Events for Oracle Users in Ireland-November 2012

November (2012) is going to be a busy month for Oracle users in Ireland. There is a mixture of Oracle User Group events, with Oracle Day and the OTN Developer Days. To round off the year we have the UKOUG Conference during the first week in December.

Here are the dates and web links for each event.

Oracle User Group

The BI & EPM SIG will be having their next meeting on the Tuesday 20th November. This is almost a full day event, with presentations from End Users, Partners and Oracle product management. The main focus of the day will be on EPM, but will also be of interest to BI people.

As with all SIG meetings, this SIG will be held in the Oracle office in East Point (Block H). Things kick off at 9am and are due to finish around 4pm with plenty of tea/coffee and a free lunch too.

Remember to follow OUG Ireland on twitter using  #oug_ire

Oracle Day

Oracle will be having their Oracle Day 2012, on Thursday 15th, in Croke Park. Here is some of the blurb about the event,  “…to learn how Oracle simplifies IT, whether it’s by engineering hardware and software to work together or making new technologies work for the modern enterprise. Sessions and keynotes feature an elite roster of Oracle solutions experts, partners and business associates, as well as fascinating user case studies and live demos.”

This is a full day event from 9am to 5pm with 3 parallel streams focusing on Big Data, Enterprise Applications and the Cloud.

Click here to register for this event.

Click here for the full details and agenda.

OTN Developer Days

Oracle run their developer days about 3 times a year in Dublin. These events are run like a Hands-on Lab. So most of the work during the day is by yourself. You are provided with a workbook, a laptop and a virtual machine configured for the hands-on lab. This November we have the following developers days in the Oracle office in East Point, Dublin.

Tuesday 27th November (9:45-15:00) : Real Application Testing

Wednesday 28th November (9:00-14:00) : Partitioning/Advanced Compression

Thursday 29th November (9:15-13:30) : Database Security

Friday 30th November (9:45-16:00) : Business Process Management Using BPM Suite 11g

As you can see we have almost a full week of FREE training from Oracle. So there is no reason not to sign up for these days.

UKOUG Conference – in Birmingham

In December we have the annual UKOUG Conference. This is the largest Oracle User Group conference in Europe and the largest outside of the USA. At this conference you will have some of the main speakers and presentations from Oracle Open World, along with a range of speakers from all over the work.

In keeping with previous years there will be the OakTable Sunday and new this year there will be a Middleware Sunday. You need to register separately for these events. Here are the links

OakTable Sunday

Middleware Sunday

The main conference kicks off on the Monday morning with a very full agenda for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There are a number of social events on the Monday and Tuesday, so come well rested.

On the Monday evening there is the focus pubs. This year it seems to have an Irish Pub theme. At the focus pub event there will be table for each of the user group SIGs. 

Come and join me at the Ireland table on the Monday evening.

The full agenda in now live and you can get all the details here.

I will be giving a presentation on the Tuesday afternoon titled Getting Real Business Value from Predictive Analytics (OBIEE and Oracle Data Mining). This is a joint presentation with Antony Heljula of Peak Indicators.

OOW content/slides are still available

For those people who where lucky to get the Oracle Open World (OOW) and for all the many thousands of people who were not able to make it to OOW, the slides from almost all the presentations are still available.

To get your hands on these presentation slides, all you need to do is to go to the Oracle Open World website

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html

Click on the Tools option on the menu and then click on Schedule Builder. You will need your Oracle Single-Sign-On username and password. Once entered you should get conference content and Schedule page.

You can search the content catalog for the presentations you are interested in and download the presentations.

There was been some mutterings that the presentation slides and access to the schedule build will be restricted at some time in the near future.

So get the conference material now.

While you are on the Oracle Open World site, why not sign up for notifications for the 2013 conference. They will probably start around early March.

ASCII to character conversion in Oracle

Here is code code that will produce formatted output of the characters and their ascii values. The formatting is broken into lower case letters, uppercase letters, characters with an ascii value less than an ‘a’ and characters whose ascii characters are greater than a ‘z.

Code

set serveroutput on FORMAT WRAPPED
DECLARE
    vTab           VARCHAR2(5) := CHR(9);
    vNum          NUMBER := 0;
    vString       VARCHAR2(80) := '';
BEGIN  
   --
   -- Formatted lower case letter to ASCII values
   --
   dbms_output.put_line('Formatted Lower Case Letters to ASCII values');
   dbms_output.put_line('-------------------------------------------------------');
   FOR i IN ASCII('a') .. ASCII('z') LOOP
      IF vNum < 6 THEN
         vString := vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i||vTab;
         vNum := vNum + 1;
      ELSIF vNum = 6 then
         dbms_output.put_line(vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i);
         vNum := 0;
         vString := '';
      ELSE
         dbms_output.put_line('ERROR');
      END IF;
   END LOOP;
   dbms_output.put_line(vString);

