Tag: openworld

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 1

After another night with little sleep, Saturday was a chance to recover. I had no formal plans for the morning. I registered for OOW, then went out for breakfast with Marcelle, who then had to shoot to MySQL Connect.

From there I went back to my room for a little rest, then it was out to take Connor McDonald‘s advice and get a $15 T-Mobile SIM to get 7 day data access from my hotel room. Much cheaper than the hotel internet!

During the day I managed to hassle Marcus Eisele, Simon Haslam and Jakko Landlust about WebLogic stuff. It’s the classic case of “The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know”. Perhaps I should stop asking questions, so I can convince myself I’m a WebLogic God!

In the evening it was out to the OakTable dinner, which as now been renamed to “The Anual Doug Burns OakTable Party”. It was a pretty good effort considering it was his first one. I was a little bit disappointed at the lack of balloons, party streamers, jelly & icecream etc. Next years I’m sure he’ll be able to rectify these oversights!

After the walk home it was off to bed to get 3 hours sleep before “Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day 1” starts.

So far I’ve managed to get to the gym every day, but I’ve also managed to stuff myself with food. As a result I’ve lowered my fitness expectations for the week somewhat. My goal is to make it to the end of the week without getting stretch-marks on my face…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 2

Day 2 of the ACE Director briefing went pretty much to plan. My recent adventures in WebLogic meant I had to pay special attention to a few areas I would normally let wash over me. 🙂 I also learned a few things about the WebLogic roadmap that made me kick myself for some of the recent decisions I had made. I guess that’s what happens when you get forced into a position of doing a role you have no background in. I confess I’m a WebLogic noob! 🙂

Thanks for Victoria and Lillian for organising the ACED briefing again. It’s good to get face time with the movers and shakers in the Oracle tech world…

At the end of the day we were taken from the Sofitel in Redwood Shores across to the Hilton in San Francisco. That’s my bas for the next few days. Sleep still alludes me…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 3 (continued)

Continuing from my previous post, the Oracle ACE Director Meeting went well. There seems little point in giving you a list of things I can’t tell you about, so I think I will just say I like Eddie Awad‘s summary of the day in tweets here.

I think it is safe for me to say there will be some interesting things going on this week for a variety of reasons. When you are following the blog posts and tweets, keep in mind the following three things are legally *very* different:

  • Talking about future tech under a safe harbor disclaimer. This basically means Oracle promise nothing and all the stuff they say may not come to pass in future products. There is absolutely *no* legal requirement for them to deliver.
  • Making an official announcement of a new product. This has some legal ramifications. These types of announcements have to be followed by real products within a certain time frame.
  • Releasing the product. This is the bit I care about, because it means I can get my hands on it. 🙂

Some of the things we’ve been told seem very… odd. It’s difficult to say more without digging a hole for myself, but I suggest you listen carefully over the coming week and make sure you place what you hear in the correct one of those three categories…

Regardless of the *oddness* of some of the information, it was a cool day. Wim Coekaerts is always a highlight for me. I just like to listen to the guy talk about tech. He makes things sound so simple and obvious. Very cool.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 3…

It’s about 05:00 Pacific Daylight Time. I’ve been up since 03:30, so I’ve already sorted my work emails, personal emails, forum questions etc. I’m going to write this post then hit the gym before going to Day 1 of the ACE Directors meetings. I have a feeling I will be asleep under the desk by the end of the day. Sorry Victoria and Lillian. 🙁

The trip to San Francisco was long but uneventful. By the time I went to bed I think I was awake for a little over 24 hours. A few hours of fitful sleep and so begins the series of ,”My life’s so hard because I’m so tired!”, blog posts that normally accompanies a trip to OpenWorld… 🙂

In the ACE Directors meetings we normally (dance naked around fires chanting) get a sneak peak at the big announcements for OOW and the coming months post-OOW plans. The first rule about the ACED meeting is don’t talk about the ACED meeting! We are not allowed to talk about the contents of the meetings, under pain of death, but judging by the stuff that has leaked already, it should be an eventful week. I’m still not sure what the plans are for announcements vs. releases. Sometimes Oracle surprise us at OOW with a combined announcement and release, but many times it’s just the marketing garb, with the software release coming a little later.

Based on what Larry has already said in press interviews, Oracle Database 12cR1 is due end of this year or start of next, so I guess it will be a big announcement at OOW12, rather than the actual release… but you never know. 🙂

If there is anything blogable/tweetable during the ACED meetings I will pass it on. If you hate getting 6 billion OOW related tweets/blogs, I suggest you avoid Twitter and your RSS feeds for the next week or so. It’s going to get very busy out there. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’m saying nothing about the Oracle Games Console (OGC). I’ll let the announcements speak for themselves…

Arrived at San Francisco (OOW & ACED)

There were no real dramas on the way from Birmingham to San Francisco, which makes a change for me. 🙂

I got to San Francisco at 16:00 local time and told myself I would go to bed at 21:00 at the latest. I trotted off to the gym, got cleaned up and went down to the bar to say hello to some people. Fatal mistake. I did my normal trick of talking incessantly until about 01:00. Luckily I was not drinking pints of “jetlag” like others I could mention. 🙂

So at about 01:00 I was in bed. I woke up at about 04:15. 🙁 If nothing else it meant I got to catch up on all my emails and go to the gym again. I think there are going to be a few very tired people during the ACED meeting today. I apologise in advance if I fall asleep in your session.

