Irish people presenting at OOW

Here is a list of presentations at Oracle Open World and JavaOne in 2017, that will be given by people and partners based in Ireland.

(I'll update this list if I find additional presentations)

Day	Time	Presentation	Location
Sunday	13:45-14:30	SQL: One Language to Rule All Your Data [OOW SUN1238] Brendan Tierney, Oralytics SQL is a very powerful language that has been in use for almost 40 years. SQL comes with many powerful techniques for analyzing your data, and you can analyze data outside the database using SQL as well. Using the new Oracle Big Data SQL it is now possible to analyze data that is stored in a database, in Hadoop, and in NoSQL all at the same time. This session explores the capabilities in Oracle Database that allow you to work with all your data. Discover how SQL really is the unified language for processing all your data, allowing you to analyze, process, run machine learning, and protect all your data. Hopefully this presentation will be a bit of Fun! For those who have been working with the database for a long time, we can sometimes forget what we can really do. For those starting out in the career may not realise what the database can do. The presentation delivers an important message while having a laugh or two (probably at me).	Marriott Marquis (Golden Gate Level) - Golden Gate C1/C2
Monday	16:30-17:15	ESB Networks Automates Core IT Infrastructure and Grid Operations [CON7878] Simon Holt, DBA / Technical Architect, ESB Networks Andrew Walsh, OMS Application Support, ESB In this session learn how ESB Networks deployed Oracle Utilities Network Management System Release 1.12 on a complete Oracle SuperCluster. Hear about the collaboration between multiple Oracle business units and the in-house expertise that delivered an end-to-end solution. This upgrade is an important step toward expanding ESB Network’s future network operations vision. Her about the challenges, the process of choosing a COTS solution, cybersecurity, and implementation. The session also explores the benefits the new system delivered when managing the effects of large-scale weather events, as well as the technical challenges of deploying a combined hardware and software solution.	Park Central (Floor 2) - Metropolitan I
Monday	16:45-17:30	Automation and Innovation for Application Management and Support [CON7862] Raja Roy, Associate Partner, IBM Ireland Automation and innovation are transforming the way application support and development projects are being executed. Market trends show three fundamental shifts: innovation to improve quality of service delivery, the emergence of knowledge-based systems with capabilities for self-service and self-heal, and leveraging the power of the cloud to move capital expenditures to operating expenditures for enhanced functionality. In this session see how IBM introduced innovation in deployments globally to help customers achieve employee and business productivity and enhanced quality of services.	Moscone West - Room 3022
Tuesday	12:15-13:00	DMigrating Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle IaaS: A Customer Journey [CON1848] Ken MacMahon, IT, Version 1 Ken Lynch, Head of IT, Irish Life Simon Joyce, Consultant / Contractor, Version 1 Software In this session hear about a leading global insurance provider’s experience of migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle Cloud. This session includes a discussion of the considerations for Oracle Iaas/PaaS vs. alternatives, the total cost of ownership for Oracle IaaS vs. on-premises solutions, the key project and support issues, the benefits of IaaS, and tips and tricks. Gain insights that can help others on their journey with Oracle IaaS generally and with Oracle E-Business Suite specifically.	Moscone West - Room 2001
Wednesday	14:00-14:45	Ireland's An Post: Customer Analytics Using Oracle Analytics Cloud [CON7176] Tony Cassidy, CEO, Vertice John Hagerty, Oracle An Post, the Republic of Ireland’s state-owned provider of postal services, is an organization in transformation. It has used data and analytics to create innovations that led to cost savings and better sustainability. The current focus—customer analytics for a new line of business called Parcels and Packets—utilizes Oracle Analytics Cloud to externalize pertinent data to clients through a portal in a secure, effective, and easy-to-manage environment. In this session hear from An Post and its partner, Vertice, as they discuss the architecture and solution, along with recommendations for ensuring success using Oracle Analytics Cloud.	Moscone West - Room 3009
Thursday	13:45-14:30	Is SQL the Best Language for Statistics and Machine Learning? [OOW and JavaOne CON7350] Brendan Tierney, Oralytics Did you know that Oracle Database comes with more than 300 statistical functions? And most of these statistical functions are available in all versions of Oracle Database? Most people do not seem to know this. When we hear about people performing statistical analytics, we hear them talking about Excel and R, but what if we could do statistical analysis in the database without having to extract any data onto client machines? This presentation explores the various statistical areas available in Oracle Database and gives several demonstrations. We can also greatly expand our statistical capabilities by using Oracle R Enterprise with the embedded capabilities in SQL. This presentation is just one of the 14 presentations that are scheduled for the Thursday! I believe this session is already fully booked, but you can still add yourself to the wait list.	Marriott Marquis (Golden Gate Level) - Golden Gate B

