Jeff Smith (@thatjeffsmith) just posted a great little piece about why you can’t afford to miss this year’s ODTUG event in New Orleans: KScope13. As usually I will be speaking there as well and running my now annual Morning Chi Gung classes.
See you there.
Kent
So on this 2nd and final day of the annual RMOUG Training Days event, I started out by attending an excellent session on Exadata for Oracle DBAs.
Even though I am not a DBA these days I thought it would be good for me to get a better understanding of Oracle’s engineered Exadata machine.
I feel very luck to have attended this session given by Oracle Technologist of the Year, and ACE Director, Arup Nanda. He had some of the best graphics and clearest explanations of the basic anatomy of an Oracle database I have ever seen or heard.
Technologist of the Year, Arup Nanda, Database Machine Administrator
He gave some pretty detailed explanations of what he called the “magic” of Exadata and why it works so well. Arup even coined a new job title, which he claims for himself, DMA – Database Machine Administrator. Because Exadata is an engineered system, it contains database, storage, and networking all in one rack. This requires some skills beyond what most dbas have or are expected to have.
He gave us a nice break down based on his experience using Exadata.
Break down of skills needed to be a successful Exadata DMA
After this talk I can see why he was give the awards. He really knows his stuff and how to communicate it. You can follow him on Twitter @ArupNanda and see for yourself.
Next I went to see my friend,and ACE Director, Galo Balda from Austin, Texas. He gave a very informative talk about Regular Expressions.
ACE Director, Galo Balda, doing his very first presentation
His presentation was very informative with easy to understand examples of how to write and use regular expression and associated metacharacters to do some pretty neat things with SQL. If you attended the conference be sure to download his slides. They will make a great cheat sheet.
You can follow him on Twitter @GaloBalda or go to his blog.
After a nice vegetarian lunch, I went to see Maria Coglan talk about using (or not using) hints in SQL and how it affects the optimizer. Last year at Kscope12, I attended one of her optimizer sessions and felt like my head would explode becuase of all the information she gave. She assured me this talk would not be as bad.
She was right. It was a very informative talk.
A full house to see Maria Coglan discuss Hints and the Optimizer
Her main message was to always use caution when using hints. You really need to understand what you are or doing or you could make your application or reports run worse rather than better.
Maria even explained how to work with applications that already have hints embedded in them.
Approach to ignoring hints in an existing application
Get her slides and follow her on Twitter @SQLMaria
After Maria’s session I did my final session for the event. I talked about my Top 10 favorite cool tools in SQL Developer Data Modeler. There were 30 or so people in attendance. Most of them even stayed through the whole talk!
Which is pretty good since I ran over my time. There was just so many tips and tricks to show. I will put it up on SlideShare in the next few days.
The final session for the event that I attended was done by RMOUG President, my long time friend, Tim Gorman.
Tim talked about the various options for data compression in the Oracle stack.
Tim Gorman (in the shadows) giving the last talk
Tim gave some pretty detailed explanations and tried to depict how compression works with some nice graphics. He also told us which ones cost additional license fees.
Data Lifecycle when using Compress for OLTPut how have
For me, the most useful part was his explanation about how having columns at the end of the table allows a default sort of compression to take place. I had heard this a long time ago. It was the reason so many of us were taught to put all mandatory columns at the beginning of the table – it saves space. In recent years I have been told by various DBAs that the rule no longer applies or made sense.
They were wrong! Tim gave us a real world example of how putting populated columns at the end of a table cost a lot of extra space to be used.
I will be taking that tidbit of information back to the office for sure.
You can follow Tim on Twitter @timothyjgorman.
A side note about RMOUG: At lunch, Tim shared with the attendees an agenda from 1991 for the 2nd RMOUG Training Days. We now realize that we started this event in 1990 and next year will be the 25th anniversary! (I say “we” because I was part of the planning committee back then and one of the early speakers too).
Another interesting notes was that 2/3 of the speakers came form out of town. Many, including me, paid there own way. Several speakers and attendees I know even had to take vacation time from their jobs to attend.
It is that important and that good an event!
So put it on your calendar to attend what is probably the most successful and longest running regional Oracle user conferences in the country. It will be in early February 2014. Watch www.rmoug.org for details.
And of ocurse count on me to post it here too.
