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Oracle Database Management Strategic Directions
This blog will focus on Database Management Topics such as:
1. Enterprise Infrastructure Management across Multiple Tiers.
2. Oracle Fusion Middleware (J2EE, ADF, XML, BPEL, SOA, Web Services, ...).
3. Multi-Database management of Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, ...
4. Oracle Database Server (11g, RAC, Streams, Data Guard, RMAN, ...).
5. Application Servers (Oracle, JBoss, WebSphere, WebLogic).
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Conference wrap up. It was an outstanding conference. Here are some of the highlights for me:
- Conference was extremely well run. Absolutely fantastic conference experience.
- Excellent technical presentations on new features for Oracle Database Server 11gR2 and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR2.
- Organization of social networking for conference.
- Oracle ACEs dinner.
- Oracle live streaming video.
- Great friends.
- OTN lounge networking.
- Great food in San Francisco.
- Excellent networking and meetings during week.
- Bus transportation for all events was excellent.
- IOUG community at the conference.
Key summary points:
- Oracle will spend more R&D on Java, Solaris, SPARC and other important areas.
- Oracle 11gR2 feature/functionality is very impressive. Overall reduces cost but adds new level of complexity for DBAs.
- Virtualization is hot, Oracle, HP, Sun, Vmware all increasing VM technology for managing IT environments.
- Oracle (software) + Sun (hardware) = Speed
- Social networking for business stood out as key part of conference.
- Oracle Fusion middleware technology is key to everything Oracle is doing in Fusion Applications.
Time to head back home.
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Tonight is the big appreciation event at Treasure Island. Aerosmith, The Wailers, Three Dog Night and Roger Daltrey is a great line up. New Oracle/Sun Exadata system.
Today it's time for me to take off my Fusion Middleware hat, put on my database server hat and focus on 11gR2 features and on HA areas.
Oracle 11gR2 has tons of absolutely incredible functionality, I'm very impressed. Lots of things to reduce costs and simplify management of Oracle environments. However, there is definitely a new layer of complexity that is required to make things easier.
Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) has incredible functionality and interfaces. Very, very impressive.
Oracle RAC 11gR2 new features. Highlights include:
- RAC single node virtualized single instance.
- Oracle grid infrastructure - ASM and Clusterware.
- New installs cannot put OCR and voting files on raw partitions. Shared file system or ASM must be used.
- Policy and role separated cluster management.
- Server pools - logical division of cluster into pools of servers.
- GPnP
- More than one public network supported.
- IP service discovery.
- Grid Naming Service (GNS).
Active Data Guard New Features:
- 11gR2 lag control and DML redirect.
- Auto block media repair for primary and secondary platforms.
- OBIEE and active data guard.
- Top link and active data guard.
Daily Agenda
- Keynote: Larry Ellison discusses the state of technology. Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the keynote.
- Keynote: S. Gopalakrishnan - Seven Game Changing Trends: How Prepared Are You?
- Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle Clusterware Release 11.2
- Active Data Guard Best Practices: Standby for More Than Disaster Recovery
- Unconference presentations
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
At Oracle Open World Oracle, Sun, HP and Dell - They are all saying virtualization, virtualization, virtualization. The new OS of the data center.
At a meeting last night seen the market share for the virtualization market. It's going to get interesting. :)
Virtualization is happening and its going to pick up speed. Virtualization and consolidation are all about lowering cost and providing more flexibiilty and speed. Business is mandating more and more of this. Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
It's definitely a batten the hatches day in San Francisco. The weather is dark, gloomy, rainy and windy. However all the positive energy of the conference is the shining light.
Oracle commercials are fantastic, very funny yet are doing a great job of getting business message across.
Networking - Fantastic to get insights, perspectives, best practices, lessons learned, war stories, trends from industry leaders. Individual meetings are as valuable as sessions. Understanding how to network at conference is so important. My number one advice for networking success is to always pay it forward.
PHP is now in the enterprise and has Oracle's attention. Oracle is going to invest more and more in PHP. PHP is now in the enterprise and is now one of top three most popular programming languages. Oracle's doing things like leveraging PHP performance with Times Ten. Oracle is also investing more in Python and Ruby.
Cloud is virtualization, software, provisioning and platform as a service. Customers are looking at public, hybrid and private clouds.
Daily agenda:
- Sun Second Life meeting - Digitial Quicksand - Time Draining Habits in a Web 2.0 world.
- Keynote: Thomas Kurian - The Fusion message, importance of SOA/Web 2.0 apps to solve business challenges of disparate systems. ADF interfaces with WebCenter, very impressive. Active Data Guard in 11gR2 looks really good.
- Keynote: The Future of Enterprise Computing
- Meetings
- Hidden Gems of Oracle Data Pump
- Rein in the Chaos and Stop the Sprawl
- Bloggers meetup
Evening ended with NetApps party, then the bloggers event. Bloggers event went really well. Wrapped up the evening with a great dinner at Houston's. Went to bed early, "You can't soar with the eagles if you hoot with the owls". Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
There has been a lot of energy and talk on Sun at Oracle Open World. Presentations on Oracle Exadata with Sun hardware have been generating a lot of excitement. James Gosling has also been very popular at the conference.
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Duke has been spotted around the conference and was signing autographs at the Oracle Technology Network Lounge today. Duke said that maybe Sakila can join him at the conference next year.
Java running on 6 billion devices with over 100 million downloads. James Gosling had a funny line during keynote, "It's like the old story on eggs and ham. The chicken is involved but the pig is committed."
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
A very clear message is companies are getting a lot smarter on managing the infrastructure, application complexity and data explosion. Virtualization is going to play an increasing role in future DBA operations.
RAC New Features in Oracle Database 11gR2
New features in Oracle Database 11gR2 for RAC and ASM are significant. Before RAC new features were incremental in new releases. In Oracle Database 11gR2 RAC new features are dramatic.
Show me the money
Here are some key skills that are going to increase in demand:
- Virtualization
- ASM
- Storage
- Enterprise Architects
- Oracle Fusion Middleware technology - SOA, JDeveloper, ADF, BPEL, Web Services, XML...
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Day begins with morning keynote with Judy Simms (CMO), Safra Catz (Oracle President), Charles Phillips (Oracle President), Joel Koppleman (Primavera) and Ann Livermore (HP Exec VP). Oracle is all about innovation and integration of technology. Absolutely amazing the incredible feature/functionality in Oracle Database 11gR2 and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR2.
Oracle Technology Network Lounge
Oracle Technology Network Lounge was great today. Ran into a lot of friends. You definitely need to stop by the IOUG booth. Lots of exciting things happening in the user group. While there heard about a Cloud and virtualization Special Interest Groups getting started.
Thoughts for the day
Oracle Database 11gR2 New Features are going to change how companies manage Oracle databases. Combine that with virtualization, flash storage and hardware and I can assure you Oracle DBAs have no idea how much new technology is going to change how companies manage Oracle databases.
Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR2 has finally achieved what they've talked about for years, high powered declarative programming for building web applications. The interfaces for Oracle Enterprise Manager, SQL Developer and JDeveloper are incredibly rich with unbelievable functionality and they all integrate incredibly well together. Allowing all the interfaces to work very well together is so powerful. For example, going in and working with Oracle XML and going back and forth with OEM, SQL Builder and JDeveloper to work with XML structures is just incredible. I looked at this with the rich interfaces and all I could think was "wow", allowing all the pieces to easly integrate is absolutely empowering. By the way, new 11gR2 XML features rock!
Oracle's leveraging of Twitter, Facebook, LiveStream, schedule builder, live updates is making this a very high ROI conference. "It's by far the best conference experience I've ever had."
The "in" look at the conference is suit coat without the tie.
Absolutely incredible new functionality/features in Oracle 11gR2 are very important in today's corporate IT departments deailing with rigid infrastructures, application complexity and information explosion. Too much of IT department budget is spent on operations instead of innovation. Virtualization is key to HP's Convergence Infrastructure.
Note to IT people. People with virtualization (automation, provisioning, load planning) skills are going to be in high demand.
