On 11th and 12th June we will be having our next SIG meetings for BI and Tech. The BI SIG will be on the 11th June in the Oracle offices in East Point. We then move the the Conrad Hotel on the 12th June for the Tech SIG. Here are the agendas for the 2 days.
BI SIG
Tech SIG
These events are open to everyone, are free for members and a small fee for non-members.
To register for these event go to the following links
The call for presentations at the OUG Ireland Conference is now open. The conference will be on Tuesday 12th March in Dublin city centre.
It is hoped to have at a number of concurrent tracks covering all the main topic areas, including application development, database administration, business intelligence, applications, etc.
If you are interested in submitting a presentation then you need to fill in some of the detail at
Follow the OUG Ireland conversation on twitter using the tag #oug_ire
Over the next couple months there are a number of events happening for Oracle Users in Ireland.
There are a number of OUG Ireland SIG meetings happening. These are:
11th September : Joint SIG meeting of the BI & EPM SIG and the first Tech SIG meeting
12th September : HCM SIG meeting
20th November : BI & EPM SIG. This will be a full day SIG event.
3rd-5th December : The annual UKOUG Conference in Birmingham. There is usually a good attendance from Ireland at this conference. On the Monday night there will be the focus pubs. Join me at the Ireland table.
Oracle and the Oracle User Group have arrange to have Tom Kyte come to Dublin on 19th September, to give a number of presentations. Check out this link for more details and how to register.
Oracle will be having an Oracle Technology Day in Dublin on 15th November in the Croke Park Conference Centre. They will be talking about Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing, Social Media and Big Data. They are also hoping to include some of the updates and product news that will be announced at Oracle Open World in early October. You will need to register for this event.
Summary of Dates & Events to add to your diary.
11th September : OUG Ireland BI & EPM and Tech SIG meeting
12th September : OUG Ireland HCM SIG meeting
19th September : Tom Kyte in Dublin
15th November : Oracle Technology Day
3rd- 5th December : UKOUG Conference in Birmingham.
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:
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.
In my previous posts I gave sample code of how you can use your ODM model to score new data.
Applying an ODM Model to new data in Oracle – Part 2
Applying an ODM Model to new data in Oracle – Part 1
The examples given in this previous post were based on the new data being in a table.
In some scenarios you may not have the data you want to score in table. For example you want to score data as it is being recorded and before it gets committed to the database.
The format of the command to use is
prediction(ODM_MODEL_NAME USING <list of values to be used and what the mode attribute they map to>)
prediction_probability(ODM_Model_Name, Target Value, USING <list of values to be used and what model attribute they map to>)
So we can list the model attributes we want to use instead of using the USING * as we did in the previous blog posts
Using the same sample data that I used in my previous posts the command would be:
Select prediction(clas_decision_tree
USING
20 as age,
'NeverM' as cust_marital_status,
'HS-grad' as education,
1 as household_size,
2 as yrs_residence,
1 as y_box_games) as scored_value
from dual;
SCORED_VALUE
------------
0
Select prediction_probability(clas_decision_tree, 0
USING
20 as age,
'NeverM' as cust_marital_status,
'HS-grad' as education,
1 as household_size,
2 as yrs_residence,
1 as y_box_games) as probability_value
from dual;
PROBABILITY_VALUE
-----------------
1
So we get the same result as we got in our previous examples.
Depending of what data we have gathered we may or may not have all the values for each of the attributes used in the model. In this case we can submit a subset of the values to the function and still get a result.
Select prediction(clas_decision_tree
USING
20 as age,
'NeverM' as cust_marital_status,
'HS-grad' as education) as scored_value2
from dual;
SCORED_VALUE2
-------------
0
Select prediction_probability(clas_decision_tree, 0
USING
20 as age,
'NeverM' as cust_marital_status,
'HS-grad' as education) as probability_value2
from dual;
PROBABILITY_VALUE2
------------------
1
Again we get the same results.
Today (Monday 5th Dec) is the first day of the UKOUG Conference in Birmingham.
Tonight we have the Focus Pubs session starting at 8:45pm. This year we have a Ireland table for all of the Irish people at the conference to gather at and to meet.
I’ll be there so drop along and say hello.