OUG Ireland Meetup 11th May

The next OUG Ireland Meetup is happening on 11th May, in the Bank of Ireland Grand Canal Dock. This is a free event and is open to every one. You don't have to be a member to attend.

Following on from a very successful 2 day OUG Ireland Conference with over 250 attendees, we have organised our next meetup. This was mentioned during the opening session of the conference.

We typically have 2 presentations at each Meetup and on 11th May we have:

1. Oracle Analytics Cloud Service.

Oralce Analytics Cloud Service was only released a few weeks ago and we some local people who have been working with the beta and early adopter releases. They will be giving us some insights on this new product and how it compares with other analytics products like Oracle Data Visualization and OBIEE.

Running Oracle DataGuard on RAC on Oracle 12c

The second presentation will be on using Oracle DataGuard on RAC on Oracle 12c. We have a very experienced DBA talking about his experiences of using these products how to workaround some key bugs and situations to be aware of for administration purposes. Lots of valuable information to be gained.

Check out the full agenda and to register for the Meetup by clicking on this link or on the Meetup image above.

There will be some food and refreshments available for you to enjoy.

The Meetup will be in Bank of Ireland, Grand Canal Dock. This venue is a very popular locations for Meetups in Dublin.

Slides from the OUG Ireland meet-ups

I've finally gotten the time (and the permissions from the presenters) to make the slides from the first two OUG Ireland meet-ups available.

I've posted them on SlideShare and I've embedded them in this blog post too.

OUG Ireland Meet-up 12th January - DevOps and Oracle Cloud from Brendan Tierney

20th Oct. 2016 OUG Ireland Meet-up - Updates from Oracle Open World 2016 from Brendan Tierney

next OUG Ireland Meet-up on 12th January

Our next OUG Ireland Meet-up with be on Thursday 12th January, 2017.
The theme for this meet up is DevOps and How to Migrate to the Cloud.
Come along on the night here about these topics and how companies in Ireland are doing these things.
Venue : Bank of Ireland, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin.
The agenda for the meet-up is:
18:00-18:20 Sign-in, meet and greet, networking, grab some refreshments, etc
18:20-18:30 : Introductions & Welcome, Agenda, what is OUG Ireland, etc.
18:30-19:00 : Dev Ops and Oracle PL/SQL development - Alan McClean
Abstract
In recent years the need to deliver changes to production as soon as possible has led to the rise of continuous delivery; continuous integration and continuous deployment. These issues have become standards in the application development, particularly for code developed in languages such as Java. However, database development has lagged behind in supporting this paradigm. There are a number of steps that can be taken to address this. This presentation examines how database changes can be delivered in a similar manner to other languages. The presentation will look at unit testing frameworks, code reviews and code quality as well as tools for managing database deployment.
19:00-1930 : Simplifying the journey to Oracle Cloud : Decision makers across Managers, DBA’s and Cloud Architects who need to progress an Oracle Cloud Engagement in the organization - Ken MacMahon, Head of Oracle Cloud Services at Version1
Abstract
The presentation will cover the 5 steps that Version 1 use to try and help customers with Oracle Cloud adoption in the organisation. By attending you will hear, how to deal with cloud adoption concerns, choose candidates for cloud migration, how to design the cloud architecture, how to use automation and agility in your Cloud adoption plans, and finally how to manage your Cloud environment.

This event is open to all, you don't have to be a member of the user group and best of all it is a free event. So spread the word with all your Oracle developer, DBAs, architects, data warehousing, data vizualisations, etc people.
We hope you can make it! and don't forget to register for the event.

