Tag: Oracle

OpenWorld Events – Monday…

I intended to go to some regular sessions, but changed tack and spent the day in Moscone West at the Unconference instead.

  • Chalk & Talk: The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing (Greg Rahn, Database Performance Engineer, Real-World Performance Group @ Oracle): I’m not a DW guy and I don’t work with Exadata kit, so this was pretty interesting for me. It’s pretty wild what this Exadata stuff can do. I’ll be going to the Terabyte session tomorrow where they will be doing a bunch of live demos.
  • Fundamentals of Performance (Oracle ACE Director Cary Millsap): I’ve seen Cary speak a few times and each time I really enjoy it. His presentation style is effortless and his explanations are so clear. He’s one of those people that raises the bar.
  • Oracle Exadata Storage Server FAQ Review and Q&A with Kevin Closson (Performance Architect, Oracle): Read Kevin’s blog and you will know he is passionate about storage and hardware. Watching him present on Exadata was like watching a freakishly eloquent child with a new toy. You come away desperate for Santa to bring you one at Christmas.
  • Visualization Session – Make your charts more effective for troubleshooting and presenting (Oracle ACE Chen Shapira): Chen took a specific use case and showed a variety of graphing methods that could be used to represent the data. It’s interesting to see how your perception of the data changes depending on the method used, and how some can distract from your message.

Alex did a video interview with me, Chris and Jacco. It’s very embarrassing and he promised to edit it, which he didn’t. You can see it here.

I’m off to the OTN night now.

Cheers

Tim…

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…

Oracle ACE Director meeting and stuff…

The ACE Director meeting went well yesterday. On the database base side there were a couple of really neat things mentioned that they are considering for the next release. As usual it’s all a big secret, so it looks like I’ve got to keep my fingers crossed and my gob shut for a couple of years…

Lots of the other stuff went over my head. I’m just a DB guy, so the middleware and SOA stuff confuses me. 🙂

The prototype of the Oracle games console was awesome. Can’t wait to see what impact it has on the gaming sector. I think it’s going to strike fear into the hearts of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.

It’s was cool to hook up with all the usual suspect, and meet a few new faces.

After the meeting it was a very jerky bus trip into the city to check into the InterContinental hotel. I’m so close to the Moscone Convention Center that if I threw myself out of my 19th floor window I would practically be in/on Moscone West, albeit rather flat. My room is awesome.

In the evening I went out with a couple of the guys to a local Irish bar where Anjo forced me to drink beer. He really is a very bad influence on me. Doug Burns bailed on us. Probably suffering from “jet lag” again.

So I have today off before the circus comes to town tomorrow. I’m a combination of exited, nervous, daunted and tired.

On a slightly different note, I actually cleared my inbox for the first time in several months. I feel an air of calm descending over me… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

New scheduler stuff in 11gR2…

There are some nice new features in the scheduler in 11gR2. I’ve written about them here:

Remember, there was already a bunch of new stuff added in llgR1, so there’s a lot of whiz-bang stuff if you are moving from 10g.

I do think there are some real security issues with some of this stuff if it is used unwisely though. The remote jobs (external and database) just strike me as a disaster waiting to happen in the wrong hands. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 11gR2 RAC On Linux Using VMware Server 2

I’ve taken my first tentative steps into 11gR2 RAC and it was a big surprise.

11gR2 RAC feels very different to 11gR1 RAC. I can imagine quite a few people wanting to upgrade from 11gR1 thinking it will be trivial and getting a rude awakening…

The Grid Infrastructure (Clusterware + ASM) seems more complicated. There are more installation options, more prerequisites, more background processes and a bigger memory requirement…

I typically install 11gR1 RAC on VMware using 1G of RAM per VM. If you try that with 11gR2 you will get to the end of the Grid Infrastructure installation and have nothing left. The minimum recommendation for Grid Infrastructure alone is 1.5G, but if you want the RAC DB as well you are talking 2.5G. It actually worked fine with 2G of RAM allocated to each VM, but this is a whopping increase compared to 11gR1.

At this point I feel like I know nothing about 11gR2 RAC, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a patched version of 11gR1. If this had been released as 12g I would have still have been surprised by the level of change.

So over the next few days I’m expecting the dust to settle, my residual fear of all things new to subside and I’ll probably change my opinion completely and think it’s all the same as it was before… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Please don’t try this installation on your 32-bit Windows laptop with 2G of RAM then write to me complaining it doesn’t work and telling me the article is rubbish… 🙂

A quick thank you…

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone involved in making the 2-day PL/SQL workshop in Utrecht happen last week. Thanks to Miracle Benelux for staging the event, to Anjo for inviting me and to Annette for organizing everything, including Anjo. 🙂

Of course the biggest thanks go to everyone who came to the workshop, because without them it wouldn’t happen. See you all soon. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle games console…

What is this years big OpenWorld announcement?

It’s not Oracle Database 11g Release 2, that’s already been announced and released. It’s not Exadata 2, that’s already announced.

So what can be so important it has relegated 11gR2 and Exadata to pre-OOW announcements, so as not to detract from the real message?

The Oracle Games Console. Working title OBox-720…

Get your first hands-on at OOW 2009…

Cheers

Tim…

RELIES ON clause no more…

I’ve been running through my demos before my PL/SQL workshop in Utrecht and I noticed a change in the behaviour of the PL/SQL Function Result Cache. In 11gR1 it was necessary to specify dependencies using the RELIES ON clause, but now Oracle 11gR2 takes care of Detection of Sources for you. Neat. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Dipping my toe in 11gR2…

I’ve had my first play with 11gR2 today:

Nothing too unpredictable really.

I guess the most noticeable change is the new installer. I didn’t have an issue with the old installer, but a few friends from the Microsoft world had pointed out how dated it looked. The new is much cleaner, and although it will take some getting used to, I think it is a step in the right direction.

I’ve decided that I’m only going to do 64-bit installations from now on. I see little point doing the 32-bit installations, as I hope I will never work on one again. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

RTFM… If you can find them…

A certain something has been released today, so like any self respecting DBA/Developer I went straight for the manuals…

At the time of writing there are none listed on OTN or Tahiti. I tried cunningly altering existing URLs to match the new version, but to no avail.

I’m sure they will appear soon. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Thank you to Mathew Buttler for pointing out the documentation is available here:

http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/portal.all_books