   --
   -- Formatted upper case letter to ASCII values
   --
   vString := '';
   vNum := 0;

   dbms_output.new_line;
   dbms_output.new_line;
   dbms_output.put_line('Formatted Upper Case Letters to ASCII values');
   dbms_output.put_line('-------------------------------------------------------');
   FOR i IN ASCII('A') .. ASCII('Z') LOOP
      IF vNum < 6 THEN
         vString := vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i||vTab;
         vNum := vNum + 1;
      ELSIF vNum = 6 then
         dbms_output.put_line(vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i);
         vNum := 0;
         vString := '';
      ELSE
         dbms_output.put_line('ERROR');
      END IF;
   END LOOP;
   dbms_output.put_line(vString);

   --
   -- Formatted chars less than 'a' to ASCII values
   --
   vString := '';
   vNum := 0;

   dbms_output.new_line;
   dbms_output.new_line;
   dbms_output.put_line('Formatted Letters, less than a  to ASCII values');
   dbms_output.put_line('-------------------------------------------------------');
   FOR i in 0 .. ASCII('a')-1 LOOP
      IF vNum < 6 THEN
         vString := vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i||vTab;
         vNum := vNum + 1;
      ELSIF vNum = 6 then
         dbms_output.put_line(vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i);
         vNum := 0;
         vString := '';
      ELSE
         dbms_output.put_line('ERROR');
      END IF;
   END LOOP;
   dbms_output.put_line(vString);

   --
   -- Formatted chars greater than 'Z' to ASCII values
   --
   vNum := 0;
   vString := '';

   dbms_output.new_line;
   dbms_output.new_line;
   dbms_output.put_line('Formatted Letters, greater than z  to ASCII values');
   dbms_output.put_line('-------------------------------------------------------');
   FOR i IN ASCII('z') .. ASCII('z')+133 LOOP
      IF vNum < 6 THEN
         vString := vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i||vTab;
         vNum := vNum + 1;
      ELSIF vNum = 6 then
         dbms_output.put_line(vString||CHR(i)||' : '||i);
         vNum := 0;
         vString := '';
      ELSE
         dbms_output.put_line('ERROR');
      END IF;
   END LOOP;
   dbms_output.put_line(vString);

END;
/

Output

Formatted Lower Case Letters to ASCII values
-------------------------------------------------------
a : 97  b : 98  c : 99  d : 100 e : 101 f : 102 g : 103
h : 104 i : 105 j : 106 k : 107 l : 108 m : 109 n : 110
o : 111 p : 112 q : 113 r : 114 s : 115 t : 116 u : 117
v : 118 w : 119 x : 120 y : 121 z : 122

Formatted Upper Case Letters to ASCII values
-------------------------------------------------------
A : 65  B : 66  C : 67  D : 68  E : 69  F : 70  G : 71
H : 72  I : 73  J : 74  K : 75  L : 76  M : 77  N : 78
O : 79  P : 80  Q : 81  R : 82  S : 83  T : 84  U : 85
V : 86  W : 87  X : 88  Y : 89  Z : 90

Formatted Letters, less than a  to ASCII values
-------------------------------------------------------
  : 0   ☺ : 1   ☻ : 2   ♥ : 3   ♦ : 4   ♣ : 5   ♠ : 6
: 7 : 8                 : 9
: 13   ♂ : 11  ♀ : 12
♫ : 14  ☼ : 15  ► : 16  ◄ : 17  ↕ : 18  ‼ : 19  ¶ : 20
§ : 21  ▬ : 22  ↨ : 23  ↑ : 24  ↓ : 25  → : 26  ← : 27
∟ : 28  ↔ : 29  ▲ : 30  ▼ : 31    : 32  ! : 33  " : 34
# : 35  $ : 36  % : 37  & : 38  ' : 39  ( : 40  ) : 41
* : 42  + : 43  , : 44  - : 45  . : 46  / : 47  0 : 48
1 : 49  2 : 50  3 : 51  4 : 52  5 : 53  6 : 54  7 : 55
8 : 56  9 : 57  : : 58  ; : 59  < : 60  = : 61  > : 62
? : 63  @ : 64  A : 65  B : 66  C : 67  D : 68  E : 69
F : 70  G : 71  H : 72  I : 73  J : 74  K : 75  L : 76
M : 77  N : 78  O : 79  P : 80  Q : 81  R : 82  S : 83
T : 84  U : 85  V : 86  W : 87  X : 88  Y : 89  Z : 90
[ : 91  \ : 92  ] : 93  ^ : 94  _ : 95  ` : 96

