PDVBV is alive....(and for hire!)

As some of you already know: I quit my "job" and started as an "indie".

I am now officially a mercenary: you can hire me.

The name of my new entity : PDVBV s.p.r.l/b.v.b.a.
The name is a reference towards my dutch-language heritage, the designation signify a belgian "Limited" company.

My aim is to look for jobs similar in content to what I did as a wage-slave: Part-time, advisory and troubleshooting jobs. I dont mind travel (on the contrary) and I would not want to be linked to a desk for 5 days permanently.
I'm lucky, my first customer-assignement is just what I wanted.

I'll update the blogs, my resume, Twitter, Linked-in, facebook etc... when time and usefulness permit (wanted to do that much earlier, but life is too short to mess with the internet all the time)
I may even start a PDVBV page somewhere.

Suffice to say : I should have done this much earlier.

The main reason to become indie is that I can now decide for my self where and how I can use the fruits of my labour. I notably dont have to tow party lines anymore (although...), and I can decide all by myself to plan/budget any visit to a conference or usergroup or any interesting gathering.
The straw that broke my camel's back: in-ability of previous employer to pay for a visit to the Scotland UKOUG event (or any other event for that matter).

I've taken back my freedom.

First trip: I intend to visit the AIM SIG of UKOUG in October. Look forward to meet some old friends there.

Given the development of my client-base, I already regret that I turned down invitations of SIOUG and HROUG. No worries: I'll make good next year, may even try to go by Motorbike - After all those years crossing the alps by car, I feel like riding a bike over those passes for a change.

Note: I currently ride a motorbike for Fun and necessity, but after handing in the company-cage, using a motorbike to commute to work feels quite liberating (at least for the summer).

(ps: I almost regret all the jokes I made about "urenzuigers", I risk becoming one of those myself).

UKOUG TEBS Impressive Agenda

You probably got the buzz already: everyone is on about the UKOUG TEBS conference agenda.

Drum roll, ... Tadaaa....


(with apologies for the noisy image, I just linked through to the official site)

Explanations:
UKOUG: United Kingdom Oracle User Group
TEBS: Technical and E-Business Suite
Conference: the annual gathering of Nerds and Marketing-folks in Birmingham.

Indeed: an impressive line up of speakers and topics, and if all goes well, I will be there. Look forward to meeting up with old and new friends from UK and elsewhere.


Update: found this "image", much nicer, to link to the conference, and more appropriate for this sort of self-promoting bragpost:



I am not going to repeat how a UKOUG event is a better "training" then just any training, and why this particular Usergroup is worth your budget. Suffice to say the inormation is mostly unbiased and from real-world Experience, not just powerpointware. And in between sessions you get to meet some RAC (Real Appliation Customers).
You can also count on meeting a large contingent of the Oaktable there, always good for some insight and some entertainment.

And finally: this year my employer has a significant Presence as well: 7 (yes, seven!) presentations by colleagees. And that may mean I also have a minimum of 6 people in the room when I do mine [link] at 16:00 on the final day of the event. The organizers seem to count on me to hold some of the attendees in the building until the very end of the event.

See the full agenda Here.

Speaking of Agendas: I will also be presenting at HROUG and OUGF(inland) as well. Have a click to see what those events have to offer. (note to self: must update agenda to the right of the blog...)

Disclaimer: I am not getting paid to post this, and Oracle does not pay for my travel. But I do hope for an invitate to the blogger-event and a few drinks from those who are sponsored. Cheers.

UKOUG TEBS Conference Abstract Judging.

Too Curious. I always optimistically volunteer to help in the judging/grading process for the UKOUG conference.

When reading abstracts, I look for User-experiences that are either Relevant to a larger group, or simply Interesting to myself. Good marks go to presentations that have practical experience behind them, to those relevant for a large group, or to those that I simply find interesting.

Low marks for those seem to have no-purpose, for the ones that sound like "summary of the manual", and especially for the ones that are product-presentations rather then User-experiences.


The process is straightforward:
You get a long list of title-links, ticklist style.
You click on one, out pops a window with the abstract.
You can then rate it from "poor" to "excellent", you need to indicate salespitch yes-no-unsure, and you can enter some comment-text (hah!).

So you click + read + grade your way through the list till all boxes are ticked. It takes me, overhead/coffee/distractions included, just under 1 min per abstract, and I had to do about 200. It is both intense and scary work.

Intense, because you have 200 words, and need to find out what is behind them. Decide how relevant, how useful this could turn out to be.

Halfway, after the first 100 or so you need a break.

It is also Scary. The majority of the content is Good Quality, relevant to a larger (sometimes smaller) audience, and most of it stems from real-world experience.
Impressive and promising. And competitive! I hope at least some merciful souls out there will rate one of my own two abstracts enough to get me into accepted (yes, this is a tout!).