This is the second of a two part blog posting on using an Oracle Data Mining model to apply it to or score new data. The first part looked at how you can score data the DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY procedure for scoring data batch type process.
This second part looks at how you can apply or score the new data, using our ODM model, in a real-time mode, scoring a single record at a time.
PREDICTION Function
The PREDICTION SQL function can be used in many different ways. The following examples illustrate the main ways of using it. Again we will be using the same data set with data in our (NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE) table.
The syntax of the function is
PREDICTION ( model_name, USING attribute_list);
Example 1 – Real-time Prediction Calculation
In this example we will select a record and calculate its predicted value. The function will return the predicted value with the highest probability
SELECT cust_id, prediction(clas_decision_tree using *)
FROM NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE
WHERE cust_id = 103001;
CUST_ID PREDICTION(CLAS_DECISION_TREEUSING*)
---------- ------------------------------------
103001 0
So a predicted class value is 0 (zero) and this has a higher probability than a class value of 1.
We can compare and check this results with the result that was produced using the DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY function (see previous blog post).
SQL> select * from new_data_scored
2 where cust_id = 103001;
CUST_ID PREDICTION PROBABILITY
---------- ---------- -----------
103001 0 1
103001 1 0
Here we can see that the class value of 0 has a probability of 1 (100%) and the class value of 1 has a probability of 0 (0%).
Example 2 – Selecting top 10 Customers with Class value of 1
For this we are selecting from our NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE table. We want to find the records that have a class value of 1 and has the highest probability. We only want to return the first 10 of these
SELECT cust_id
FROM NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE
WHERE PREDICTION(clas_decision_tree using *) = 1
AND rownum <=10;
CUST_ID
----------
103005
103007
103010
103014
103016
103018
103020
103029
103031
103036
Example 3 – Selecting records based on Prediction value and Probability
For this example we want to find our from what Countries do the customer come from where the Prediction is 0 (wont take up offer) and the Probability of this occurring being 1 (100%). This example introduces the PREDICTION_PROBABILITY function. This function allows use to use the probability strength of the prediction.
select country_name, count(*)
from new_data_to_score
where prediction(clas_decision_tree using *) = 0
and prediction_probability (clas_decision_tree using *) = 1
group by country_name
order by count(*) asc;
COUNTRY_NAME COUNT(*)
---------------------------------------- ----------
Brazil 1
China 1
Saudi Arabia 1
Australia 1
Turkey 1
New Zealand 1
Italy 5
Argentina 12
United States of America 293
The examples that I have give above are only the basic examples of using the PREDICTION function. There are a number of other uses that include using the PREDICTION_COST, PREDICTION_SET, PREDICTION_DETAILS. Examples of these will be covered in a later blog post
Oracle in Ireland is hosting a session called Data Centre Transformation on 7th December (9:30-13:00), in the Guinness Storehouse, St James Gate, Dublin 8.
The agenda for this session is
| 9:00 | Registration & Coffee |
| 10:00 | The 21st Century Data Centre, Delivered by Oracle Solaris – Mike Ramchand |
| 10:30 | Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c – John Caulfield, Solutions Director |
| 11:00 | Oracle Virtualised Systems (VM 3.0) – Dave Patterson, Oracle Hardware |
| 11:30 | Coffee Break |
| 12:00 | Transformative Oracle Storage Solutions – Neil Caughey, Oracle Storage Business Unit |
| 12:30 | Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata and Exalogic – Brian Grant, Oracle Exalogic Business Development Manager |
To book your place on this event email oracle.events@ketchumpleon.com
Or register by following this web link.
I wont be at this event as I’ll be presenting in the afternoon at the UKOUG conference in Birmingham.
This is the first of a two part blog posting on using an Oracle Data Mining model to apply it to or score new data. This first part looks at the how you can score data using the DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY procedure in a batch type process.
The second part will be posted in a couple of days and will look how you can apply or score the new data, using our ODM model, in a real-time mode, scoring a single record at a time.
DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY
Instead of applying the model to data as it is captured, you may need to apply a model to a large number of records at the same time. To perform this bulk processing we can use the APPLY procedure that is part of the DBMS_DATA_MINING package. The format of the procedure is
DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY (
model_name IN VARCHAR2,
data_table_name IN VARCHAR2,
case_id_column_name IN VARCHAR2,
result_table_name IN VARCHAR2,
data_schema_name IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL);
| Parameter Name | Description |
| Model_Name | The name of your data mining model |
| Data_Table_Name | The source data for the model. This can be a tree or view. |
| Case_Id_Column_Name | The attribute that give uniqueness for each record. This could be the Primary Key or if the PK contains more than one column then a new attribute is needed |
| Result_Table_Name | The name of the table where the results will be stored |
| Data_Schema_Name | The schema name for the source data |
The main condition for applying the model is that the source table (DATA_TABLE_NAME) needs to have the same structure as the table that was used when creating the model.
Also the data needs to be prepossessed in the same way as the training data to ensure that the data in each attribute/feature has the same formatting.
When you use the APPLY procedure it does not update the original data/table, but creates a new table (RESULT_TABLE_NAME) with a structure that is dependent on what the underlying DM algorithm is. The following gives the Result Table description for the main DM algorithms:
For a Classification algorithms
case_id VARCHAR2/NUMBER
prediction NUMBER / VARCHAR2 -- depending a target data type
probability NUMBER
For Regression
case_id VARCHAR2/NUMBER
prediction NUMBER
For Clustering
case_id VARCHAR2/NUMBER
cluster_id NUMBER
probability NUMBER
Example / Case Study
My last few blog posts on ODM have covered most of the APIs for building and transferring models. We will be using the same data set in these posts. The following code uses the same data and models to illustrate how we can use the DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY procedure to perform a bulk scoring of data.
In my previous post we used the EXPORT and IMPORT procedures to move a model from one database (Test) to another database (Production). The following examples uses the model in Production to score new data. I have setup a sample of data (NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE) from the SH schema using the same set of attributes as was used to create the model (MINING_DATA_BUILD_V). This data set contains 1500 records.
SQL> desc NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE
Name Null? Type
------------------------------------ -------- ------------
CUST_ID NOT NULL NUMBER
CUST_GENDER NOT NULL CHAR(1)
AGE NUMBER
CUST_MARITAL_STATUS VARCHAR2(20)
COUNTRY_NAME NOT NULL VARCHAR2(40)
CUST_INCOME_LEVEL VARCHAR2(30)
EDUCATION VARCHAR2(21)
OCCUPATION VARCHAR2(21)
HOUSEHOLD_SIZE VARCHAR2(21)
YRS_RESIDENCE NUMBER
AFFINITY_CARD NUMBER(10)
BULK_PACK_DISKETTES NUMBER(10)
FLAT_PANEL_MONITOR NUMBER(10)
HOME_THEATER_PACKAGE NUMBER(10)
BOOKKEEPING_APPLICATION NUMBER(10)
PRINTER_SUPPLIES NUMBER(10)
Y_BOX_GAMES NUMBER(10)
OS_DOC_SET_KANJI NUMBER(10)
SQL> select count(*) from new_data_to_score;
COUNT(*)
----------
1500
The next step is to run the the DBMS_DATA_MINING.APPLY procedure. The parameters that we need to feed into this procedure are
| Parameter Name | Description |
| Model_Name | CLAS_DECISION_TREE -- we imported this model from our test database |
| Data_Table_Name | NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE |
| Case_Id_Column_Name | CUST_ID -- this is the PK |
| Result_Table_Name | NEW_DATA_SCORED -- new table that will be created that contains the Prediction and Probability. |
The NEW_DATA_SCORED table will contain 2 records for each record in the source data (NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE). For each record in NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE we will have one record for the each of the Target Values (O or 1) and the probability for each target value. So for our NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE, which contains 1,500 records, we will get 3,000 records in the NEW_DATA_SCORED table.
To apply the model to the new data we run:
BEGIN
dbms_data_mining.apply(
model_name => 'CLAS_DECISION_TREE',
data_table_name => 'NEW_DATA_TO_SCORE',
case_id_column_name => 'CUST_ID',
result_table_name => 'NEW_DATA_SCORED');
END;
/
This takes 1 second to run on my laptop, so this apply/scoring of new data is really quick.