Our first OUG Ireland Meet-up

Last Thursday evening (20th October) we had our first Meet-up event for OUG Ireland.

Up to recently we have had a one or two full day SIG events that covered both the Tech and BA/Big Data areas. But we have been finding it increasingly difficult to get speakers and attendees to take a full day out of work to attend the SIG events. This was particularly true for a SIG event we had scheduled to happen in early October. But by the end of August things were not coming together for us, so it was time to try something new.

Over the past couple of years Meet-ups have been growing in numbers and in popularity. We (the OUG Ireland SIG committee) have been keeping an eye on this in the UK and Ireland.

It was time to get this concept a try.

What did it entail and what venue did you use?

The first thing we needed to do was to arrange a venue. A very popular location for Meet-ups in Ireland is in one of Bank of Ireland branches. This is Bank of Ireland on Grand Canal Dock in Dublin. It is one of their enterprise centres and is open during the day for meetings, as a workspace and it also operates as a branch. In the evenings and on a Saturday morning it is available for groups to hold meetings for larger groups and Meet-ups. We have the venue from 6pm-8pm.

What presentations did you have?

After securing a venue the we then decided to have the theme of the Meet-up to be about 'Updates from Oracle Open World'. Most of the SIG committee was at Oracle Open World, so that should be easy enough to put a few presentations together and we got the local Oracle office to joins us to.

What about catering?

The venue very kindly supplies some soft drinks, tea, coffee, a few beers, along with some sandwiches and pastries. All for free!

So far we have a free venue, free catering and the committee for presenters.

How did you advertise the event?

The only other thing we needed to do now was to advertise the event. For this we used a combination of EventBrite and Meet-up.com for this, along with our own contacts. Plus some of our friends helped to spread the word. This worked really well. We ended up getting roughly the same number of people registering for the event on each platform. We had 98 registrations on these websites.

Something we were warned about is that a lot of people will register, but if you get 40% of those turning up for the event then you are doing well. We got 48 attendees (=50%). We were delighted with this. For our full day SIG events we might have had 20-25 attendees.

How much this this event cost?

It cost us zero euro/dollars/sterling. As there was no admin, advertising costs, catering, room hire, nothing. Well that is not entirely true. There was a small cost and that was for our membership fee to be on Meet-up. That cost me about $30 for 6 months (unlimited plan). Yes I've paid that myself.

What was the feedback after the event?

The feedback was fantastic. People loved the new format, loved that it was in the evening after work, liked the short length presentations, liked that it was free, etc.

I also asked people if they might be interested in presenting at a future Meet-up. Personally I had 5 people talk to me about this. The over committee members also had people talk to them about it. It seems people are interested in trying the shorter format presentations, as it is not as daunting as presenting at a conference. A conference seems to be more formal and a step up in presenting levels.

What next?

Well we have the same venue booked for 12th January and 11th May. We have our 2 presenters for the 12th January already. We actually had those before our first meet-up. Plus for the 11th May we have some possible presenters and I just need to work with them to see who will get on the agenda.

The plan was to have 3-4 of these each year. Based on the feedback and the level of interest we might need to have a few more. But it is still early days and we need to see how things develop.

Our Meet-up was in Dublin. Ideally we want to bring this to over regions. For example we could do the same in Belfast and Cork, and possibly Limerick and Galway. This is something we are looking at and in 2017 we will definitely have a Meet-up in one (or two) of those locations. That would bring us up to 4-5 Meet-ups in 2017.

Thank you to everyone who attended and everyone how helped to make this happen.

OUG Ireland Meet-up 20th October

Come along to the first OUG Ireland meet-up on the 20th October, in Bank of Ireland, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, between 18:15 and 20:00.

Over the years the OUG Ireland SIG committee have organised one day SIG events once or twice a year. This is in addition to the annual OUG Ireland conference (typically held in March). Sometimes it has been a challenge to get people to attend, sometimes it has been a challenge to get enough speakers, sometimes it was a challenge to get a good venue, etc.

So we have decided to try something a little bit different. In keeping with the current trend of smaller scale events we have organised our first Meet-up. This will be a short 2 hour event to be held after work on the 20th October. So come along and joins us.