Formatted Letters, greater than z  to ASCII values
-------------------------------------------------------
z : 122 { : 123 | : 124 } : 125 ~ : 126 ⌂ : 127 Ç : 128
ü : 129 é : 130 â : 131 ä : 132 à : 133 å : 134 ç : 135
ê : 136 ë : 137 è : 138 ï : 139 î : 140 ì : 141 Ä : 142
Å : 143 É : 144 æ : 145 Æ : 146 ô : 147 ö : 148 ò : 149
û : 150 ù : 151 ÿ : 152 Ö : 153 Ü : 154 ø : 155 £ : 156
Ø : 157 × : 158 ƒ : 159 á : 160 í : 161 ó : 162 ú : 163
ñ : 164 Ñ : 165 ª : 166 º : 167 ¿ : 168 ® : 169 ¬ : 170
½ : 171 ¼ : 172 ¡ : 173 « : 174 » : 175 ░ : 176 ▒ : 177
▓ : 178 │ : 179 ┤ : 180 Á : 181 Â : 182 À : 183 © : 184
╣ : 185 ║ : 186 ╗ : 187 ╝ : 188 ¢ : 189 ¥ : 190 ┐ : 191
└ : 192 ┴ : 193 ┬ : 194 ├ : 195 ─ : 196 ┼ : 197 ã : 198
à : 199 ╚ : 200 ╔ : 201 ╩ : 202 ╦ : 203 ╠ : 204 ═ : 205
╬ : 206 ¤ : 207 ð : 208 Ð : 209 Ê : 210 Ë : 211 È : 212
ı : 213 Í : 214 Î : 215 Ï : 216 ┘ : 217 ┌ : 218 █ : 219
▄ : 220 ¦ : 221 Ì : 222 ▀ : 223 Ó : 224 ß : 225 Ô : 226
Ò : 227 õ : 228 Õ : 229 µ : 230 þ : 231 Þ : 232 Ú : 233
Û : 234 Ù : 235 ý : 236 Ý : 237 ¯ : 238 ´ : 239 ­ : 240
± : 241 ‗ : 242 ¾ : 243 ¶ : 244 § : 245 ÷ : 246 ¸ : 247
° : 248 ¨ : 249 · : 250 ¹ : 251 ³ : 252 ² : 253 ■ : 254
  : 255

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Observations

There are two things that stand out in this. The first is there is sound produced. This is because one of the characters is defined this way. It is ASCII number 7. This can be repeated using the following:

select chr(7) from dual.

The second is the formatting of the lines for ascii codes 8 to 12. We can see that one of the ascii codes does not get displayed and the ordering of this is not as expected. This is due to ascii 10 being a line feed.

Oracle Scene (Autumn 2012) now available

The Autumn 2012 edition of Oracle Magazine (I’m the deputy editor) is now available online. Like in other editions recently there is a bumper online edition.

Here is the marketing release with the details of the contents.

Welcome to Issue 48 of Oracle Scene

In this digital edition find out why you should attend this year's UKOUG conference - Brendan Tierney tells us why he has been attending since 1998. Read about one organisation's success story from System Integration to Employee Self-Service, what the new release of Oracle BI Applications 11g has to offer and how it has been improved. Find out about training opportunities in the fastest-changing profession in the world, and Tim Poynter sheds some light on UPK Professional. Plus, Jonathan Lewis outlines how to apply a new strategy for Star Transformation. 
Click here to view the digital edition

The articles in this edition: Discuss the essential ingredient of Oracle Gold Partner, Prōject, transformation Explore the ABC of ADF and why it may matter to you Look at Oracle Fusion Middleware and summarise the most common products Explore solutions for space management of database and file system Outline optimal Oracle configuration for efficient table scanning Click here to view the digital edition

And there’s more... How to raise a Service Request with Oracle Support for Exadata Introduction to Data Vault Modeling Next Generation Service Patterns using Oracle Fusion Middleware HR Platform - the changes and how to implement it successfully Winners of the UKOUG 2012 Partner of the Year Awards We hope you enjoy a good read. Click here to view the digital edition

The deadline for submitting an article for the Spring 2013 edition will be in early January.

Many thanks to Brigit Wells and the other member of the UKOUG office who have worked on getting this edition and every edition out to print and online. Also a thank you to Geoff Swaffer who is the editor, and myself who is the deputy editor

New features for Developers in Oracle 12c & Tools

Continuing on from my previous posts on new features in the Advanced Analytics Option and the 12c Databases, this post will focus on the proposed new features for Developers in 12c and in the new releases of the development tools.

Health Warning: As with all the presentations at OOW that talked about what may be in or may be in the next release, there is no guarantee that these features will actually be in the released version of the database. Here is the slide that gives the Safe Harbor statement.

• APEX 4.2 is out now and has lots of new features in particular features for creating mobile applications including transitions, gestures, changes in orientation and HTML 5 support. Coming in 12c APEX will be able to support the pluggable database environment. You will have the option to install APEX in the Contain database or in the pluggable databases. It will also support the extended VARCHAR2 size
• SQL Developer will have Data Pump to allow for fast movement of data and for scheduling of the movements. The Database Difference tool has been redesigned to give more options and gives a more reliable comparison. A redesigned Database Copy (more options), improved Migrations and PDF report generation. SQL Developer is not the admin tool to manage the APEX Listener. UI improvements include more/better drag and drop, GRANT statement support in SQL editor and database Doc reporting. A new release of SQL Developer will be made available with the release of 12c that includes all the 12c new features
• Better Data Compression of data being sent to/from the client/server. So how you use the ORDER BY clause will become more important
• We will now have BOOLEAN in 12c but only in PL/SQL
• 12c will allow you to grant ROLES to PL/SQL program units. Or we could specify a White List that lists what other code units can call your code. This is a great security enhancement, although it involves more admin work, but it is worth it.
• 12c will allow you to include PL/SQL in WITH
• 12c will allow you to create duplicate indexes on the same set of columns. Sometimes you might want two different types of index on the same data, for example a bit map index and a b-tree index.
• Cursor results sets can now be returned implicitly instead of the existing explicit method
• The Warning messages when compiling our PL/SQL code can be filtered based on if they are Severe, Performance related or just Informational. This can be set at a System or Session level.

