Tag: Hyderabad

Oracle Code : Hyderabad – 2018

Today was Oracle Code : Hyderabad.

I woke up in a bit of a daze, so rather than jumping straight into the fray I worked through my demos again just to settle my nerves. 🙂

I headed down for my session to find there was no lectern and they wanted to run my presentation from the audio desk. I said that wasn’t going to work as I had live demos, so they guys went off to find one. The keynote had overrun, so people were late coming into the session, which bought me some time. 🙂

The presentation was a little tricky. The sound on the wireless head mic kept dropping out or getting feedback, so I switched to a hand mic part way through, which made typing difficult. There was a large back-lit screen, which looked great, but didn’t work with a laser pointer, so that made life harder. Despite the issues, I think the talk went OK. It was a little choppy, but I think I got the message across. The main thing was I got through it without my laptop giving up. 🙂

After my session I spent a lot of time chatting to people and continuing the discussion of Oracle Databases on Docker, which filtered into lunch.

After lunch I did a periscope live stream with Connor McDonald chatting about a variety of things including my website, presenting and Oracle databases on Docker.

After that I went to watch Connor do a session on SQL. You know you are doing something right when they have to add a few extra rows of seats to the room and you still have people standing. 🙂

From there is was back to the developer lounge to look at the demos. One of the guys doing the IoT demos was a machine. He was so enthusiastic and went all day.

The developer lounge is also a good way to connect with more people. Some people are quite intimidated about asking a question in the session, but they will happily come up to you in private and ask. I always like this bit of the conference.

And before I knew it the day was over. Some of the folks went out to eat together, but I ducked out because I had been so short on sleep already. I decided to go back to my room and crash, but more on that in the next post… 🙂

Overall I think the event went really well. The turnout was great and people were really enthusiastic and open. Thanks everyone, especially those folks that came to speak to me during the day. It makes the events even more fun for me.

So tomorrow I travel to Bengaluru, where I will be “working from home (from India)” for a few days before the next event. I’ve got to save my holidays for events later in the year. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Code : India – The Journey Begins

If you’ve been following my tweets recently you will know I’ve had a bit of a nightmare lead up to these events. Problems with my laptop and problems with my seat on one of the planes.

About 15 minutes before the taxi was due to pick me up I finally got most of the laptop things sorted. It was a bad morning…

I got to the airport in plenty of time and went to the check-in desk to try and get an aisle seat. The lady there said she could lock an aisle seat for me, but couldn’t give me a boarding pass for it as I had ordered veggie food, and moving me to a different to a different floor in the plane was a problem. When I got on the plane there was a bit of confusion, but eventually they told me to sit in the new seat location and see if anyone else turned up to claim it. They didn’t so I got the aisle seat, which was a big relief.

The flight went well, and the guy sitting next to me was cool so I spent a lot of time chatting. Unfortunately I didn’t get any food, but faced with the choice between a window seat with food or an aisle seat with no food, the aisle seat wins every time. I also watched Star Wars : The Last Jedi, which I enjoyed.

I got to Dubai on time and about 14 hours after waking up I finally got to eat something. A Starbucks muffin. 🙂

The flight from Dubai to Hyderabad was only about 3 hours, but by the time it was over I had been awake for about 20 hours and was feeling it. I got to watch Get Out, which was very cool.

I got a Taxi from Hyderabad Airport to the hotel, which was interesting… The driver wasn’t too interested in reading the hotel name or address, which I had written down. He eventually dropped me off at the wrong hotel and they had to explain to him it wasn’t the correct place. He then managed to reverse out of the hotel carpark into oncoming traffic and hit someone. The bumper of our taxi was then pushed back into place before we drove off and finally got to the correct hotel. 🙂

I was about 3 hours early for check-in, but they had a room for me, so it was time for a shower and bed. Sleep was a bit fitful, but at least I got some.

In the evening I met up with some of the other speakers and folks from the Dev Champion Program to get some food, then it was back to bed.

So I made it to Hyderabad. The Oracle Code : Hyderabad event starts tomorrow.

Cheers

Tim…

AIOUG Sangam15 : It’s a Wrap!

The whole Sangam15 experience is over for me now!

Here are the posts I put out during the trip.

I did my thank you messages in the Day 2 post, but once again I would like to say a big thank you to AIOUG for inviting me, to the Oracle ACE Program for getting me to the event and to all the attendees for making it a great event and for making my Facebook go nuts! 🙂

See you all soon!

Cheers

Tim…

AIOUG Sangam15 : The Journey Home

The night before a morning flight is always a little tricky for me. I lie in bed thinking, “What if I oversleep?”, which winds me up and makes it really hard to relax and drop off. I dozed on and off, but eventually gave up, turned the TV on and watched some films for a few hours.

I grabbed a quick breakfast and got the taxi to the airport. The hotel staff advised leaving at 07:00 for a 10:15 flight. The traffic was very light and the queues for check-in and security very small, so I ended up sitting at the boarding gate two hours before the flight. Better to be early than late!