As always, I’m a little daunted at the start of this week. Having 2 days of ACED meetings followed by the main 5 day conference is a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially when everyone knows enough to make you paranoid about your own abilities. Having said that, I know it’s going to be fun and I know I’ll be glad I came.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Already missing the people I know can’t make it this year. Excited about meeting up with everyone again.

PPS. Must remember to speak less and listen more.

PPPS. Must try remain calm this year, not act like a kid in a sweet shop. 🙂

Let’s play spot the Sve…

I was just looking at a couple of photos from OpenWorld and I noticed a “not so little” Bulgarian hiding in the photo. Can you spot the Sve (Svetoslav Gyurov)?

Other things to notice about the photo are:

  • Richard Foote explaining exactly how much like David Bowie he really is. My original explanation of his action was a little more uncharitable. 🙂
  • Me being interested enough in Richard’s conversation to drag me away from my iPad for 2 seconds.
  • Chris Muir ignoring us both and trying to come to terms with the fact he hadn’t brought his iPad to the US and was forced to use one of those mini-iPads.

If you recognize yourself on this photo feel free to comment. I think the foot may belong to Jacco Landlust as I seem to remember him having one of those posh lunch boxes one of the days we were camped out in The Zone. Having said that, Jacco is usually making far more of a fashion statement than denim. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OpenWorld Day 1-3…

This years OpenWorld has been a little unusual for a couple of reasons. First, in previous years the OTN Lounge (now The Zone) and the Unconference have been in Moscone West, which meant it was really easy to bounce between those and the database sessions in Moscone. This year The Zone and the Unconference venue are near the Hilton, which make for a lot of walking and clashing sessions for anyone with a database focus. I guess the extra walking will do us all good. 🙂

Second, the wifi this year has been really bad. There are always glitches, and don’t get me started on the schedule builder, but this year the wifi has been unusable for extended periods of time. In fact, I’ve never managed to get on it in Moscone South yet. It makes life very difficult when you are trying to use an online schedule builder. 🙁

Enough of the moaning. Let’s focus on the good…

The best thing about being at OpenWorld is all the cool people you meet. Lots of new faces and lots of old friends. I’ve also really enjoyed The Zone this year. At first the location and layout felt a little odd, but I’m now used to it and it feels even more relaxing than previous years. I’ve been hanging around there a lot, chatting to people rather than trying to attend every conference session on my agenda. Most importantly I won the Google sponsored Lego competition today. I play with Lego a lot with my nephews, so I felt like I had an unfair advantage. 🙂

I’ve been quite selective about the sessions I’ve attended, picking speakers I enjoy listening to more than specific topics. With so many conferences under my belt over the last couple of years it’s getting harder to find sessions with new content, but that’s a nice problem to have. 🙂

The evenings have been as fun as ever. The ACE dinner was on a boat this year. Food, drink and unsteady footing didn’t sound like the best idea. As it turned out it was really good fun. Especially since the water was calm. The OTN party was a food fest. I’m sure other things were happening, but all I can really remember was eating. 🙂 Tonight was a quick trip out with some of the guys, then back to the hotel to catch up with the blogging.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I bought an iPad. More to come on that as I learn how to use it, or not…

Frankfurt to San Francisco…

I posted yesterday about the start of my trip to OpenWorld. I arrived late, so I never got around to posting about the second half of my trip so here goes…

Frankfurt to San Francisco

I was in a pretty bad mood when it came to boarding. We were 4+ hours late and the boarding process was a complete disaster. Nobody could hear the announcements, so we were all in queues to ask what the hell was going on. Even so, nobody on the desk thought to just come and shout out what to do. As a result, boarding was like a rugby scrum, with people from all classes, seating zones and people who had not cleared security all thrown together. I don’t remember ever taking so long to board. Sigh.

I got on the plane and was instantly more miserable. It was one of those planes where you all have to watch the same films on shared screens. Sigh. I watched:

  • The Back-up Plan: Nauseating romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez.
  • Iron Man 2: In my opinion it wasn’t as good as Iron Man 1, but it was still pretty cool.
  • Just Wright: Chick-Flick. Would have hated it, except I had used up all my hate on the Jennifer Lopez film.

The food came along and guess what? I wasn’t on the list of vegetarians. Sigh. Luckily, they had extra so it wasn’t a big deal, just another thing to “brighten” my day.