alter session set plsql_warnings='enable:severe';

alter session set plsql_warnings='enable:performance';

alter session set plsql_warnings='enable:informational';

There was a large number of exhibits at OOW. All of them were giving things away. For some of these you had to endure a sales pitch. One of the popular type of give away was a t-shirt. If you really wanted to, you could get enough t-shirts to keep you going for a few years. I popped into the exhibits for JavaOne and the pictures below is my faviourate t-shirt from OOW, by CloudBees.

Some of the exhibits were also giving away money. If you would sit through a 10 minute presentation you were given a ticket and if your number was picked your would could win anything from $20 up to $100. Many thanks to Intel

Oracle Database next release (12c) new features

At Oracle Open World there was a number of presentation on the new features that we will see in the new release of the database, which is being called 12c, where c is for the cloud.

The 12c Database/Next Release was announce during Larry’s Sunday keynote speech. 

Health Warning: As with all the presentations at OOW that talked about what may be in or may be in the next release, there is no guarantee that these features will actually be in the released version of the database. Here is the slide that gives the Safe Harbor statement.

In addition to this key note there was a few additional presentations on 12c with the main one, for me, by Tom Kyte on the Thursday morning.

• The 12c database will be a multi-tenant database. What does this mean? If means that we can have multiple databases running on the same server sharing the same memory and process management. Under the current configuration, when we create a new database on a server we create a separate set of processes and memory allocation.  Oracle is calling this, Pluggable Databases

• MapReduce in the Database - MapReduce can be run from PL/SQL directly in the database.
• Improved default value management. We will be able to clearly how to allocate a value to or calculate a value as a default for a column. The first of these is that we will be able to assign a sequence to a column. Example x int default s.nextval primary key. We can then insert into a table and not worry about how to calculate a primary key value, insert into t(y) values ('hello world');.  We will also be able to specify a default value when no value is being inserted into a column, z number default on null 42
• Increased size for VARCHAR2, NVARCHAR2 and RAW data types up to 32K in size. You will need to se the Max_SQL_String_Size in the init.ora to EXTENDED. But this new size limit is not supported in clustered and index organised tables.
• Some improvements to PARTITIONing, with asynchronous global index maintenance for DROP and TRUNCATE partition. New CASCADE functionality for TRUNCATE and EXCHANGE partition. You will be able to perform multiple partition operations with a single DDL command.
• There will be better Statistics for query performance including Hybrid Historgrams, Session Private Statistics and statistics will be gathered during data loads automatically.
• Temporary UNDO for objects will be handled in TEMP
• Greater insight of data usage i.e .what is being used or not being used and how frequently. This allows policies in table definition (new ILM clause) to compress or archive data after time.

ALTER TABLE orders
ILM ADD CompressionPolicy
COMPRESS Partitions for Query
AFTER 90 days from creation;

This post focused on the core database new features what may be coming in 12c.

In my next blog post I will look at some of the coding/development changes that are coming in 12c and associated Oracle development tools

Oracle Advanced Analytics Option in Oracle 12c

At Oracle Open World a few weeks ago there was a large number of presentations on Big Data and Analytics.  Most of these were marketing type presentations, with a couple of presentations on using R and how it can not be integrated into the Oracle Database 11.2.

In addition this these there was one presentation that focused on the Oracle Advanced Analytics (OAA) Option.

The Oracle Advanced Analytics Option covers the Oracle Data Mining features and the Oracle R Enterprise features in the Database.

The purpose of this blog post is to outline and summarise what was mentioned at these presentations, and will include what changes are/may be coming in the “Next Release” of the database i.e. Oracle 12c.

Health Warning: As with all the presentations at OOW that talked about what may be in or may be in the next release, there is not guarantee that the features will actually be in the release version of the database. Here is the slide that gives the Safe Harbor statement.

• 12c will come with R embedded into it. So there will be no need for any configurations.
• Oracle R client will come as part of the server install.
• Oracle R client will be able to use the Analytics functions that exist in the database.
• Will be able to run R code in the database.
• The database (12c) will be able to spawn multiple R engines.
• Will be able to emulate map-reduce style algorithms.
• There will be new PREDICTION function, replacing the existing (11g) functionality. This will combine a number of steps of building a model and applying it to the data to be scored into one function.  But we will still need the functionality of the existing PREDICTION function that is in 11g. So it will be interesting to see how this functionality will be kept in addition to the new functionality being proposed in 12c.
• Although the Oracle Data Miner tool will still exits and will have many new features. It was also referred to as the ‘OAA Workflow’.  So those this indicate a potential name change?  We will have to wait and see.
• Oracle Data Miner will come with a new additional graphing feature. This will be in addition to the Explore Node and will allow us to produce more typical attribute related graphs. From what I could see these would be similar to the type of box plot, scatter, bar chart, etc. graphs that you can get from R.
• There will be a number of new algorithms too, including a useful One Class Support Vector Machine. This can be used when we have a data set with just one class value. This algorithm will work out what records/cases are more important and others.
• There will be a new SQL node. This will allow us to write our own data transformation code.
• There will be a new node to allow the calling of R code.
• The tool also comes with a slightly modified layout and colour scheme.

