Develop Day…

The Develop day is my first conference day, but I guess for most people it is Day -1. After purposely leaving my calendar empty, I ended up filling the day quite well.

  • What Are We Still Doing Wrong? by Tom Kyte: It’s always a pleasure to hear Tom speak. He always has a good balance of content and humor and engages the audience so well, even in a massive room like today. Check out the slides when they come out. There are a number of the links to WTF style code samples and questions.
  • Welcome to the Oracle Application Express Sunday Symposium (ODTUG/IOUG) by Scott Spendolini and Dimitri Gielis: I grabbed some food with Scott yesterday and we discussed the contents of this talk so today it was a bit like deja vous. 🙂 Scott and Dimitri set the scene for the rest of the weeks presentations by explaining why APEX is a valid option when it comes to migrating/converting from legacy to web technology.
  • Oracle XML Database: Design Concepts for XML Applications That Will Perform by Marco Gralike: I’ve been working with the XML features of Oracle since they were introduced, but on a very small scale. Marco on the other hand has been doing the real deal. It’s good to hear some numbers from someone in the trenches.
  • Designing PL/SQL with Intent by Andrew Clarke: I’ve been presenting for about 2 years now and I guess it’s all thanks to Andrew. He gave me my first speaking opportunities as part of the UKOUG SIG events. He also gave me loads of tips about presenting, so I am forever in his dept. This talk was about the concepts behind design patterns as they relate to PL/SQL. Rather than go for the easy prescriptive option, he used design patterns for town planning as his metaphor and then related them to PL/SQL. I really liked the way it worked out. When I see people do these styles of talks I’m always a little jealous because it’s not something I can really pull off.
  • Oracle XML Database: Oracle Database 11g Release 2 New Features by Marco Gralike: The second talk by Marco I attended today (I’m not stalking him). As the name implies, this one was a quick romp through the new XML DB features in release 2, but it also mentioned some of the stuff from release 1.

One of the really nice things about all the traveling and speaking I’ve been doing over the last year is I’ve met so many people. Walking round today I keep bumping into people I’ve met at other conferences. It invariably results in me saying, “I’ve met you before but I don’t have a clue where!” 🙂 It’s cool because even though this is a massive event, it can still feel intimate when you are constantly meeting friendly faces.

It’s the ACE dinner tonight. I’m feeling a bit battered now, but I’m sure I’ll get my second wind by the time it starts.

Cheers

Tim…