Ann Livermore from HP is an excellent speaker. If you are on the same stage as her, you'd better be on that day. :)
Day ended with a fantastic San Francisco evening. Had a fun meeting with an old friend at Mel's Diner. Then took the cable car to Fishermans' Wharf to meet some more friends for a relaxing evening.
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Generating a lot of online content for the Oracle Open World conference is a lot of fun. Watch out here comes the press! Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
The Oracle ACEs dinner was absolutely fantastic as always. Thanks Lillian for putting together a fantastic program. The Oracle ACEs program brings together some of the top Oracle leaders in the user community. The picture is of the new Oracle ACE tshirt. I love the shirts and coats we get in the ACEs program. Information exchanged over dinner more than pays for the the price of the Oracle conference. The Oracle ACE program is also important to me because I can make statements about Oracle version 4 or 5 and there are others there that understand what I am saying. :)
Another great shirt from the Oracle ACEs program. Too funny, but I like this shirt. :)
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Great day at Oracle Open World:
- Stopping by and visiting IOUG booth. They are giving away Tips Booklet.
- Developing Rich Internet Applications and Rich Enterprise Applications with Oracle ADF Faces
- Oracle Fusion Development Experience: An Oracle Application Development Framework Overview
- Introduction to Storing, Indexing, and Querying XML with Oracle XML Database I
- Introduction to Storing, Indexing, and Querying XML with Oracle XML Database II
- High-Performance Database Applications Using Oracle In-Memory Database Cache Scott McNealy,
- Meeting with friends for coffee before ACEs dinner
- Oracle ACEs dinner
- Probably won't be able to attend the open receptions but that's okay.
Hands on labs were of extreme high quality, well organized and put together well. I really got a lot of value out of the ADF and XML hands on labs. I enjoyed them so much I'm having a hard time stopping myself from going back to hotel and playing with 11gR2 ADF and XML new features. :)
Keynote with Scott McNealy, James Gosling, John Fowler and Larry Ellison was excellent. Highly recommend you watch the online version of this. Oracle spending over 3 billion on research and development. Combine Oracle's budget on R&D and combine that with Sun's R&D budget and its going to create an incredible R&D environment.
Highlights of Larry Ellison during keynote:
- SPARC is a incredible technology.
- MySQL competes in different market. Oracle will spend more on developing MySQL. MySQL does not compete against Oracle.
- Sun solution offers 25% better throughput with 16x better performance response time versus IBM.
- Sun hardware/software with Oracle software is a great combination.
- IBM is NOT very green compared to Sun.
Scott discussed top ten innovations he is proud of:
- NFS/PC-NFS Technology
- SPARC chip
- Sun was open source before open source was cool.
- Solaris combining BSD + UNIX System 5 was the solution to beat.
- Java
- ZFS
- Open Storage
- E10K - 64-way Solaris4.
- Project Blackbox - datacenter on wheels
- SunRay
- Flash
- Chip multithreading "CoolThreads"
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Saturday - October 10, 2009
Really nice relaxing day in the city
I arrived in San Francisco and was able to spend the day relaxing and enjoying the city. The Blue Angels were performing above the city and it was a great performance. My hotel room overlooks San Francisco bay so I was able to get a close up view of their air aerobatics, it was awesome. With some of their maneuvers it seems they were barely skimming the tops of the buildings.
Dinner with Steve Lemme
I had a great dinner with Steve Lemme. His insights in where the industry is going with virtualization are eye opening. We've had a lot of discussions on virtualization and putting together a Special Interest Group (SIG) for the Oracle user community (IOUG). It's definitely time to get this going. Virtualization is going to be one of the hottest areas in the IT industry.
Labels: Oracle Open World 2009
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Oracle definitions for MySQLers (Dolphins)
- OTN is the Oracle Technology Network, the URL is http://otn.oracle.com, it is the Oracle equivalent of dev.mysql.com. Contains software downloads, white papers, tutorials, forums, etc. Joining is free.
- Oracle Database 11gR2 is the lastest release of the new database server and it can be downloaded on Linux systems currently. The Release 2 is important because this is the main release customers migrate to. Only early adopters usually go to a Release 1 of Oracle. Expect a lot of activity at Oracle Open World in October on the Oracle Database 11gR2 release.
- Oracle Apps 11i/12i - Oracle business applications (Financials, Manufacturing, HR, etc.)
- Oracle EBS is Oracle's E-Business Suite containing Oracle business applications.
- Oracle Fusion Applications - next generation integration of Oracle EBS, Siebel, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft business applications.
- Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g - Technical foundation for Oracle Fusion business applications (Java, J2EE, Web Services, Java, BPEL, SOA, XML, ADF, Business Rules, ....)
- JDeveloper is an enterprise IDE supporting database design, UML design, PL/SQL development, XML development, Java Development, etc.
- Eclipse Enterprise Pack is a set of Oracle plugins for middleware development using the Eclipse IDE.
- Application Express (APEX) is Oracle's native web development environment. Customers can build full blown web applications running in database server. Very fast, runs natively compiled PL/SQL in database server to generate web applications.
- Oracle Weblogic Server - Application Server Oracle is basing all future middleware development on.
- Oracle Enterprise Manager (Grid Control) - Very robust enterprise tool for monitoring and managing Oracle infrastructures (operating system, databases, application servers, web services, applications, ....)
Labels: Oracle Definitions
Overview of Oracle ASM Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is volume manager and a file system that can be used to manage all storage for Oracle environments. This allows a company to strip and mirror data without having to use expensive third party volume managers. The storage management unit for ASM are disk groups. A disk group is a collection of disks that ASM manages as a single unit. ASM can distribute hot spots on a disk to distribute I/O across multiple disks. ASM provides two key advantages: - Inexpensive storage management by supporting striping and mirroring across cheap fast disks instead of purchasing expensive storage arrays.
- A consistent storage management system across different operating systems.
An exciting new feature of Oracle ASM is the Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (ACFS) is a multi-platform file system that supports storage of software, application files, executables, trace and log files, BFILEs, configuration files, audio, video, text and any other type of application data file. Key highlights: - Oracle ASM will still be used for all database files (recommended).
- Oracle ACFS will manage non-database files. ACFS will not support files that can be stored in ASM.
ACFS provides: - Dynamic file system resizing.
- Disk management through ASM disk groups.
- Mirroring capability and protection.
- Balanced I/O distribution.
- ACFS can be accessed through operating file system tools and APIs.
- Access capability through NAS, NFS and CIFS.
- Support for hundreds of thousands of files.
The ability to have a HA file system supporting striping and mirroring across multiple platforms is pretty impressive. With what I've seen so far, this is going to be a hot new feature in Oracle 11gR2. Labels: Oracle Database 11g New Features
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I found an excellent article on delivering presentations that I thought I would share with everyone. Carmine Gallo's " How to Give a Lousy Presentation" contains fifteen ways to make a bad impression. It amazes me how often you see professional speakers as well as newbies making the same common mistakes over and over again. I definitely recommend reading this article.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
DBAs have used vendor solutions for backups for years.
- In the Oracle world RMAN has been the primary tool used for Oracle backups.
- In the MySQL world replication, InnoDB hot backup have been primary tools used for backups.
However as databases grow into the two terabyte range and larger, the old ways are just not efficient any longer. In the future you will see snapshots and split mirror backups become more prominent in large database enviroments.
Snapshots and split mirror backups offered by logical volume managers and some operating systems allow a backup to be taken in a few seconds. Higher availability requirements and time windows required to perform backups are becoming bigger issues as database servers continue to grow in size.
Labels: Best Practices
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The DBA Skills Gap In going to different companies every month I am consistently seeing a DBA skills gap in the peripheral areas of being a DBA. In the old days, a DBA that understood the operating system, networking and the development environment was a pretty complete DBA. Especially since in the old days, DBAs came from the development ranks and could support developers. In today's complex database environments, there is a definite skills gap in DBAs understanding the environments around databases. DBAs don't need to be experts in these areas, but should at least be comfortable in some of the areas surrounding databases: - Operating system.