Again, the points that I have given above are just my observations. They may or may not appear in 12c, or maybe I misunderstood what was being said.

It certainly looks like we will have a integrate analytics environment in 12c with full integration of R and the ODM in-database features.

Extracting the rules from an ODM Decision Tree model

One of the most interesting of important aspects of a Decision Model is that we as a user can get to see what rules the machine learning algorithm has generated for our data.

I’ve give a number of examples in various blog posts over the past few years on how to generate a number of classification models. An example of the workflow is below.

In the Class Build node we get four models being generated. These include a Generalised Linear Model, Support Vector Machine, Naive Bayes and a Decision Tree model.

We can explore the Decision Tree model by right clicking on the Class Build Node, selecting View Models and then the Decision Tree model, which will be labelled with a ‘DT’ in the name.

As we explore the nodes and branches of the Decision Tree we can see the rule that was generated for a node in the lower pane of the applications. So by clicking on each node we get a different rule appearing in this pane

Sometimes there is a need to extract this rules so that they can be presented to a number of different types of users, to explain to them what is going on.

How can we extract the Decision Tree rules?

To do this, you will need to complete the following steps:

• From the Models section of the Component Palette select the Model Details node.
• Click on the Workflow pane and the Model Details node will be created
• Connect the Class Build node to the Model Details node. To do this right click on the Class Build node and select Connect. Then move the mouse to the Model Details node and click. The two nodes should now be connected.
• Edit the Model Details node, uncheck the Auto Settings, select Model Type to be Decision Tree, Output to be Full Tree and all the columns.

• Run the Model Details node. Right click on the node and select run. When complete you you will have the little green box with a tick mark, on the top right hand corner.
• To view the details produced, right click on the Model Details node and select View Data
• The rules for each node will now be displayed. You will need to scroll to the right of this pane to get to the rules and you will need to expand the columns for the rules to see the full details

My Presentations on Oracle Advanced Analytics Option

I’ve recently compiled my list of presentation on the Oracle Analytics Option. All these presentations are for a 45 minute period.

I have two versions of the presentation ‘How to do Data Mining in SQL & PL/SQL’, one is for 45 minutes and the second version is for 2 hour.

I have given most of these presentations at conferences or SIGS.

Let me know if you are interesting in having one of these presentations at your SIG or conference.

• Oracle Analytics Option - 12c New Features - available 2013
• Real-time prediction in SQL & Oracle Analytics Option - Using the 12c PREDICTION function - available 2013
• How to do Data Mining in SQL & PL/SQL
• From BIG Data to Small Data and Everything in Between
• Oracle R Enterprise : How to get started
• Oracle Analytics Option : R vs Oracle Data Mining
• Building Predictive Analysts into your Forms Applications
• Getting Real Business Value from OBIEE and Oracle Data Mining  (This is a cut down and merged version of the follow two presentations)
• Getting Real Business Value from OBIEE and Oracle Data Mining - Part 1 : The Oracle Data Miner part
• Getting Real Business Value from OBIEE and Oracle Data Mining - Part 2 : The OBIEE part
• How to Deploying and Using your Oracle Data Miner Models in Production
• Oracle Analytics Option 101
• From SQL Programmer to Data Scientist: evolving roles of an Oracle programmer
• Using an Oracle Oracle Data Mining Model in SQL & PL/SQL
• Getting Started with Oracle Data Mining
• You don't need a PhD to do Data Mining

Check out the ‘My Presentations’ page for updates on new presentations.

Review of Oracle Magazine-March/April 1998

The headline articles for the March/April 1998 edition of Oracle Magazine were on how the role of the DBA is increasing in importance, managing databases globally, how the DBA is an important strategic partner in an organisation. Oracle is being used by a number of health organisations including Norway’s national hospital system, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah and Neuroclinical Trials Center.

Other articles included:

