In my opinion

It looks like I got off on my day numbering for each blog page but that’s ok, it’s the content that counts..   Session: Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Deployment Best Practices This was a full house and thinking about other sessions related to Grid that I attended; they all had a good turnout.  This session focused on planning the Grid environment, especially when it is being used to manage more than databases.  One key item that I got out of this session was using the command line tool, emctl to export the Oracle Management Server (OMS) configuration (emctl exportconfig oms).   Another item that we will need to do is separate the OMS from the Oracle Management Repository (OMR), and we can do this when we move to 11g with Weblogic. An abstract name of virtual name should be used for the OMS in order to support load balancing.  This session reference the emctl command line tool for other items like tracking audit actions and other maintenance tasks.  Also the backup of the emd.

Sitting in the SFO airport, waiting to board flight 668, and thought I would add some miscellaneous rambling from the conference. I saw this and thought what a great idea, using the stairs for advertising.  Everyone takes the escalators so the ad is always visible. I attended a session on TimesTen, an in-memory database ( way cool stuff but this is a rambling page), and noticed the room was above one of the exhibit areas.  This is what it looks like when they are taking things down.  Amazing what goes on to put something on this big. After all of the sessions ended yesterday evening, they has a small party in the Yerba Buena gardens with a local band.  They played a number of cover songs and the lead singer is an employee of Oracle.  I guess this is the 4 th or 5 th year they have been doing this.  It was sponsored by Tsingtao so I had to have a couple,( beers :-).       I found out the group is The Five Hundreds and the lead is Tom Geck. I know I posted how much I enjoyed ridi

Last day of the event and I think I finally know where Moscone( North, South, West), the Marriott, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are located for the different sessions. I will post yesterday’s events as time permits. Wednesday was a good day at Oracle Open World; some hands-on, good sessions on performance tuning, and one-on-one with Joel Kallman, (Director, Software Development for Oracle Application Express). The hands-on session was an Introduction to Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition.  At a high level ODE is a tool used for extract, transform, and load (ETL) of data, any type of data.  Flat files, comma delimited, XML, other database platforms.  I even noticed my old friend Informix on the list of sources.  The lab was taking XML data sources, joining the data, and inserting it into an Oracle database.  Like most of the Oracle tools these days, OED is Java based so it will run on Linux, Apple and Winblows.  These one hour hands-on sessions are a good test of the produ

Just had to add a quick update while I have some time...  T he Oracle stuff is in 5-6 buildings and I don’t know how many Java is occupying.   Anyway, I was walking from one building to another and as usual people are handing out stuff.   I see something that looks like a CD and I figured it could be a local band trying to get their sound out to people, so I grab one.   As I am walking I look closely at the CD cover and this is what it was…. :-) The question of the day is… Are you a geek if you wear both straps of the backpack? I think I mentioned this before but I have to state it again, register early and get accommodations in SF.   I am tired of the BART thing.   Yesterday I got to spend time in the cloud with Amazon EC2.   This was a hands-on session with Oracle Database Firewall and we connected to EC2 environment to do the lab.   It sounded as if this was another acquisition for Oracle and was relative new.   I am not a firewall person but the idea of monitoring and bloc

Lesson Learned:   Get an iPad or have a PC that runs Windows 7.. This waiting for XP to load is a pain. Day two started about like day 1 with one good thing, a transfer on BART was not required to get to SF.  It was a direct route.  Have I mentioned yet how big this Open World is?   Looking west, east, south, I don't know I am lost without the mountains This is looking the other direction from the one above  A couple of things I forgot to mention from the Keynote by Larry… He said they were going to bring his boat, guess it’s really called a yacht, into SF but the mast would not fit under the Golden Gate Bridge.  The thing must be huge, ( 20 stories high see: http://bmworacleracing.com/de/yacht/pdf/The_USA.pdf ) Also, since Larry bought, oops forgot, won, the cup, he now gets to pick where in the USA to have the next cup race. A model of Larry’s boat The CUP..  The other thing Larry, ( we are on a first name basis :-)  t

