Tag: oow

Oracle OpenWorld 2015 : Day Off

You might have guessed from my last post, I was feeling a little bit deflated (insert fat joke here) yesterday morning.

I cheered myself up by spending the day in my hotel room doing installations. 🙂

On Friday evening the new Fusion Middleware 12.2.1 stack was released, so spent the day playing with it. I’ve written some articles, but they will need some tidying up when I get home. There are definitely some things I want to change.

The Forms and Reports Services installation is very different compared to the previous version. After completing the WebLogic installation, you have to install the FRS software, run the RCU, then create the FRS domain as three separate steps. In the previous version, the installation and configuration of FRS was a single step. If you’ve configured WebLogic 12.1 clustered domains, it will feel very familiar. If not, it’s probably going to mess with your mind a little at first. 🙂

I’ve done the FRS domain creation also, but the configuration of the web tier is not complete. If you want to see what I’ve got so far you can check it out here, but as the warning says, it’s a work in progress.

The OPMN stuff is out of the door and NodeManager has stepped in. If I don’t have time before, I will work through everything when I get home and knock them into shape.

I reserve the right to throw this all away and start again when I get home and spend more time on it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2015 : ACE Director Briefing : Final Thoughts

ace-directorSo it’s the day after the 2 day ACE Director Briefing and I’ll try to lay out my feelings about what I heard. I can’t of course mention details.

First off, the briefing itself was great. Many thanks to the team running the ACE program for putting this all together and persuading all the speakers to come. The same goes to the speakers, that give up their time at one of the busiest periods of the year. Despite what you may feel, your presence is much appreciated. 🙂

For those that have never attended one, the ACE Director Briefing is pretty much a private 2 day conference (mostly under NDA) which can be a little intense, especially when it comes before a 5 day conference. The content covers a whole range of the Oracle product stack, which is great for a generalist like me, but can be a little hard to cope with for those ACEs that specialise more. My advice to those people is, use it to pick up the buzzwords and identify the ACEs and Oracle staff that work in those areas. You never know when you will need some information and knowing the go-to kids is a quick and “safe” way to get it. You don’t have to know everything, just where to find it. 🙂

I guess my overall feeling this year is one of frustration, but for a number of reasons.

  • I am undoubtedly a generalist, so I have a finger in many pies, so to speak. As a result of that, I can’t be “amazing” at any of them. The classic Jack of all trades, master of none. When you are hit hard with a bunch of sessions from different areas, it makes you realise how rubbish you are at many of them, and that’s kind-of frustrating. It’s nice to sit at home and kid yourself you are awesome, but an event like this brings you back down to earth with a bump. Ego can be a terrible thing. 🙂
  • I feel like some teams at Oracle are completely divorced from reality. I am on the coal face. I speak with people on a daily basis who are struggling with some of the these products, for a variety of reasons. I don’t want to get all bitchy about this (I do really), but it feels like the classic “them and us” situation you always see between I.T. and their users, but in this case, us DBAs and developers are the users. There are some teams at Oracle who are fantastic at engaging with their community. I’m thinking APEX and Linux to name but a few, but there are others who… Well… Not so much… I feel the constant negative press about Oracle’s shady sales tactics are hurting Oracle at business level. What they really don’t need is people like me who have been rabid advocates of the technology for 20 years thinking, “Ahh f**k it! Time for something new!”, which is exactly how I felt at times during these two days.
  • It feels like some areas of Oracle are running scared, or at the very least, totally directionless, at the moment. I guess in this day and age, with a new “cool kid on the block” every 5 minutes, you’ve got to hedge your bets somewhat, but it gives me an uneasy feeling. Weakness elicits either a nurturing or attack response. I guess it says a lot about me, but in this case weakness triggers my attack mechanism. I want Oracle to be strong and fearless, not another one of those tech companies who bounce around aimlessly before falling into obscurity.
  • Jetlag.

I was very vocal during these two days. I’m pretty sure some speakers felt I gave them a hard time. Some of that is obviously born out of this frustration. I would like to apologise to any of the speakers who felt I was picking on them. I wasn’t. I just want this stuff to work so badly. I want people to say, “Wow. That’s f**kin’ amazing!” I want people to like Oracle. I want Oracle to be successful. This is totally selfish, because I want my knowledge and skills to remain relevant. It is in my interest that Oracle stay top of the pile.

Anyway, enough this emotional nonsense!

Over the next few days, you are going to see a large number of announcements. Many are quite obvious. There are normal release cycles you can predict. You know every other word is going to be cloud. 🙂 Having said that, try and look through the marketing and you will find some really cool stuff underneath. I think when the dust settles, a lot of people will find a lot to be happy about. I hope I’m one of them!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. This is not a rallying cry. This is just a tired, fat, old man venting. Nothing to see here. Please move along…

Oracle OpenWorld 2015 : ACE Director Briefing – Day 2

ace-directorI started the day with a jog around the lake. Believe it or not, I got lost a couple of times. We checked out of the hotel and headed off for the second day of the ACED Briefing. 🙂

Once again, it’s mostly under NDA, but the agenda for the day was as follows.