And even if I can present (and thus visit) at the conference, I'll still be faced with the luxury problem of choice: there are way to many that I absolutely want to see. I know from past experience that you miss out on a number of must-see items because they will be scheduled simultaneously.


I like doing this judging job (well, once per year is OK) as it shows what people are busy with or at least what they want to talk about.

And being a hopeful submitter myself, I assume that some have put their very soul into crafting those abstracts. And for some (me included) it is vital to get at least one paper admitted otherwise the boss will not pay for the event and the trip. Hence, I try to treat all of them fairly and with much respect.

But there are some, a minority, where I copy-paste one of my pre-typed comments. Tempted to give some examples, but first: end of break and back to the tick-list.

OEM Oracle Enterprise manager graphs are great

The title says it all.

I am really coming round to Oracle Enterprise Manager, OEM, for use in monitoring and troubleshooting performance. I'm with Doug Burns here, who once did a presentation on how he learned to love pictures.

OEM is maturing
gradually
into a
great,
good,
and indispensible
tool.

I cannot express my appreciation for OEM enough.



Am
ai
below
the blog-aggregator
horizon
already?

---

*PdV peeks over the edge, then looks over shoulder - twice*

This will not get me credit with Vendors...

---

Oracle-OEM, Quest, and Symantec all have competing commercial products,
but today, I am plugging ... :

TORA.
And to a lesser extent, Lab128 (which is effectively free as well).

(If those two are old news to you, I apologize, just close the tab and go click elsewhere)

I will admit that the commercially licensed products are much better.
They are richer in functionality (feature bloat!) then any open-source, free-to-give Tool could hope to be (or are they?). I should also mention that the commercial products often will offer all the goodies, gizmos, spotlights and the key-hangers that my kids like so much. I would never pass up on the free parties, eh, salesevents Seminars with food and refreshments. In that area, commercially licensed product are unbeatable.

But for Sheer Simplicity, for Acutal "Value" I have used TORA for nearly 10 (ten!) years now. My trusty 1.3.8 version dates back to 2001. I always used the free version worked fine on oracle 8, 9 and 10. It still works on 11, and I'm sure that when an 11.2 "problem" pops up at one of our customers, that even the old 1.3.8 version will show my the wait-stats.

Since Quest (bless them, they are the makers of Toad), claimed to have bought TORA in eh... 2003, I had not checked for TORA updates.

But now Timo Raitalaakso (Rafu on OTN, blog can be found Here) from Finland told me TORA is still around.
Version 2.0.0 is available.

Go and check it out at sourceforge, and go find a few references on google...

Then download it and Test It (it is totally for free - Wayhey!). If TORA is right for you, you will become addicted quite easily.

My main reason for having TORA is the server-tuning screen called "wait-events". It offers a free, and quick-to-use alternative to the OEM waitevent graphic.

I can run TORA without need for permissions on OEM (acutally, without the OEM period), and it gives me roughly the same screen. All I need is "PERFSTAT" or any user with sufficient privs (the "advisor" role is fine). If I can run spreport or awrrpt, I can generally also run TORA.

It just takes a tns-entry, and Oracle-Net connection, and then TORA is up and running. Mine runs from my company-windhoze. But there are Linux and Mac builds too.

I combine TORA with some servertool sar, vmstat (unix), lparstat (AIX) or taskmgr (windhoze) and with statspack (AWR for the licensed-lucky).
With those tools, I have solved just about every performance-problem I was given.
(admittedly, my problems tend to be simple - but I'm waiting for the first SOA/SOAP system to overload).

Inside TORA, I run the "server tuning" screen at 10 sec interval (I only use the 3rd tab with the graph and the pie-chart of the wait-events). I tend to disable the other screens, not just to save on sqlnet traffic, but also to keep my windows-lappy running happy.



And Voila, that screen (which predates and resembles the OEM graph...) tells me what is happening right now, and in the last hour. In using it, I have a few dislikes and a wishlist too, but I'll keep that for another time.

Tip: I often configure 12 gridlines and 360 datapoints to have a 5 min grid on 1 hr of data.

I am still of the opinion that real DBA's use SQL*Plus, common sense, and not much more. But if you are into troubleshooting databases, you could do worse then look into these tools.

Oracle Usergroup meetings - Tips

Last week was Perfect: I could escape the project-managers for all but Monday and spent the rest of the week "working" remotely, while visiting two usergroup-events.

I had the pleasure to attend the DBA-Day from Oracle Usergroup Holland (OGH), and the Autumn Seminar from Oracle Usergroup finland (OUGF). Both events were Very Well organized and had excellent content.

Being lazy, I do hope some other enthusiastic bloggers will do a writeup of the interesting items from each event. Today, I have another priority on this blog.

