Live to Ride....

Agenda Update! Here is what I plan to do in the next two months...
(remind me to update the list to the right... I'm not very disciplined blogger these days - will try to prioritize soon...)

As some of you know, I plan to visit several OUG events by Motorbike. Start date is 24 May, leaving from Spa, B. And return on the 23rd to The Hague, back to work (if I'm still in one piece, if my customers will still have me, if my colleagues havnt filled my seats..)

Firstly, the Bike (I named her Beauty-Case, you can check why) the Bike gets a large maintenance and new tyres (rear tyre is in dire need, I ride it way too much...). After I break in the tyres, it is off to the East, leaving on 24th.

If it all works out, than this is approximately the proposed route (c/o Google maps, right-click to new tab to zoom):

Of course, I'm posting the map with a purpose: If you live along the route and fancy a coffee or light meal, drop me a line.

First destination is SrOUG, which runs from 28 to 30May:

Next is a trek north, through Hungaria, Slovakia, Poland, then the Via Baltica through Latvia and  Lithuania, on to Talinn in Estonia, where I have a Tallink ferry to catch for Helsinki.

OUGF happens at Haltia (google it!) on 05 and 06Jun.

After OUGF, which includes a night of Camping (Glamping, I hope), it is Ferry again to Tallin, and a trek south to Sandanski (that is surprisingly close to Greece, so yeah; South). Sandanski is where BGOUG takes place from 13 to 15Jun.

Proud to display this logo:

Then it is back to The Hague where, on 23Jun, I hope to take up residence in a new(ly rented) apartment with a nice View!

And back to work - the finance-chief of PDVBV (that is me!) will want me to fill the coffers after such a splash (and I might need a new rear tyre again).


BTW: Cross  fingers that the Internet connection at the apartment works by then. Imagine returning "home" after 9000km and no connectivity to brag about it...

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.

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!)

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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.

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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.

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.