- Basic networking knowledge.
- Storage management.
- RAID levels.
- Striping and mirroring concepts.
- Middle-tier fundamentals (Application Servers, connection pooling, caching, connection best practices from Java, .NET, PHP, etc).
- J2EE environments (Web Services, WSDL, SOA, BPEL, ...).
- XML.
DBAs with peripheral skills in some of these areas are worth their weight in gold. With the complexity of database management it is getting harder and harder for new DBAs to have strong DBA skills and peripheral skills of the environment surrounding the database. Labels: Oracle DBA
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Complexity of Database Environments
Database vendors are putting in tremendous effort to reduce the complexity of database environments. However in the world of multi-tiered architectures, application servers, web technologies, storage, clustering, virtualization, Grid management, EPM, MDM as well as the constant growth in databases and performance challenges their is going to be complexity. So DBAs are going to need to constantly upgrade their skills to be ready for all the challenges surrounding database environments.
IOUG Collaborate 09 Conference Whitepapers and Podcasts
One of the ways of keeping an Oracle DBA and Developer's skills up is to attend user conferences. The whitepapers and podcasts from the IOUG Collaborate 09 conference are one way to keep up to speed on what the top Oracle user community leaders are saying. I have been reading a number of excellent whitepapers and podcasts. Below are some of the categories of whitepapers from the IOUG conference.
- Technology Directions
- Connectivity
- Governance and Corporate Compliance
- Application Express
- Service Oriented Architecture
- 11g Features
- Performance Database Tuning
- Database Programming
- Security
- Tools Evaluation
- Frameworks
- Testing/Quality Assurance
- Best Practices
- Web Development
- Crossover Topics for App Server Administrators
- Industry Best Practices
- Case Studies
- Design/Configuration
- Enterprise Integration
As a database professional make sure you are finding ways to keep your skills up. :) Labels: Collaborate 09
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
It is always important to make sure you are maintaining your skill set and marketability as an Oracle professional. In a down economy it is even more so for a DBA. So my question to you is , do you try to scale vertically or horizontally? Scaling vertically, is picking a specific area like RAC or BI and trying to maximize your expertise in that one area. If you scale horizontally you are trying to maintain expertise in a number of areas. I have focused on scaling horizontally, so I can manage HA across all tiers of an Oracle infrastructure. This has involved three key areas: - Infrastructure Management: Oracle Enterprise Manager (Grid Control)
- Database Server High Availability: Oracle RAC, Data Guard, Streams, Disaster Recovery, Performance and Backup/Recovery
- Middle-tier Management: Oracle Fusion Middleware (J2EE, Web Services, BPEL, SOA, XML, Oracle Business Rules)
Maximizing your expertise is very important these days. The traditional DBA that just knows basic administration, performance tuning and backup/recovery is the lowest common denominator and the easiest person to outsource. Here are ten areas you may want to consider for increasing your expertise and marketability as a DBA: - Managing infrastructures with Oracle Enterprise Manager (Grid Control)
- High Availability (RAC, Data Guard, Streams)
- Virtualization
- Oracle Fusion Middleware
- Oracle Applications DBA (EBS, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, Siebel, Oracle Fusion, ...)
- Oracle EPM
- Oracle Essbase and EPM
- Oracle Security
- Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
- Oracle Application Server and Portal
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Maintaining and Improving Your Technical ExpertiseThe complexity of Oracle environments and the strategic importance of Oracle databases require the Oracle DBAs constantly improve their skill sets to remain marketable. What are you doing today to maintain your expertise and your marketability in this ever increasing competitive IT market? Upcoming Skill Sets that are Increasing in ImportanceAt customer sites I see the following skill sets increasing in importance (in no particular order): - Virtualization.
- Storage management (ASM and Clustering).
- Oracle Application DBAs.
- Oracle Fusion Middleware (Java, Web Services, XML, SOA, BPEL, SOAP, WSDL, ...).
- Business Intelligence
Labels: Oracle Future Trends and Directions
Friday, April 17, 2009
 The Collaborate 09 Users Conference is going to be a conference with an excellent ROI. Some of the key areas I will be looking at include: - DBA best practices tips and tricks.
- Latest techniques in RAC, Data Guard, Streams and OEM.
- Performance tuning, performance tuning, performance tuning.
- Oracle Automatic Storage Management is a key upcoming skill for Oracle DBAs.
- Updates on Oracle Fusion Middleware technology and intergration with BEA.
- Oracle DBAs with applications knowledge will be in ever increasing demand. So attending some OAUG and Quest presentations will be good for the technical DBA.
- Looking at evolution of Oracle BI with Hyperion.
Collaborate is the key Oracle technical users conference of the year. I can't wait for the conference to begin. Labels: Collaborate 09
Thursday, April 09, 2009
The technology environments being used by startup companies is always important to understand. These environments show the next generation of where technology and business are going. After startup organizations maximize these technologies you then see these technologies grow into large organizations. In the last thirty years we have seen the importance of recognizing this. What's interesting yet not surprising is that patterns of change are occurring faster and faster. - 1980s - 2000 - During this time desktop computing, Unix, client/server, relational databases allowed small organizations to compete against the traditional big companies running IBM, DEC, Prime, Unisys who were the traditional technology powers in the 1960s and 1970s. (note: I wonder how may know even who DEC, Prime and Unisys are)
- 2000 - 2005 - During this time commodity hardware (x86), Linux, mid-range systems, clustering (growing systems horizontally instead of vertically) is where you seen tremendous growth.
- 2005 - Today - Open source has been the big growth area using Linux, MySQL, PHP, Apache to growth large scale web solutions.
- Today - - Cloud computing and Software As A Service (SAAS) have the potential to be the next big growth area.
Each of these technology shifts were first seen by startup organizations that needed to leverage the cost efficiency and effectiveness of new technology to compete against larger firms. It will be important to watch the emergence of open source, cloud computing and SAAS and the role they play in business growth and development. Labels: Cloud Computing, Technology trends
Friday, February 13, 2009
Right now a lot of professionals are not prepared to get a new job in today's economy. Their resume and approach to finding a job are totally wrong. The reason is they are using the same type of resume and approach to finding a job that they used in the .com boom days. That approach will not work today. It is very important for someone to make a major effort in their strategy for getting a new job. Here is a top ten list for finding a new IT job in today's economy. - Accomplishments: Make sure your resume focuses on accomplishments and things you have done to make companies successful. A resume showing you are a great DBA or Developer is not going to be enough. The competition is going to be too intense. You'll lose the numbers game. Your resume needs to show what you are going to do for a company and new boss. Accomplishments, accomplishments, accomplishments!
- What have you done lately: A company is not likely to care that you have tons of experience. What have you done in the last two years that separates you from all the other resumes. Focus on highly polishing your resume for the last two years, then last five years and then last ten years. In sports, your market value is going to be based on what you did last season, not ten seasons ago. It is the same in today's economic market.
- Go the extra mile: Properly research the organization, hiring department, hiring manager for the job you are interested in. A "To Whom It May Concern" cover letter is going to wind up in the trash.
- What makes you special: If you are applying for a job, it is likely 300 - 1000 other people are also. How is your resume going to get on the stack to get an interview. Your resume and cover letter has to get you the interview. Focus on that. Your interview will then focus on getting the job.
- First impression is everything: Your cover letter is more important than your resume. If your cover letter is not good enough, your resume will never get read. Make your cover letter stand out.
- Win the numbers game: You are going to be competing against hundreds of people looking for a job. Just having experience and being good at what you do is not going to be enough. There are also likely people interviewing for the position that have the inside track due to networking or people that they know. What's going to impress someone enough about you that makes you a candidate they have to look at?
- The 30 second resume: If someone is looking at hundreds of resumes they are not likely to spend more than 30 - 60 seconds looking at a resume. Your resume needs to be able to make the 30 second cut.
- Prepare: Proper preparation prevents pitiful performance. You just got an interview. You've done a great job being one of the few candidates that gets an interview. Now you have to get the job. You'd better have prepared your questions, your answers and everything you do in that interview. Someone within 15 seconds will have a feeling if they are interested in you or not. Go to the library, get on the internet, talk to friends, but you'd better be ready to completely ace an interview.