I hope all of the the attendees had an interesting and productive time. And I would encourage them to tell their managers how useful these meetings are.

If anyone has to justify their Usergroup-Fees or cost, I always like to make the point that these groups are the only way to get information that is not totally-tainted by pre-sales. At a usergroup, you can hear how it really works, rather then how it is supposed to work. The unbiased (ok: less biased) information combined with the staff-motivational aspect, are probably the best business-case.


Evaluation forms

I know most usergroups are trying very hard to please their audience, their members and their sponsors with ever-present "Evaluation Forms", and I do fill in my share of forms.

I would like a quiet word with that one person at UKOUG events who always fills in 100% minimal scores on my presentations. I can only presume he is linked some some vendor that lost business because of my "simple" crusade.

I know for a fact that at least some of my comments to UKOUG have been read, and considered. Thanks Aimee, Rachel and all the other members of staff.
Those forms are useful, and I forward all the good comments to my boss.


Tips

As a regular visitor and presentor at Usergroups in various countries, I have compiled my own list of preferences and what I consider best-practices.

Mind, this is not criticism, but rather praise and encouragement. I full well realize that it is much easier to criticize then to construct. And I do applaud the volunteers and staff who organize it all.


So, at the risk of ridicule, here goes...


- Handcuff speakers to the table.
Do not allow speakers to run in, rush-ppt, and run away from the event. No matter how "celebrity" they are, they should allow time to discuss and mix with the (paying) audience. Find some incentive to keep the speaker after his talk. Allow approachability and discussion.

- Clean out the speakerlounge regularly.
Discourage speakers from hiding in speakerlounges. See above. Usergroups are for users. The mixing and hobnobbing with higher celebrities can be done elsewhere.
And for speakers: the information you pick up from listening to in-the-field users is often invaluable. Get out there.

- Provide a safe cloakroom.
Especially for those who travel with luggage-trolleys, it is very convenient to have a safe spot. It is one less worry, and ppl dont lug around the additional coats and other items (also a firehazard).

- Use simple timings.
Plan the start/stop of sessions on whole-hour, half-hour or quarter-hour, please.
Simple timing is easier to keep. When a speaker is sweating in front of an audience he doesnt want to permanently do time-math. And users wandering around or smoking outside will easier remember simple timings as well.

I sometimes had to fit a 45min ppt (+/-22 slides + some demos) into a slot between 14:25 to 15:10. Running it from 14:30 to 15:15 is just easier (me - I like simplicity). I know that staggered breaks are better for services, staff, crowd-control and exhibition-sponsors. I understand that, but it doenst mean I like the funny timings.

- A visible clock.
A nice big clock on the wall, visible to both speaker and public is a great help. See above.

- Breaks between sessions.
Breaks should be 15-20 minutes, please. In between all sessions. Breaks are meant for discussing the topics, for networking, for coffee/ciggies and for phone-calls/mails. A whole morning sessions with no break (because the speakers want to run away?) is tiring, and doesnt allow to digest and discuss the material presented.

- Simple Refreshments at Every Break.
Preferably Coffee (strong), Tea(ditto), water (still) and biccies (optional) at all breaks. IT ppl like we are run on coffee (and some also run on ciggies [link to Doug?]). And a cup facilitates mixing and networking.

- Provide some (walking) space during breaks.
The venue should provide sufficient space to walk around and mix (with cup of coffee in hand). Networking and listening to peers is such a very important aspect! Additionally, some of the attendees will want to return phone-calls and will appreciate some space to hide and speak.

- Provide Free wifi - Please.
Possibly negociate vouchers with venue if the wifi is payable. A lot of us want to stay in touch, or even verify what the speakers say on tinternet.

- Practical Food.
The Quality of the lunch needs to be Acceptable, but the food should mainly be practical, and easy to consume while networking. Sandwiches are perfect, hot soup is a big risk. The sit-down lunch in "Slough" is very Good (a much appreciated classic at UKOUG). But if such quality is not on offer, then make sure the food can easily be consumed standing/walking. Balancing a hot plate plus a glass in a crowded space can be awkward.

- Facilitate shared transport after the event.
Ask publicly, around lunchtime, if anyone wants to share taxi to trainstation or airport. The RMOUG has set the golden standard for this, AFAIK.
But it is plain funny to command 5 taxis separately and form a convoy to the trainstation. And sometimes a gentle soul even offers a ride from Solihul all the way to London (Thanks Dave!).


That concludes my pedantic advice
(I'm a consultant after all - I always want to impose some unsolicited opinion).

If it helps anyone, then fine. If you think all of the above is totally obvious or ridiculous, then I apologize for wasting your time (you should have stopped reading earlier - consultants are there to be ignored, remember).

See you at some Usergroup maybe!