Ciao for now! I am off to ski with some RMOUGers tomorrow.
Kent
Today I arrived in Denver to attend the annual Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days conference. It is one of, if not the, most successful local Oracle user group events in the United States (and has been for many years). For the past few years it has been held at the Denver Convention Center (which is guarded by a big blue bear).
Big Blue Bear
It has a been a few years since I have been able to attend and I am glad to be back. I am attending and presenting (as I posted last week).
Today, I was mostly in attendee mode and got to attend a lab session hosted by a few of my friends from Oracle product management (Jeff Smith, Kris Rice, and David Peake). They did an end-to-end, soup-to-nuts session taking the attendees through using SQL Developer Data Modeler to design a database, then SQL Developer to build the tables, then Oracle Application Express (APEX) to build a web based interface to add and view data in that database.
OTN Developer Lab
And all this was done using an Oracle virtual machine downloadable from OTN.
Unfortunately it would not load on my machine (figures) so I paired up with my long-time friend Jon Arnold and did the labs together.
David Peake Teaches APEX
I learned quite few interesting things and got re-introduced to APEX (which s a very cool tool). I need to look some more at the Interactive Reporting feature for sure.
The coolest thing was that APEX can be used to build applications that run on mobile devices. All point and click development to do it too. APEX has been used to build some pretty big apps for some pretty big companies (including Oracle).
APEX Mobile
Another cool thing I learned was that the default install of APEX (a no-cost option with every Oracle database) comes with a bunch of packaged application that are ready to use and a bunch of sample apps for oyu to start with to try out different APEX features. You really need to check this tool out.
Tomorrow will be busy.
I was officially added to the agenda at 7 AM to teach my morning Chi Gung class.
Then I have two presentations to do and a networking lunch session.
Then dinner with some friends and soe good Colorado Mexican food (and adult beverages).
Stay tuned…
Kent
Are you ready?
Are you coming?
The annual Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days kicks off next Monday, February 11 at the Denver Convention Center. I can hardly wait! I love the beautiful surroundings and vibe of Denver and the mountains. It is a great place to hang out, relax, and sharpen your skills.
I will be there attending sessions, networking with some old friends, and doing three presentations. Here they are:
Five Ways to Make Data Modeling Fun Tuesday, 11:15 – 12:15
Using OBIEE and Data Vault to Virtualize Your BI Environment: An Agile Approach Tuesday, 5:15 – 6:15 PM
Top 10 Cool Features in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Wednesday 2:45 – 3:45 PM
In addition to these officially scheduled sessions, I will be conducting Morning Chi Gung sessions at 7 Am both Tuesday and Wednesday morning for those interested. Not sure yet where we will gather for this but probably in the Convention Center somewhere. (Keep an eye on my twitter stream @KentGraziano for details once I am on site next Monday).
The Chi Gung sessions are staring to be a traditon with me at various Oracle user events, so please come and join our growing tribe. If you are not sure what Chi Gung is, check out my post from last summer for a video introduction. For those of us coming from lower altitude, these morning sessions should help us adjust a little easier. Since the air is a bit thinner in Denver, learning to breathe deeply will be a useful skill. 
If you are signed up and planning to attend, I look forward to meeting up with you. If not, get signed up soon and get yourself to Denver to enjoy a little Rocky Mountain high with 1,000 of the brightest Oracle minds in the world.
See ya!
Kent
Hard to believe it is nearly the end of the year. But…it is here.
I will be taking time until the end of the year so I am doing my “year-end” post now.
It was a significant year for me with many new things, events, conferences, and clients. Here is a list, by month of a few of them:
I launched this blog – Oracle Data Warrior! At the stroke of midnight on January 1, I hit publish for this posting. So far I have had over 22,000 views on the site with the best/biggest day drawing 294 views on September 24th. People came to check out a free promotion for my new Kindle book.
So far 78 of you have subscribed to this blog and hence get notification whenever I post something new.
Thanks for your support! (For the rest – subscribed now so you don’t miss anything in 2013).
In January I also launched the Year of the Data Vault by going to Dan Linstedt’s Data Vault certification class in Montreal. It was a great class. Check the January archive for my posts about the class.