  • Tom Michelini and Jeff Welsch : BDaaS and IaaS Update.
  • Edwin Desouza : MySQL Update.
  • Wim Coekaerts : Linux and Virtualization Update.
  • Steven Feuerstein : Strengthening the Oracle Database Developer Community Together.
  • Roland Smart and Vikki Lira: Oracle ACE Program and OTN Update.
  • Andy Mendelsohn : Oracle Database Development Update
  • Oracle Database Development Update – the details. This was presented by a group of people whose names I forgot to note. Sorry. I missed the second half of this session because I went outside to chat to some of the guys presenting the first half…
  • David Peake : APEX Update.

After refreshments, it was a coach ride to the Hilton San Francisco, where we will be based for the main Oracle OpenWorld conference.

Just before I left I noticed WebLogic 12c (12.2.1.0) and Oracle Forms and Reports Services (12.2.1.0). That was a little surprising, since the timeline for the Forms release is not what were were told the day before! Sigh. Good news though. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2015 : ACE Director Briefing – Day 1

ace-directorThe day started at 03:00 local time. I was in denial for about 60 minutes before I threw in the towel and got up. A couple of new release blog posts (VirtualBox 5.0.8 and MySQL 5.7) later, it was off to the gym again. I told you, it’s the new me…

After the gym I spent ages chatting to people in the foyer, whilst still stinking of gym and drinking coffee++. After getting cleaned up, I met up with a bunch of folks at 08:00 to walk across to head office for the first day of the ACE Director Briefing.

As usual, this couple of days is all under NDA, so we can’t talk about specifics, for fear of leaking some of the big announcements for OOW 2015, or because we are being told future direction. As a result, the following is really an idea of the agenda, where that doesn’t imply the content of an announcement… 🙂

  • Vikki did some quick introductions and basically told us to behave. 🙂
  • Jeremy Ashley and co. : Spoke about Cloud User Experience. Jeremy’s UX team has a hand in the design of many Oracle products. I have a lot of time for the work they do, and I can think of a few Oracle products I wish they had more involvement in. 🙂
  • Thomas Kurian : Gave an executive address. I’m saying nothing more about this, for fear of getting “disappeared”. Lots of interesting things coming. Something for everyone. 🙂
  • Vikas Anand, Kaj Van De Loo, Greg Stachnick and Kuldip Oberoi : Cloud update, with each person speaking about their respective parts of the cloud.
  • Interjeet Singh : Oracle Fusion Middleware update. This was quite a “vibrant” session during the question and answer part. 🙂
  • Mike Lehman : This session focused on WebLogic.
  • Shay Shmeltzer and Joe Huang: Oracle Development Tools and Mobile Platform Update.

After the sessions were over, we had some refreshments, then headed back to the hotel. A few of the folks went out to eat, but I just headed to bed.

For a generalist like me, today contained lots of interesting and sometimes confusing stuff. Tomorrow is more focussed on Linux and database stuff, so it is like a fun day for me. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2015 : The Journey Begins

The day started at 05:30, which was not much different to normal, so that was good. A quick taxi ride to the airport was followed by a 1 hour sleep on the floor next to the departure gate. It’s wonderful having no shame. 🙂

The first flight from Birmingham to Frankfurt was about 80 minutes and it was fairly straight forward. I had a 2 hour layover before the next flight, so there was no real drama there. I ended up boarding as the last person in the last boarding group. 🙂 I tried to buy a business upgrade, but it was going to cost $2500, so screw that.

The United flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco was about 11.5 hours and a little annoying.

  • The plane interior was a really old refit. It was pretty terrible compared almost every other airline I’ve been on in the last few years.
  • The “entertainment system” was one of those old shared screen things, not a personal system, so you had to watch the same thing as everyone else.
  • The shared screen froze for a few seconds every 5 minutes or so, which kind of ruins your suspended disbelief.
  • My special meal was “missing” again. I mean, come on!

It’s hard to believe it’s 2015 when you are on a United plane. 🙂 Luckily, the staff were really nice. There was one lady doing her last flight after 46 years of service. Awesome!

We landed a little late. Getting though US customs was actually pretty quick, which makes a change. I took the hotel shuttle with Osama, Gurcan, Simon, Cary and Arup, who all converged from different flights.

After getting to the hotel, I dumped my stuff and went to the gym. It’s the new me. 🙂 After getting changed, I went down to the bar for a few minutes to say hello to some people, then headed off to bed by about 22:00 local time.