This is a free and open event. You do not need to be a member of the user group to come to this meet-up.

Here are the details:

Theme for Meet-up

Updates from Oracle Open World 2016

Agenda

18:00-18:20 : Sign-in, meet and greet, and setup of space with seats etc

18:20-18:30 : Introductions & Welcome, Agenda, what is OUG Ireland

18:30-18:45 : The Oracle 12.2 Database new features (Simon Holt)

18:45-19:00 : What's new in the BI, BA, Big Data world from Oracle (Brendan Tierney)

19:00-19:15 : What's happening with Cloud (Tony Cassidy)

19:15-19:30 : Other updates from Oracle (John Caulfield, Oracle)

19:30-19:45 : Q&A session and Open discussion

Location

Bank Of Ireland

1 Grand Canal Square

Dublin

Please sign up, so that we know who is coming

There are 2 places where you can sign up. It doesn't matter which one you use but please use one of them to let us know you will be there.

Sign up on EventBrite.com

Sign up on Meetup.com

We will be looking to setup more Meet-up events, so let us know what you think of the new format and particularly if you would like to get involved with talking about a topic, project, new feature, whatever, etc. for 15-20 minutes (a short demo would be good)

OUG Ireland 2016: a roaring success

Last week we had out OUG Ireland annual conference. Traditionally it has been a 1 day conference and in the past few years we have had an extra day where we had the likes of Tom Kyte (we miss you), Maria Colgan, etc give a full day seminar.

But over the past few years a few of the committee have been constantly asked about when we would have a second day of presentations (just like we have for the one day event).

After lots of discussions and looking at budgets and relooking at budgets, then looking at possible alternative venues we worked out a way to have a 2 day conference.

So last week we had our new 2 day conference in the Gresham hotel in the centre of Dublin. Check out the agenda here.

The day before the conference (on the Wednesday) I had arranged for a speakers drinks meet-up. There was lots of people travelling in from all across Europe to present, so this was a good way to get everyone together over a few beers. We met in a micro brewery in Dublin. It was a fun evening with people coming and going throughout the evening and some people stayed for the entire evening. (Oh my poor credit card!)

On Thursday we all got together with all the 275+ attendees at in the Gresham Hotel.

We had 4 tracks that covered DBA, Developer, Business Analytics and Apps. The rooms were just the right size for these tracks, with most of the rooms being full for each of the presentations. With some presentations there was people standing around the sides and down the back. All of this helped to add to the atmosphere. The exhibitors were only there for the first day. This is something we need to look at for next year to get them to attend the 2 days.

On the Wednesday evening we had an Oracle ACE Dinner that was sponsored by OTN (THANK YOU) and they also provided the ACEs with conference ribbons. Also thank you to the OTN ACE programme for providing some travel support to the various ACE Directors.

On the second day (Friday) we kind of got of a slow start for the first sessions of the day, but this must have been due to the snow we had in Dublin that morning. But from the second sessions onwards we were back to packed rooms. Because of this great turn out on the second day, helps us justify having a 2 day conference next years.

I got a chance to talk to lots and lots of people over the course of the 2 days and every single person was talking about the conference being 2 days and Please doing this next year and the year after and the year after, etc.

One of the highlights from the end of the second day was the Q&A panel discussion on the Oracle Optimiser. On this panel we had Jonathan Lewis, Joze Senegacnik and Martin Widlake. I managed to rope in a friend Alan Kelly to be the quiz master for the session. The Q&A Panel session was scheduled for 45minutes. But despite the best efforts to encourage the attendees to finished up, they kept on asking questions and the panel kept on answering. This session ran for an additional 45 minutes. Yes that was a 90 minute session.

All in all the 2 day OUG Conference was a roaring success and I would like to thank all the speakers, the attendees and the various sponsors for making this event happen.

Check out Debra's blog post about the conference.

Check out Martin Widlake's blog post about the conference.

Oh and there was a Yeast and Sourdough Bread Making symposium during OUG Ireland where a number of the peoples got to talk about and share their experiences on making bread.

OUG Ireland 2016: APPs Track highlights

Today I was joined by Debra Lilly who is the APPs track lead and conference chair for OUG Ireland. Debra lets us know what we can look forward to on the APPs track at this years conference.