- Get better: While you are going through the interview process keep improving your skills. Make yourself more attractive to an interviewer. Are there additional skills you can be working on? Are there skills you can add more depth to?
- Life is not fair: Don't expect life to be fair. In this politically correct world we pretend people are not prejudice, are nice and will treat everyone fairly. That could not be further from the truth. Prepare yourself to win the game in an unfair world. Be the best candidate so the organization sees that you "are the one" that they have to hire.
Whatever you do, don't despair, give up or get down. Make yourself better and stronger during this process. Read books on networking. Call friends, peers, get out there. Get more involved in church, local groups, charity events, etc. to get out in front of people. Also find ways to deal with the stress. Whether it is exercise, starting a new hobby, whatever. But you have to be ready when you get the interview. And last, work your rear end off! The harder you work the luckier you will get. And most of all, good luck! :) Labels: finding a job, Getting a job, Job Tips, winning the interview game
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Today was an excellent wrap up to RMOUG training days. A summary of highlights: - For RMOUG being a local users group event, there were a large number of top Oracle presenters who flew in for the conference.
- A large number of excellent performance tuning presentations. Performance tuning was a major focus.
- The networking and interaction of the attendees was as good as I've seen at a conference in years.
- I would put the quality of all of the presentations be extremely high for the conference.
- There were no marketing presentations. Excellent focus on technical presentations with high ROI for attendees.
An observation: Oracle10gR2 has been out a long time (2005) and there has been a slow adoption rate of Oracle Database Server 11gR1. So as we start the new year, I wanted to see how have skills and tools of DBAs have evolved in the last few years and what is changing around DBAs. A few thoughts about DBAs between 2005 and 20010: - DBAs have gotten very, very good with core skills such as performance tuning, backup/recovery, ASM, RAC, partitioning, OEM, etc. So if you are a DBA you'd better have some very serious skills to compete as a senior DBA.
- DBAs are adding lots of scripts, tricks and techniques to managing Oracle database servers.
- I was surprised to see the large number of DBAs are still interested in basic DBA skills and knowledge.
- Still a small percentage of DBAs that are really good with Streams, Data Guard, XML, etc.
- A lot of DBAs are not using OEM features in 10g to manage their database servers due to licensing of management packs.
- DBAs are not migrating to managing the middle tier. For the most part DBAs are staying to the database server. There are more developers migrating to managing the middle tier, similar to how the traditional developers migrated to be come DBAs.
- There is still a long way to go to develop people's skills in Oracle Fusion Middleware (J2EE, Web Services, XML, BPEL, SOA, etc). Most people I talked to at the conference still do not even understand what Oracle Fusion Middleware is. If you ask attendees what is Oracle Fusion Middleware or why is it important, I'd bet 9 out of 10 could not answer these questions.
Overall a great success for the conference. Way to go RMOUG! Now on to IOUG Collaborate 2009 in Orlando, FL starting May 3rd 2009! Labels: RMOUG 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
My Highlights of Day One at RMOUG 2009 Training Days: - As always RMOUG is a very well run conference and the volunteers and RMOUG team are outstanding.
- Congratulations to Peggy King for a RMOUG Lifetime Achievement Award! Very well deserved.
- Tom Kyte: Went to a presentation by Tom Kyte I was very familiar with, but his presentation style, techniques and demos always make it a pleasure to attend one of his presentations.
- Debra Lilley: Excellent presentation on Fusion. It was great to have Debra deliver a detailed presentation on Oracle Fusion Middleware from the "applications" perspective. Debra has been a key leader in the Oracle Fusion Council for years and her insights and perspective on Oracle Fusion applications is invaluable.
- John VanSant: Outstanding presentation on Oracle WebLogic Application Server. This was an excellent presentation for me to attend. I've spent years trying to master the Oracle Application Server and in Oracle 11g Fusion Middleware, everything is moving over to the WebLogic Application Server. It was great to hear from one of the top Java architects, his perspective on the WebLogic application server.
A few take aways for me: - Despite working with Oracle Fusion Middleware for a few years, there is still a lot to learn as middleware technology and surrounding standards continue to evolve. The enhancements to JDeveloper and the integration of Oracle technology into the WebLogic Application Server keeps the Oracle Fusion Middleware a moving target for right now.
- I'm going to wait for the Oracle 11g WebLogic application server instead of investing heavily in Oracle WebLogic 10.3 skill development.
- The new features of Oracle Fusion Applications bring alot of incredible technology and new functionality into the next generation of Oracle business applications. The role of SOA will continue to grow in large organizations and Oracle technology is in the center of this next generation of business applications.
It was great running into so many friends at the conference. There is a lot of energy and enthusiasm at the conference. It was also excellent to get a pulse and perspective from the attendees. I heard a number of people mention presentations I was not able to attend that they really enjoyed. A great first day of the conference. Labels: George Trujillo, Oracle Training Days, RMOUG 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
As always there is a great list of upcoming conferences to look at for the upcoming year. On my wish list is: - RMOUG - Training Days - Denver, CO, February 10 - 12, 2009
- MySQL - MySQL Conference, Santa Clara, CA, April 20 - 23, 2009
- IOUG - Collaborate 2009, Orlando, FL, May 3 - 7, 2009
- JavaOne - JavaOne Conference, San Francisco, CA, June 2 - 5, 2009
- Oracle - Openworld 2009 - San Francisco, CA, October 11-15, 2009
I have not attended presentations at all the local user group conferences but the following is a list of users conferences I have attended that were excellent. - Houston Oracle Users Group
- Dallas Oracle Users Group
- Northern California Oracle Users Group
I can't recommend highly enough to get involved in your local technical user groups and start getting involved.
Monday, February 09, 2009
The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group ( RMOUG) is one of the top local Oracle user groups in the country. Their training days are February 10 - 12, 2009 at the Colorado Convention Center. On February 10th there are all day University events where you can see some of the top presenters focus on a specific topic. Then on February 11 - 12, there are the 1-2 hour presentations delivered by some of the top presenters in the Oracle world. In today's economic climate it is more important than ever to maximize your networking, improve your technical skills and understand strategic directions. For technical DBAs, Developers, Application Server Administrators, Analysts, etc. technical user conferences are one of the best ways to achieve these goals. I can't recommend highly enough to attend the RMOUG conference if you can. This year I am taking a break from presenting at conferences due to the number of side projects I am working on. However, there is incredible value in these Oracle user conferences and I plan on attending as many as I can. I thought I would go ahead and publish the presentations I plan on attending. There is no rhyme or reason for this schedule. I try to balance listening to future directions, new tips, looking at upcoming speakers, or seeing what a specific presenter has to say on a topic.