Oracle 11gR2 buzz and my "Thank You" to Oracle

re-Hi all, and nice to see everyone busy downloading/tweaking the 11gR2.

Must say I havnt really kept up with all the buzz, but when I looked at the new features I tried to be a-typical: I'll not go and sing praise to all the new complexities yet. I'm sure they are fine and wont cause serious trouble. They will come my way in due course.

My 11gR2 buzz ?
I'm on the lookout for the simple stuff that may just be of benefit to a large number of DBA grunts like me. For the moment, I will have to let someone else study the new intricacies of the upgraded root.sh script (Hi Martin, Jason!)

---

I have to fuss-up that the most high-tech "fixes" I did in the last year was around conventional locking (TX Enqueue, just app-logic, talk to the vendor), Dynamic-SQL (politely lean on the vendor of the app) tweaking CBO (and not even subtle, just applied some Tapio[link]) and the (system-)statistics. Most of my work didnt come close to proper rocket science, any of you could have done it. The bulk of my assignments seem to involve pushing people, rather then data-blocks. And my email-cc skills have greatly improved in the last months. Sigh.

---

Reading the "wotsnew", I still found several gems of simple (I hope) and possibly very usefull features.

There is at least one client that will be interested in "Instance Caging". The site that can benefit from this as the Developers have 100 small, but sometimes nasty databases running on a single machine with 24 CPUs. And sometimes they have an "oops" moment and one instance affects the whole (development) system. Reading up on "instance caging", it is dependent on Resource-manager. That sort of locks me in, I now Have to use this Resource manager malarky... (Guess I'm a Lazy Luddite at heart)

The IGNORE_ROW_ON_DUPKEY_INDEX may well be an instant hit. I will not be able to resist abuse of that one! The benefits are Obvious.
But... (there are at least two buts)
This new hint will lead to a lot of lazy-programmer-style stuff. Potentially as dangerous as the "whenever others" that Tom Kyte is sometimes on about.
And, on a more Friday-philosophical level [link to MWidlake], I dont like the fact that a Hint has an impact anywere but on the optimizer.
I can not stop Oracle from developing (useful!) stuff like this, but it puts "Hints" in a whole different part of the game. Food for thought there.

So let me politely say "Thank You" to Oracle for the new, simple, and easy-to-use(?) features. There are a few more ones, I will explore them further when time permits.

First got to do some prio stuff, such as booking trips and updating the Agenda [link]. Hope to see some of you in Real Life on a conference, a SIG, or a Gig somewhere.

From Google to oracle

A recent article in the Register throws some light on the different approaches by Google and M$. The article and its links are worth a careful read, no matter what hat you wear.

Reading break....



(go on, read it...! that stuff is much more important then my ramblings)


Me, of course I only read and retain what I want to agree to ...
Not hampered by too much knowledge of my own, here is my colored and limited interpretation:

The Micro$oftee boasts in management-speak about the "tremendous set of applications" and the problem to come up with "one set of KPIs that works" (sic).

The Geekle is very much focussed on performance and smooth global deployment. He speaks of "forcing developers into a confined space", and of "GFS as a baseline service".

Two items struck me in particular.


Firstly, one of the key-items put forward by the Google engineer is to "limit" the developers. The Google platform offers a very limited set of "services" to the developer and the challenge is to keep the developers inside that box.
Hearding Toads comes to mind.

The Confinement, the Limitation shows the Master


The other keyword that ticked my fancy was "GFS". The Google File System.
There is nothing that isolates infrastructure more elegantly then a file system.
The "everything is a file" adage that came with Unix is unbeatable.
A database consists of files.
A VM is a set of files.

And a "Global File System" is a very useful, and a conceptually clean "layer" to deal with.

Those of us in the process of building "farms", "estates", "grids" and "clouds" would do well to study some of the Google approach. Oracle and its practitioners (that is us) may well be able to learn a trick of two from the Google Approach.

Limitation : reduce the number of different components. But scale horizontally by having many of them.

Simplicity and Confinement : do a few things, but do them simple and do them really really well (and Often, and Fast).

Layering : Isolate everything in a "File System"


In my opinion, the "limitation" and the relative simplicity of the google platform is one of its key success factors.

That Simplicity, and the hiring of all the brightest brains on the planet.
I have seen some very good minds leave to join Google, but I never heard of a manager going there...

Oracle CBO version 12 - secret preview

Tanel Poder has the scope on this.

He got his hands (and eyes, and brain) on something that seems to have escaped from an Oracle Lab.

Have a look.

Nice one Tanel!

Simplicity is Crucial in Database Deployment

While visiting the homepage of our beloved vendor, I came across this link to "Gartner".

Gartner Research is among the most used and cited in the IT industry, so I was curious to see what was there. The title was promising:

Oracle RAC Moved to Mainstream Use

I had a good read and the one thing that struck me was the number of mentions (warnings) of "complexity" and "need for training". There is also the "confusion between ASM and CFS" to notice.