I was seated next to the galley so I got to hear a lot of the gossip from the cabin crew. They do talk rather loud. 🙂 One woman seemed to be hitting the assistance button continually, which was getting on their nerves (and mine because I could hear the dinging). It seems the maintenance crew had left one of the internal panels off, which was mentioned by a passenger 2 hours before landing. HELLO! Don’t you think you might want to mention that to someone before you take off ? You are sitting next to a ruddy great hole on an 11+ hour flight! The cabin attendant told the woman to keep her seat belt on. 🙂 I’m sure it was just a cosmetic thing.

All in all, the flight was ok. The cabin crew were pretty good, which offset most of my gripes.

In the update to yesterdays post I mentioned Hajo Normann and Andrejus Baranovskis were on an later flight from Frankfurt. I think it was scheduled to leave about 3 hours after mine. Their flight wasn’t delayed, so they actually left over an hour before me. When I landed at SFO I saw Hajo in the customs queue. It turns out they were in a holding pattern for over an hour so we landed at about the same time. 🙂

It has been mentioned several times by friends and family that I never seem to have a straight forward trip anywhere. My response is, this is the reality of international travel. There is no enjoyment involved. It’s a matter of endurance and anger management. Can someone hurry up and invent a teleport system already!

Cheers

Tim…

Birmingham to Frankfurt…

Birmingham Airport

Whilst people watching in Birmingham Airport I discovered a new category of traveller I had never noticed before, namely the “control freak”.

The person in question was an older gentleman having a bit of a tizzy because he didn’t think the allocated 25 minutes boarding time was enough to get everyone on the plane. During the next few minutes, the sky was apparently falling in because of this disastrous planning by the airport. I can only conclude that:

  • His life is timetabled down to the last second.
  • He probably uses MS Project to track the slippage caused when the kettle takes 30 seconds longer to boil than he planned for.
  • He probably reads the Daily Mail. Did you know if there are more than two teenagers together they are probably planning to murder you?
  • Things were much better in his day!

Birmingham to Frankfurt

We boarded in plenty of time. It seems 25 minutes was actually more than enough. The cabin doors were shut, then the captain announced that flights to Frankfurt were delayed because of the wind. Frankfurt was apparently down to 2/3 capacity, so that meant a 60 minute wait on the ground in Birmingham. Sigh. Of course, 60 minutes became 70 minutes before we took off. This meant we would land at the same time as boarding was planned to start for my connection to San Francisco.

I arrived in Frankfurt to the good news I hadn’t missed my flight. Joy quickly turned to misery when I was told my flight had been delayed by 4 hours. 🙁 On the plus side I did get a €10 food voucher, which I accidentally spent on loads of diet coke and chocolate. In my defence, the lady in the shop wasn’t too happy about me spending less than €10, so she kept telling me to pick up more items. For the sake of international relations my only option was to take her advice and fill my bag with chocolate.

I’ve been collared by security twice in Frankfurt Airport. The first time focused mainly on my sachets of Lemsip. I’m not sure if they were hoping to confiscate my cold cure, thereby saving themselves about £5 at the pharmacy, or whether they thought it was something naughty. The second encounter was random check to see if I was carrying weapons. I’m not sure quite how I could manage that after going through security in Birmingham and Frankfurt, but I would rather they tried too hard, than not hard enough. I wasn’t sure if they vast quantity of chocolate I was carrying qualified as a deadly weapon or not. It’s certainly going to kill me if I don’t give it up.

It’s a couple more hours until I fly…

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Just bumped into Hajo Normann and Andrejus Baranovskis. They were just about to board their flight to SFO that was running on time. I’m still waiting for mine, even though it was meant to leave 3 hours before theirs. 🙁

Thursday OpenWorld Sessions…

Sessions:

  • Kevin Closson cancelled his session, which was a bummer, but life goes on.
  • Oracle Optimizer Roundtable: Some members of the optimizer team answered the audience questions.
  • Real-World Database Performance Roundtable: Members of this group answered questions from the audience on a variety of performance related subjects.

The roundtable sessions were pretty cool, but it feels a little like groundhog day sometimes. I think I could summarize much of the advice as follows:

  1. Design your database properly.
  2. Write good SQL. This is usually pretty easy if you have a good design.
  3. Use default settings and functionality, unless you hit an issue that forces you not to. Even then, don’t assume you can not use the defaults for other projects. Work on an exception basis, not a one-size-fits all approach.
  4. Newer versions of the database probably have features to eliminate or offset the problems seen in previous versions. If possible upgrade and make sure you understand the new features so you can apply them.

I don’t know about you, but this list has been true for as long as I’ve worked in Oracle. Unless you are working on systems requiring extreme performance or of extreme size, modern Oracle versions make life incredibly easy. It would be cool if people actually started taking the advice given by these guys every year…

Cheers

Tim…