Presentations I plan on attending at RMOUG (this is tentative and may change): Tuesday: February 10, 2009 Undecided on whether to attend University event. Wed: February 11, 2009 9:00 Encryption Tom Kyte 10:30 Partitioning Tim Gorman 1:30 Tuning Advisors Donald Burleson 2:15 Best Practices Iggy Fernandez 3:15 Fusion Hands On Lynn Munsinger 5:00 Websphere John Vansant 6:00 Reception Four Seasons Ballroom Thu: February 12, 2009 9:00 Execution Plans Charlie Callaway 10:15 Dev Workshop Cary Milsap 11:15 Execution Plans Tamal Poder 1:30 Connection Pools Michael Rosenbloom 2:45 Partitioning Hermann Baer 4:00 SOA for DBAs Brad Brown I hope to run into as many friends as possible during the conference and hopefully will make a few new friends before the conference is over. You should also take a look at the upcoming IOUG Collaborate conference May 3 - 7, 2009 in Orlando, FL. Labels: George Trujillo, Oracle User Conferences, RMOUG
Friday, January 16, 2009
This is the time of year to start looking at upcoming Oracle user conferences. Attending local user groups are also an excellent way to get some great training. Upcoming Oracle user conferences I strongly recommend include:
- Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group, February 11-12 2009, Denver, CO, USA
- Hotsos Symposium, March 8-12 2009, Dallas, TX, USA
- COLLABORATE '09' Conference, May 3-7 2009, Orlando, FL ,USA
- Kaleidoscope 2009 conference, June 21 - 25 2009, Monterey, CA, USA
Local user conferences that I have attended that have been excellent include: - Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group
- Dallas Oracle Users Group
- Northern California Oracle Users Group
- New York Oracle Users Group
- Houston Oracle Users Group
Friday, December 19, 2008
I'm always being asked the following questions; "How do I stay marketable?" or "What trends are occurring in technology that impact DBAs and Developers?". The trends are pretty obvious, the question is what conclusions do we draw from them. These trends can be found at http://mysql-dba-journey.blogspot.com . Labels: Technology trends
Monday, November 03, 2008
Coming back from the Oracle Open World conference, a lot of energy was around the Oracle middleware solutions and SOA. So I found the recent projections from Gartner that SOA growth projections are shrinking. The article says the number of companies looking at going to SOA is dropping dramatically since the beginning of 2008. In this article, "Gartner also said the number of organizations already pursuing SOA shows a massive change in the future perception of SOA, from something that is essentially inevitable for all organizations in a short time to a situation where many organizations evaluated SOA and have chosen not to spend time and effort on it."
A lack of SOA expertise and no true business we also stated as key reasons for the slowdown in SOA growth projections. I found it interesting that SOA adoption is highest in Europe, moderate in the United States and lowest in Asia. Oracle is completely committed to SOA and the middleware for the Oracle Fusion Middleware applications, so the activity surrounding SOA is not likely to change around Oracle environments. However, SOA activity outside of Oracle will be interesting to monitor for the next year.
Labels: SOA
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
We've all been waiting for the big announcement from Larry Ellison at Oracle Open World. This one is definitely going to shake things up a little bit. Here at the Moscone Center it's standing room only. Safra Catz CFO for Oracle introduced the keynote speakers. HP, Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, Technology Solutions Group
By 2010 more than 1/3 of CEOs and CIOs say their current data center will be unable to meet growing needs. Their infrastructures are going to need to deal with Information explosion, CEOs demanding more from IT and an aging infrastructure of data centers.
They need to provide robust information to enable better business decisions. She said, HP blade servers have 50% of the blade server market. With the acquisition of EDS, HP is looking to manage more data centers for customers. She sees future data centers will have assets operating as a single virtual infrastructure. She showed a video of how data centers for HP have been evolving. They moved from 85 to 6 data centers. Highly emphasized blade servers. She sees virtualization as empowering deployments faster. She talked about PODs (performance-enhancing data centers) that can be built and shipped. They are portable. Want to use laser light beams instead of copper wire.
Oracle, Larry Ellison, CEO - Extreme Performance
Larry Ellison is here to talk about "Extreme Performance". Large data warehouses are doubling every few years. Current systems will not be able to handle the data bandwidth of future systems. "The Data Bandwidth Problem". Data warehouses start to slowdown at 10TB. Even the fastest disk storage systems start to fall apart at 10 TBs. Midrange storage arrays and NAS have trouble sooner. Multiple ways to solve the data bandwith problem. One way is to reduce the amount of data that needs to go from storage to database or increase the bandwidth.
Oracle is announcing Oracle's first hardware product, The Exadata Programmable Storage Server. They are partnering with HP on this. They are building intelligence into the storage to reduce data going through the pipes. It will pass query results back to database server not disk blocks. So instead of going through storage array and transferring all disk blocks to database server and database server filters out the disk blocks to generate a query result. The Exadata Storage Server. They pass the query to the storage arrays. Underlying ASM storage will perform parallel processing in the storage grid. This will take a lot of pressure off the bandwidth. Also will have wider pipes and more of them. They will have 2 Infiniband pipes. The Infiniband pipes are actually faster than the disk storage.
- 2 Intel processors: 8 cores
- 12 Disk Drives, up to 12 TB raw storage
- Oralce Enterprise Linux OS
- Oracle Parallel Query database software
The HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server Grid is available with Linux today. Other systems coming. Believe in scaling horizontally:
- Exadata Storage Grid
- Oracle Database Grid
- Fusion Middleware Grid
The Oracle HP Database Machine is the second database announcement, its all packaged for you:
- 8 Oracle database servers
- 64 Intel processsor cores
- Oracle Enterprise Linux
- Oracle Real Application Clusters
- 14 Exadata Storage Servers
- 14GB/sec data bandwidth
- 112 Intel Processor Cores
- 1000 GB disk drives
Current testing has shown 10 times to 72 times faster than current systems. He said Oracle mirrored Oracle's Primary Financial Data Warehouse and ran it on the Exadata Storage Server Grid and it ran 30 times faster. Larry compared the Oracle Database Machine and showed how they believe this new Oracle hardware is much faster than Teradata and Netezza. He believes Oracle now has a major architectural advantage. He said the delivery model is HP for systems delivery and hardware service and Oracle will provide sales and system support.
A good friend of mine looked at the pricing model for this solution and I heard numbers from 2 - 5 million dollars. So make sure you bring your checkbook for this. This I need to look at in more deail.
My understanding is that HP has exclusivity with Oracle for six months and then other companies can start working with Oracle using this technolog. Not sure about this, I have to look at it in more detail.
Labels: Evaluation of Enterprise Linux for Oracle, Exabyte Database Server, George Trujillo, Larry Ellison
Monday, September 22, 2008
Changing Role of the DBA The role of the Oracle DBA is continuing to evolve. If you look at the Oracle Open World conference anybody that is looking can see this change. The fundamental skills of the "traditional" DBA that knew administration, performance tuning and backup and recovery is not going to be enough for an Oracle DBA to stay highly marketable in the future. Another bad thing about having just the traditional skills is that those skills are the easiest to offshore.
Steve Lemme has been one of the leaders in the Oracle community discussing the evolving role of the DBA and how automation is going to also change the role of a DBA. Here is one link to look at: http::/eyeonoracle.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/04/16/can-oracle-dbas-survive-automation/#comment-12549
Increasing your marketability as an Oracle DBA So I'm always being asked what areas should a DBA be looking at. I then answer with "it depends". To be successful in any area, you have to have a passion for what you are working on. So I'm going to give my perspective on areas to be looking at if you want to stay marketable, and increase your salary. - I love what I do and I want to keep doing it! "The Technical Track" - Oracle environments are getting more and more complex. Specializing in Oracle RAC, Data Guard, Streams, OEM and managing VLDBs is an area that is continuing to increase. These additional areas are not anything special. More and more companies are going to require DBAs have skills in some of these areas.
- Show me the money! "The Money Track" - There is going to be an every increasing demand for DBAs that understand areas like Essbase, BI, OLAP, Hyperion, Stellant. Specializing in these areas is going to return you to the golden days of the dot com period. When DBA bill rates were very high and top DBAs could tell companies the salary they wanted.
- Give me Fusion or give me death. "Fusion Track" - When Oracle Fusion Applications start to gain momentum there is going to be an enormous demand for DBAs that can support Oracle applications as well as DBAs that can manage multiple tiers of an Oracle infrastructure that includes the middle-tier.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Definitely take a look at Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) SIG Sunday September 21, 2008 during Oracle Open World 2008 in San Francisco. The IOUG SIG day is going to contain technical presentations by recognized industry leaders in topics ranging from the database server, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Business Intelligence. Labels: Oracle Open World
While attending Oracle Open World (OOW) September 21 - 25 2008 attending presentations related to the BEA Integration into Oracle Fusion Middleware are going to be popular presentations. Two Oracle booths in the Oracle Campgrounds I would definitely recommend visiting include: - Oracle WebLogic Server
- Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE)
The Oracle WebLogic Server is going to be the key engine that runs Oracle Fusion applications. OEPE takes the most popular middleware development tool and provides Oracle WebLogic Server plug-ins for Eclipse 3.3 and 3.4. Labels: George Trujillo, Oracle Open World
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
BEA Welcome and Oracle's Middleware Strategic Briefing
I just finished listening to the BEA Welcome and Oracle's Middleware Strategic Briefing by Charles Phillips (President) and Thomas Kurian (Senior Vice President) at Oracle. As part of the user community, I heard a lot of good things in this presentation. Oracle is continuing to excel at integrating acquisitions into their strategic directions. The strategic roadmap for integrating BEA into Oracle Fusion Middleware looks like a win for Oracle and BEA customers. The entire presentation can be replayed using RealPlayer.
