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.

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...

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).