The new table NEW_DATA_SCORED has the following description
SQL> desc NEW_DATA_SCORED
Name Null? Type
------------------------------- -------- -------
CUST_ID NOT NULL NUMBER
PREDICTION NUMBER
PROBABILITY NUMBER
SQL> select count(*) from NEW_DATA_SCORED;
COUNT(*)
----------
3000
We can now look at the prediction and the probabilities
SQL> select * from NEW_DATA_SCORED where rownum <=12;
CUST_ID PREDICTION PROBABILITY
---------- ---------- -----------
103001 0 1
103001 1 0
103002 0 .956521739
103002 1 .043478261
103003 0 .673387097
103003 1 .326612903
103004 0 .673387097
103004 1 .326612903
103005 1 .767241379
103005 0 .232758621
103006 0 1
103006 1 0
12 rows selected.
The UKOUG conference will be in a couple of weeks. I have my flights and hotel booked, and I’ve just finished selecting my agenda of presentations. I really enjoy this conference as it serves many purposes including, finding new directions Oracle is taking, new product features, some upskilling/training, confirming that the approaches that I have been using on projects are valid, getting lots of hints and tips, etc.
One thing that I always try to do and I strongly everyone (in particular first timers) to do is to go to 1 session everyday that is on a topic or product that you know (nearly) nothing about. You might discover that you know more than you think or you may learn something new that can be feed into some project on your return or over the next 12 months.
My agenda for the conference currently looks Very busy and in between these session, there is the exhibition hall, meetings with old and new friends, meetings with product/business unit managers, asking people to write articles for Oracle Scene, checking out possible presenters to come to Ireland for our conference in March 2012, etc. Then there is my presentation on the Wednesday afternoon.
Sunday
I’ll miss most of the Oak Table event on the Sunday but I hope to make it in time for
16:40-17:30 : Performance & High Availability Panel Session
Monday
9:20-9:50 : Keynote by Mark Sunday, Oracle (H1)
10:00-10:45 : The Future of BI & Oracle roadmap, Mike Durran, Oracle (H5)
11:05-12:05 : Implementing Interactive Maps with OBIEE 11g, Antony Heljula, Peak Indicators (H10A)
12:15-13:15 : OBI 11g Analysis & Reporting New Features, Mark Rittman (8A)
14:30-15:15 : Master Data Management – What is it & how to make it work – Robert Barnett, Hub Solutions Designs (H10A)
16:20-17:35 : Dummies Guide to Oracle ADF, Grant Ronald, Oracle, (Media Suite)
16:35-18:30 : The DB Time Performance Method, Graham Wood, Oracle (H8A)
17:45-18:30 : Performance & Stability with Oracle 11g SQL Plan Management, Doug Burns (H1)
17:45-18:30 : Experiences in Virtualization, Michael Doherty (H10A)
19:45-20:45 : Exhibition Welcome Drinks
20:45-Late : Focus Pubs
Tuesday
9:00-11:00 : Next Generation BI Architectures Masterclass, Andrew Bond, Oracle (H10B)
10:10-10:55 : Who’s afraid of Analytic Functions, Alex Nuijten, Maxima (H5)
11:15-12:15 : Analysing Your Data with Analytic Functions, Carl Dudley, (H9)
11:25-13:25 : Using a Physical Standby to Minimize Downtime for DB Release or Server Change, Michael Abbey, Pythian (Media Suite)
14:40-15:25 : How note to make the headlines, Mark Clewett, Hitachi (H10A)
14:40-15:25 : APEX Back to Basics, Paul Broughton, APEX Evangelists (H9)
15:35-16:20 : Can People be identified in the database, Pete Finnigan (H1)
16:40-18:35 : OTN Hands-on Workshop, Todd Trichler, Oracle (H8A)
17:50-18:35 : SQL Developer Data Modeler as a replacement for Oracle Designer, Paul Bainbridge, Fujitsu, (H8B)
18:45-19:45 : Keynote : Future of Enterprise Software and Oracle, Ray Wang, Constellation Research (H1)
20:00-Late : Evening Social & Networking
Wednesday
9:00-10:00 : Oracle 11g Database: Automatic Parallelism, Joel Goodman, Oracle (H9)
9:00-10:00 : Big Data: Learn how to predict the future, Keith Laker, Oracle (H8B)
10:10-10:55 : All about indexes – What to index, when and how, Mark Bobak, ProQuest (H5)
11:20-12:30 : Using Application Express to Build Highly Accessible Products, Anthony Rayner, Oracle (H8A)
12:30-13:30 : Practical uses for APEX Dictionary, John Scott, APEX Evangelists (H8A)
15:20-16:05 : How to deploy you Oracle Data Miner 11g R2 Workflows in a Live Environment – Me (H7B)
16:15-17:00 : Next Generation Data Warehousing, Kulvinder Hari, Oracle (H8A)
16:15-17:00 : Beyond RTFM and WTF Message Moments. Introducing a new standard: Oracle Fusion Applications User Assistance, Ultan O’Broin (Executive Room 7)
I know I have some overlapping sessions, but I will decide on the date which of these I will attend.