Overall, I was impressed with Thomas Kurian's details of the BEA integration into Oracle and how that impacts Oracle Fusion Middleware technology. Thomas Kurian emphasized: - Oracle's solution offers a unified solution make up of modular components.
- Key areas continue to be SOA, business intelligence, content management, Web 2.0 and process management.
- There is a clear well-defined strategy for Oracle and BEA products. This will increase customer choices for how to implement their middleware solutions.
- Oracle will continue to increase its investment in middleware technology.
- Oracle has a number of local events planned for BEA customers and partners.
Key Points in Briefing
The key points that stood out to me: - Oracle's Application Integration Architecture (AIA) is demonstrating that Oracle picked the right framework for integrating Oracle and standards based solutions into enterprise solutions. AIA is showing flexibility as Oracle technology evolves.
- The Oracle Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is still going to have JDeveloper as the key development tool but will also use an Oracle Eclipse Pack that will address all the BEA developers that have worked with Eclipse for years. This allows developers have have grown up with the Oracle JDeveloper tool and open source developers that use Eclipse to choose their IDE development tool of preference.
- Oracle ADF will continue to be a key strategic piece of developing web based applications.
- Oracle BPEL Process Manager will continue its key role in the SOA strategy.
- Oracle Business Rules and BAM are going to continue their strategic roles.
- BEA technology in areas where the BEA products or components excel, are going to be integrated into the Fusion Middleware modular components. Products like JRocket and parts of AquaLogic will strengthen Oracle Fusion Middleware in the future.
- In areas where there is overlap between Oracle and BEA products, there is going to be some merging of products. This is something that should surprise no one. Customers are going to have to address this transition area.
- BEA customers will be able to continue to use BEA products for existing support lifespans and no forced migration strategies are in place.
- BEA developer and technology groups will move into the OTN online community.
- SOA governance will include BEA AquaLogic Repository, Oracle Web Services Manager, EM SOA Management Pack, BEA AquaLogic Services Manager as key pieces.
- Enterprise Portals will use Oracle WebCenter, BEA WebLogic Portal, BEA Commerce Services, BEA Collabra, BEA Pathways and BEA Ensemble as key components.
- The Oracle Service Bus will integrate the Oracle ESB and BEA's service bus.
Summary
As the old saying goes, "the devil is in the details". However, the roadmap is clear and looks like a big win for Oracle and BEA customers. I liked knowing that my knowledge investment in areas such as Oracle ADF, BPEL, Oracle Business Rules and the Oracle Application Server continue to play a major role in Oracle Fusion Middleware. I also like knowing that leading edge components in BEA are going to integrate into the modular component design of Oracle Fusion Middleware. BEA technologists are going to have a larger transition.
Oracle Middleware expertise is going to continue to play a larger and larger role in the IT industry as Oracle Fusion applications start rolling out and as customers want to protect their current customizations to make sure they integrate into next generation business applications. Labels: Oracle Fusion Middleware
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Oracle users conference called collaborate 2008 just wrapped up. This users conference is a collaboration of three key Oracle users groups:
- Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) is a users group supporting the technology side of Oracle.
- Oracle Application Users Group (OAUG) supports users working with Oracle Applications.
- Quest International Users Group (Quest) supports users working with PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle Utilities and their complementary products and services.
This conference is the largest Oracle users conference in the world. It allows someone to attend tracks for a specific user group or to attend presentations from different users group. With my focus on the technology side, I usually attend presentations from the IOUG and then cherry pick key speakers and presentations from OAUG and Quest relating to Oracle Fusion Middleware. The OAUG and Quest both have a lot of presentations in the different Oracle application areas. All three user groups try very hard to minimize the marketing presentations and focus on presentations related to Oracle technology or functional areas of Oracle applications.
For me, I attended some excellent presentations on the database server from the IOUG and some excellent presentations on Oracle Fusion Middleware from all three groups.
This is an excellent conference to attend with outstanding presentations and tremendous networking opportunities.
Thanks again to all the outstanding volunteers who are the heart and soul of the conference from all three groups.
And special kudos to Executive Editor John Kanagaraj and the Contributing Editors of Select Magazine. Select magazine is voted every year as the number one member benefit of the IOUG. The incredible effort of the Select team results in an outstanding and high regarded product. Way to go John, Tony, Don, Paul, Arup, Andy and April!
Labels: Collaborate 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Collaborate 2008 Oracle users conference is definitely charged with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Everybody seems to love the rooms at the Hyatt. Sunday - A great start with a lot of excellent university presentations. Monday - Fusion Infusion started with George Trujillo talking about the importance of Fusion Middleware to the user community. His presentation was followed by some excellent presentations by Fusion industry leaders such as Paul Dorsey, Peter Koletzke, Eric Marcioux, Basheer Khan and Duncan Mills. The words of wisdom and insights provided by these leaders was absolutely fantastic. Monday ended with a great networking party "Oracle Tuning" that had a lot of members playing the guitar, singing songs, doing karaoke, and dancing. A great evening was had by everyone. Tuesday - A lot of great presentations on Tuning, RAC and Fusion Middleware. The hands on Fusion development experience had to be the hit of the day. Wednesday - Some excellent presentations on XML DB and Fusion Middleware. A lot of the buzz on the street is on Stellant and Hyperion. Oracle seems to be putting a lot more emphasis on WebCenter. Expect a lot more on WebCenter in the next year. Wednesday is a big party. Everybody seems to really enjoy the networking that is occurring outside of the presentations.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The one consistent part of the Oracle world is that it is constantly changing. How are you changing in this dynamic environment to make sure you stay marketable in the future. Here is a list of trends I see going on in the Oracle world. - VLDBs - Oracle databases are getting larger and larger. There is more complexity in managing very large databases running RAC, Data Guard, Streams. Storage and security are playing a larger role as well. People with strong skills sets in VLDBs are going to increase in demand.
- Oracle Fusion Middleware - This going to be a great area to expand in. People with skills in SOA, BPEL, BAM, ESB, Web Services, J2EE, ADF, JSF and XML are going to increase significantly in demand. The issue here is Oracle Fusion Applications are not rolling out yet. This demand is coming in the future. So there is time for you to get up to speed to take advantage of this future hot area.
- Application Server Administrators - People that can manage the middle tier are just as important as the Oracle DBAs. The Oracle Application Server, BEA, WebSphere are all complex applications that require a lot of skill to manage successfully.
- Application DBAs - People with DBA experience that can work with middleware developers and application server environments.
- Managing Complexity - People with strong skill sets in Grid Control or Quest and that can manage multiple tiers of an Oracle environment from the database server to the application server are going to increase in demand. DBAs that contribute more to the business versus heads down DBAs that just write scripts are needed more than ever.
- Hetergenous environments - DBAs that can manage multiple database platforms such as SQL Server, MySQL and DB2 are going to be in strong demand.
- Security - Security is playing a larger role every day. Experts in the area are going to be able to name their price.
- Open Source - The LAMP stack is playing a larger role. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP are having almost exponential growth.
There is a summary podcast at http://web.mac.com/george. Trujillo. At the site, click on Oracle Podcasts. Labels: Oracle, Oracle Future Trends and Directions
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Oracle users conference, Collaborate 2008 is coming up. It's one of highest ROIs you can get for your Oracle training dollar. Just like anything else you do that is successful, plan on how you can maximize your attendance at a conference. If you don't attend conferences on a regular basis here are a few things you can do to maximize your experience:
- Volunteer! Best way to meet new people and feel a part of the conference.
