Just a quick reminder about tonight’s Oracle Midlands Webinar.
Cheers
Tim…
Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)…
Bryn very kindly stepped in for Tom Freyer who unfortunately couldn’t make it. Bryn’s presentation was called Why use PL/SQL?, which was based on his whitepaper of the same name. I’ve written about a number of the topics he raised, including a piece on My Utopian Development Environment, but his talk and his whitepaper put forward a much more consistent and compelling argument. Definitely worth checking out if you are a PL/SQL expert or newbie!
Along the way, he used a little piece of syntax I have never noticed before, which has been available for the whole 20+ years I’ve been using PL/SQL. I’ll write about that in a post tomorrow if I get chance.
By the way, Bryn loves being called Brian, and he loves it when you say S.Q.L. and PL/S.Q.L. rather than Sequel and PL/Sequel. 🙂
Both guys will be presenting these sessions at UKOUG Tech15 if you want to catch up with them!
Thanks to the guys for coming to speak to us. Thanks to Bryn’s mom, for living in the UK, giving him an excuse to come to UKOUG Tech15 early and therefore be available to step in at short notice. Thanks as always to Red Stack Tech for sponsoring the event, allowing it to remain free, and to Mike for organising it!
Cheers
Tim…
Just a quick reminder, Oracle Midlands Event #12 is just around the corner.
Update: The first talk is now “Why use PL/SQL?” by Bryn Llewellyn.
This is the day after I get back from India, right after my first day back at work. It’s going to be really hard to drag myself there, but I know it will be worth it!
Cheers
Tim…
The lead up to this event was not the best for me. I had been on the verge of a headache all day. By 14:00 I gave up, went home and went to sleep for a couple of hours. It wasn’t great, but it was just enough to take the edge off, so when the time came, I felt sort-of OK to head out for the event. The drive started to convince me this wasn’t the best move, but once I got to the event and sat down I figured I was going to make it. 🙂
Chris did two talks at the event.
The first talk had lots of people’s heads nodding. It’s kind-of depressing, but we’ve all seen, and continue to see, these same things happening again and again. I, like others in the audience, am convinced it is because of the lack of emphasis on database technologies in development. Too many frameworks encourage a hands-off approach to the database, hiding it behind persistence layers that end up doing a mediocre job, at best. Anyway, enough of my rambling. This session should be mandatory viewing once a month for every developer that goes near a database! 🙂
I think the evening went really well. Thanks to Chris for coming to speak to us and thanks to the Oracle ACE Program for getting him across. Thanks to Red Stack Tech for sponsoring the event, allowing this to remain free. Thanks to Mike for doing a great job of keeping these events rolling. Of course, thanks to everyone for turning up after the Bank Holiday weekend. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
The first session was on “Five Hints for Optimizing SQL”. The emphasis was very much on “shaping the query plan” to help the optimizer make the right decisions, not trying to determine every single join and access structure etc.
In the past I’ve seen Jonathan do sessions on hints, which made me realise how badly I was using them. As a result of that I found myself a little scared by them and gravitating to this “shaping” approach, but my version was not anywhere near as well thought out and reasoned as Jonathan’s approach. It’s kind-of nice to see I was on the right path, even if my approach was the mildly pathetic, infantile version of it. 🙂
The second session was on “Creating Test Data to Model Production”. I sat there smugly thinking I knew what was coming, only to realise I had only considered a fraction of the issues. I think “eye opening” would be the phrase I would use for this one. Lots of lessons learned!
I must say, after nearly 20 years (19 years and 11 months) in the game, it’s rather disconcerting to feel like such a newbie. It seems to be happening quite a lot recently. 🙂
The next event will be on the 1st September with Christian Antognini, so put it in your diary!
Cheers
Tim…