As you an see I will be following the BI stream mainly, with a few sessions on the Database and Development streams too.
This year there is a smart phone app help us organise our agenda, meetings, etc, The only downside is that the app does not import the agenda that I created on the website. So I have to do it again. Maybe for next year they will have an import agenda feature.
On Wednesday 2nd December, I attended a full day of presentations given by Tom Kyte of Oracle (asktom.oracle.com). Tom covered a number of topics and these included some of his Oracle Open World presentations.
The topics that were covered included
All of these presentations can be downloaded from Tom’s website www.asktom.com.
Tom wont be presenting at the annual UKOUG conference in December, but he is hoping to be there next year (2012).
Today I received two boxes, containing 48 books of
The Performance Management Revolution by Howard Dresner
These books have been kindly donated by Duncan Fitter, UK Business Development Director at Oracle.
I will be distributing these books to my MSc Data Mining students over the next week.
Thanks Duncan and Oracle
The OUG BI SIG meetings you can book your place with the UKOUG.
Venue Address - Dublin:
Oracle Block H, East Point Business Park, Dublin 3
Venue Address - Belfast:
The Mount Conference Center, 2 Woodstock Link, Belfast BT6 8DD
For questions about logistics please contact the marketing team on marketing-ie_ie@oracle.com
If you have any question about the content please contact: mina.sagha.zadeh@oracle.com
If you know of any other events that are not listed, let me know and I’ll update the list
This year the Annual UKOUG event will be in Birmingham (again) from the 5th to 7th December.
This year there is a slight difference to the usual schedule. On Sunday 4th December there is an Oak Table event, with two parallel tracks. It has all the well known experts presenting at this event.
If I had the time turner from Harry Potter, I would be able to go to all the sessions.
Presenters include Morgens Norgaard, Johnathan Lewis, Frits Hoogland, Martin Widlake, Christian Antognini, Connor McDonald, James Morle and Wolfgang Breitling.
This is an impressive line up and hopefully the UKOUG will run a similar event in 2012.
Check out of the full agenda at
http://2011.ukoug.org/personalisedagenda
This is one event that I would love to go to but unfortunately I wont be able to make it. I’ll be attending the Annual UKOUG conference alright, and I have already booked my airline tickets. But there are no flights from Dublin that will get me to Birmingham on time. I would need to fly to Birmingham on the Saturday, involving another hotel night and another night away from the family.
The best I’m hoping for is to get to the ICC in time for the Panel Session on Performance and High Availability.
Depending on weather and travel delays I might even miss this last session. If I do, I can always meet up with everyone in the pub on the Sunday evening for a chat.
Maybe next year.
The Winter edition of the UKOUG Oracle Scene magazine is now looking for articles to be submitted for consideration.
The due date for the article submission is Friday 26 August. So you have just over 2 weeks to put together your article.
Lots of people have asked me what kind of articles are you looking for. The simple answer is anything as long as it is Oracle related. The following list should give you some ideas:
So you can see anything goes really.
How long should an article be ? It can be any length really. Anything from 1/4 page to a full 5 page article, and anything in between.
Selection of Articles Process
All submitted articles are assessed by a review panel, comprised of volunteers from a variety of businesses and specialties. The review panel rates the articles and makes comments where appropriate.