Hyderabad airport is very clean, modern and has some reclining seats so I was able to chill out for a while. 🙂

The flight from Hyderabad to Dubai took about 3.5 hours. It was relatively uneventful, but rather uncomfortable. I had an aisle seat, but the guy in the centre decided he wanted to sit with his elbows digging into my ribs and his leg pressed against mine. I wouldn’t mind so much if he was a big guy and couldn’t help it, but he was a skinny little thing, so taking all of his space and part of mine seemed unnecessary. 🙂

As soon as we landed in Dubai airport, I grabbed some food and headed off for the boarding gate. Very soon we were on the plane and heading to Birmingham. I enquired about an upgrade, but it was going to cost $2,500 USD, so that wasn’t going to happen. 🙂

I got to experience wifi on the plane for the first time. It’s been “available” on other flights, but I’ve never got it to work before. I got it working on the flight between Dubai and Birmingham. It was ultra-slow, but better than nothing and only $1. 🙂 It made the 7 hour flight go a lot quicker.

I arrived back in Birmingham safe and sound. After a quick taxi ride home I put my washing on, scrubbed the smell of aeroplane off me and went to bed!

Cheers

Tim…

AIOUG Sangam15 : Day 2

My session on Day 2 started at 11:10, where I spoke about running Oracle Databases in the Cloud. This included a quick run through of the Oracle DBaaS offering and AWS RDS for Oracle amongst other things.

The session generated a lot of interest. In fact, I spent the next 5 hours answering questions and taking photos with people. It sounds kind-of crazy, but it was really good fun. As a result, I didn’t get to see any sessions, but as I said yesterday, I feel my purpose here is to connect with people and that is exactly what I did for 5 hours straight. Thanks to everyone that came to speak to me. You made me feel very special and I hope I was able to help you. It never ceases to amaze me what an impact one little website can have!

From there it was on to the closing talks. In addition to the normal closing speeches, there was a motivational talk by DR Rajdeep Manwani. I really enjoyed the talk and judging by the reaction of the crowd, so did everyone else. The talk used several anecdotes and his personal experiences to put across the message that your success or failure is your responsibility. You can blame others when things go wrong (external locus of control) or take personal responsibility (internal locus of control). Ultimately, successful people are those that take personal responsibility and do something about it, rather than blame the world for their failings. I wholeheartedly agree.

After that I spent some time saying my goodbyes, then it was off to get some food and then to bed, ready for my early start for the trip home.

I would like to say a big thank you to the AIOUG for inviting me and to all the AIOUG volunteers that made the event go so well. Thanks also to the Oracle ACE Program for getting me to the event. My special thanks go to all the attendees that made me feel really special for two days.

Tomorrow is the journey home. Fingers crossed for free upgrades to Emirates business class! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

AIOUG Sangam15 : Day 1

I was up at about 04:00 on Saturday and waiting for breakfast to open at 06:30. Pretty much as soon as I ate something I felt really tired again. That after a day of sleeping… 🙂

I headed on down to the conference and instantly saw a bunch of friendly faces, including lots of people I had met on the OTN Yathra 2014 Tour.

After the keynotes, I got to have a quick chat about User Groups with Mary Lou Dopart from Oracle, then it was off to my first session about database consolidation.

I’m always more nervous about giving introductory/overview sessions than I am about full-on technical sessions. My database consolidation session is a little bit like a history lesson of consolidation, including old and new. The response was very good. I had a lot of people wanting to speak to me afterward, which meant I missed the next two sessions. I don’t mind that, as I feel my purpose here is to interact with as many people as possible. As long as people want to speak to me I’m willing to speak. 🙂

After lunch I had a major energy crash again. Whenever I was speaking to people I felt really up-beat, but as soon as the conversation stopped I felt like I wanted to collapse on the floor and sleep. To play it safe I went back to my room to sleep for a couple of hours.

Next up I went to see Debaditya Chatterjee and Giridhar Ravipati speaking about “Oracle Multitenant Best Practices”. Some points that came out of that were.

  • Always use the AL32UTF8 character set for the CDB. Most other character sets can be converted to that to allow them to become PDBs and in a future version, we might be able to plug in a PDB with any character set, provided it is a subset of the CDB character set.
  • Use OMF, as it simplifies file management substantially.
  • Consider the impact of operations, like patching. Are you patching all PDBs, or not? If not, you will be using the unplug/plug approach to patching.
  • Standardise as much as possible.
  • Size SGA, redo and undo correctly to allow for the combined needs of the consolidated workload.
  • Always use Resource Manager to control resource usage of each PDB.
  • Don’t modify PDB$SEED. Create a new PDB with the modifications, then use that as the clone source, for new PDBs, instead of the seed.
  • Stagger maintenance windows within a CDB so all PDBs aren’t doing maintenance tasks at the same time.

