Category: Oracle

CLOUG Day -1

It’s 10:50 am and I’m in my room in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Santiago, Chile. The CLOUG conference starts tomorrow and I’m feeling a bit nervous. My last presention was in Sweden (ORCAN) in December, but it seems like an eternity since then. 🙂

I’ve already got a whole bunch of stuff lined up this year. The current timetable looks like this:

13th-14th April: Chilean Oracle User Group (CLOUG)

24th-25th April: Bulgarian Oracle User Group (BGOUG)

27th-28th April: Oracle University 2-day workshop in Slovakia (still unconfirmed)

11th-12th May: Swedish Oracle User Group (ORCAN)

14th May: Oracle User Group Finland (OUGF)

21st-25th June: ODTUG in Monterey, California. This is combined with a visit to Oracle’s head office for a briefing, which should be interesting.

11th-15th October: Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco.

Things seem to be popping up all the time, so who knows what else will be in that list as the year progresses. The world tour continues. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Orcan Update…

I’ve been in Sweden for the last few days at Orcan, the Swedish Oracle User Group. The event was held in the Yasuragi Hasseludden hotel about 20 minutes outside Stockholm. I was a surprised when I arrived as the hotel is a Japanese Spa and it didn’t really seem to be an obvious place to hold a conference. As it turned out it was a great choice. The atmosphere was very relaxing and the social event involved sitting and chatting in a hot bath then going for food. It sounds a bit strange, but it was good fun.

Some of the sessions were in Swedish, so I took the opportunity to use the spa facilities, including a flotation tank. It’s quite freaky lying in a big plastic bubble full of salt water with no light or sound. Sensory deprivation is a strange thing…

It was good to see some familar faces (Julian Dontcheff and Laurent Schneider) and meet some new people including Joel Goodman.

I’d like to say a big thank you to Patrik Norlander for inviting me to speak at the event and thanks to everyone who attended my talks. Hope to see you all again soon.

I think I’m going to be at home for the next few months. It looks like I’ll be in Chile, Bulgaria and Finland in the middle of next year, but for the moment life is back to normal…

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 10 and Oracle 11gR1…

I like to meddle with Fedora from time to time, just so I can see what’s coming round the corner in RHEL. I read recently that Fedora 11 will be the base for RHEL6, which means we are about 6 months away from seeing what the future of RHEL is going to be…

Much as I expected, there were no real problems getting Oracle 11gR1 running on Fedora 10. Here is an OS and an Oracle installation guide for Fedora 10.

The Fedora 10 network configuration dialog seemed to have a couple of issues/bugs. For a start, it was impossible to set the subnet mask. It was constantly overwritten by the default gateway. I adjusted it in the config file and it was fine, but it was a bit confusing for a while. 🙂

I’ve complained a number of times in the past that Fedora doesn’t seem to have an obvious direction. Is it server or is it desktop? Of course it’s both, but I think some clear intent helps from a marketing point of view. The fact that the Desktop Edition, a live CD, is at the top of the Get Fedora page will save many people form downloading a DVD full of software they will never need. Once installed, you get access to all the software via the “Add/Remove Software” dialog.

A few interesting things about the installation are:

  • The installation package list is fixed. There’s no customization during the installation.
  • The installer assumes you want DHCP for your network.
  • SELinux and the Firewall are on by default.
  • Services like SSHD are not on by default.

I guess if these issues annoy you, don’t pick the desktop edition. 🙂

I think this is definite step in the right direction as far as encouraging Fedora for desktop use.

Cheers

Tim…

PIVOT and UNPIVOT in 11g…

I’m trying to get back into the swing of writing again after my 2 month layoff. It’s a little daunting, but quite fun as well.

There’s a bunch of 11g new features that didn’t make it into the OCP exam, and the PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators fall slap bang into that category.

Pretty neat!

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 11g RAC On Linux Using VMware Server 2…

I mentioned in a previous post I had taken the plunge and upgraded to VMware Server 2 on my laptop. Now I’ve also upgraded my main machine at home and it seems to be working fine. Probably the most complicated thing I run at home is a virtual RAC, so I wrote a new article to document the installation:

From a user point of view, the only difference between VMware Server 1.x and 2 is the new web-based managment interface. The VM setup itself is almost identical and as you would expect, so is the Oracle installation.

So far so good.

Cheers

Tim…

NZOUG Day 1…

NZOUG Day 1 seemed to go pretty well. My talk went OK, and the guys from Quest gave me some more Toads to shoot out into the audience. In the evening we all went out for a Skyrides and Luge trip. The Luge rides were cool, but I nearly fell out at one point.

On the last luge run you had to carry a cup of water, with the person spilling the least winning a prize. Francisco Munoz Alvarez got some shots off me. Here’s a couple of shots of Francisco and his son.

The luge runs were followed by food and a quiz. My team came 4th from bottom and I was unable to answer most of the questions about the UK. 🙂

It was a great night out, but I feel really tired today! I guess I better go and prepare for my second presentation now…

Cheers

Tim…

AUSOUG Perth…

The AUSOUG Perth conference finished a few hours ago. It’s a really good size event, about 400 people, which is big enough to feel busy, but small enough to feel personal. I met a bunch of familiar faces and many new ones.

The best speaker prize went to Connor McDonald. If you get the chance, check out his presentation style. It’s not the normal thing you see on the Oracle conference circuit.

I did two talks, which must have gone down OK with the audience as I got the second prize behind Connor. It was very nice surprise.

So tomorrow morning I leave Perth and head to Sydney for a couple of days on my way to Gold Coast…

Cheers

Tim…

Doug: I’ve already had the Number Two’s joke, so I’ll head you off at the pass on that one… 🙂

OpenWorld Pictures…

I didn’t really take many photos in San Francisco, but here’s two shots I thought were worth posting…

First the DeLorean. Why didn’t Larry pack the Database Machine into one of these?

From OpenWorld

Next, a photo taken on Friday morning, after the conference was over. Believe it ot not, this was the road with the big marquee. Hard to imagine this road actually has traffic on it the rest of the year. 🙂

From OpenWorld

Cheers

Tim…

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