Of course, I only read what I want to read, and conclude what I want to conclude, but I will stay firmly on my view "Simplicity is King" (but complexity sells better).

compliments to metalink support

Metalink is a very positive experience.

My compliments to Oracle for their state-of-the-art 3rd generation pro-active Support system.

The good old metalink interface was Snappy and Fast and the new flash(?) interface is so clever it is just a doddle (albeit a bit obese, I do alway request for a mega-size hi-res screen, and a 3Ghz Dual-core machine, just in case).

You will notice that I cram in as much positive words as I possibly can, just to make it look like I really am a fantastic supporter of this excellent metalink support system. The search engine will love this. And may the gods of google and Redmond reward me with oodles of Good Karma, and lunches, and plane-tickets, for all this forward-facing and link-enhancing Feedback. if only I wasnt so lazy with links...


Anyway, the Rant...

Last week I had one of those refreshingly positive Metalink experiences.

An issue with "system statistics". The details are rather client/app specific, hence no further details (yet).

System_statistics?
You know, the stats that replace Multi-block-read-count and ind_cost_adjust_perc. The stats that tell the Cost-Based-Optimizer about the underlying hardware.

System stats are the stats that get stored in SYS.AUX_STATS$ with items like CPUSPEED, MBRC, SREADTIM and MXTHR (another great feat of engineering-in-progress, the CBO). For those of you who think I'm talking about stats on the SYS schema, or just the auto-gather job: Get the Book By Christian Antognini. He has what I think is a good explanation, and the Best Strategy (best practice, if you want management speak) for gathering system-stats.


OK, so we have an Issue with this gather_system_stats. And nor metalink nor google came up with a satisfactory answer. Even a phone-call to an ACE director didnt give me a resolve (but at least we agreed on possible approaches, Thx Anjo!)

So what is a consultant to do ? I reluctantly opened an SR...

After two polite and cheerful acknowledgements (Hi I'm Joe and I will help you.... Hi I'm Tom and I will help you....) but no answer whatsoever, the third "Support Analyst" had actually searched metalink and typed (pasted) some reply. Thank you.

His first reply was to read 10 or so notes on Metalink, all related to "object stats", e.g. gather_schema and gather_table stats. My colleages had already read all of those, and I had read most. I sacrificed my time on a double-check but our answer wasnt in there.

So I had to update the SR and politely point out that my question was about SYSTEM statistcs. The ones stored in SYS.AUX_STATS$, and gathered by dbms_stats.gather_SYSTEM_stats. The stats that represent the underlying hardware configuration.

Next reply from the analyst (more metalink searching on his part) was that the gathering of stats on the SYS schema was explained in ML notes Eeeeeeh.1, Grrrrr.1 and Zzzz.1... with some obviously sensible and MC (Metalink-Correct) caveats and version-dependency remarks.

I then Icey-Politely stated I did not want to offend him, but that I would really appreciate it if he read the question and my replies again, carefully. Please-pretty-please.

Maybe the question was not that trivial, after all. I had spent a full evening in an Ice-cold shopping centre with wifi trying to find the answer myself on both metalink and google.

One Weekend further, a support analyst called my mobile number. Relief. This person at least knew approximately what system-statistics were. And he called mainly to confirm and assure that he actually understood the question (Yay - Progress!). He Did understand the Issue. And the question. And he is now looking for an answer inside Oracle.

The secret of using the CBO is to not let it eat up your time and effort. And in writing this, the CBO just cost me another 30min of my life. My mistake.

Am I Positive about Metalink ?
You Bet !

That fact alone that someone now read and understood the question, and the actual effort he displayed to now find an answer is Refreshing. It restores my faith in online-support.

And metalink-alone justifies the flat-screen TV I've requested on my desk.

Irony anyone ?
(I never was good at jokes)

Planboard

Today's image is a plan board. This is of course to promote the Planboard DBA symposium. A relatively small-scale, Dutch event by "planboard". The small scale of the event makes for excellent knowledge transfer (I expect many questions that I cannot answer...) and good networking.

Kuddos to Planboard for this initiative, and my gratitude to those who have convinced their budget-holders that these events are Valuable. Believe me, they are! And they are cheaper then training too.

It is something the UKOUG has noted as well. Small and targeted events, Special Interest Groups if you like, often are the most valuable meeting.
I'd be tempted to report on a discussion I had with two DBA's over lunch at the Scottisch DBMS SIG. They might just have solved a nagging listener-connection problem from a good discussion with Joel Goodman and a few others.

And that is the kind of value you get from SIGs and Symposia.

That is Ace indeed. Oracle Ace even.

The Brits, normally fairly cool folks, have a way of saying "That is ACE!" when they are enthusiastic or excited about something.