• Oracle Applications 11was due for release during the first half of 1998 and has a number of key features including, Universal Access, Globalized Finance, Project Manufacturing and Flow Manufacturing.
• Oracle’s Industry Applications division recently introduced new products including Oracle Public Budgeting, Oracle Sector Grants Management and the Oracle Energy Upstream solution .
• 5 ways DBA’s can be strategic partners: Proactive systems management, systems design, change management, performance tuning and security.
• Steve Lemme, DBA/systems manager for Motorola lists the following tasks for DBAs to keep them busy
• Daily Duties : At a minimum monitor
• Oracle ALERT file logs
• Systems resources
• Backups
• Archive logs
• Error logs
• Weekly Watch : Check free space including:
• Tablespaces
• Tables
• Indexes
• Clusters
• Monthly Monitoring : Do audits for fragmentation of :
• Indexes
• Clusters
• Tables
• Oracle Enterprise Toolkit comprises, Enterprise Manager, Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack and Management Pack.
• Kenny Smith looks at a day in the life of a DBA working from home using Oracle Enterprise Manager that included a Data Load, Change View, Create stored function, Add a new user, Fix a database link, Send a size report to director, Fix a production slowdown, Helped an application developer and Averted a production crisis.
• Migrating to Oracle 8: Quick Start on New Features:
• Knowledge Collection and Consolidation
• Learn about Oracle 8’s new features
• Get help from someone who has implemented Oracle 8
• Review the new features with your team
• Application Analysis for New Features
• Implement minor changes first
• Define the table partitioning strategy
• Define and indexing strategy
• Identify the tables you can index organise
• Database Design Analysis for New Features
• Define the new physical layout
• Define a partition maintenance strategy
• Migrate to partitions
• Backup and Recovery Strategy
• Review your current backup and recovery strategy
• Make as many tablespaces as possible read-only
• Define a multitiered backup strategy using SMR
• Make sure at least two independent restoration options exist
• Ensure that you can do the restoration in an adequate time period
• Define a plan for testing backup and recovery
• Kevin Loney has an article on the new format for ROWID in Oracle 8, what it is and how to use it

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the image at the top of this post or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions and a PDF for the very first Oracle Magazine from June 1987.

Review of Oracle Magazine–January/February 1998

The headline articles for the January/February 1998 edition of Oracle Magazine were on Electronic Commerce and include justification for building EC applications, creating online shops and what products Oracle has to support as aspects of an EC applications.

Other articles included:

• Oracle Product announcements included:
• Oracle InterOffice 4.1
• Oracle Lite 3.0 gets a Java facelift
• Oracle Gateways for MS SQL Server 8 and Sybase 8
• Oracle Applications Release 11 is coming soon
• Applications Desktop Integrator
• Application Server 3.1
• Oracle 8 on Sun Sets new World Record. TCP-C Benchmark with 51,871.62 tpmC at $134.36 per tpmC runing Oracle 8 on Sun Solaris 2.6 on a two node Sun Microsystems Ultra Enterprise 6000 cluster
• Marking the Mart Decision, looked at how using a Data Mart approach you can have a project delivered quicker (3 to 6 months) and a cost of $100,000. All this using the Oracle Data Mart Suite for Windows NT
• Securing transactions in Network Applications using Oracle’s Web Application Server to control security
• Digital Certificate Authentication
• Application Authorization
• Encryption
• Managing Unstructured data in Oracle 8. There ware some new data types including LOB, CLOB, BLOB  and BFILE
• Making the most of Java looks at how you can use applets with Designer/2000 WebServer Generator
• A quick start guide on how to migrate to Oracle 8, included:
• Determining the Migration Strategy
• Ensure compatibility
• Identify invalid objects and lost statistics
• Eliminate language problems
• Take care of read-only tablespaces
• Know the point of no return
• Avoid large restores
• Defining Resource Requirements
• Define Personnel requirements
• Set the timing of the migration
• Determine space requirements
• Create an appropriate testing environment
• Determining Potential Problem Areas
• Review ROWIDs
• Avoid reserved words
• Eliminate obsolete init.ora parameters
• Identifying Verification Tests
• Develop the test strategy
• Do migration testing
• Perform minimal testing
• Do functional testing
• Do integration testing
• Do performance testing
• Do load-stress testing

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the image at the top of this post or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions and a PDF for the very first Oracle Magazine from June 1987.

Review of Oracle Magazine–September/October 1997

The headline articles for the September/October 1997 edition of Oracle Magazine were how to put your data warehouse on the web, how to build it, how it works, differences between a data mart and a data warehouse, how Delicato Vineyard and the US Environmental Protection Agency web enabled their data warehouse,

This was a bumper edition of Oracle Magazine. It had just over 150 pages of content. This is compared to the previous editions that have been +/- a few pages of 100.

Other articles included:

• There was a certain amount of repetition of announcements from the previous edition (a lot). I won’t repeat them here but check out the previous edition review.
• Extending Oracle 8 with Objects covered how to create and work with Object Types.
• How to setup and configure your Oracle Database hot standby, how to monitor it and what limitations to watch out for.
• Oracle Designer/2000 Administration: Tuning Tips and Techniques.
• The tips for the Repository included:
• Bring your system up to speed
• Re-create indexes and hash tables frequently
• Size the SGA Shared_Pool_Size and the DB_Block_Buffers
• Pin procedures to the SGA
• Size the tablespaces
• Re-create the repository through import/export
• Be aware of the impact of sharing objects across multiple application systems
• Tips for Client-side tuning:
• Use suggested settings for PC clients
• Install Designer/2000 client tools on a file server
• Tips for Network Tuning
• Configure SQL*Net
• Unlocking the value of test with Oracle ConText cartridge. CareerPath.com uses ConText to enable servers to quickly and efficiently search through hundreds of thousands of job vacancies quickly and relevant for the searchers entered details.