Check out Debra's video.

Click on the image below to get more details of the agenda and to register for this 2 day conference.

Follow the conference and OUG Ireland on twitter using #oug_ire

OUG Ireland 2016: DBA and Developer track highlights

This morning I records a short video (1:18m) view with Simon Holt giving a quick overview and some highlights of the DBA and Developer tracks for the upcoming OUG Ireland 2016 conference.

Click on the image below to get more details of the agenda and to register for this 2 day conference.

Follow the conference and OUG Ireland on twitter using #oug_ire

OUG Ireland 2015 : Call for Papers

We finally have confirmed dates for the OUG Ireland Annual Conference. It will be on the 3rd & 4th March, 2016.

In 2016 we are expanding the conference and marking it a 2 day conference. Over the past few years some of the feedback from delegates has been, can we have more sessions and add a second day. So we have listened and will now have a 2 day conference on 3rd & 4th March, 2016.

We also have a new venue too. The 2016 conference will be held in the Gresham Hotel, on O'Connell Street in central Dublin. It is so close to lots of the tourist attractions, lots of hotels and lots of entertainment.

The call for papers is now open and we are looking for presentations for the typical Business Analytics/Big Data, Hardcore DBA, Development, Cloud and Applications.

Do you have a story to share? Have you discovered something recently? Have you used a new product? Is there anything about some part of an Oracle Product you would like to share?

If so then click on the image below to go to the Submissions Website and get submitting. Closing date for submissions is 9am on 4th January.

Hopefully I'll see you in Dublin in March.

People from Ireland who are Speaking at #OOW15

Oracle Open World 2015 will be kicking off in a few days time. There will be over 50K people attending this event, with a couple of hundred speakers.

I'm one of the lucky ones to have been selected to speak at Oracle Open World. This will be my third or fourth year in a row that I'm speaking at Oracle Open World.

Am I the only person from Ireland who is speaking at Oracle Open World ? No, I'm not, but there is a small number of us this year. There are basically 2, yes 2 other people from Ireland speaking at Oracle Open World. These are Richard Corbridge from the HSE, and Debra Lilley.

If you are interesting in attending these sessions here is the schedule.

Please share this information to allow your colleagues and help spread the news about he Irish Speakers.

If you are attending OOW, then please tweet, blog, Facebook, etc about these presentations.

Hopefully I will see you are one or both of my presentations on the Sunday.

And I will be having a draw/raffle for a copy of my book at my second presentation on the Sunday at 15:30 in Moscone South - 307

OUG Ireland 2015 is next week

The annual OUG Ireland conference is on next week on Thursday 19th March.

If you haven't already signed up for the conference this is only a few days left to do so. Click here to go to the registrations pages.

Also don't forget to sign Maria Colgan's one day seminar on the Oracle 12c In-Memory Option.

As always there is a very full agenda with 7 streams, 47 presentations and several keynote presentations.

I'll be a draw for a copy of my book and I'll be giving away a few Oracle Press goodies too. Check out this blog post for the details and rules of the book draw.

The following are the presentations I'm planning on attending (so you know where to find me)

Time	Presenter	Topic
09:10-09:30	Debra Lilley	OUG Ireland Welcome, Introduction and Opening
09:30-10:10	Jon Paul (Oracle)	Opening Keynote by Jon Paul from Oracle
10:15-11:00	Oralce Presentation	Oracle Big Data Strategy
11:00-11:25		Exhibition Hall
11:25-12:10	Antony Heljula	Real Business Value Using Predictive BI (I've seen this before but I worked with Antony on some of what he will be talking about)
12:15-13:00	Roel Hartman & Brendan Tierney	What Are They Thinking? With Oracle Application Express & Oracle Data Mining. (we gave this presentation at Oracle Open World back in September 2014)
12:15-13:00	Gurcan Orhan	How to handle Dev, Test & Prod with ODI
13:00-14:00		Lunch (and then freaking out before I give my second presentation)
14:00-14:45	Brendan Tierney	Predictive Queries in Oracle 12c Database (I suppose I have to turn up to my own presentation)
14:50-15:35	Roel Hartman	Hidden APEX 5 Gems Revealed (APEX 5 is due out any day now)
15:35-16:00		Exhibition Hall & Coffee (and then freaking out before I give my third presentation)
16:00-16:45	Brendan Tierney	Running R in your Oracle Database using Oracle R Enterprise (This presentation generally runs for 50 minutes)
16:50-17:35	Maria Colgan	BI, Dev & Tech Closing Keynote: Oracle Database In-Memory-The next big thing
17:35-18:35		Event Social i.e. free drink :-)

As you can see it is going to be a busy, busy day.

