ODTUG: Day 1 & 2…

 

I’m not going to write about everything, but just post a few select highlights.

Day 1

There had been a timetable change that I had missed, so I arrived late for the “Messed up Apps: A Study of Performance Anti-patterns” talk by Cary Millsap. He knows his stuff, is a great presenter and he’s very pretty (in-joke). 🙂

Next it was “Take a Load Off: Load Testing your Web Applications: Oracle APEX, JDeveloper, Web Services, Anything” by Chris Muir. Chris demonstrated JMeter and SOAPUI for stress (and regression) testing web apps. I’m vaguely familiar with JMeter, but SOAPUI was new to me, so this was a really useful presentation. Chris has a very casual presenting style, which I like. It feels kinda like you are chatting about a product, rather than being preached to. Definitely get to one of his sessions if you can.

For the love of God, don’t let me into panel sessions, or gag me. It doesn’t matter if I’m on the panel or in the audience (as was the case here) I just can’t shut up. The “Experts Panel” in the “Performance, Scalability, and Security” track had the misfortune of my attendance. I’m sorry.

Day 2

“How to Write Efficient SQL” by Jonathan Lewis was a very cool session. I’m no Jonathan Lewis, but I’m pretty happy with my SQL and SQL tuning skills. When I’m writing and tuning SQL it’s all about shapes. Some shapes work and some shapes don’t. I can’t really explain what I am doing to others, but it works for me. Jonathan on the other hand can explain exactly what he is doing and why. Almost like a repeatable recipe for success. Very good. After the presentation I was talking with Alex Gorbachev and he suggested I read The Checklist Manifesto. On a similar vein, I’ve had some dealings with NLP in the past so I know how important it is to model successful outcomes, so maybe my next task should be to understand my tuning methodology, rather than assuming I will never lose it. It will probably end up looking like a poor-man’s version of Jonathan’s. 🙂

“Accessing the Oracle Database from Google (Apps, App Engine, Spreadsheets)” by Anjo Kolk was an eye opener. Some of the infrastructure Google has in place is still in its infancy, but it certainly makes you wonder what we might be doing in a few years. Maybe I can ditch Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g in favour if iGoogle. 🙂

The “Database Development Sundown Session” was another example of why I should shut the hell up in a panel session. That said, one of my more cynical comments did elicit a hand shake from Bryn Llewellyn (PL/SQL Product Manager at Oracle). 🙂

One of the coolest moments of the day was during the reception with Oracle ACE Directors in the evening. The moment in question was when Victoria Lira and Lillian Buziak got a “Contributors of the Year” style award. If you are outside the Oracle ACE program you may not know who Victoria and Lillian are, but almost everything the ACE program achieves would be impossible without their organization skills. I’m very pleased they were recognized by this award. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.