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the image at the top of this post or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions and a PDF for the very first Oracle Magazine from June 1987.

Review of Oracle Magazine–July/August 1997

The headline articles for the July/August 1997 edition of Oracle Magazine were all focused on using Java, building applications, an interview with James osling using Java and the Oracle Database together and an outline of what Oracle sees as the future for Java.

Other articles included:

• There as a lot of product announcements (similar to the previous edition). These included:
• Developer/2000 Web Cartridge
• Enterprise JavaBeans for Integrated Business Solutions
• Oracle/CNN Launch
• Personal Oracle Lite 2.4 : Mobile RDBMS
• Oracle Replication Services Release 1.3: Bidirectional replication
• Oracle Projects 10.7 Suite of Applications
• Oracle Web Application Server 3.0 on HP-UX
• Oracle Discoverer 3.0
• Oracle GEMMS 4.1
• Data Mart solution for Windows NT
• Using the Network Computing Architecture (NCA) with Developer/2000 and Designer/2000. This covered how you can create components that you can mix and match, and plug into your applications. This involved using JDeveloper and the Developer/2000 Web Forms Cartridge to Deploy in Java.
• There was an article discussing how you can implement your applications in a distributed environment, on a phased basis.
• Steven Feuerstein writes planning your PL/SQL development to maximise your PL/SQL environment. He suggests that there are two specific steps for PL/SQL: 1 Consolidate access to the underlying database, and 2 Standardize exception handling and creating general utilities that can be reused. Best practices include:
• Make packages flexible and easy to use
• Overload the package to make the package smarter
• Modularize the package so it can be maintained and enhanced.
• Hide the package data
• Build multiple packages simultaneously
• Employing top-down design in PL/SQL
• Make the most of the PL/SQL language and features

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the image at the top of this post or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions and a PDF for the very first Oracle Magazine from June 1987.

OOW : Day by Day blog or Not

Today Sunday is the first full day for Oracle Open World. Although parts of it started on Saturday with the MySQL conference as was as a number of other briefing type session throughout the day and evening.

One thing that I will not be doing over the course of the next 5 days is to give a day by day account of the different sessions that I attended nor will I be giving updates on what was announced at OOW.

There will be plenty of announcements and there will be many thousands of people who will be tweeting, blogging and writing all kinds of articles about the these.

When the conference finishes up next Thursday I will take some time to write a blog post on what were the main announcements for me and in particular for the Oracle Analytics Option and suppose the whole area people call BIG Data.

The first IOUG BIG Data SIG meeting will be on Tuesday morning from 8:45-9:45, Moscone West, Level 3, Overlook 3.

The main presentation on the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option will be on Wednesday by Charlie Berger (Sr Director for Advanced Analytics). In addition to this presentation there will be a number around the whole ORE and BIG Data. This will rounded off by the Keynote on Thursday morning. Yes that is the morning after the big social event on Wednesday night with Kings of Leon and Peal Jam.

One thing that I will be doing each day will be posting a new review of old Oracle Magazine. So check in daily for those.

The next 5 days will be a bit manic as I try to gain learn lots. The problem here is that my interest span a number of areas. OK the main one is the Oracle Advanced Analytics and BIG Data, but I also have DBA and Developer skills/interests too.

Review of Oracle Magazine–May/June 1997

The headline articles for the May/June 1997 edition of Oracle Magazine were focused on the release of Oracle 8, with articles on the new features, how Boeing and Arizona Start University are using Oracle 8 to create a plane for the future, and some articles on using object technology in Oracle 8.

I remember back in 1994 Oracle bought an OODBMS company with the aim of ‘if you cannot beat them then buy them’. The Object Relation project of Sedona was born and the first of the deliverables from the project was in Oracle 8.

Other articles included:

• The key benefits of Oracle 8 Server (The Database of Network Computing) can be grouped under Scalable, Available, Object-Relational, Large Scale, Distributed, Secure and Evolutionary.
• The new features of Oracle 8 have been in new or better functionality for OLTP, Data Warehousing, Parallel Server, Object-Relational (code named Sodona), Partitioning, Backup and Recovery, Connectivity, Replication, NCA Framework and Migration.
• Oracle announces that they have licensed Borland Java tools and we now have the birth of JDeveloper and the world of ADF will come along many years later.
• The Industry Applications Division (IAD) of Oracle announce new applications and releases. These included: Oracle Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) 2.2, Oracle Government Financials, Oracle Energy 3.1, Oracle Clinical 3.1, Oracle Environmental 4.5 and Oracle Health and Safety 2.0.
• Kumaran Systems, releases a tool that will convert all your reports written in RPT (ReportWriter, which was very similar to PL/SQL) to Reports 2.5.  I really liked RPT. It was quick and you could do a lot with a few lines of code. Converting to Oracle Reports took a bit of getting used to. As a lot of the work you had to put into developing the report revolved you having to play with frames and anchoring box positions. Oh I still have the scares.
• Los Angeles County uses Oracle 7.1 to help it manage its environmental applications.
• How to defined and use Summary tables in your Oracle Data Warehouse.
• Oracle launches a new magazine for its users call Profit and is aimed at the CFO and CIO market.

