bgoug | The ORACLE-BASE Blog

BGOUG Spring 2014 – The Journey Begins

I’m sitting at Birmingham airport, waiting to start my journey to Sandanski. I’ve got a flight to Frankfurt, a sprint to the flight for Sofia, then a 2-3 hour drive to Sandanski. It’s going to be a long day. 🙂

The airport is really busy. It seems lots of flights leave between 05:00-06:00 on a Thursday. One of the food places is playing plinky-plinky music and I’ve just had to listen to some racist a-holes spreading their uneducated garbage. Very annoying…

Can you tell I am tired and in a bad mood? 🙂

It’s going to be worth the hassle though. I’m going to be reunited with my wife and daughter. Unfortunately Dad can’t make it to this conference. We will all meet up at OOW this year, where I think we should recreate this family photo.

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Spring 2013 : Photos

I was a little bit rubbish and forgot to get photos of the recent BGOUG event. Fortunately, the conference photos have arrived. You can check them out here.

There are a number of photos of an old fat guy that looks a little like me. I don’t remember meeting him though. Weird… I think he needs the toilet in this shot.

By the way, don’t say stuff like, “Bind variables are a waste of time!”, when you are near to Tom Kyte. He will slap you quicker than Debra Lilley after a negative comment about Fusion Apps. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Spring 2013 : Day 2…

How do you want to start the day? I’m guessing it’s not to be called out to the front of the room by a speaker and used as a guinea pig, while they ask you trick questions to make you look stupid. Tom Kyte, you will pay. Oh yes! You will pay!!!

The sessions I attended on day 2 were:

Tom Kyte : What’s new in Oracle database application development
Tim Hall (me) : A cure for Virtual Insanity : A vendor-neutral introduction to virtualization without the hype
Georgi Kodinov : Quick Dive into MySQL
Tim Hall (me) : From Zero to Hero : Using an assortment of caching techniques to improve performance of SQL containing PL/SQL calls
Husnu Sensoy : ZFS Storage can backup your Exadata
Tom Kyte : 5 SQL and PL/SQL things in the Latest Generation of Database Technology

Another very useful day indeed. I had some good feedback and interesting questions about my talks. This sort of feedback is really important when you are presenting regularly as it allows you to continuously refine your material and presenting skills. It can sometimes give you a fresh perspective on a subject, that inspires you to alter the focus of your presentations entirely. I’m very grateful to anyone who takes the time to provide this sort of feedback. Big thanks to Tom Kyte, who has given me some very useful advice over the last couple of days, but then he owes me for making me look stupid in his first session of the day! 🙂

In the evening we went out for dinner at a restaurant just down the road from the hotel. I ate plenty of cheese, so I was in heaven. Not surprisingly, much of the talk ended up being about Oracle. It may seem a little sad to some people, but when I’m surrounded by people with brains the size of a planet, I can’t help myself quizzing them about this stuff. I love it! 🙂

Great big thanks go out to Milena and her gang for organizing this event and inviting me. Thanks also to Stoyan for being my driver again. No offence to other user groups, but BGOUG conferences are my favorite events of the year. I will keep coming back as long as you will have me! Also, a big thank you to the Oracle ACE program for making this possible.

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Spring 2013 : Day 1 (part 2)…

So Day 1 (part 2) didn’t go to plan because I forgot to take my camera or my phone to the party. 🙂

Suffice to say, lots of food, lots of drink (for those that do) and most importantly lots of dancing. Yes, I once again murdered the traditional dances of Bulgaria, but it’s the takling part that counts right? 🙂

I had good intentions of leaving early, but I ended up chatting about Oracle until about 02:00. Day 2 is going to be tough… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Spring 2013 : Day 1 (part 1)…

Last night we all got together to eat some food and chat. Julian Dontcheff is practically a savant where Bulgarian Poetry, World Cup match results and random Oracle facts are concerned. Although Christian Antognini was pretty impressive on the random Oracle facts too. 🙂

I didn’t have any presentations today, so I got to sit and watch. 🙂 I’ve done loads of typing, mostly of syntax for 12c features, but it’s not really stuff that is worth posting, because I have no way to validate it out, so I’m just going to keep it as a reminder for when I get hold of 12c and can try it out.