I would love to attend lots of others, but being able to be in multiple places at the same time is not one of them.

NOTE:The User Group has a rule that a presenter can have a max of 2 presentations. Unfortunately we had to break this rule a week out from the conference, due to some cancellations. And that is why I've ended with 2.5 presentations.

Book give away at OUG Ireland

The annual Oracle User Group in Ireland conference is on the 19th March in Croke Park.

I'll be giving 2 presentations, with one each on the Development and Business Analytics tracks. Here are the details of these presentations.

Time	Room	Presentation Title / Topic
14:00-14:45	InterConnect 681	Predictive Queries in Oracle 12c
16:00-16:45	Davin Suite	Running R in the Database using Oracle R Enterprise

I will be giving away a copy of my book to one luck person :-)

How will this book give away work?

During both of my presentations I will pass around a "hat" for you to put your name or business card into. Then at end of my last presentation we will draw one name out of the hat.

But you have to be in the room to collect the book. If you are not there then I will draw out another name (and so on) until the winner is in the room.

So by attending both of my presentations you are doubling your chances of winning my book.

(Maybe this is an attempt by me to have a good attendance at my last presentation)

Plus I might have a few other Oracle Press goodies to give away too.

Oracle ACEs at OUG Ireland 2015

The annual Oracle User Group in Ireland Conference will be on Thursday 19th March. This year the conference will be held in the Croke Park conference centre. This conference centre is only a short taxi ride from Dublin Airport and Dublin City Centre.

If you are planning a hotel stay for the conference I would recommend staying in a hotel in the city centre and get a taxi to/from the conference venue.

We have a large number of Oracle ACEs presenting at the conference. The following table lists the ACEs, their twitter handle and their website.

Oracle ACE	Type of ACE	Twitter Name	Blog / Web Site
Brendan Tierney	ACE Director	@brendantierney	http://www.oralytics.com
Debra Lilley	ACE Director	@debralilley	http://www.debrasoracle.blogspot.ie/
Jonathan Lewis	ACE Director	@JLOracle	http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/
Tim Hall	ACE Director	@oraclebase	http://oracle-base.com/
Alex Nuijten	ACE Director	@alexnuijten	http://nuijten.blogspot.com/
Dhananjay Papde	ACE Associate
Stewart Bryson	ACE Director	@stewartbryson	http://www.redpillanalytics.com/
Antony Heljula	ACE	@aheljula	http://www.peakindicators.com/
Gurcan Orhan	ACE Director	@gurcan_orhan	https://gurcanorhan.wordpress.com/
Heli Helskyaho	ACE Director	@HeliFromFinland	https://helifromfinland.wordpress.com/
Marco Gralike	ACE Director	@mgralike	http://www.xmldb.nl
Roel Hartman	ACE Director	@roelh	http://roelhartman.blogspot.com/
Martin Widlake	ACE	@mdwidlake	https://mwidlake.wordpress.com/
Liron Amitzi	ACE	@amitzil	http://www.dbaces.com/
David Kurtz	ACE Director	@davidmkurtz	http://www.go-faster.co.uk/
Marcin Przepiorowski	ACE	@pioro	http://oracleprof.blogspot.com/

Make sure you check out the full agenda for the conference by clicking on the following image. Plus there is a full day session on Friday 20th March with Maria Colgan on the Oracle In-Memory option.

People from Ireland Presenting at OOW14

Oracle Open World is coming up in a few days time. This is a huge event that also incorporates Jave One and various other smaller conferences that are for specific product areas and for partners.

I will be presenting at Oracle Open World this year and I'll also be taking part in a number of other sessions/events including the Oracle ACE Directors briefing. Check out my blog post that list these sessions/events.