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the image at the top of this post or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions and a PDF for the very first Oracle Magazine from June 1987.

What to do with your Freebies from Oracle Open World

With 50,000+ people attending Oracle Open World (and associated other conferences) between 30th September and 4th October, and with over 400 exhibitors, there should lots of freebies available.

What do you do with all of these things like pens, pencils, notebooks, memory sticks, t-shirts, pen pots, stress balls, etc. ?

Do many of these items get given away as presents, gives to your colleagues, or at some point end up in the refuge collect, land fill or recycle centre ?

Why not give these items to primary and secondary schools in Africa?

Over the past couple of years I have been collecting some of these kind of things to send out to schools in Africa. What I try to do is to wait until I have enough items that can kit out students in a class with pens, pencils and notepads for a year.

There is no corporate sponsorship of this project that is called Tech Gear for the 3rd World.  I just ask for people to send me their spare items or old corporate items (due to rebranding etc.).  I look after identifying what schools to send the items too, packaging of the items and I pay for the shipping of the parcels to the schools.

So after visiting Oracle Open World you have suitcase full of stuff, or if you are an exhibitor and you have items left over, why not send them to Tech Gear for the 3rd World.

Click here for more details and postal details.

Oracle Magazine Collection

Are you going to Oracle Open World & have old Oracle Magazines.
I’ve been working in the Oracle World for 20 years now. During that time I’ve been collecting the print editions of Oracle Magazine since 1992.
I have all the Oracle Magazines from 1998, but I’m missing some of the editions prior to 1998.

Can you help me complete my collection ?   (I promise that you wont find them on ebay!!)

What I would really like to do is to have a print copy of every Oracle Magazine going back to the very first one in June 1987. To see the electronic version of the first edition, which was very kindly made available by Cary Milsap, click here.

So in the run up to Oracle Open World could you have a look to see if you have any of my missing editions or any of the early editions. I can collect them off you are Oracle Open World.

If you have a look through my blog you will see that I’ve been posting a review of some of the early editions of Oracle Magazine. Ideally at some time in the future I will have a review of all the Oracle Magazines available.

Oracle Open World Schedule

Oracle Open World is fast approaching. Over the past couple of weeks I have been using the schedule builder tool to work out what sessions I would like to attend.  Unfortunately there are LOTS of sessions I would love to attend but I haven’t worked out a way to be in 10 places at the same time.

When attending a conference I try to achieve a number of things. These are find out about new topics/features, benchmark my knowledge of existing topics, try some of the hands-on labs, try something new and do something completely different. This will be my challenge at Oracle Open World.

There are a number of other people from Ireland who will be attending OOW, and there are some plans to have an Ireland social event. Plus there is lots of meetings/catch-ups planned too with people I know from the virtual Oracle world.

There will be some people from AIB who will be presenting at OOW. Their presentation will be on the Tuesday morning 10:15-11:00.  I’ll be there.

Other social things that are on include the Oracle ACE dinner, the Oracle Music festival, with Kings of Leon playing support to Pearl Jam on the Wednesdays night.

It is going to be a busy week, an enjoyable week, a week of learning new things and finding out lots of what the 12c database will be like. 

Will I get time to go to everything ?  The simple answer is NO.  So I will just have to try to get to another Oracle Open World soon.

Review Oracle Magazine–Sept/Oct 2006- 20th Anniversary

The Sept/Oct Oracle Magazine from 2006 was the 20th Anniversary edition.

The main articles were focused on Security, Unstructured Data, Using Ajax, Partitioning (this is a regular topic), Application Express and there was the regular articles from Tom Kyte and Steven Feuerstein

 

There was only one article focusing o the 20th Anniversary of Oracle Magazine, written by Jeff Spicer and gave a brief overview of how the magazine has progress and the main technologies. The highlights included

• Oracle Magazine emerged in 1987 from the original newsletter that was issued every quarter
• In the 1990's the magazine grew in size and was primarily focus on how Oracle customer were using the products
• By the late 1990 the magazine evolved into have a number of distinct sections focusing on the wide range of products that Oracle now owned
• Then into the 2000 Oracle magazine stated to introduce more user focused features. With this we get more user group news and features on community members.
• Tom Kyte joins with a regular column in 2000
• Back in 2006 Oracle magazine has a readership of nearly 1 million.

In the November/December 2011 Oracle Magazine, Tom Haunert give an brief history of Oracle Magazine, over its 25 year history

To view the cover page and the table of contents click on the image at the top of this post or click here.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here. You will find links to my blog posts on previous editions and a PDF for the very first Oracle Magazine from June 1987.

Peer-to-Peer in Oracle Magazine–September/October 2013

The latest edition of Oracle Magazine is now available online and can be viewed at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oramag/magazine/current-issue/index.html

I’ve been included in the Peer-to-Peer feature, along with two other Oracle ACEs. The Peer-to-Peer feature is a regular part in Oracle Magazine and typically gives a short profile of 3 Oracle ACEs or ACE Directors.

If you have subscribed to get a printed copy, we should be getting a copy of it in the post over the next couple of weeks.