And I feel sufficiently proud of my new status to say that myself. (I'll do some screaming therapy form a hilltop in the Ardennes this weekend, and then I'll try to refrain from looking too smug next week...)

But at the same time, I realize I owe this to many friends, customers and co-workers.

I owe this to all the sparring partners I debated with over the years (Even Nigel!).

And I owe this to all the managers that benevolently signed off the expenses for trips and presentations (Thanks JP!).

I owe it to those who let me attend their events at a reduced rate (if I name them, they will get spammed?).

And I owe this to all the Project Managers and Architects that took responsability for my Mistakes and Blunders (FredP, MikeC, Geert, ChrisC, DavidH, IanS, PeterP, PeterG, ...). I have helped a few Nasty bugs to surface as well, notably in FBIs and IOTs... Not always to the joy of my customers. Customers expect the systems to work, rather then to score bugs that feature in powerpoints by Phil Davies.

Right.
And now I need to live up to the expectation.
I am doing 3 ppts in the coming week, one in York and two in Edinburgh. And my regular customer wants an in-house presentation on top of that.
Then there is Planboard Symposium on 26 May...

But First A good night sleep, and then Back to Work.

Thank You, that was ACE

Thank You, Anjo.

(Rush job blog, as I have a few other things on, writing from the BK in Metrocentre, with funny blockage of blogger-items ...)

Anjo-YAPP-Kolk doesnt really need introducing, and I am not going to link to
him again, for fear of over-doing the link-stuff (dont want jealous webmasters, do we?) and my boss is also looking...

But Anjo basically, on a rainy evening over one of those idea-bouncing
nerdy dinners, dropped the concept, wrote the introduction, and magically made me enter the ACE-arena...

And now he twitted the news prematurely and I got a few "Gratz" mails.

All I still need to do now is to sign over my life to Larry, sit still, behave respectably (Havnt bought a suit in ages...), and then I might be allowed to put various logos on my blogs and presentations. Maybe someone will someday finally READ all this... This writing stuff isnt really my thing, I prefer to stand up in front of customers or a usergroup-audience. More Fun, less spelling-errors).

Anyway. Awaiting the last results from the jury...

And my next blog ( at SimpleOracleDba.blogspot.com) will be semi-serious, about a select count(:x) stmnt, whereby x is...

Oracle Usergroup Scotland and Northern Server Day

Or, as now two different UKOUG representatives have stated: we dont mind if you mention our events on your blog.

Well, since a lot of the internet is indeed just "Search Engine Content", and since it is mainly about link-harvesting, here is some plug-text for the Events where I myself present.
speaking of links... I refuse to point out the site that most bugs me when I do googlies on "oracle" content. you all know there is a lot of obnoxious trivial stuff around, and I am quite ashamed to go into the game of search-enginge-link-farming myself. The name "dom" comes to mind [link to Ora600.be]. Kurt did a good job of making fun of it.

I am also green with envy those who can go and see Tanel in Europe, and even Jeremiah Wilton comes to holland this summer. But I will make the effort to first promote the following (nearly free) events:

First, there is the Northern Server Day of UKOUG on 28 April 2009.
To be held in the beautiful city of York.

After you have done the touristy-check (York is Beautiful!), please also check out the content of the Meeting (just follow the UKOUG logo...). There are two streams (you may have to choose) and topics are about disasters Recovery, flashback, exadata, and (hometown of Pete Finnigan... you guessed it... ) Security.

The Northern Server day is an excellent opportunity to mix with fellow-practicioners and exchange some relevant real-world (non-sales) experience. And York is easy to reach by train from just about anywhere in the North (or anywhere else, for that matter).


Secondly, The Scots, proud as ever, of course have their own OUG, and some blue color in the logo.

The Oracle User Group Scotland DBA SIG, will be held the next day, 29 April 2009, in "Embro". And again, you can meet peers with Real World Experience who use the same products and tools you do. Come and learn from eachother. Personally, I did have a problem convincing my management that I really should visit both, but I gave them a few strong-worded arguments, backed up with links to both events (hey, links and search-engines can be your friends indeed)

Hope to see you on one, or both, of the events!


PS: Tjees, do I sound like a commercial or what ?
Even dom himself couldnt do more link-shopping, could he ?
You two (you know who you are) now Happy with this ?

Anyone interested in starting a Toon-chapter of UKOUG. Logo: black and white stripes...?

In a crisis, you call the DBA

There is renewed demand for Real DBA skills.

And I now understand why.

In these stormy days, there is an increasing need for sober, simple and honest craftsmen (and women). Solid DBAs who know their job, who do not over-stretch or over-promise, and who can tell it like it is.