- Join! There are often Special Interest Groups (SIGs) or other groups within a conference that try to bring people with common interests together.
- Introduce yourself! Try to meet as many people as you can at the conference. Challenge yourself to meet as many people as you can as possible. Ask them questions like: What's the best presentation you've attended so far? Are there any speakers you really like and would recommend to someone new to a conference attend? What area are you focusing on at the conference? A conference is the best way to work on your communication and networking skills. Buy a book on networking and try some of the techniques. If you are new to the conference no one knows you, what do you have to lose? Ask them about what environments they are running? What challenges are they having with their technology?
- Attend get togethers! Every conference has breakfast, unconference and birds of a feather meetings and other ways to network. If one doesn't work out, don't get discouraged. Remember you don't know anyone there how can you make a mistake.
- Business cards! Bring business cards and everyone you meet give them a business card. Who knows, someone might even give you there card. :)
- Prepare! Get organized. There are tons of great books, blogs, and Internet information on 10 ten tips for introducing yourself, networking and socializing. Try them.
- Submit! Submit a presentation. Awesome way to expand your comfort level and for people to get to know you. Most important thing people want at a conference is to learn from other people's experiences. You don't have to be a top expert. Do not underestimate what you have to say?
I consider myself a pretty social person. However, I remember when I first starting going to conferences it was pretty lonely. I wasn't comfortable walking up and talking to people. The first birds of a feather meeting I went to, I walked in the door, everybody looked up at me, I froze and I walked out. I realized I was too shy but was too embarrassed to walk back in. It can get really lonely if it seems everybody else knows each other.
Since then I have ran different areas of a conference, been on expert panels, given key note presentations and been on board of directors for conferences. All of these things occurred because I was willing to push myself past my comfort zone and began to submit papers for presenting and to join different groups at conferences.
Networking is always rated first or second in terms of benefits for people that attend conferences. If you would like to increase your networking skills I would recommend you read the book "Million Dollar Networking" by Andrea Nierenberg. This will give you a lot of great ideas, recommendations and things to say to greatly increase your networking skills. You are going to spend thousands of dollars to attend the conference, why not spend another $30 and maximize the networking you can do.
Everybody attending a conference has been in your shoes. Go introduce yourself to volunteers or speakers. Ask them about ways to maximize the time at the conference and what speakers they like to see. All volunteers I guarantee you want you to have fun and enjoy the conference and they know what its like to go to a conference for the first time. Most importantly, find out if any conference volunteers are around, they are some of the coolest, most enjoyable and high energetic people you'll find at the conference. :) Labels: Collaborate 08, IOUG
Monday, February 18, 2008
There have been significant trends and changes in the IT industry. Some of them include: * Main Frame systems * Client/Server * Distributed systems * Multi-tiered platforms with application servers * Open Source It's important to understand each of these is a technology to help meet business goals. Open source is currently an area of high growth and interest in the industry. The cost benefits provide organizations with a lot of flexibility in how they put their infrastructures together. Global markets and competition are putting even more pressure on IT organizations to make the right decisions.
I was talking to a friend about what organizations are doing with open source strategies. The result of the conversation ended with it is not about an open source strategy. It is more about developing the "right customer strategy" and if and how open source can play a role in helping a customer meet their business objectives and goals.
I've always felt as a DBA/manager, the more options I have the better decisions I can make. Including open source solutions in the decision process helps make sure customers are looking at their overall strategy in addressing challenges they are facing. No one technology solution is the best solution for every problem that exists. Oracle Enterprise Edition, Oracle Standard Edition, Oracle Express, MySQL, Oracle Application Server, Apache, JBoss, BEA, Eclipse, JDeveloper, Linux, PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc. all have features that can leverage what customers are trying to do. I have nothing against Windows or IBM it has just been my preference to work with Oracle and MySQL environments. Oracle and BEA have played well in the large enterprise commercial environments. MySQL has played well in Internet and web applications. For anyone to say other vendors do not provide a good solution is pretty closed minded. What I like to do is understand what a customer is trying to do and weigh the pros and cons and let them make the decision that is best for customer.
Most companies are running different types of applications. - Java and SOA are extremely scalable and powerful solutions that are great when those benefits are needed.
- APEX is a strong Oracle solution that does not need application servers but it does require an Oracle database. APEX can be a very strong solution for Oracle Forms and Reports and legacy client/sever applications that are looking to move to a web based environment.
- Ruby on Rails and PHP are great for web based applications that do not need a lot of database features.
I have been very impressed with the feature/functionality of Oracle Express. I have not tried to deploy this in a production environment but in small case scenarios it has been really impressive. Especially if you are a technical Java or XML person. - Oracle Express and APEX can provide a strong low cost web solution.
There are current and future costs and ramifications associated with hardware, database, application server and application development decisions. Linux, APEX, Oracle Express, Oracle SQL Developer, Apache, JBoss, Ruby on Rails, PHP and SOA are providing more options than ever.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
At the RMOUG conference I was able to get a more detailed look at Oracle's Berkeley DB. I have to admit it is very coooool. I seen some XML demos using Oracle Berkeley DB and it was like waving a bone in front of a wolf's nose, it got my attention. The Oracle Berkeley DB, Oracle Berkeley DB XML and Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition are all things that really interest the technologist in me. Right now Oracle Berkeley DB cannot compete with everything MySQL brings to the table in terms of commercial and business solutions but the developer in me really wants to play with this tool.
Friday, February 15, 2008
I gave two presentations at RMOUG this year. I have retired from doing presentations at technical conferences but I had to pay a debt for crashing the RMOUG party last year. Doing a presentation was the price I had to pay. :) In all honesty, I really just wanted to help to contribute to the RMOUG because they are an excellent local Oracle user group and I wanted to help support them in any way possible. RMOUG gives out some of the coolest shirts, so I may try to come back next year to get one of the cool volunteer shirts they gave out to everyone. My two presentations were on: Understanding the MySQL Architecture for Oracle DBAs- This is a fast paced presentation focused on showing Oracle DBAs and Developers key features and benefits of using MySQL and the LAMP stack for projects. Topics will focus on: best practices for configuring a MySQL database server, understanding key differences between Oracle and MySQL and OFA versus MOCA. Attendees will also be introduced to MySQL replication and Cluster configurations. This is an excellent bootstrap presentation for developers and DBAs that may be looking at using MySQL and the LAMP stack for future projects.
- Audience: Developers and DBAs
- Summary: A bootstrap presentation focused on showing Oracle DBAs and developers key features of MySQL and the LAMP stack.
Demystifying Middleware Technologies- This presentation is designed to demystify popular Middleware technologies and explain how these technology components work together. Topics include: J2EE, Application Servers, Web Services, XML, Application Frameworks, WSDL, BPEL, SOA and business rule engines. Attendees will learn how each of these different Middleware components work together in application servers. This is an important presentation for developers and DBAs who would like to learn more about the middle-tier.
There is a podcast summary of the Demystifying Middleware Technologies presentation at web.mac.com/george.trujillo. Go to this site and then select Oracle Podcasts. I really enjoyed giving both of these presentations. I always shoot from the hip when I give presentations and let my mood and the mood of the audience determine the focus of the presentation. The MySQL presentation got a lot of enthusiasm from the Oracle DBAs because whenever I discuss the MySQL database server, Oracle DBAs are always really surprised by how much it can do and why it is growing in popularity. So this presentation was very upbeat and high energy. The Middleware presentation was more of a fireside chat on what are important things to understand about middleware technology that is not in the documentation and in the books but you really need to understand. I thank the attendees who laughed at my jokes even when they weren't funny. :) Labels: RMOUG
RMOUG ended yesterday, it was an excellent conference. There were a lot of excellent presentations. Conference highlights for me include:
- Rich Niemiec's presentation "All Uncommon Leaders" was one of the best presentations I've ever seen in my life. I've been going to business and technical conferences for about 15 years and listening to great speakers such as Gene Kranz (NASA flight director), Henry Kissinger, etc. and Rich is in the upper echelon of outstanding inspirational speakers. Way to go Rich!
