Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)…
Unfortunately I will not be at the Bulgarian Oracle User Group (BGOUG) event. That pesky volcanic ash cloud has put a stop to my flights. 🙁
As I’ve said before, the BGOUG event feels like a big family gathering, so I’m really annoyed at having to miss it.
Sorry
Tim…
Most of the time I write about stuff I’m interested in, but occasionally I’m forced into writing something to prevent me answering the same question again and again. This is one of those moments and it’s been several years in the making. The last time I tried to muster up the enthusiasm was on a flight last year and I got so bored I fell asleep.
Well today I finally got round to putting it together, so next time I get asked something like,
“I’ve moved a table to a new tablespace, how do I free up the space in the original datafile?”
I can answer, read this:
If you already know the answer, please don’t read it. I don’t want to be responsible for you falling asleep at your desk and losing your job. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Day 2 started with an ACE panel session. There were more ACEs than attendees, but we all had fun chatting to each other. I guess one of the difficulties with this was it ran along side regular presentations, but such is life.
Straight after that it was the second part of my PL/SQL Presentation Layers session. Familiar faces from the day before and a couple of new people, although I think I did lose a few to Robert Freeman as I expected. I thought this session would finish early, but true to form I over ran and had to bolt through the last few slides. The blind panic at the end meant it didn’t feel as slick as I would have liked it to be, but that’s the price for trying to squeeze 120 minutes of content into 100 minutes.
I spent the rest of the day talking to people. I am blessed, or cursed depending on how you look at it, with the ability to talk to anyone and I just kept finding myself on conversations with various attendees and exhibitors about a whole variety of subjects. This is my favorite bit of going to conferences if I’m honest.
The day was wrapped up by an assortment of prizes from the sponsors, including a couple of people who got prizes for injuries sustained during the luge ride the night before. There was blood. 🙂
In the evening I went out for food with a few of the guys and we had a walk around the park, looking at all the thermal vents that spontaneous appear there. Lots of bubbling mud and water, along with a little cat sitting slap bang next to one. Cats are crazy.
So that’s the NZOUG conference over for another year. It was good fun and I hope I get to come back again, but with it being such a long way from home you never really know if it’s going to happen. Fingers crossed though.
Thanks to all the people on the NZOUG committee for making it happen and to all the attendees for coming. I hope to see you all again next time. Also, a big thank you to the Oracle ACE program for getting me down here. Without them this just wouldn’t happen.
Cheers
Tim…
The day started in the normal way. First, an introduction by Francisco, the new president of NZOUG, then some keynotes, then on to the presentations…
One of the difficult things about being a speaker at so many conferences is you often struggle to see something on the agenda you have not already seen several times around the world (nice problem to have). As a result I side-stepped Dan Morgan’s first presentation because I had already seen it (or most of it) at OpenWorld. I’m sure it went down well because Dan is a natural speaker.
My first session of the day was Robert Freeman‘s. A quick romp through the Oracle features that have been around for ages, but you probably don’t know exist. You will struggle to find a nicer guy than Robert, so it’s always good to see him present. I kinda like this sort of presentation because because Oracle has such a lot of functionality, it’s easy to miss things. Robert has turned “to the dark side” and is now an Oracle employee. Come on Oracle. Stop poaching our ACEs. 🙂
I spent a lot of time during the day chatting to people (there’s a surprise). Plenty of familiar faces along with some new ones.
My session was the last time slot for the day. I’m doing a two-part session on PL/SQL presentation layers. I had a good turnout. It felt like it went well. I guess the real test will be how many people turn up for the second part, although I’ve just noticed I clash with Robert Freeman on my second slot, so when nobody turns up I can massage my ego by telling myself I was amazing, but Robert is famous. 🙂
In the evening we went over for the social event at the Skyline Skyrides. It was great fun going on the luge again. I learnt two lessons last year.
I remained alive and dry, so all was good.
After the luge rides came the dinner. Lots of food, lots of drinking (for those that do), comedian, party games and very little in the way of speeches. I think the NZ sponsors have got it right. Essentially it was, “Thanks for coming. Have a good night. Cheers”. Perfect. 🙂
This morning I’ve got a “Learn about the Oracle ACE Programme” session, followed by the second part of my PL/SQL presentation layers session. Then later in the afternoon I’ve got a “Meet the Experts” session. I’m interested to see what experts they’ve got for me to meet. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
I walked off the 7 hour flight to Dubai, straight on to the 13+ hour flight to Melbourne. I got a 1 hour rest at Melbourne while they cleaned the plane, before I started the 3+ hour flight to Auckland. I got to Auckland at about 14:00 where I was met by one of my friends. I was whisked straight back to his house and spent the rest of the day catching up on everything that happened since my last skype call ( 4 days before 🙂 ) and playing with their kid.
The following day was mostly spent with a trip to some of my friends relatives and general idle conversation. Very low pressure. Very cool. The funny thing is, it’s about 18 months since I was last here and I feel like I never left. 🙂
This morning I got up early to pick Chris Muir up from the airport, where I bumped into Dan Morgan, not literally. Chris was delayed, so after a bit of messing about we got on our way to Rotorua. The roads were quiet so we made good time and I’m now in the hotel ready to go. We have a little get together tonight, then the conference starts tomorrow.
I guess I’ll do a run through of my presentations now, and maybe sleep a little later.
Cheers
Tim…
Today is the day I fly to New Zealand to present at the NZOUG conference.
I got to the airport 2 hours before the flight as usual, but I’ve been here 3 hours already and I’ve still not boarded the plane. I have a long wait at Dubai, so this delay shouldn’t affect my connection. It’s 7 hours from Birmingham to Dubai, then 18 hours (including a fuel stop in Melbourne) to Auckland. I have a feeling I’ll look like “Dawn of the Dead” when my friend picks me up from Auckland Airport. I’ve not even started yet and I’m already kinda nervous. The thought of 18 hours on a plane is really getting to me. I only hope I can get some sleep on this trip.
It’s about 5 minutes to boarding now so I need to go through my last minute panic session before getting on the plane. 🙂
If there is ever another blog entry it means I made it. If not, it was nice knowing you all…
Cheers
Tim…
I’ve been having a play around with the DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE package introduced in 11gR2. It seems pretty neat, but I can’t help thinking the suggested usage (updating large tables) would probably be better done with a table redefinition or CTAS.
It’s worth knowing about though.
Cheers
Tim…
You sometimes get questions that are easily answered by a Google search, so you give people a link to lmgtfy.com, like this.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Oracle+11gR2
As a homage to lmgtfy.com I’ve created a documentation search.
https://oracle-base.com/search/
If you specify your search it gives you a URL you can pass to others. When they use the URL it shows them what they could have done rather than bug you. 🙂
https://oracle-base.com/search/?txt=automatic+storage+manager
Update: It now uses TinyURL, like this http://tinyurl.com/yamsmc2
It’s a little basic to look at, but it made me laugh. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Just a point-and-click guide to Data Guard setup using Grid Control.
Cheers
Tim…
I know it’s been said before, but I read this and thought, once Red Hat’s market value starts to drop Oracle could get a really good deal.
I thought the reference to the quality of Red Hat’s support was quite comical. I’ve always found their support to be terrible. To be more specific, you raise a service request and never get a response. If that is quality support I obviously have very different standards to the CIOs surveyed.
Cheers
Tim…