Troubleshooting Streams @ Openworld Unconference October 3, 2008

Thanks for everyone who attended the session – you were attentive, intelligent and supportive audience, I couldn’t have hoped for better. I was especially stoked to see Lewis Cunningham in the audience, since he i an expert on the topic. Thank you Lewis for giving encouraging nods throughout the session
I definitely got an appetite for speaking a bit more, and I’m now furiously scribbling and sending abstracts. I hope to see you in my future presentations. 

I promised to upload my material, so here we go:

 

• Powerpoint (including the component diagram)
• Script for creating the replication environment (intentionally buggy!) and also (working) script for removing the replication. This creates replication from HR schema to a new schema called MYHR, but only  replicates one table.
• Script with troubleshooting queries used in the session.

Good Times in Oracle Openworld September 30, 2008

I came back from Openworld to the office and for two consecutive hours I could not shut up about how wonderful it was, how much I’ve learned, new troubleshooting methods, new features, new hardware!

“You are the only person in the world who can enjoy this kind of thing” my manager said when I finally closed my mouth. The senior DBA, senior sysadmin and storage admin agreed.
“What can be so great about listening to boring marketing sessions for an entire week?” They asked.

That is the big secret, I think. During Oracle Openworld I spent only three hours listening to boring marketing sessions. 14 more hours were spent on non-boring, non-marketing sessions.
And according to my accounting I spent over 20 hours that week talking to some of the most brilliant an interesting people I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

Of course I had a great time. It was better than most of my vacations.

In many ways it was better than the previous Openworld. Last year was magical, like falling in love. This time, it was a bit like visiting an old friend. I felt more at home. I knew many people, and was very happy to talk with old friends whom I’ve never met. I felt more comfortable introducing myself to people I did not know and just chatting with anyone who happened to sit next to me in OTN lounge. I also knew better which sessions to attend and what can be happily skipped. With a little help from my friends I even worked up the nerve to give an unconference session.

The highlights: Alex Gorbachev’s Clusterware Internals, walking tour of San Francisco with Rob van-Wijk, Blogger Meetup, Amazon’s session, chatting with Nicolas and Rob, RAT session by Jim Czuprinksi, complaining about streams and clusterware issues to product teams in Demogrounds, 11gR2 Beta briefing, meeting Frits Hoogland and Jacco Landlust, Andrew Holdsworth sessions, Tom Kyte sessions, Lary Ellison’s keynote, seeing Mogens Norgaad naked (video only), Tim Hall’s Spore demo, Tanel Poder’s Advanced Troubleshooting, Greg Marsden’s Linux Tuning talking with Fuadar, Justin Cave and Lewis Cunningham and my own unconference sessions.

I only regret not getting Tom Kyte to sign my chest

Streams Replication At Oracle Openworld Unconference September 24, 2008

I’m planning to give a session about Oracle Streams at the Openworld Unconference. Thursday at 1pm.

I’ll give a short “intro to streams” and then I’ll demonstrate basic troubleshooting techniques. I have streams configured on my laptop, and I’m planning to break it repeatedly for your amusement

Please drop by. Oracle Unconference looks very empty this year, and I’m worried about an empty room even more than I’m worried about speaking in front of people. I’ll be very happy to answer lots of audiance questions, even if not directly related to streams.

OpenWorld Once Again September 4, 2008

In 18 days I’ll be attending Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco.

Last year I was extremely nervous about attending – It was my first time at a conference ever. This year I feel like a veteran.
I recognize many of the speakers, some are almost friends (even if we never met). I have a much better feel toward which sessions are worthwhile and which are a waste of time.
I’m preparing lists of annoying questions to ask at the demo grounds (Single best feature of OpenWorld which I didn’t use nearly enough last year).
I know that when I’ll sit down in OTN lounge, I’ll recognize few faces. Meet friends. Get to talk to smart people who are just as passionate as I am about Oracle.
I’m planning to give an unconference session, streams live demo is itching my fingertips waiting to get out. Writing this here is of course a way to keep me from chickening out like I did last year.

One of the many things I’m planning to do this year different than last year is to attend more diverse sessions. Some for DBAs and some for developers, some about performance and some about availability, some about the OS and some about applications, some about things I do all the time and some about technologies I barely touch.

I’m looking forward to meet great people, hear interesting sessions, have interesting conversations, and come back to work hyped up and energized about all things Oracle.

OpenWorld 2008 – Did you vote? July 8, 2008

In a classic better-late-than-never move, I noticed that Oracle Mix site allows you to vote on Open World sessions. I should have noticed it before (say, in time to submit my own ideas!), because people mentioned it to me, but this just slipped through.

At least it was not too late to vote for interesting sessions. I was amazed by the number of sessions proposed. Lots of the sessions sound sexy and relevant. The best thing is that when looking through the sessions that appealed to me, I noticed that I don’t recognize many of the names. This is terrific, because as much as I enjoy hearing the usual gurus, sometimes I feel that after three conferences things begin to repeat themselves with same speakers and same topics all the time. I assume that this is because conference organizers prefer to stay on the safe side with well known gurus, but I really welcome the opportunity to hear some new voices in the Oracle community.

So if you didn’t vote yet, I recommend looking through the proposal lists. I bet you’ll find a few that you’ll want to vote for.