- There were excellent presentations on Fusion Middleware, APEX, XQuery, etc.
- Congratulations to the speakers from Raytheon, every presentation I went to from the Raytheon team was outstanding.
- Noticed significant change in trends in topics selected and focus of presenters. When you looked at the presentation topics and how full the rooms were, you were definitely able to see where the interest resides in the Oracle user community.
- RMOUG continues to attract the top presenters in the industry, naming a few: Thomas Kyte, Jonathan Lewis (met for the first time), Peter Koletzke, Paul Dorsey, Tim Gorman, John King, Duncan Mills, Michael Ault, Steve Lemme, Don Burleson, etc. I don't mean to leave anyone out these are just the list of people I have seen speak in the last year. Speaking to any of these excellent speakers is definitely worth its weight in gold.
It just continues to boogle my mind that local companies do not send more people to conferences like RMOUG and the IOUG. With all the complexity of database and development environments it's amazing that companies will not send more employees to listen to the top industry leaders for a few hundred dollars. Oh well, it was a great conference for me.
Labels: IOUG, Oracle conference, RMOUG
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) an alliance group with the IOUG every year puts on an outstanding conference in Denver, CO. This conference is one of the best returns on investment for training you can get anywhere in the world. This years agenda looks fantastic as always. When looking at the agenda, topics that stand out to me:
- Lots of presentations on Oracle Database 11g New Features.
- Application Express (APEX).
- Oracle Fusion Middleware.
- XML.
- Security.
- Oracle development.
RMOUG as always brings together some of the top industry leaders and presenters in the United States. The agenda for this year's training days looks fantastic as always. The leaders of RMOUG understand how to put on a great conference. If in the Denver area try to attend, I believe this is one of the don't miss training opportunities of the year. RMOUG always makes you feel welcome and creates a create atmosphere.
The conference always starts with the speaker and volunteer reception. We hope to see you there.
Labels: George Trujillo, Oracle training, RMOUG, Trubix
Thursday, January 31, 2008
In today's global Internet environment we all see things are changing faster and faster every day. The side effect of this is organizations and individuals push back by trying to keep everything the same. It's more important than ever that to be thinking about: - How do we continue to adapt our business processes for a world where technology is constantly changing?
- What are our sources to make sure we have the correct business insight into open standards and open source and we are increasing value to our customers?
- Do we periodically make sure sure we have the right focus and alignment between user centricity and our corporate goals?
- How do we measure the Reliability, Availability, Service and Security (RASS) within our technical infrastructures?
"Even if you are not moving in the right direction as an organization, you should at least be pointed in the right direction". Labels: George Trujillo
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
As a student of history I went and listened to Henry Kissinger once. He said before World War I there was a tremendous amount of prosperity in the western world but everyone new war was coming. He said there was no reason for World War I to ever have occurred but everyone at that time knew it was inevitable. If you look at the IT industry today and the different acquisitions that are occurring you can start to see how the competitors and strategies are lining up. Here are a number of the key groups that will define direction and have an impact on where the IT industry is going. I picked these due to their capability to act as change agents: - Oracle - Database server, middleware, applications.
- IBM - Database server, middleware, professional services.
- SAP - Applications.
- Microsoft - Operating systems and software.
- Sun, HP and Dell - Hardware and professional services.
- Internet companies - Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, etc.
- Open Source - The companies, products and initiatives of the community.
- Web 2.0 - Wikis, Blogs, Social networks, Mashups, etc.
- The Internet - The power of connectivity and access.
- Startup companies - The fuel for the Internet.
As I said previously, 2008 is going to be a very interesting year. I'm especially interested in the database and middleware arena. New features and releases coming out towards the second half of 2008 is going to create some very interesting redirections of the IT industry. As an Oracle DBA or developer where do you see yourself in this Internet picture? Also, how are your skills evolving to stay marketable in this changing world? Labels: George Trujillo
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
This may be an interesting year of acquisitions. Oracle's purchase of BEA and Sun's purchase of MySQL are definitely starting the year out with a bang. Red Hat's purchase of JBoss is also going to be interesting. As the Internet and open source continue to evolve daily, we can definitely expect more fireworks in 2008.
Oracle right now seems to be the master of acquisitions. Oracle has proven the great ability to successfully integrate the companies they purchase. From the purchases of J.D. Edwards, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Retek, Hyperion, etc. we can expect that Oracle has a strong integration strategy for BEA. The winners are going to be Oracle customers and middleware technologists. With the power of the core of WebLogic and AquaLogic being added to Oracle's middle tier, it will add a lot of power to Oracle as it goes toe to toe with IBM for the enterprise middleware space.
From a pure technoogy view, this is a great move for Oracle. For how much Oracle paid for BEA and what Oracle will do with BEA, I'll leave it to the industry analysts and wall street to determine if it was a good purchase. I've been busy enough on the Oracle side with the BPEL process manager, SOA Suite, XML and JDeveloper platform, I'm getting a headache thinking about WebLogic and AquaLogic. Does anybody else feel their head leaking when they think about middleware. The year 2007 was a banner year for Oracle acquisitions. It will be fun to see what Oracle does in 2008.
Labels: BEA, George Trujillo, Oracle
Today, January 16, 2008, Oracle announced an agreement to acquire BEA Systems, Inc. This is sure to bring new innovativeness to the strong middleware position Oracle currently has with Oracle Fusion Middleware. BEA is a strong leader in the middleware space. With this purchase we can all expect acceleration of the SOA and Java-based technologies Oracle is currently offering today. The interoperability of Oracle Fusion Middleware and BEA will offer customers more options and flexibility with middleware solutions in the future.
The middle-tier is playing an increasing role in database architectures with identity management, SOA, BPEL, XML and Java based applications. As customers requirements become more complex, the increased options and flexibility that this acquisition will bring is important to Oracle customers. This brings the power of Oracle's BI purchases such as Hyperion and the Web 2.0 and the SOA stack that BEA has. Instead of looking at this as Oracle purchasing BEA, it is also important to also look at the new stew ingredients that Oracle and BEA have with Hyperion, Web 2.0 components, AquaLogic, XML, SOA stacks, etc. When you look at the ingredients as if a stew is being put together, the components of this stew mix that Oracle and BEA can now set on the table is pretty interesting to middleware enthusiasts.
Labels: BEA, George Trujillo, Oracle
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Oracle Open World from my perspective and a lot of people I've talked to was one of the best Oracle Open World in years. Main reasons:
- Lots of energy and excitement over Oracle products and applications.
- Great user and vendor turnout.
- Oracle and user groups (IOUG, OAUG, Quest, IOUC, HEUG, etc) all working really well together. When this happens the entire Oracle user community gains.
- Lots of innovation, Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Applications, Hyperion and Business Intelligence, Enterprise Web 2.0 and the new features in all the Oracle products.
- Great networking with Oracle Connect, unconferences and an incredible array of evening networking events.
- Great combination of Marketing presentations to understand strategic directions balanced with a very good technical presentations. There was plenty for everybody.
It was also an exciting conference for the future of the DBA. Companies have been using software, hardware and outsourcing to greatly reduce the number of working DBAs in the market. A key point that stood out to me is that there are going to be a lot of new opportunities for DBAs that are willing to learn new things they will be rewarded by being in hot demand for the next couple of years. Some key areas where growth will create a demand and high revenue for Oracle DBAs and Developers:
- Data Infrastructure Administrators (DIAs) - who can manage multiple tiers of an Oracle infrastructure. These DBAs will support the Database Server and Application Server in an enterprise.
- DBAs who can configure and support Hyperion and BI as it moves into the database. Hyperion may grow at a tremendous rate over the new few years.
- Developers who can develop and customize Oracle Fusion Applications using Oracle Fusion Middleware.
- DBAs who can configure and support the Oracle Application Server and Enterprise Web 2.0.
- DBAs who can support advanced Oracle configurations such as RAC, Streams, Data Guard and OEM.
- DBAs that can support Oracle applications.
There are additional areas but these are the three that stand out to me.
Labels: George Trujillo, Hyperion, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Open World
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