Some points about possible features in 12.2 were also mentioned, including:

  • Maximum number of PDBs increased from 252 to 4096.
  • PDB memory management via resource manager.
  • Ability to set CPU_COUNT at the PDB level to allow the equivalent of instance caging for the PDB.
  • Hot cloning of PDBs and incremental PDB refresh.
  • Application containers, to allow common definitions across all similar PDBs. Useful for ISVs who require many copies of the same PDB, like one for each customer.
  • Online relocate of PDB from on-premise to cloud, as demoed by Larry Ellison at OpenWorld 2015

Remember, all talk of 12.2 is covered by the safe harbour slide, so those features might not end up in the final release. 🙂

After speaking to Debaditya and Giridhar, we headed off to a panel session to close the day. As most people will know, putting me on a panel can be a dangerous thing. I ended up having something to say about almost everything. Panels are a mix of scary and fun. 🙂 As usual, the session was followed by additional questions and conversations which lasted about an hour. 🙂

After saying a few quick goodbyes, it was off to grab some food, then back to my room to sleep some more. Are you starting to sense a pattern here? 🙂

Overall, day 1 was a really fun experience. Let’s hope day 2 does not come with quite so much jet-lag! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

AIOUG Sangam15 : The Journey Begins

The day started pretty early. I was packing at 00:00 and the alarm went off at 05:00. Nothing like last minute packing to focus the mind. 🙂

The taxi to the airport was good. The driver was interesting, speaking to me about his visits to India and Pakistan. It certainly helps pass the time when the driver is chatty.

I wasn’t able to check-in online, but there was no queue at the check-in desk, so that was quick. It’s such a short trip I’m only traveling with hand luggage, but I still checked it. I can’t be bothered to fight for overhead locker space with everyone. The queue for security was really long, but they had all the sections open, so it moved quickly. I had to get my laptop scanned because … reasons?

Once through security I bought myself a coffee and promptly threw it across the floor. Embarrassing much! I was hoping to find some floor to take a nap on, but after shaming myself with the coffee situation, I thought the last thing I needed was to shame myself further by sleeping on the floor. I try to limit myself to one shameful moment per airport visit…

The flight from Birmingham to Dubai was easy. It was meant to be 6.5 hours, but we arrived early. The plane was half empty, so there was free space next to me. Happy days. During the flight I watched:

After a 2.5 hour layover in Dubai, it was time for the next flight. The flight from Dubai to Hyderabad was really busy and some lucky people, including me, got upgrades to business class (see video). It was only a 3 hour flight, but I’m all about the business class these days! 🙂 The important thing about upgrades is you have to pretend it wasn’t a free upgrade and you could afford it. 🙂 During the flight I watched the second half of Mission Impossible : Rogue Nation. It was quite good.

After a very pleasant flight, I arrived at Hyderabad and bumped into Kamran Agayev at customs. We agreed to share a taxi to the hotel, then I made him wait for over an hour for my bag to arrive. It was really embarrassing. Sorry mate!

I’m now firmly ensconced in the hotel (see video). It’s 05:24 and I plan to spend the whole of today (Friday) in bed playing catch-up, before the conference starts on Saturday.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Yathra 2014 : Hyderabad

I literally got no sleep last night before the Hyderabad event today. My hotel room overlooked what looked like the busiest road in the world and Indian drivers have a love affair with their car horns. Every time I was about to nod off, a different tone of horn would wake me. 🙂

So this morning, with a breakfast of coffee in me, we headed off to the huge Oracle campus in Hyderabad! The event was split into a technical track and an apps track. Not surprisingly, I spent the day in the technical track.

After introducing ourselves, we started with the first session by Satyendra Kumar talking about 12c New Features, which focussed mainly on the CDB/PDB functionality. As I’ve said previously, it’s interesting to see how different people approach this topic. We all have a slightly different angle on the same subject. The next session was by Chaitanya Koratamaddi, who talked about APEX. I’m trying to get my APEX mojo back so I’m happy to listen to as much as possible about APEX. 🙂

I avoided lunch as I didn’t want to have an afternoon slump. What with missing a nights sleep, I would probably have fallen into a coma if I had eaten anything. After a coffee lunch it was my first session, which was on PL/SQL performance. That was followed up by Hans Forbrich talking about Oracle Linux, a subject dear to my heart. 🙂 After that came Satyendra Kumar speaking about performance tuning in 12c, then lastly me speaking about Analytic Functions.

As usual I got chatting to people at the end and made us late. 🙂 Thanks to everyone for making this run smoothly. Thank you to all the attendees, who asked lots of great questions and helped make the event a success!

So that is 5 out of 7 cities done! I’m going to go down to hit the buffet hard, then pray for sleep tonight, before tomorrow’s flight to Bangalore.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I got back to my room to find my freshly washed clothes waiting for me. Happy days!