UKOUG Application Server & Middleware SIG

ukougI’ll be speaking at the UKOUG Application Server & Middleware SIG tomorrow.

It’s going to be another hit-and-run affair for me. I’m in meetings at work all morning,Ā then I’ll be doing a mad dash to get to my presentation at the SIG, then straight back to work to do an upgrade during the evening.

The agenda looks cool, so I would have liked to stay the whole day, but sadly that’s not going to happen. šŸ™

My favourite bit of any tech event is interacting with people, so just turning up to present is not ideal, but in this case I don’t have a choice in the matter, unless I go AWOL from work… šŸ™‚

Hope to see you there, even if it is only briefly!

Cheers

Tim…

OUG Ireland 2016 – Summary

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The day started at 05:00. I lay in the bath for 20 minutes in denial, wondering how I would manage to stay awake for the day. I’ve been ill for ages, so I felt like I was running on empty anyway.Ā Once I had managed to drag myself out of the bath and get dressed, I picked up my laptop and took a taxi to the airport.

The taxi to the airport was smooth enough. I was already checked in and had no bags to drop off, so I went straight for the security and was greeted by the biggest queue I had ever seen at Birmingham airport. To all those people that laugh at me getting to the airport 2+ hours before aĀ short flight like this I say, “Better to be safe than sorry!”

Despite the massive queue for security, populated by people who didn’t understand commands like, “Belts off!”, and, “All liquids out of your bags!”, the queue moved quite quickly and the departure area felt relatively quiet. I grabbed some food and logged into work to find one of the DW loads had failed. I cleaned stuff up and reset it. As I was boarding I passedĀ one of my colleagues who was off to Glasgow for a product user group. I shouted across that his DW load had failed, then turned the corner to board before he could quiz me further. šŸ™‚

The ChavAir flight was fine. They are a basic bitchĀ airline, but you can’t really complain when you are paying Ā£27 for a return flight. I overheard three people saying they paid Ā£20 return. I was robbed. šŸ™‚

When I arrived in Dublin, I got the AirLink Express into the city, which was 10 Euros for a return ticket and dropped me off about 100 yards from the Gresham Hotel. Bonus!

After signing in and saying hello to a couple of people, including the wife, it was off to the first session. My timetable for the day was:

  • Marcin PrzepiorowskiĀ with “Looking for Performance Issue in Oracle SE. Check What OraSASH Can do for You”. I’m lucky enough to have Oracle EE with the Diagnotics and Tuning pack for all the databases I work with, so I get to use the real ASH and the performance pages in Cloud Control. Even so, it’s worth keeping your eye on what others are doing, as you never know when you will need it!
  • Carl Dudley with “SQL Tips, Techniques and Traps”. I really enjoyed this session. It was a quick pace with lots of little and interesting points. I’m sure everyone picked up something they had not heard before. I know I did.
  • Oren Nakdimon with “Write Less (Code) with More (Oracle 12c New Features)”. This was another quick paced session made up of lots of little pointers. As I watched it I found myself thinking, “Have I written about that?”, or, “Did I include that in my article?”. There were certainly a few things that had passed me by during my time with 12c, so I made a note about them and will be revisiting a couple of articles. It was a really neat session!
  • Keith Laker with “SQL Pattern Matching Deep Dive”. I’ve written some stuff on pattern matching, but this was another level. After watching this session I know enough to know I don’t know enough. šŸ™‚ Definitely a subject I need to go back and revisit. I’m always a little nervous of deep dive sessions because often they don’t deserve that title. I think this one did! šŸ™‚
  • Me with “Analytic Functions: An Oracle Developer’s Best Friend”.Ā This was in the same room as Keith’s talk and had most of the same audience. I started by saying something to the tune of, if you understood the stuff from the previous session, you probably don’t need to watch this one. šŸ™‚ My analytics session is quite different toĀ ones I’ve seen others do. It is an entry level session, where I repeatedly reference non-analytics stuff to try and simplify the concepts and syntax. If you have done lots of analytics it’s probably not for you, butĀ I always get some comments from people saying they useĀ analytics, but didn’t realise what some of the stuff did.
  • Me with “Oracle Database Consolidation: It’s Not All About Oracle Database 12c!”. This isĀ an overview session where I discuss the methods of database consolidationĀ I use along with their pros and cons. I don’t dislike any individual method of database consolidation, but I do react harshly to anyone who claims one method is superior. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to database consolidation and anyone that tells you there is is a bloody liar! You will always need a combination of approaches and this is very much my message here. It’s a lightĀ and fluffy session, which probably fits quite well towards the end of the day when everyone is fried. šŸ™‚
  • Cloud Q&A Panel Session. I mostly turned up to supportĀ the wife, but itĀ was actually quite relevant to my current company, who areĀ in the procurement phase of a replacement forĀ many of our core business systems, with “the cloud” beingĀ an option. Added to that, I’ve been doing POCs of Azure, AWS and Oracle Cloud recently for IaaS and PaaS.