It really helps that Customers have no more patience for FUDdies and timewasters.
The vendors of over-complex, every-expanding, ever more costly contraptions are the first to go. Houses of cards cannot stand the storm. And the groupies that dont carry their weight get blown away with them: They add no value to Real Application Business.

In these Fearfull times, the demand for Uncertainty and Doubt is suddenly gone, and there is a need for Real Application Solutions.

Those who tried to boast their CV by implementing ever-more-misty FUD and "business" oriented layers of complexity are now finding a deaf ear. The Customer is too busy surviving, and their shiny layered contraption may have to go in the freezer, or down the drain. Simple Real Application Survival is more important.

I have always liked a good crisis.

A crises is when you call your DBA.

A crisis is the moment, the Opportunity, to solve some Real Application Problems.

And remember Professor Dijkstra:

"Simplex Veri Sigillum"
simplicity is the hallmark of truth.

Dijkstra then went on to state:
"Unfortunately, Complexity sells better"

Customers got wise.
Customers stopped buying!

And many sensible customers are actually using this so called "crunch" to reduce the complexity. The cold wind will blow away the chaff, and leave more room or serious, quality engineering.

Simple, solid and robust systems are de rigeur again. Real Application Simplicity.


Tip for salesmen: If you want to sell anything: try selling something simple.


PS: Thanks to a Miraculous friend for inspiring this blog! I hope his presentation went well, and I told him:
In case of doubt: Choose the more Simple solution.

Real Application Simplification is the word!

Herding TOAD

You have to see the Fun side of this credit-crunch thing!

We had some great humour sprouting up inside our company when management went into cost-cut-panic. Hence the squeezed lemons.

And now this: A tech who turned maybe-manager and who will rationalize our TOAD license into "compliance".

Controlling Developers TOAD is like hearding Cats.
Actually, it is much harder then that!
(I think this was Pete Sharman's favorite line)

Here is an appropriate classic line by a Nerd from this 90s movie:

"The kind of control you are trying to exert is just not possible"



I am simply saying that Licenses eh Toads eh Life Finds a Way.

Luckily, the current office dinosaurs are not half as scary as the ones in the movie. But let me just check that My Green Friend is still legal, in case I get a spot-check on my laptop next week.


Never forget how a lean and mean american client, always brutally efficient, avoided to pay for a very complex and very bespoke report from the E-Business Suite:

"So, Who wants this report again? ... "

(....timid answer...., followed by a Grunt from the Boss)

"So what if we just get rid of him?"

Database wise, that is called Optimization by Elimination.
Funny that this client is still doing quite well...

Optimization by Elimination...
That reminds me of Dave Ensor...

My next Presentation on the Northern Server Tech Day might just be about Indexes, simple and advanced, and on what you can do if CBO doesnt "get it". Tapio and Richard Foote to the rescue.

Elimination is key. I'm still working on it.
Elimination of useless effort.
Elimination of Complexity.
Simplicity.

Of course, I do not have the Definite answer to CBO headaches. 42, and some paracetamol may still be your best bet.

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Update: Lisa and the folks at UKOUG have chosen to re-run my rather boooring presenation on "Is my Back(up) (re)covered ?". On the one hand I find it my most boooring presentation, but in the last 12 months, it has been The most asked-for topic I present on. I guess "Recovery" is even more of a fixation then the infamous CBO. I'll do a plug on the "Northern Server Day" later, but suffice to say York is a very nice town and the NS day is alsways a relaxed gathering of Oracle Professionals. Funny enough, there is a Scottisch DBA-SIG event the day after./

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Anyway, one more about Rationalizing TOAD:



Respect to those who manage to ride this herd into town succsefully !

Miracle Open Oracle World

Mooow.

This is a Shameless Plug.

I'll blame it on the credit-crunch: I was looking at a slow-ish week with a few documents to review, a few meetings left-right-centre, and especially a lot of boring car-commutes.

What saved me was a brief chat with Anjo Klok from Miracle Benelux. There were a few spaces left at the Miracle Oracle Openworld (Moo?) Event in Lalandia.

So, Im writing form the back of a minivan on my way to the Event. and to justify my use of the Miracle Taxi Service (MTS), I should give the good folks at Miracle some free publicity.

Here is the Banner


There are a few aspects that make this event unique:
First, the quality of the speakers and presentations. Secondly, there is the relatively small scale of the event. It is about the size of a good UKOUG SIG meeting, and offers a good opportunity to mix with the speakers. Mogens, the organizer, deliberately did not provide a speaker-lounge, hence the Gurus cannot hide from the hoi-polloi. Ample opportunity to harass them with questions.

Oh, and dont mention it to your manager, but the Danes also know how to throw a party, or two.

More later!

Birmingham UKOUG annual conference

If you can attend just one Oracle event per year: Come to Birmingham.

Despite the logo, the event is more then just a party:

The size of the event makes it unique and the provides a huge range of topics and speakers.