In addition to myself presenting at OOW14 there are a few other people from Ireland who are presenting. The following lists there sessions (including mine for a full list). If you are attending OOW14 then do try to drop along to these sessions.

Sunday 28th September 9:00-9:45

   Brendan Tierney & Roel Hartman

   Moscone South Room 304

   What are they Thinking? With Oracle Application Express and Oracle Data Miner.

   Debra Lilley 14:30-15:15

   Moscone South Room 304

   2 Looks at Oracle Database 12c: EOUC Short Talks [UGF8949]

   Debra Lilley 15:30-16:15

   Moscone South Room 304

   12 Looks at Oracle Database 12c: EOUC Short Talks, Part 2 [UGF9221]

Tuesday 30th September 17:00-17:45

   Mina Sagha Zadesh (Oracle Ireland)

   Intercontinential - Grand Ballroom A

   [CON4259] Unique Advantages of Oracle Solaris for Oracle Database Systems.

Wednesday 1st October 10:15-11:00

   Simon Holt (ESB)

   Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C1/C2

   [CON5388] An Oracle SuperCluster Engineered System for Oracle Utilities Network Management System.

   Debra Lilley

   Moscone West - 3018

   Deliver Business Innovation while Reducing Upgrades’ Risk [CON8534].

Wednesday 1st October 11:30-12:45

   Kevin Callanan (AIB)

   Moscone South Room 301

   [CON8247] DBA's New Best Friend for Mistake Free Administration: Oracle Real Application Testing.

I'll be at these sessions to support my fellow Irish. I hope to see you there too :-)

OUG Ireland Super SIG Day : Sept. 24 2014

The next set of Ireland Oracle User Group SIG meetings will be on Wednesday 24th September. This will be a super SIG event with the following SIGs being run in parallel and all in one venue (Jurys Inn, Customs House, Dublin).

OUG Ireland BI & EPM SIG Meeting

OUG Ireland Technology SIG Meeting

OUG Ireland HCM SIG Meeting

Click on the links above for each SIG to get the details of agenda. There is a great line up of presentations for each SIG with some true experts.

From what I've been hearing that has been a lot of registrations already for these events. So if you are interested in attending then sign up now to reserve your place. Click on the SIG you want to attend and there will be a registration button on the webpage, just below the agenda.

Unfortunately I won't be at these event :-( The 24th September is the day that I travel out to Oracle Open World. Yes I know OOW doesn't start until the 29th, but I will be attending the Oracle ACE Director briefing at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores on the 25th and 26th.

Hopefully there will be lots of twitter action during these SIGs and don't forget to use the OUG Ireland twitter hash tag of #oug_ire That way I and others can follow what is happening during the day.

OUG Ireland

The annual OUG Ireland Conference (or special event) will be on Tuesday 11th March.  Actually this year there are sessions spread over 2 days, for the first time ever in the 10+ year history of OUG Ireland. In addition to 2 days of sessions there are 7 streams of presentations on the Tuesday and then there is the RAC AttacK for the first time in Ireland.

The main conference event is on Tuesday 11th March in the DCC in Dublin. Things kick off at 9:20 with Debra Lilley welcoming everyone to the event. Then Jon Paul from Oracle in Ireland will do the opening keynote. Then we can break into the 7 streams with lots of local case studies and some well known speakers from around the world including many Oracle  ACEs and ACE Directors (my presentation is at 12:15).

The day ends up with 2 keynote presentations. There will be a keynote that will be focused on the App streams (Nadia Bendjedou, Oracle) and a separate keynote for Tech streams (by Tom Kyte).

Throughout the day there will be RAC Attack event. Look out for their tables in the exhibition hall. Again there will be some well known experts from around the world who will be on hand to help you get RAC setup and running on your own laptop, answer your questions and engage in lots of discussions about all thing Oracle. The RAC Attack Ninja will include Osama Mustafa, Philippe Fierens, Marcin Przepiorowski, Martin Bach and Tim Hall. Some of these are giving presentations throughout the day, so when they are not presenting you will find them at the RAC Attack table. Even if you are not going to install RAC drop by and have a chat with them.