Lessons learned:  I should have taken a journalism course in college or maybe that shorthand class in high school would have helped, (does anyone still use that..) The rest of Sunday included a panel discussion of Oracle Apex and the Keynote presentation, which include Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. The panel discussion included the PM for Oracle Apex, a developer lead, and some non Oracle employees that were experts with the product.  In this session I learned some new things and confirmed some stuff that I already was evangelizing with Apex.  One person mentioned the direction to use Apex to kill Access.  I have not been that strong but I do believe that Apex is a better foundation for departmentalized applications that Access.  One of the panel members described how business units needed technical solutions and IT departments were too busy to help so companies ended up with “Miniature little train wreaks” all over the place.  Someone mentioned that they scanned their network for .MDB fil

Well this Oracle Open World thing got started today and I already have some lessons learned… First, most important, register early and get accommodations in San Francisco.   I am staying in Berkeley CA, and taking BART to the conference, which is fine but on Sunday the red line from Berkeley to SF does not run and requires a transfer before crossing under, yes under, the bay.    So, because of the additional time, I missed the first session, Enterprise Manager Grid Control--Moments of Truth. The second session, DBA Fusion--An Introduction to Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g was interesting.   Ray Smith from Portland General Electric gave a presentation on his experiences of 11g Grid Control.   Some highlights: ·         Oracle is really taking this Grid Control serious as a management tool for enterprise datacenter management.   I had heard this last year at the 10g Grid Control training and it was very to the Oracle product line. ·         Don’t do try and have the DBA group install, man

 ( subject to change ) Schedule: Sunday: 12:30PM Title: IOUG: Enterprise Manager Grid Control--Moments of Truth Abstract: This case study describes successes and challenges experienced by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory through utilization of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control. The discussion focuses on key features that enable administrators to become more proactive and efficient through database monitoring, standardized administration, and automated patching and provisioning. Schedule: Sunday: 13:30PM Title: IOUG: DBA Fusion--An Introduction to Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Abstract: On the closing day of Collaborate10, Oracle President Charles Phillips announced the release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g. It forms the core element of Oracle\2019s integrated IT management strategy by providing a single management console for every element of the technology stack right out of the box. The secret, of course, is how to get Oracle Enterprise Manage

This past week I attended an Oracle half day session about 11g with the Key note speaker being Tome Kyte.  I thought I would take my note and apply then to my blog in preparation of going to Oracle Open World in a couple of week.  I am also trying something a little different by writing my totes in an email message and sending to the blog to be posted… We will see how it goes. This is just a summary of my notes.  I should be receiving the Power Point presentations soon. The topic of his presentation was “Oracle Database 11g – What does this mean”  which covered some interesting topics and, as usual for Tom Kyte, was entertaining and informative.  Some of the highlights included: Oracle Data Masking Irreversible De-identification – This will allow the ability to create test environments and masking sensitive information, (credit card, social security numbers) with realistic but non-factual values allowing production data to be safely used in development.  This is not just creating “dum

It’s been some time since I updated this site and I thought I would start blogging again…. I am attending Oracle Open World in San Francisco this year, September 19-23, and I thought this would be a good place to add notes, information, and basic ramblings, ( which I do well :-) of things leading up to the event and daily updates while I am there. This is an event that I always wanted to attend but was never fortunate enough to attend… Guess you just have to ask… First thing I found out is you need to ask early.. I registered last week and trying to find hotel accommodations in SF is impossible, especially on a government Per Diem. I found a place in Berkley, CA and figured I would take BART into SF. Stay tuned on how that goes… I can’t believe the size of this thing. I went to an Informix conference in 1997, back when Informix was competition for Oracle and it was nowhere near this size. The organization of Open World must be a fulltime job for a department. Add Java to th