The sessions I went to included:

Joze Senegacnik : Is my SQL Statement Using Exadata Features
Christian Antognini : SQL New Features in the latest generation of Oracle Database
Julian Dontcheff : Upgrading to the latest generation of database technology
Christian Antognini : How the Query Optimizer Learns from its Mistakes
Clive King : Solaris 11u1 performance and stability : features and frameworks
Tom Kyte : Tom’s Top 12 Things about the Latest Generation of Database Technology

There was a lot of material I had seen at OOW2012 and UKOUG2012, but also a lot I had not, so I’m glad I went to them. The smaller setting also made it easier to ask questions, which can be quite daunting at the big events. 🙂

Tom gave me a couple of tips that have gone straight into one of my talks for tomorrow. I’m gonna have to name check him for it, or I’ll feel like I’m passing it off as my own. 🙂

I said this after OOW2013 and I’m sure I will say it again, but the number of changes in 12c is pretty daunting. I guess the fact it’s been about a 3 year wait, rather than the normal 18 months adds to that. In many cases (but not all) it’s not the scope of the individual changes that are the issue, but the sheer volume of them. I think people are going to be blogging for a long time before they’ve got through them. It will be interesting to see what gets selected for inclusion in the OCP DBA upgrade exam. 🙂

I’m off to dinner now. I will try to get some photos and post them in “Day 1 (part 2)@ tomorrow. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Spring 2013 : Day -1

It’s stupid o’clock in the morning and I’m waiting for my taxi to arrive. Considering how close Bulgaria is, it takes me a very long time to get there.

I am a mix of excited and nervous. This is my first conference this year, so all the usual insecurities are in full effect, from fear of flying to the constant nagging thoughts that perhaps I don’t know anything about Oracle and maybe I shouldn’t be on stage acting like I do. 🙂

I’m sure it will go OK and it will be nice to meet up with the gang again.

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Spring 2013…

On Thursday I’ll be flying out to Bulgaria for BGOUG Spring 2013. It’s been about 18 months since I’ve visited the people over there, so I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in.

This will be my first conference of the year, so I’m feeling a little nervous at the moment. I’m sure the adrenalin rush will kick in and get me through. 🙂

I’m signed up for the southern leg of the OTN Tour of Latin America (Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil), but it will be a while before I get any confirmation, so there are no guarantees yet.

Fun, fun, fun…

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG 2011: Wrap-Up

So that’s another BGOUG finished and once again it was a great event. Every time I go I recognize more faces and my Bulgarian dancing gets a little better. 🙂 I’m already looking forward to the next one I get to attend. A big thanks to Milena and the gang for organizing everything. There was literally nothing I had to do for myself. 🙂 Also a big thank you goes out to the ACE program for funding my travel costs. It’s much appreciated.

For the first flight on my way home I had the pleasure of sitting next to Dimitri‘s wife Crystal (spelling?), which made the trip more interesting. Watching her play games on my iPad was funny. On the second flight I managed to completely screw up my demo database. Thank heavens for backups. 🙂

That’s my last international event for the year, so I guess it’s time for me to get ill and miss the whole of December, including the UKOUG conference. If that happens again this year I think I will never hear the last of it from Debra Lilley. 🙂

I’m going to hit the gym hard, clean up my diet again and take lots of vitamin C. I will be healthy for UKOUG!

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG 2011: Day 2…

Day 2 started with a very tired Doug Burns presenting “Performance and Stability with Oracle Database 11g’s SQL Plan Management”. As with his previous talk, this was firmly rooted in his practical experience of the feature and as such contained a mixture of positive and negative results. Essentially it boiled down to, this works great for some applications and not so great for others, so you’ve really got to suck it and see.

Next it was my Clonedb talk, which seemed to go pretty well.

After that it was Joze Senegacnik talking about “To Index or Not to Index, That is the Question”. Having seen Richard Foot‘s presentation at InSync11, I was pretty confident about the answers to some of the questions Joze asked the audience. 🙂

Next up it was me again, this time giving my Edition-Based Redefinition talk. Once again, this seemed to generate a good number of questions.

Then it was back to Joze for “Getting the Best from the Cost Based Optimizer”. This was a mixed bag of tips and features relating to the optimizer. These style of presentations always contain gems that either you didn’t know already, or had forgotten you know. 🙂

After a short break it was off to the evening meal. This was a more sedate affair than the previous evening. I don’t think any of us could have coped with another full-on night. After the food we moved down to the bowling alley in the hotel, where I was spectacularly rubbish. 🙂

This morning we had plans to do some sight-seeing, but everyone was so tired we’re giving it a miss and being lazy in the hotel spa. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG: I’m on my way…

I’m at the airport waiting for my flight to Sofia (via Munich), on my way to the BGOUG conference in Hissarya.

It’s early and I’m totally knackered. I had a killer tabata-style circuits class last night and a nightmare tabata-style kettlebell class the night before. I still have bruises from the latter. If only I could stop eating rubbish I would look quite buff. 🙂

This is my last overseas event of the year and I’m glad it is the BGOUG event. Anything else and I think I would be looking for an excuse not to go. It will be great to get back amongst my Bulgarian buddies again.

Cheers

Tim…