2012 December General Meeting Presentations

December 2012 General Meeting

KEYNOTE:  “What’s Next for Oracle Database?”Consolidating databases onto Private Clouds, utilizing Database Services in Public Clouds, deploying Engineered  instead of manually built systems and integrating Big Data into Business Intelligence applications and dashboards are top priorities for many IT organizations. Oracle Database is fundamental to the success of IT projects like these. But what can Oracle customers anticipate next? This keynote discusses the latest innovations from Oracle Database Server Technologies that can help accelerate IT projects, protect enterprise data, lower IT costs, and add value to the business.Charles Garry has over 20 years of experience in Information Technology. He is a former Vice President and Director for META Group’s Technology Research Services. Mr. Garry’s focus has been on relational database and infrastructure design, support staffing, licensing/pricing and data management best practices. He has been a frequently requested speaker at noted database conferences such as Oracle World, IOUG, IDUG, Teradata Partners and the MySQL User Conference and was the author of a regular column for eWEEK.com. Mr. Garry was a founding member of Divine Interventures and VP of Infrastructure Strategies for Platinum Technology, and Director of Field Operations for Platinum’s data warehousing/BI division.

 

DBA TRACK:  “Exadata Demystified for Oracle DBAs”Exadata is fast – even superfast. That is not a secret anymore. But what really makes it fast? This presentation explores the various building blocks of Exadata: Storage Indexes, Cell Offloading, Smart Scan, smart Flash and more – all the components that make the database machine faster. Attendees will learn what these concepts are, how they are used, and how they can jumpstart their transition from an Oracle DBA to a DMA.

Arup Nanda has been working as an Oracle DBA for the past 17 years. Arup trains and mentors DBAs, has coauthored 4 books, written some 300 published articles (including the most popular 11g and 10g New Features Series on the Oracle Technology Network) and given numerous presentations. He is an OCP DBA, an Oracle ACE Director and a member of the Oak Table Network. In 2003, he won the coveted Oracle DBA of the Year award. Arup blogs at arup.blogspot.com.

 

DBA TRACK:  “Edition Based Redefinition: Testing Live Application Upgrades (Without Actually Being Live)”No matter how “agile” you believe your development environment to be, if you’re using PL/SQL code and patching or upgrading frequently, you’ll find that your patches and upgrades almost always incur necessary downtime. With Oracle11gR2’s edition-based redefinition, re-creating a stored procedure, changing a trigger, adding or revoking a grant, and changing a view (to name a few actions) have been made easier with the ability to access more than one occurrence of such objects to stage changes in a schema in complete isolation. This helps you to see how your changes will behave in a
production environment without their being “live”. This presentation provides an introductory discussion of the editionbased redefinition feature, the edition object introduced in Oracle 11gR2, editionable and non-editionable object types, and includes example code for code patches and schema changes, as well as caveats.

Melanie Caffrey is a senior development manager for Oracle Corporation, providing front-end and back-end Oracle solutions for the business needs of various clients. She is co-author of several technical publications including Expert PL/SQL Practices for Oracle Developers and DBAs and Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table, (Apress), as well as Oracle Web Application Programming for PL/SQL Developers and The Oracle DBA Interactive Workbook, (Prentice Hall) and she writes the SQL 101 series of articles for Oracle Magazine. She instructed
students in Columbia University’s Computer Technology and Applications program in New York City, teaching advanced Oracle database administration and PL/SQL development, and she is a frequent Oracle conference speaker.

 

DBA TRACK:  “Hey Oracle Optimizer! Don’t Mess with MY Plans”Unexpected execution plans due to system changes such as optimizer version and statistics, schema/metadata definitions, and system settings can have disastrous effects on database performance. Prior to 11g, you could not guarantee that a plan will change for the better. This has caused some DBAs to freeze execution plans and optimizer statistics. SQL Plan Management (SPM) is a new 11g feature that provides controlled plan evolution by not permitting the optimizer to select a plan that is slower than the one currently executing, thus ensuring stability and consistent SQL performance. This presentation will explain how to set up SQL plan baselines and use them effectively. Attendees will also learn the difference between SPM
compared to previous Oracle plan stability features such as Outlines and SQL Profiles.

Janis Griffin has over 25 years of Oracle DBA experience including design, development and implementation of many critical database applications. Before coming to Confio, Janis held DBA positions primarily in the Telecom/Network Industry, working with both real-time network routing databases and OLTP B2B applications. She was responsible for mentoring other DBAs on best practices in database performance tuning and managing all aspects of the Voice Network databases. Additionally, Janis has many years of experience implementing Oracle Applications (E-Business) as a consultant.
As a highly successful liaison between management and technical staff, Janis has proven to be an effective collaborator implementing cutting-edge Oracle solutions.

