Riga Dev Day 2015 : The Journey Home

The morning didn’t start well. I woke up several times in the night feeling pretty bad. The combination of a cold, general lack of sleep and too much beer was not great. I don’t drink very often, so it doesn’t take much to make me feel bad. 🙂

I went down for breakfast with a few of the folks, then went back to bed and spent the next few hours switching between sleep and being sick. Luckily, everything seemed to calm down just before I had to get the taxi to the airport.

Check-in and security was quick and efficient. I found my departure gate, then got some food and a drink (non-alcoholic), which made me feel a lot better. The plane was pretty full, but was able to do a little work, which makes the journey much more bearable.

It was another fairly quick connection in Frankfurt, before getting on the plane home. I arrived at Birmingham airport in time for rush hour, which was not the best, but them’s the breaks…

The Riga Dev Day event was good fun. Riga is a really nice looking city and the people were friendly. As an English speaker, I had no problem at all from a communication perspective, which makes the whole process so much simpler and less stressful. 🙂

I mentioned in a previous post, the conference is a mixed discipline event, so you get to chat with a range of people from different backgrounds. I think it’s really important to break out of the bubble from time to time, so that you can get a feel for what the rest of the world is up to. For any of the other speakers reading this, you should give this Riga event a try. I think you’ll like it.

Thanks to the folks from LVOUG for inviting me to the event and making me feel welcome. Thanks to the attendees and speakers who I spoke to during the event. I hope to meet you all again! Big thanks for the Oracle ACE Program for getting me across to the event and allowing me to fly the flag.

Cheers

Tim…

Riga Dev Day 2015 : The Main Event

The event was held at a cinema in a shopping mall. We even got a free popcorn ticket. Awesome! I missed the starting keynote, which was a pity because everyone said it was really cool. So my day went as follows.

Krasimir Tsonev : Using Node.js for everything or what it is to write a book about it

I went to this session because I wanted to be with the “cool kids”. 🙂 I ended up chatting to Kasimir during lunch and in the evening. He’s from Bulgaria, so I was able to use my extensive Bulgarian vocabulary on him. 🙂 I’m never going to be one of the cool kids, but it’s good to get some context about different technologies. What is it? What does it do? What is it good at? What is it bad at? Where should I avoid it? It was good to get a feel for this from someone who is really using it, not just writing about it like it’s the Emperors new clothes.

Heli “Hell-Squirrel” Helskyaho : 9 use cases for Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeller

Back in the day we used to spend a lot of time on database design. I remember spending hours in Oracle Designer. Nowadays database design seems to have fallen by the wayside, which is a pity because good design is important if you want good performance and you want your application to stand the test of time. Adding in new functionality on top of a badly designed database is a nightmare. Extending a good design is usually much simpler.

In this session my daughter gave an overview of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeller. For those familiar with Oracle Designer, there is enough similarity to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling. The session included 9 ways to use the tool, including importing from previous tools like Erwin and Oracle Developer.

Me : PL/SQL : Stop making the same performance mistakes

Next up was my PL/SQL performance session. I had some problems with the screen at the start, so I was just about to launch into a no-slides, no-demos version of the talk, then they realised my adapter was faulty and everything was working again. My bad! The talk went well and I managed to finish on time. A number of people had questions, which took me through the break and right up to the next session. Happy days. 🙂

Roel Hartman : The best of both worlds : Going hybrid with your mobile APEX Oracle Application

This session showed how to use Apache Cordova to create an APEX application that acts like a native app, allowing it to interact with information from the phone, such as contacts or compass etc. It’s a really neat solution to allow you to bridge the gap between mobile web apps and native apps, allowing you to stick with your preferred development tool, in this case APEX… I feel like a native developer now. 🙂

Robin Moffatt : No Silver Bullets – OBIEE Performance in the Real World

I’m not an OBIEE guy, but I wanted to see Robin present and I loved it. If Cary Millsap did a presentation on OBIEE performance, it would be pretty much like this session. Robin referenced Cary’s “Thinking Clearly About Performance” paper at the start of the session and that really set the scene. He’s a confident, no-nonsense presenter, which I really like. Well worth going to watch, even if OBIEE is not your thing, because the approach he speaks about it pretty much universal for identifying and fixing the actual problem, rather than relying on Voodoo.

Me : A Oracle DBA’s guide to WebLogic server

I was then up again for the last session of the track. This time it was my introductory WebLogic session. It really was the end of the day and I think everyone, including me felt like it. 🙂

The Evening

After the last session, we took a taxi back to the hotel to drop off our stuff, then headed out to the closing party at a bar in the old town. I had a couple of pints and watched the band, which I believe was made up of some of the techies from one of the local companies. I really enjoyed it! After the band came some comedians, which I didn’t really hear as I was standing at the other side of the room talking geek with Robin Moffatt. When the festivities were over we headed back to the hotel and sat in the bar chatting for a couple of hours, then it was off to bed.

It was a long day, but a really enjoyable one. The conference was great fun and all the people I interacted with were really enthusiastic! I’ll write some more about the event in my closing post.

Cheers

Tim…

Riga Dev Day 2015 : The Journey Begins

My first flight was 06:20, so I had to leave the house at 04:00, which meant getting up at about 03:00. Yuck!

The first flight was about 90 minutes from Birmingham to Frankfurt, with the smoothest landing I can ever remember in a plane the size of an A320. I was meant to have a 65 minute changeover before the flight from Frankfurt to Riga. A one hour changeover at Frankfurt is too short, but the alternative was to wait for about 6 hours. As soon as I got off the plane I did a quick march to the departure gate and arrived just as boarding was meant to start. The following plane was late getting in, so I got a 10 minute break before getting on the plane. The flight to Riga was pretty straight forward, taking a bit under 2 hours. Both planes had lots of empty seats, so I was able to get my laptop out and have a play.

At 16:00 we had a tour of the old town. It started with a quick bus tour and then we walked through some of the old town, with a tour guide telling us about a few of the key places. I really like the look of Riga. I took a few photos, which will be available here when I get to upload them.

From the tour, we went out to dinner, where we met up with some of the people who arrived too late to make the tour. This is a multi-discipline conference, so it was really cool speaking to people from different backgrounds, which helps you see how your pieces fit into the bigger picture…

From dinner it was back to the hotel and bed. It was a really long day, so I was desperate to get to bed. The conference starts tomorrow…

Cheers

Tim…