And if the bean-counters question the need for membership-fee and participation-effort, then question them on the amount of licensing- and consulting fees that need to be paid annually to this large software vendor....

Because if your employer is spending millions per year in licensing, they should at least make sure they keep checks on what other users do. A Usergroup is an excellent opportunity to discuss and argue with colleague-victims who are held hostage by the same vendor.

"The Conference" is one of the Largest and Best Organized non-Oracle-Oracle events (e.g. not organized by Oracle, but still about Oracle) on this side of the Atlantic.

Why do I really post this?

As always, the blogosphere is asked to plug, to promote and to web-Link this event into the search-engine rankings (the request went out weeks ago, and I am probably the last, fashionably late, blogger to put in an entry... But hey: there might be drinkies again at the blogger-event).

See you in Brum!

UKOUG 2008 Bloggers Assistance.

It is that time of year: the UKOUG is on with the Organisation of the next Big Yearly Conference. And as this is the 25th edition, it may just be Extra Feisty.

The call for papers is out and can be found here: http://conference.ukoug.org/




As always, the blogosphere is asked to plug, to promote and to web-Link this event into the search-engine rankings (the request went out weeks ago, and I am probably the last, fashionably late, blogger to put in an entry... But hey: there might be drinkies again at the blogger-event).

To be honest: This one is Worth It!

It is one of the Largest and Best Organized non-Oracle-Oracle events (e.g. not organized by Oracle, but still about Oracle) on this side of the Atlantic. Another good one is the SIOUG in Slovenia[link]: surprisingly Large Event and in a very nice location (yes, I was there last year, and it was Great Fun).


Time to go over my project-notes from this year to see what I can bring to the party. I had several ideas in the last months, but none of them are very "nice". But then, that is what user-groups are for maybe: Calling a Spade a Spade ?

"Upgrade Nightmares"
Indeed, why do we do it each time? why do we take the bait and the FUD each time and go through these Painful Upgrades...
My Cost+work saving tip for today would be: If you are still on 9.2 or even 8.1.7.4, and are considering to upgrade (as you should) why not show real balls and wait for 11.2 to come along?
If you have to go through the pain of an upgrade, you might as well
go to the highest possible version and be done for at least the next 2 years...

"Is my Diaster (re)Covered?"
Well... yes, but... (Oracle will never say No..)
If and Only If you took all the right precautions, and after you have managed to DIY the recovery all by yourself, Then the jovial Oracle representative is ready to share in your success!

If you had failed, then that is exactly what would have happened:
"YOU and only you, the miserably non-manual-reading, non-certified,
non-budget-spending, non-patch-applying DBA, would have Failed".
It could not possibly be the fault of those expensive Oracle products, could it?
Actually, let this narrow-escape be a lesson to you:
In future, you will need to buy more (licensed options) of these products just to make sure you show your total determination to spend your whole budget on their products.
BTW: the long winding small print on all Oracle products (the screen with the "I agree" button)states the equivalent of:
"Any disaster will still be your responsability..."


Right.
Those titles should get me in the "good book" of someone (whoever pays for my UKOUG budget), but probably not in the book of Oracle... hmmm.

In short:
If you want to know what works and what does not work with Oracle Products and Tools, then come to the UKOUG conference. The information you can get there is about as good as it gets.

See You There!

Road Trip

Normally, I perfer trains and airplanes to get to work: More time to think. Taking the car to work generally means getting stuck in traffic.

But last week we drove 2800 KM across the Alps. A drive on which we visited the SIOUG, Venice and Salzburg. All Highly recommended. Work can be such a pain...

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Driving towards the Alps takes a while, but on approach, you get these rewarding views:

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The SIOUG is held in a very nice location on the Slovenain coast. A great place to take your other half. I'm already pondering my submission for next year (The barely visible conference venue is located on the far-right corner of the picture):

The SIOUG can be blogged on the "work blog", but for a seemingly small country, it is a surprisingly Large Event with 500+ delegates. On a personal note I can say it was a Good Idea to bring the Mrs along. She was able to take valuable notes at sessions where I could not attend myself, and provided me with some interesting comments on my own presentations.

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Venice was Beautiful, Romantic, and wet. The Mrs bought a pair of wellies on day 1. For someone from a country where the sea is an ever-waiting menace (link to 1953?), it is ennerving to see how the Plazza San Marco simply inondates during high-tide. I am glad I've seen Venice before it risks sinking into the sea (it does give that impression!).

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Salzburg, the birthplace of W.A. Mozart, is simply Beautiful. Highly recommended. Very well kept and organized. And a lovely place to take your Partner.


nb: the Mrs has the camera and all the pictures are stil on Her laptop.
But then, no matter how careful you take the pictures, there are always nicer ones on the web.