 

DBA TRACK:  “Partitioning: What, When & How”So you have heard about partitioning but don’t know where to start, or you are familiar with it but want to double check your design. This session explains when to do partitioning for tables and indexes, which partitioning options to choose depending upon the problem you are trying to solve – purge, performance, archival, backup or whatever, potential issues to watch out for and so on. This presentation will *not* describe the syntax and commands for partitioning, but rather how to decide which partitioning scheme to choose. Includes Oracle 11g.

See above for Arup Nanda bio.

 

DBA/DEV TRACK: “Oracle WebLogic: Foundation of Oracle Fusion Middleware”This presentation will cover JavaEE, Web Server, Application Server Models, as well as the core components of the Oracle WebLogic Application Server and explain its position in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Stack. Attendees will also learn how to install and configure WebLogic Server and deploy an application.Lawrence Manickam is the President of Toyork Systems Inc, An Oracle Gold Partner. He has 12+ years of Architecture, Administration experience in all versions of WebLogic Application Server

 

DBA/DEV TRACK:  “Database Virtualization and Instant Cloning”This presentation provides an overview of current technologies for virtualizing databases. With database virtualization and instant cloning, database copies can be made in seconds with almost no extra disk space usage. Database virtualization technology includes on-copy on-write file systems, journal file systems, point-in-time snapshots, point-in-time writeable clones, and the NFS technology stack. This technology stack will be explained and the presentation will discuss the differences in specific technologies as implemented by Oracle , Delphix, VMware, EMC, and NetApp.

Kyle Hailey is the designer of Embarcadero Technology’s DB Optimizer and a principal designer for the Oracle Enterprise Manager performance pages. He is a member of the Oracle Oak Table, co-author of Oracle Insights: Tales of the Oak Table, and was a technical editor of Oracle Wait Interface. Currently he is working with industry leading software, kernel, and filesystem designers at Delphix to take corporate data management to a new level of agility.

 

DBA/DEV TRACK:  “Mobile-Enable Enterprise Applications with Oracle ADF”This session discusses and demonstrates how Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) can easily extend Oracle Fusion Middleware and enterprise application functionality to mobile users. Whether users are accessing them from an iPhone, iPad, Android phone/tablet, or even feature phone, Oracle ADF provides a common framework to deliver browser-based as well as on-device mobile applications. Although most of the mobile platforms require extensive and expensive efforts to integrate with the enterprise platform, Oracle simply extends the enterprise platform to mobile devices through Oracle ADF, which lowers TCO and helps you deliver what really matters: compelling mobile applications for enterprise application users. This presentation explains the new ADF Mobile development fundamentals to extend Java EE enterprise applications to mobile devices and how
to leverage ADF skills to create mobile applications.

Juan Camilo Ruiz is a Principal Product Manager for Oracle Development Tools. He is a frequent speaker at Oracle user groups meetings.

 

DBA/DEV TRACK:  “Twelve Steps for Successful OBIEE/Applications Implementations”This session will provide 12 tips from the field to help implement OBIEE and BI Applications, risk free. Attendees will learn about the best practices using real world customer case studies. In addition, the full tech-stack involved in Data Warehousing and how to configure and customize it will be described as well as how companies can take their BI experience to the next level by utilizing Advanced Analytics.

Shyam Varan Nath is an OBIEE Architect with IBM and has 22 years of industry experience. He is OCP as well as Certified in OBIEE / BI Applications. He is Director of Product Integration, an IOUG Board Member, and President of IOUG’s BIWA and Exadata SIGs

 

DEVELOPER TRACK:  “Oracle Application Express 4.2 – New Features”Application Express 4.2 is known as the “mobile release”. With Oracle Application Express 4.2, APEX has evolved into a modern and productive mobile development platform. Via live demonstration, attendees will experience how easily you can optimize your own applications for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. With Oracle Application Express 4.2, APEX has been enhanced to be the underlying infrastructure of the Oracle Cloud Database service. This presentation will describe the new features in Application Express 4.2, driven by the development of the Oracle Cloud: RESTful Web Services, Responsive Web Design, Security and a new suite of Business Productivity Applications included with APEX 4.2.

Marc Sewtz is a Senior Software Development Manager at Oracle Corporation in New York. With over sixteen years of industry experience, Marc previously held roles in Consulting, Sales and Product Development and now manages a global Oracle Application Express (APEX) development team, part of the Oracle Database Tools group. Marc and his team are responsible for features such as the development of Mobile Web Applications with APEX, Reporting and Charting, Tabular Forms, Oracle Forms to APEX conversion and integration with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. Marc has a Master’s degree in computer science from the University of Applied Sciences in Wedel, Germany.

 

DEVELOPER TRACK:  “The Database Emperor has no Clothes”Transactional systems were designed for just that – transactions, namely a point in time when a purchase occurred or an event happened. Big Data is largely a result of the electronic record we now have about the activity that precedes and follows that purchase or event. This data dwarfs transactional data in terms of volume and, more importantly, it does not usually lend itself to the structure of tables and fields. This presentation will review the complex and time-consuming machinations we go through to build Data Warehouses using relational databases, and discuss Hadoop’s inherent advantages, especially where “Big Data” is involved.

