There’s no thrill in easy sailing when skies are clear and blue, there’s no joy in merely doing things which any one can do. But there is some satisfaction that is might sweet to take, when you reach a destination that you thought you’d never make.– Unknown
“It is the responsibility of leadership to work intelligently with what is given, and not waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.”
— Marcus Aurelius
Hmmm….so how do your leaders roll? Do you need to find new leaders?
Are you that leader?
Cheers,
Kent
The Oracle Data Warrior
Looks like I will be doing a bit of speaking this year at a number of events around the country, and later on, the globe (more on that later).
As usually all my talks will center around using SQL Developer Data Modeler, data modeling standards, Data Vault, agile, or a combination of all of the above.
If you have budget and time, please come out to at least one of these events this year, I would love to meet you in person and talk about the world of Oracle and Data Modeling.
If you aren’t planning to attend one of these – WHY NOT?
These are all great events with tons of learning opportunities. The networking alone is worth the price of admission.
Here is a list of the first three events confirmed on my calendar (and SURPRISE – they are NOT all Oracle related events):
In less than two weeks: The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days 2014 in Denver, Colorado. This runs from Feb 5-7 , will have at least 1,000 people and you cannot beat the price.I will be presenting Friday at 1:30PM on how I save my clients big $$ by applying repeatable processes and standards to my data models.
Follow it on twitter with #RMTD14.
Next up March 20 – 22nd , I will be participating in the 1st ever World Wide Data Vault Consortium and User Group meetup in beautiful northern Vermont near the home of my good friend, the inventor of the The Data Vault Model and Methodology, Dan Linstedt. I will be speaking about agile and data warehousing, using SDDM to do Data Vault modeling, and no doubt engaging in some lively debates with Data Vault experts from around the globe. Check out the agenda on the event page for more details on who will be speaking (hint: Bill Inmon, father of data warehousing is participating!).
The #EDW14 event is really the annual conference put on by DAMA International and the speaker list is a veritable who’s-who of the data architecture and modeling world. This year the event is in Austin, Texas on April 27 – May 1. Since that is quite close to where I live, I figured I would submit an abstract and I was honored to be accepted. I have attended this event only once before when it was in Denver (a long time ago!) and have been a member of DAMA on and off for years, but this is the first time I have been asked to speak. I am looking forward to it for sure (not sure how I will fit my talk into a 45 minute slot!). Sign up for it here.
If you are planning to attend any of these, drop me a line over Twitter or LinkedIn so we can plan to meet up.
Later.
Kent
The Oracle Data Warrior
One of the standards I recommend in my book Check List for Doing Data Model Design Reviews is to use color in your diagrams to visually differentiate types of entities or tables.
As luck would have it, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler has a feature that makes this very easy. It is Classification Types.
In the latest version. 4.0, you set these up by going to the context menu on the Design level. From that menu pick Properties. Once on the property dialog go to Settings -> Diagram -> Classification Types. (In 3.x look under Tools -> Preferences)
The default install comes with a bunch already – fact, dimensions, logging, summary, and temporary. Each has a pre-set color assigned. You can change that color by clicking on the color and selecting another option from the pallet. You can also set a prefix for each type. (Note – if you are already using a classification and change the color, when you hit apply the new color will be applied in all existing diagrams within the design.)
You add new types by clicking the green plus (+) sign and then just add in whatever you want and save.
For Data Vault modeling, I add three new types: Hub, Link, and Satellite with the colors you see in the screen shot here.
Using Classification Types to Color Code Your Diagrams
To apply a classification type to an existing table, open the table property dialog and look for the classification types node in the tree (in 4.0). In 3.x, there is a simple classification type drop down on the main property page.
Once applied, the first letter of the classification type will appear in the upper left corner of the table (see screen shot).
Another way I have used this recently was in my current data warehouse project where I have source, stage, and dimensional tables all in one design. I found I often want to show all three tiers in on diagram (sub view) for a sprint (we are using a SCRUM approach) to help the ETL programmers and QA folks have one place to go where they can see how these layers are related. So for this project, I also added a source and stage classification type.
So if you have been color coding you diagrams by hand, this tip should save you a bunch of time since you won’t have to pick the colors by hand on each table. Plus the color selection will be more consistent.
If you aren’t color coding, now would be a great time to start!
Bonus Tip: If, like me, you want to be consistent across all your designs with the types and colors, I just figured out I can hack the dl_settings.xml file to copy my classification type customizations from one design to another. Just be sure to exit and then restart SDDM after you update the file for it to take effect.
Have fun coloring your diagram! (Maybe more people will read them)
Kent
The Oracle Data Warrior
Happy New Year!
I have been busy relaxing with my family on vacation so I decided not to write a full review this year. It was a busy year in many ways (not just blogging!). If you take a look in the right column, you will see a list of recent posts, top posts, and a complete archive by month. Go crazy…
If you want some highlights and details to see what happened on Oracle Data Warrior, check out this cool report provided by WordPress. Below the report I am also posting the link for Jeff Smith’s SQL Developer year-in-review.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for my blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 46,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 17 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Well my main man Jeff Smith did a nice write up for SQL Developer. Check it out here: www.thatjeffsmith.com/archive/2013/12/the-best-of-2013-sql-developer-posts/
I was pretty busy on Twitter this year too. Here is a list of my top tweets: https://twitter.com/KentGraziano/timelines/419701819502104577.
For something fun check out the Vizify video link in my twitter profile.
For me, 2014 will be more adventures in Oracle data land, attending conferences, listening in at the BBBT, working with Dan and Sanjay on DV 2.0 stuff, and working to build and improve data models and data warehouses for my clients.
What will you do in 2014?
Cheers!
Kent G
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