Allowing for the time difference, I think that’s about 24 hours from bed to bed. 🙂 Tomorrow is the first day of the ACE Director Briefing!

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 : Wednesday

Another early start on Wednesday. I headed down to meet the Dbvisit gang for breakfast. FYI: I’m not paid to keep mentioning them and I don’t work for them. They are just a great group of people who I really like, so when I get a chance to meet up with them I do. 🙂

From there it was on to Moscone where I bumped into Eric Yen. We’ve known each other for years on the interwebs, so it was nice to spend some face-to-face time. I also bumped into Daniel De Meda again. We chatted for a while the previous day, so when we met today we did a selfie. From there it was off to the demo grounds again, then I met up with Sve Gyurov for lunch.

IMG_20141001_123115

If you’ve ever met Sve, you will realise that I am on tiptoes and he is crouching when we took this shot, otherwise this would be a picture of my head and his chest. 🙂

After lunch I had a major attack of lethargy, so I headed back to the hotel for a rest, which I’ve just surfaced from at 20:00. 🙁 I’m going to duck out of the evening events as well…

So this really marks the end of OpenWorld for me, because I leave tomorrow morning. It’s been a really strange one for me this year. I enjoyed the ACE Director Briefing and felt like I was coping really well, then I kind-of crashed once OOW actually started. What with being ill for the 3 weeks prior to the event, then having to deal with the jet lag, I really had no reserves to fall back on this year. I feel a bit disappointed with myself as it feels like a wasted opportunity, but you can only do so much…

I’ll write a wrap-up post about the whole event when I get back.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 : Tuesday

Tuesday started early with 5 hours in the hotel lobby. The plan was to catch up on my blogging using the free wifi. I hadn’t blogged for a couple of days, which prompted an email from my mom to see if I was OK. 🙂

It took about 5 hours to complete two blog posts, because every 30 seconds someone new walked by and I was “forced” to speak to them. 🙂

That done, I headed down to Moscone South to check out the Dbvisit stand. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had never tried a Twinkie, so Chris Lawless went to work correcting that state of affairs by bringing a box of Twinkies to their stand. You can see me trying my first Twinkie here!

I didn’t record me eating my second Twinkie. 🙂

From there is was a visit to the demo grounds again, then up to the OTN lounge to chat with a few people about the ACE Program, life the universe and everything. After a quick lunch with Vikki from the ACE Program, I hooked up with Steven Feuerstein to chat about his YesSQL initiative. Soon after that it was across to the ODTUG gathering briefly, before heading off to the SQL and PL/SQL Performance Panel, which featured Jagan Athreya, Dad (Graham Wood), Tom Kyte and Steven Feuerstein.

After popping back to the hotel to dump my bag, it was back down to Howard Street to the attend the evening festivities. I spent most of the evening with Doug Burns and one of his colleagues called Seamus. I even had a drink. Who’da think it?

Tiredness is still a big problem for me. The day is starting so early that I feel like the living dead most of the day.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 : ACE Director Briefing – Day 2

Day 2 of the ACE Director Briefing followed a similar format to day 1. Lots of things we are not allowed to talk about and a few things we can.

Of the things we can talk about:

  • The release schedule for 12cR2 (12.2) was mentioned. It was published a few weeks ago. It’s tentatively listed as 1HCY2016. You can read it for yourself in MOS Note 742060.1.
  • Dan Mcclary‘s session on Oracle Big Data SQL seemed to win over even the most cynical in the room. It was a really interesting session on something I know virtually nothing about. 🙂 Having external tables pointing to Hive and NoSQL sources, allowing SQL queries and joins across multiple data stores is pretty cool.
  • The JSON support in 12.1.0.2 looks pretty cool.  Some more goodies related to APIs for this functionality are on their way in Oracle REST Data Services (APEX Listener).
  • David Peake previewed Live SQL. It’s still under construction at the moment, but it looks like it’s going to be a useful resource for people learning SQL or sharing examples with each other. Kind-of like SQL Fiddle on steroids, with an emphasis on learning through tutorials and example code etc. The aim being to reduce the barrier to entry.
  • Wim Coekaerts gave an overview of what’s going on in the Linux and virtualization world. I’m a total fanboy, so I loved it. 🙂
  • Steven Feuerstein spoke about his new initiative to revitalise the SQL and PL/SQL communities in Oracle. It’s still in the early stages, but it will be interesting to see how this develops. Obviously I have a vested interest in anything that makes the database look cool! 🙂

Of the things we can’t talk about:

  • We can’t take about them. 🙂

Overall I thought this was a really great briefing. There was a lot of stuff on the agenda that didn’t relate to my core skill set, but I still got drawn in. It’s good to be aware of what’s happening around you, even if you will never get chance to get on top of it. Big thanks to the Oracle ACE Program and OTN for getting this organised for us!