David Teplow began using Oracle with version 2 in 1981, and has worked as a consultant for Database Technologies (1986-1999) and Integra Technology Consulting (2000-present). He served as president of the Northeast OUG from 1992-1999, and on the board of the IOUG from 2003-2008.

 

DEVELOPER TRACK:  “Responsive Web Design in Oracle Application Express with HTML5 and CSS3”Users are no longer tied down to their PCs. They are interacting with Web applications from an increasing array of devices  and browsers, each with its own individual screen size and resolution, providing whole new challenges to Web developers. Oracle Application Express addresses these development challenges by extending its user interface themes to support different UI types, including modern HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets 3 (CSS3)–based templates that deliver a quality experience to users regardless of screen size. This session introduces the UI-related changes in Oracle Application Express
Release 4.2 and shows how developers can incorporate modern CSS techniques and design principles such as fluid grids and media queries into their application designs.

Shakeeb Rahman is a Principal Software Developer at Oracle Corporation in Reston, Virginia. He has been a member of the Oracle Application Express (APEX) product development team for over three years and has played a key role in modernizing the look and feel of the product, including the Application Builder, Web Sheets, and Themes. Shakeeb has a keen interest in designing crisp and intuitive user interfaces that take advantage of emerging web standards (HTML5/CSS3) and applying them to several projects within Oracle, including APEX, Oracle Cloud, and Oracle Store.

See above for Marc Sewtz bio

 

IMPLEMENTATION TRACK:  “Alternative Approaches to Deploying Flash in the Data Center”Database owners face constant pressure to increase application performance. Satisfying the I/O demand of application servers (with their ever-increasing core count and memory footprint) has proven challenging for legacy storage systems. New technology, such as flash storage (SSDs) and hybrid flash arrays, promise to overcome these challenges. This presentation addresses issues surrounding SSD technology and hybrid flash deployments with a focus on network-based options for high throughput applications such as databases and analytic systems.

Erik de la Iglesia is currently the chief architect at GridIron Systems, responsible for machine learning, analytics, and flash technology. He was previously a founder and chief architect of content security pioneer Reconnex (acquired by McAfee) and architect of WebStacks (acquired by Extreme Networks). With 30 patents issued, his work has spanned full and semi-custom logic design, programmable logic systems and software applications. Erik holds a BSEE from University of Florida and an MSEE from Stanford where he was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow

 

IMPLEMENTATION TRACK:  “DBAs: Take Control of the Storage Needs for your Oracle Environments”Many database teams are trending towards managing the entire Oracle stack from the binaries down through storage. Moving away from a shared services IT model and towards a departmental team approach enables faster provisioning, reduces timeto-market, and empowers DBAs. This  presentation describes another option in owning storage that enables your Oracle team,remains an open platform, and has all of the built-in mobility, availability, continuity and recoverability that databases demand. The presentation will show how database teams can own their own storage service catalog with features like built-in web based user portal, easy administration requiring no storage skills, and select a performance level to meet their database IOPS requirements.

Sam Lucido has over 16 years experience with Oracle database (7.x – 11g) and the E-Business suite (10.6 – 12). Nine of those years were spent working at Oracle Consulting based in Chicago for the “Performance Architecture Group.” Sam now leads EMC’s Oracle Solutions Enablement group in which he is the owner of the Everything Oracle at EMC Community: www.emc.com/everythingoracle.

 

IMPLEMENTATION TRACK:  “Exadata X2/X3-8: A Critical Review”Almost every Exadata presentation is in praise of the system. While it may deserve praise, people should also be aware of the possible pitfalls. This presentation provides a look at Exadata’s up and down sides. This presentation describes the pros and cons feature-by-feature. From the Exadata storage cell-only software bits to the hardware and licensing issues, this presentation covers the possible pitfalls associated with the Exadata platform.

Mike Ault has worked with Oracle since 1990. Mike has written or co-written over 25 Oracle related books. Mike is a frequent presenter at international, national and regional Oracle user meetings.

 

IMPLEMENTATION TRACK:  “Reduce Downtime During Migrations & Upgrades”Perhaps your company has participated in a merger or acquisition and is experiencing a related data center consolidation. Or you may be considering a change in hardware platform, operating system or application upgrade. How can you reduce downtime in these situations and allow business to continue while the migration activities occur? You can minimize the downtime and risk required for upgrading your Oracle database, moving your Oracle database to a different hardware platform, or both using various methods. Although they reap long-term business benefits, migrations are a major availability
challenge that companies face today. Each method has its own trade-offs. Attendees will learn about which method is best for their organizations. Some typical migration situations include: data center and/or server consolidation, retiring older technology, platform version, and application upgrades.

Formerly a DBA, Jeffrey Surretsky has been in the IT industry for over 25 years and recently has been working at Dell Quest Software for over 12 years as a Strategic Systems Consultant where he has focused on their database solutions.