I posted what has turned out to be THE most popular article so far: The best FREE data modeling tool ever. So far it has had 8,213 views! Wow! (of course since a bunch of you just clicked the link that number has gone up again)
Also big in February (every year) is the RMOUG Training Days in Denver, Colorado. This year I did the first ever remote presentation via skype as part of their pre-conference seminar on data warehousing. My presentation was, of course, on Data Vault. There were a few technical issues but with the help of my good friend Jerry Ireland we got through it fine.
(Note: For RMOUG 2013, I will actually be presenting in person).
Two really big things this month:
Business wise, I started the 1099 contract work at MD Anderson Cancer Center and got to work building a data vault for one of their internal projects.
On the blog, I made some modification to the layout and added a War Chest page with links to some resources that cost a little money (as opposed to my White Paper page which has Free stuff).
After one month of being an independent contractor I bought my first smartphone – an LG Nitro. I am not really a huge gadget guy so I had put this off for sometime but finally gave in so I could tweet at the upcoming ODTUG conference in San Antonio.
Of course this means I signed up for Twitter. You can find me there at https://twitter.com/KentGraziano.
June was HUGE month.
Slowed down a bit here. Recovered from KScope12 (started planning for KScope13). Wrote a bit about work/life balance and posted this cool InfoGraphic.
Another first for me in August was I published my first eBook on Kindle about data model design reviews.
Then we had an excellent family vacation with my father back east. We drove through the Adirondack Mountains in New York State and then to the Green Mountains of Vermont where we stayed at the Trapp Family Lodge. It gets my highest recommendation for a family friendly, environmentally aware, upscale, outdoor vacation resort. Pay the money and go – you only live once!
While on the trip, my nine year old son came up with a great idea for a blog post: How to make data modeling fun. When we got back, I wrote and posted it here. (Soon it will be a presentation at a conference near you)
This was another big and fun month – all about Oracle Open World 2012 and getting to attend my first Oracle ACE Director meeting at Oracle HQ. Like at KScope, I blogged every night in the wee hours to capture what I saw and learned that day. The smart phone got a lot of use taking pictures in session and around San Francisco. It is all logged in the September archives.
Actually OOW 2012 bled over into October so there are even more posts and pictures in the October Archive folder.
The other biggie in October was that I finished out my contract at MD Anderson Cancer Center and started a new gig at McKesson Specialty Health (US Oncology). This has turned out to be a great project with a good team (like I had at MD Anderson), but with the added benefit of only being 9 miles from my house. This is the shortest commute I have had since college! Saves me 2.5 hours a day in driving.
Needless to say, that is a very nice aspect of the job.
This month was less about data (and my normal work) and more about fitness, a new habit, and being a warrior. (Though I did get accepted to present at the RMOUG Training Days in Denver.)
The highlight of the month was attending the 20th Anniversary celebration for the International Combat Hapkido Federation. I have been attending their workshops and seminars for over 15 of those years and have had the privilege to train with several of their master as well as their founder and grand master John Pellegrini. Combat Hapkido is a very practical martial art for self-defense and a lot of fun to learn and practice.
It was a great event with back to back workshops (i.e., work outs!) with many masters and grand masters. We got training in Tai Chi, stretching, conditioning, kicking, Filipino Escrima, ground survival, and pressure points. There were actual martial arts celebs in attendance including Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Cynthia Rothrock, and Stephen Hayes.
Since my main art is Tae Kwon Do, I was very privileged to meet and train with Grandmaster Bill Wallace (who actually has signed my last two black belt certificates along with GM Pellegrini). GM Wallace’s session was challenging and fun. He is quite entertaining.
Me (right) with GM Superfoot Wallace (center) and Master Ramon Voils
At 67 years old, GM Wallace can kick faster and higher than pretty much everyone I have every trained with. I can only hope to be doing so well when I reach that age.
This is why he is called “Superfoot”
For more pictures from the event, you can subscribe to my newsfeed on Facebook or like my page. You might even find a picture of me in a suit!
And now we are up to this final month of 2012. I have been very busy with my work at McKesson so have only got one post out about the newest release of SQL Developer Data Modeler (which I use nearly every day!).
I did however recently get notification that I had several papers accepted for presentation at the ODTUG KScope13 conference in New Orleans next June. Be sure to register for that event too!
Yes it was quite the busy year…
Stay tuned for 2013 and see what happens.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Kent
The Oracle Data Warrior
Kent - The Oracle Data Warrior