An editorial meeting takes place after the submissions have been rated. The articles are assessed and the review panel’s scoring and comments are taken into account. The editorial team makes the final decision as to which articles will be selected for publication, or to be held over for a future edition. You will be notified of the result as soon as this process has been completed.
You will be contacted near the publication date by the publishing company for you to review to print version of your article.
Submitting your Article
Check out the Article Formatting Guidelines before submitting.
All pictures and images should be 300dpi.
Include a 100(max) word Bio and your photo
Email your article and images to
Brendan Tierney
Deputy Editor
Today I gave my VirtaThon presentation on the new Oracle Data Miner 11gR2 tool.
It was an interesting experience as VirtaThon was a virtual conference. The organisation and administration of the conference was excellent.
I had over 25 participants for my presentation, including Carolyn Hamm who has written a book on using Oracle Data Miner 10g. She seemed to enjoy my presentation as she was asking for more at the end, but we had run out of time.
The presentation was an unusual but interesting experience. All the participants were muted, so I could not hear anyone or be asked questions as the presentation progressed. I was not able to judge the body language or facial expressions, for me to work out how the presentation was going.
I was sitting in my living room when giving the presentation and spent almost an hour talking to myself. At time the concentration levels dipped and I have to refocus and used some visualisation to help me concentrate.
The presentation was divided into 2 parts. The first part was a presentation consisting of some background to ODM, how to get setup and running with ODM, and finally a discussion of some of the new features. This first part took approx. 30 minutes which surprised me as during my rehearsals it was talking 16 minutes. The second part of the presentation was a demo of using ODM to create a workflow, generating a classification model and then applying this model to some new data. During my rehearsals this was taking approx. 40 minutes.
I only had 50-55 minutes for my VirtaThon presentation so after my presentation I had 20-25 minutes for the demo. So I had to get through the demo quickly and I had to cut out a discussion of how the data exploration functionality in ODM can be used to get an insight into the data before you start using the data mining features. I will put together a blog post and video of this in a couple of weeks time that will explain it in more detail.
I managed to finish at 49 minutes, which left 6 minutes for questions. There was only a couple of questions, plenty of Thank You’s along with Good Presentation, which is always good to hear.
Thank you to everyone who attended the presentation and to the organisers of VirtaThon.
Brendan Tierney
I will be giving a presentation on the Oracle Data Miner New Features at the online conference VirtaThon, on Monday 18th July.
VirtaThon is a FREE 6 day conference with 2 parallel sessions with world leading speakers on Oracle Java and MySQL.
Previously attendance at the conference cost $100, which was good value considering the quality of the speakers. But this year it is Free.
The VirtaThon conference runs from 16th July to 21st July
The schedule is available at
http://www.brainsurface.com/virtathon/sessions-schedule
To sign up to attend some or all of the sessions go to
Attend4FREE! Jul 16-21: 6 Days of Expert+ Sessions #VirtaThon The Online Conference for the Oracle, Java & MySQL Domains http://bit.ly/ehlaV9
I had my first meeting, as a deputy editor, with the Oracle Scene team on Tuesday 12th July. The meeting was organised by Suzanne Gaunt, who is leaving the UKOUG on Friday. She will be sadly missed. Lavinia and Karina are taking over the role of producing the magazine.
Also at the meeting was Neil Jarvis, the editor, and Gillian and Philip Adams from www.doggARTadams.com, who look after the whole production of the magazine.
The main topic of discussion was the production process for the magazine and an outline of the timelines involved.
There was some discussions on how to improve the magazine with new material. Some of the suggestions included
In addition to these suggestions the main content of articles from the user community. Everyone is invited to write an article. It does not matter how long or short it is. The main idea is for you to share some of your knowledge. An article can be of any length, for example it could be 1/4 page, 1/2 page, 1, 2, 3 or 5 pages.
Have you come across a new or unusual feature, did you do something interesting with a feature, how and why you implemented it, case studies, new tools, etc.
So articles could be technical or non-technical, or on anything that might be of interest to the user community.
The next deadline for submitting articles is 26th August and with all deadlines it is good to submit early!
The finished magazine will be ready for distribution around the end of October.
If you have any suggestions of changes, additions, articles or adverting, let me know.
