2 Day Oracle Data Miner training course by Oracle University

In the past few days Oracle University has advertised a new 2 Day instructor led training course on Oracle Data Miner.

There are no advertised dates or locations for this course yet. I suppose it will depend on the level of interest in the product.

There is the overview from the Oracle University webpage

“In this course, students review the basic concepts of data mining and learn how leverage the predictive analytical power of the Oracle Database Data Mining option by using Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2. The Oracle Data Miner GUI is an extension to Oracle SQL Developer 3.0 that enables data analysts to work directly with data inside the database.

The Data Miner GUI provides intuitive tools that help you to explore the data graphically, build and evaluate multiple data mining models, apply Oracle Data Mining models to new data, and deploy Oracle Data Mining's predictions and insights throughout the enterprise. Oracle Data Miner's SQL APIs automatically mine Oracle data and deploy results in real-time. Because the data, models, and results remain in the Oracle Database, data movement is eliminated, security is maximized and information latency is minimized”

Click on the following link to access the details of the training course

http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getCourseDesc?dc=D73528GC10

To view a PDF of the course details – click here

Oracle Magazine–Winter 1994

The headline articles of the Winter 1994 edition of Oracle Magazine included topics on how an energy company migrated to client/server, towards the paperless office (it never really happened!!), Business Processing Reengineering and document management.

There was a noticeable number of articles and advertisements on reporting tools. The tools mentioned included Oracle Browser version 2.0, Oracle Data Query, Impromptu, Intelligent Query (IQ), Visual CyberQuery, R&R Report Writer, ReportSmith and SQL Assist

There was also an article called ‘An Elegant Approach to Report Generation’ and looked at how you could take the ASCII file produced by a SQL report and load it into a WordPerfect template.

We have the first mention of on Oracle Certification. ‘Database administrators and application developers can now become Oracle Certified to demonstrate their skill and competence in using Oracle systems. ……. Upon successfully completing the exam – which covers such areas as using SQL and Oracle Forms, tuning applications, and administrating and Oracle database – students will be awarded with the title of Oracle Certified Administrator and/or Oracle Certified Application Developer’.

Oracle announces the launch of their Real-Time Support System. Unlike My Oracle Support we have today, back in 1994 you needed a modem and remote communications package that could emulate a SQL*Forms support terminal type.

There was an article, by Kevin Loney, on how you could add Help documentation to your Oracle Forms applications using Oracle*Text Retrieval 2.0.

Finally there was an article by the IOUG about their International Oracle User Week in 1993. This event was held in the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando FL, where there was an attendance of 3,300 participants. This conference has since been expanded and is now call COLLABORATE and will be in Las Vegas in 2012 on 22-26 April (I wish I could be there).

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the above image or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions.

My OUG Ireland Conference Presentations

Wednesday 21st March an important for the OUG Ireland as it is the annual conference. This year we are in a new venue, the Dublin Convention Centre, on the river Liffey.

After many, many years of being an attendee of my local conference, this year I will be presenting 2 presentations. Actually, I’ll be presenting one and co-presenting another.

My first presentation, will be an introduction to Oracle Data Miner, which is now part of SQL Developer. I will be talking about the new features and some features that be part of a future presentation. Most of the presentation time will be taken up with a Demonstration of using Oracle Data Miner (ODMr). I will step through a the main steps of data mining using the ODMr tool. The data set that I will be using is based on a University in the UK who wanted to look at how data mining could be used to help them manage student retention/churn.

The second presentation will be lead by Antony Heljula, of Peak Indications, with me co-presenting or butting in on some topics. This presentation will be at a much higher level. This presentation will be aimed at analysts and managers who are looking at data mining and what it can do for them.We will look at what it can be used for, who are the main people, some sample case studies/application areas, data quality issues, etc. There will be a demonstration on how you can incorporate the data mining model, developed in the first presentation, into OBIEE Dashboards. We will be using the same UK University scenario here and we will show how data mining has helped to identify specific types students that could not be identified using other means.

Check out the full conference agenda – here

There are plenty of excellent presentations, with lots of Oracle ACE’s and Oracle ACE Directors.

Some of my other activities on the day will be:

• Talking to people about writing articles for the Oracle Scene, the user group manage. I’m the deputy editor of Oracle Scene.
• I’m also deputy chair of the Irish BI & EPM SIG, so I’ll be trying to persuade people take part in and present at future meetings.
• Finally and perhaps most importantly, I will be meeting other people in the Oracle world here in Ireland. Some of these people I know for 20+ years. Because of busy schedules sometimes the only time we get to catch-up is at the annual conference.

If you would like to talk to me about the topics covered in the presentations or about any of the about activities, look out for me during the day. I will be at the (free) drinks reception at the end of the day, so you can talk to me then. If that does not suit, then drop me an email and we can arrange to meet up.

Oracle Magazine–Fall 1993

The headline articles of the Fall 1993 edition of Oracle Magazine included topics on Multimedia Servers, Free Space Defragmentation and Geographic Information Systems.

Apart from the head line articles most of the other articles were about product announcements/updates and about how certain types of companies were using IT.

The main technical article was by Kevin Loney on freeing up free space in an Oracle 6 database using defragmentation. This was a popular topic for Oracle version 6 and 7, when disk space was expensive. It is less of an issue today.

There was an article on the Digital Highway and in Multimedia Servers. These were early indicators of Larry’s investing in the Video On-Demand servers.

The first maintenance release of Oracle 7 database was announced (Oracle 7.1), with enhancements centred around:

• Parallel Operations : performance increases, splitting of query execution, data loading and index creation tasks and execute them concurrently on multiple CPS. Permits multiple sessions running SQL*Loader using the fast bulk load i.e.direct path
• Application Development : Users can now embed PL/SQL functions in SQL statements and reference those functions in SQL expressions as if they are build-in.
• Administration : Tablespaces can be placed in read-only mode. Provides a parallel recovery mechanism.
• Standards Compliance : Oracle 7.1 is compliance with the SQL92 Entry Level standard. The ORDER BY clause can not reference SELECT list items names with a column alias.

Some of the products discussed in articles included Pro*C version 2.0, SQL*Module version 1.0, OracleWare, Oracle Graphics version 2.0, SQL*Net version 2 on MVS, SQL*Connect to SQL/400 and Oracle Card 2.0.

Apart from these product related articles, some others of interest included an advertisement for ERwin which was a product owned at that time by Logic Works.

There was a short article on the IOUG 12th Annual User Group Conference in September.

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the above image or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here.

My previous posts on Oracle Magazine
  - Winter 1993
  - Fall 1992

Rewards received in the Post today

Today I arrived home from work to find that I had received 2 parcels.

In the first parcel was

Thank you Oracle ACE Programme and OTN.

In the second parcel was an IOUG Select Contributors T-shirt. I received this because I had an article in the Q1 2012 edition of IOUG Select, on Oracle Data Miner.  Thank you IOUG.