After a bit of socialising, it was on to the coach to drive from Redwood Shores to San Francisco. We are now all in the Hilton and waiting for OOW to start tomorrow.

This morning I did my first proper gym visit of the trip. I hit the weights and did some stretching. I’ve just got to avoid food for the next 6 months and I’ll be buff! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Thursday

I got up late, so I missed the morning gym session.

When I got to Moscone at about 08:30, I headed straight for the speakers room to play catch-up on emails, questions, blog posts and work emails. I expected that to take a few minutes, but it actually took me up to midday. It’s crazy how much time we spend on this community stuff. 🙂

I spent most of the afternoon in the OTN Lounge geeking out with a variety of people. I was initially expecting to spend the whole day in presentations, but it turned out I didn’t manage to get to a single one. I spent some time chatting with the ladies and gents from the RAC SIG about ideas for future directions for user groups and collaborative efforts like RAC Attack. It’s interesting to hear the different opinions and motivations of the people involved.

I had an interesting chat with Lenz Grimmer about a number of Linux related things. He was kind enough to help me out a few months ago with some clarifications on my Oracle Linux : Frequently Asked Questions post and was asking how I was getting on with the Oracle Linux migrations at my current company, which spawned a few ideas for some followup posts about the process we’ve gone through to move a variety of systems from RHEL, Solaris and HP-UX to Oracle Linux on VMware. Watch this space! 🙂

From the OTN Lounge the next stop was the “It’s a Wrap” party, where I had an emotional reunion with my dad.

IMG_20130926_172805

I’m still waiting for the 44 years worth of birthday and Christmas presents he owes me!

I’m back at the hotel now, feeling totally burnt out. I know it’s not very rock-n-roll, but I think I’m going to bed. 🙂 I’m flying back home tomorrow, so I’ll get back on Saturday UK time. Next week I’m back to work during the day and back to learning 12c during the evenings. Thank goodness for insomnia…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Wednesday

A familiar morning. Up at silly o’clock, went to the gym, then read in my room for a while…

The plan for Wednesday was pretty much the same as Tuesday. Most of the day was spent at RAC Attack. I thought we were meant to be helping people install RAC on their laptops, but I quickly came to understand this was a cover for watching Yuri take photos of people jumping in the air… 🙂

A big thank you to all the people involved in making RAC Attack happen again! A lot of people helped in making the new 12c install notes. Lots of people dedicated two days of OOW2013 to this, rather than watching presentations or swanning off to the boat racing. Thanks also to the OTN crowd for giving up so much space to us.

After RAC Attack I popped in to see John Beresniewwicz and Kellyn Pot’Vin presenting, “Active Session History Deep Dive: Advanced Performance Analysis Tips”. I like listening to both these speakers!

From there it was back to the exhibition stands to hook up with the DBVisit guys, before returning to the OTN Lounge for the “Meet the ADF Team” session. David Peake was lurking there, pretending to be part of the ADF team. There’s a rumour there that is just begging to be started! 🙂

Then it was back to the hotel to dump my stuff before heading off to the Bloggers Meetup. I was only there for about 2 minutes, before I had to leave for the appreciation event, so sorry if I missed anyone. Having spent so much time in the OTN Lounge this year, I doubt there is anyone I’ve not met already. 🙂

This year I got to do the appreciation event in style as a VIP, thanks to an invite by the DBVisit guys. We were in the New Zealand suite at the top of the stadium, so I was an honorary Kiwi for the night. 🙂 I had a few drinks and ate vast quantities of food, without having to fight it out with the crowds. It was great! I’m always bigging up the DBVisit folks, but they really are a great group of people. Chris Lawless (formerly of the Oracle GoldenGate team) is a great addition to the team. He cracked me up all night. To show my support, I put some “temporary” Dbman tattoos on my arms. Turns out they are not so temporary after all. Two showers and some scrubbing and they are still with me. 🙂 You can see a picture of them here. I love that picture because it makes me look skinny! 🙂

During the event, I managed to find Nemo and watch Maroon 5 and The Black Keys. Adam Lavine from Maroon 5 has a really strange voice. When he sings it sounds fine, but when he talks he sounds like he’s been hitting the helium balloons. It’s like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Very odd. I’m not a fan of Maroon 5, so I was surprised that I recognised all but one of the songs they played. They were really good. The Black Keys where a lot heavier than I expected. I knew I had heard some of their stuff, but I wasn’t sure how much I would recognise. I think there were three songs I definitely recognised. Pretty cool.

I got back to the hotel at about 01:00, so this morning was a later start for me. Someone has been shopping again. Lots of boxes outside their room again this morning! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…