Cancelled!
Don’t forget Oracle Midlands Event #18 next week!
If you live near, please show your support for the event and come along. It’s free thanks to the sponsorship by RedStackTech.
Cheers
Tim…
Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)…
Don’t forget Oracle Midlands Event #18 next week!
If you live near, please show your support for the event and come along. It’s free thanks to the sponsorship by RedStackTech.
Cheers
Tim…
First up was Dominic Giles with “Oracle Database 12c Release 2: Whats new?… What’s improved?” I’ve been a big fan of SwingBench forever so the name Dominic Giles has been familiar to me for a long time. Up until recently I had never actually put a face to that name, but once I did I realised I’d seen him loads of times over the years. I was finally able to introduce myself properly at this years ACE Director Briefing and apologise for not doing so earlier. 🙂
Dominic’s session was a romp through some of the 12cR2 new features and enhancements. With allegedly 500+ new features in 12cR2, not all of which are documented yet, there was a bunch of stuff I hadn’t already heard of. Dominic is relaxed and super-confident in his presenting style. That combined with the huge list of new stuff knocked my internal 12cR2 hype-meter up a few notches. There is so much new stuff it is really daunting, but exciting too.
Note to self. Keep checking the v$version view on LiveSQL incase it mysteriously switches to 12cR2 at some point soon…
As the name suggests, Nigel’s session was also about new features, but focussed on the optimizer. With finer grained control over the adaptive features and more conservative defaults in this regard, I think a move from 11gR2 to 12cR2 will be less of a mystery than the switch from 11gR2 to 12cR1 was for many people. 🙂 The session actually covered most of the 12cR1 optimizer features as part of the setup for what’s changed in 12cR2, which I thought worked really well. Nigel is also a confident speaker, with a laid back approach and midlands accent, which of course makes him a superior presenter! 🙂 Once again, my internal 12cR2 hype-meter got knocked up a few more notches!
Come on Oracle! Give me 12.2! 🙂
Big thanks to Dominic and Nigel for coming to speak to us. Thanks as always to Red Stack Tech for sponsoring the event, allowing it to remain free, and to Mike for organising it!
See you all again soon!
Cheers
Tim…
Don’t forget Oracle Midlands Event #15 next week!
It’ll be interesting to see what this new kid on the block Jonathan Lewis has to say for himself!
Please show your support and come along. It’s free thanks to the sponsorship by RedStackTech.
Cheers
Tim…
First up was Joel with a session called, “Oracle Storage Fragmentation”, where he discussed the potential fragmentation issues possible in tablespaces, tables and indexes. If you’ve been a DBA for a long time it’s easy to think everyone knows this stuff, but I get asked questions about this stuff a lot! The session had a good mix of content, with something to keep everyone happy from beginner to old timers. Joel is like a walking encyclopedia of Oracle, so it’s always good to hear him present.
Next up was Martin with a session called, “Performance of PL/SQL functions called from SQL”, where he discussed the pros and cons of calling PL/SQL functions from SQL statements. I like Martin’s presentation style. He’s very self-deprecating and amusing. Of course I am biased because he’s part of the family. 🙂
Thanks to the guys for coming to speak to us and to everyone that came along to the sessions. Thanks to Mike for doing a great job in keeping Oracle Midlands going and to Red Stack Tech for their continued support.
Cheers
Tim…
Don’t forget Oracle Midlands Event #15 next week!
Please show your support and come along. It’s free thanks to the sponsorship by RedStackTech.
Cheers
Tim…
The session started with “Raiders of the Data Dictionary I: Indexing for the Workload” where Lothar discussed a project he worked on based around completely revamping the indexing of a system. I guess the best way I can describe it is to say it’s a more scientific approach to indexing, using the contents of the dictionary to provide information about columns and column groups used in queries to determine the indexes to create. In some ways the approach was quite extreme (throw everything away and start again), but I also admire the bravery of that approach!
Next up was “Raiders of the Data Dictionary II: The Curse of the Buffer Cache” where Lothar discussed the problems associated with trying to keep large, frequently used tables in the buffer cache. Once again, some interesting points made and some things that will definitely influence my approach in future.
It was great to meet Lothar in person for the first time. After being in the game for 20+ years many subjects can start to feel a little repetitive, so it’s nice when someone comes along with a different spin on a subject. I certainly found myself asking a lot of questions of him and myself, which surely must be what this knowledge spreading thing is all about!
Thanks to Lothar for taking the time to come and speak to us and to everyone that came along to listen. Thanks to Mike for doing a great job in keeping Oracle Midlands going and to Red Stack Tech for their continued support.
See you at the next one! 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Tomorrow is Oracle Midlands Event #14.
Please show your support and come along. It’s free thanks to the sponsorship by RedStackTech.
Cheers
Tim…
Bryn very kindly stepped in for Tom Freyer who unfortunately couldn’t make it. Bryn’s presentation was called Why use PL/SQL?, which was based on his whitepaper of the same name. I’ve written about a number of the topics he raised, including a piece on My Utopian Development Environment, but his talk and his whitepaper put forward a much more consistent and compelling argument. Definitely worth checking out if you are a PL/SQL expert or newbie!
Along the way, he used a little piece of syntax I have never noticed before, which has been available for the whole 20+ years I’ve been using PL/SQL. I’ll write about that in a post tomorrow if I get chance.
By the way, Bryn loves being called Brian, and he loves it when you say S.Q.L. and PL/S.Q.L. rather than Sequel and PL/Sequel. 🙂
Both guys will be presenting these sessions at UKOUG Tech15 if you want to catch up with them!
Thanks to the guys for coming to speak to us. Thanks to Bryn’s mom, for living in the UK, giving him an excuse to come to UKOUG Tech15 early and therefore be available to step in at short notice. Thanks as always to Red Stack Tech for sponsoring the event, allowing it to remain free, and to Mike for organising it!
Cheers
Tim…
The lead up to this event was not the best for me. I had been on the verge of a headache all day. By 14:00 I gave up, went home and went to sleep for a couple of hours. It wasn’t great, but it was just enough to take the edge off, so when the time came, I felt sort-of OK to head out for the event. The drive started to convince me this wasn’t the best move, but once I got to the event and sat down I figured I was going to make it. 🙂
Chris did two talks at the event.
The first talk had lots of people’s heads nodding. It’s kind-of depressing, but we’ve all seen, and continue to see, these same things happening again and again. I, like others in the audience, am convinced it is because of the lack of emphasis on database technologies in development. Too many frameworks encourage a hands-off approach to the database, hiding it behind persistence layers that end up doing a mediocre job, at best. Anyway, enough of my rambling. This session should be mandatory viewing once a month for every developer that goes near a database! 🙂
I think the evening went really well. Thanks to Chris for coming to speak to us and thanks to the Oracle ACE Program for getting him across. Thanks to Red Stack Tech for sponsoring the event, allowing this to remain free. Thanks to Mike for doing a great job of keeping these events rolling. Of course, thanks to everyone for turning up after the Bank Holiday weekend. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…