From there is was a quick chat with some folks at the social event, then theĀ AirLink Express back to Dublin Airport.

The flight back was fine, but I was starting to feel really worse for wear. At one point I thought I was going to puke, but I managed not to. I was imagining everyone else thinking I had been for a day on the lash in Dublin. šŸ™‚ We landed early and I got a taxi home and the day was done!

Big thanks to OUG Ireland for inviting me to the day. Sorry I couldn’t stay for the second day! Thanks to the other speakers andĀ attendees, who are collectively the most important people there! Thanks to the Oracle ACE Program for letting me continue to fly the flag!

For anyone that is looking for a new conference to try out, you should give OUG Ireland 2017 a go. Just so you know, here is the breakdown of the travel costs for my day trip:

  • Taxi to airport: Ā£25
  • Return flight betweenĀ Birmingham andĀ Dublin: Ā£27
  • Return trip on AirLink Express into the city: 10 Euros
  • Taxi home: Ā£35
  • Total: < Ā£100

The costs have been similar for the last three years and it’s certainly something I’m happy to pay out of my own pocket!

See you all next year!

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit 23 for Windows

UltraEdit 23 for Windows has been released. Followers of the blog will know I’m an UltraEdit junkie, so as soon as I got the email telling me UltraEdit 23 had arrived I installed it instantly. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!

The glaring hideousness you are presented with is a ribbon! For ***** sake! Hasn’tĀ the whole world spent enough time moaning about the Office ribbons already?

uedit23

Never mind. Right-clicking on the ribbon allows you to switch to “Toolbar/Menu Mode”, so that’s good right? Wrong! You switch and everything looks fine, but when youĀ resize the window you lose half of the windows and the only way back is to enable the ribbon again. šŸ™ (Fixed by latest build)

So I’m left with this bloody awful ribbon, or a non-functioning editor. I am not happy!

Moving away from the ribbon issue, there seem to be a number of rendering issues about the product in general. Making minor theme or layout changes cause it to hang for a minute, before coming back to life.

This release seems to be mostly about the pretties, but the pretties make the product unusable.Ā I can’t state how disappointed I am with this release. Let’s hope the patches come soon!

My advice,Ā don’t upgrade toĀ 23.00.0.43 as it is bloody useless. Wait until they sort out the rendering and the “Toolbar/Menu Mode”, then you can use something that doesn’t make you want to vomit or slash your wrists!

Cheers

Tim…

Update: It seems my problems with UltraEdit 23 may be caused by my work Windows PC being locked down to Classic Mode, rather than using Aero. If you also use Classic Mode, approach UltraEdit 23 with care. If not, then everything I say below is probably not relevant to you!

Update 2: IDM have sent me a new build (23.00.0.49) that works fine. I guess this will be available for others to download soon.

OUG Ireland 2016

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Early tomorrow morning I will start my journey to Ireland for theĀ OUG Ireland 2016 conference.

I’ve got back-to-back sessions in the afternoon on database consolidation and analytic functions. I was invited to a panel on the Friday also, but I had already booked my flights before that invite, so sadly I had to decline.

This year is going to be another day trip for me, with the flight costing a gigantic Ā£27 on ChavAir. šŸ™‚

See you there!

Cheers

Tim…