACE dinner. It was a very long day for someone so tired, but fun too.

I won’t bore you with the details of the day, just list a few funny things:

I was with Lewis Cunningham waiting for a few of the guys to show up when I was sure the ground was shaking. He assured me it wasn’t, which was when I learnt that jeg lag can sometimes make you feel like there’s a minor earthquake going on. I guess it’s like getting your land legs again. Never happened to me before.

Doug Burns turned to me later in the evening and said, “martial arts films and jet lag…” I was expecting this to be the precursor to a good slagging off over the lack of Oracle content on my blog, but his biggest concern was I didn’t seem to be suffering as much as him in the jet lag stakes. Some of us hide it better than others. 🙂 I was a little disturbed by the lack of soft toys with Doug, but I noticed on his blog some have made the journey with him. I hope they coped with the jet lag better than he did.

Eddie Awad did a live podcast from the pub. I have no clue what I said, but I was tired and I’d had a drink, which I don’t usually do. That’s my excuse if I was talking gibberish. Of course, if it was truely insightful, then it’s all down to me. 🙂

I think I’ve got a full schedule of talks today, but I might have to ditch some of them. I went to bed as 00:00 and I woke up at 04:00. It’s now 07:00 and I’m starting to feel really tired again…

Cheers

Tim…

Car Trouble…

I had a bit of car trouble yesterday. By the time I got back from visiting the family the car sounded like a tractor. I’m getting on a plane in a couple of hours, so I guess getting the car fixed will be the first thing I do on my return…

Cheers

Tim…

Frantic Assembly – Stockholm…

Brace yourself. This is even more random than most of my blog entries…

Last night I went to see a physical theatre production called Stockholm by a company called Frantic Assembly. It’s a two person performance about a rather dysfunctional relationship. It’s a very gritty, for want of a better word, performance and certainly not easy watching. Some of the dance sequences freaked me out because there were knees and shins getting far too close to the corners of kitchen work surfaces for my liking. I was expecting some accidents, the thought of which make my shins ache, but fortunately the two performers survived the show, although a couple of bruses were evident from previous performances.

I’m no expert in this stuff, but I do know what I like and I thought this was really cool. I think I might go and see some more of this stuff.

Cheers

Tim…

Flashback, LogMiner and The Light Fantastic…

I put an article about Flashback and LogMiner new stuff live the other day, but forgot to put a post here. Better late than never. I feel a bit cheap and dirty admitting this, but I’m starting to like the web based Enterprise Manager. 🙂

The new LogMiner interface is really easy to use, and the integration with Flashback Transaction is right on the money. I guess LogMiner isn’t the sexiest of features, and I’ve had very little cause to use it since I first tried it out in 8i, but at least now it’s a no-brainer in terms of ease of use.

On a separate note, I finished The Light Fantastic last night. It seemed marginally more serious than the first book, but was still very funny. The introduction of character Cohen was very cool. Had me in stitches. I adopted a Sean Connery accent (in my head) for most of his dialog. Off to the book shop on the way home to buy the next couple…

Cheers

Tim…