On Wednesday 12th March the OUG Ireland Conference ventures into a second day of sessions. These sessions will be a full day of topics by Tom Kyte. This is certainly a day not to be missed. As they say places are limited so book your place today.

Click on the following image to view the agenda for the 2 days and to book your place on the 11th and 12th March.

I hope to see you there and make sure you say hello to me.

OUG Ireland BI & Tech SIGs June 2013

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

• BI SIG Registration
• Tech SIG Registration

Oracle Magazine–March/April 1999

The headline articles for the March/April 1999 edition of Oracle Magazine were on the evolving world of the DBA. With some much new technology available in the database the role of the DBA is moving from a back office type role to one having a significant strategic influence in the organisation.

Other articles included:

• Oracle releases a web based version of their Oracle Strategic Procurement application that includes three key parts: Strategic Sourcing, Internet Procurement and Process Automation.
• Sun and Oracle announce a strategic agreement that allows both companies to enhance their product offerings by exchanging key technologies. Oracle will use the core of the Sun Solaris operating environment to deliver the industry’s first database server appliances.
• Oracle Data Mart Suite releases version 2.5. It includes, Oracle Data Mart Builder, Oracle Data Mart Designer, Oracle 8 Enterprise Edition, Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Application Server and Oracle Reports and Reports Server.
• New integration between Oracle Reports release 6.0 and Oracle Express Server release 6.2 to give users the ability to distribute high quality reports of information held in a multi-dimensional database across the enterprise.
• The need for the DBA to know and understand the V$ views has been increasing during the later releases of 7.3 and 8i. The can be used for a variety of purposes, including understanding locked users, system resources, licencing and parameter settings.
• One thing that all DBAs need to plan for is a database recovery. Planning it is one thing, but practicing it is another thing. A typical recovery plan will include, choosing a data file, create a backup, take the damaged tablespace offline, restore the damaged data file, bring the tablespace back online, recover the tablespace, bring the tablespace back online and test it.
• Avoiding trigger errors, including Mutating and constraining table errors.
• There is an article by Bryan Laplante on using Historgrams to Optimize Data Mart Performance.

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.

Clustering in Oracle Data Miner–Part 3

This is a the third part of a five (5) part blog post on building and using Clustering in Oracle Data Miner. The following outlines the contents of each post in this series on Clustering.

1. The first part we looked at what clustering features exist in ODM and how to setup the data that we will be using in the examples
2. The second part will focus on how to building Clusters in ODM .
3. The third post will focus on examining the clusters produced by ODM and how to use the Clusters to apply to new data using ODM.
4. The fourth post will look at how you can build and evaluate a Clustering model using the ODM SQL and PL/SQL functions.
5. The fifth and final post will look at how you can apply your Clustering model to new data using the ODM SQL and PL/SQL functions.

In my previous posts on Clustering in ODM we have setup our data, we have explored it, we have taken a sample of the data and used this sample as input to the Cluster Build node. Oracle Data Miner has two clustering algorithms and our Cluster Build node created a clustering model for each.

In this post we will look at the next steps. The first of these is that we will look at examining what clustering models ODM produced. In the second part we will look at how we can use one of these clustering models to apply and label new data.

Step 1 – View the Cluster Models

To view the the cluster modes we need to right click the Cluster Build node and select View Models from the drop down list. We get an additional down down menu that gives the names of the two cluster models that were developed.

In my case these are called CLUS_KM_1_25 and CLUS_OC_1_25. You may get different numbers on your model names. These numbers are generated internally in ODM

The first mode that we will look at will be the K-Mean Cluster Model (CLUS_KM_1_25). Select this from the menu.

Step 2 – View the Cluster Rules

The hierarchical K-Mean cluster mode will be displayed. You might need to readjust/resize some of the worksheets/message panes etc in ODM to get the good portion of the diagram to display.

With ODM you cannot change, alter, merge, split, etc any the clusters that were generated. Oracle take the view of, this is what we have found it it up to you now to decide how you are going to use it.

To see that the cluster rules are for each cluster you can click on a cluster. When you do this you should get a pane (under the cluster diagram) that will contain two tabs, Centroid and Cluster Rule.

The Centroid tab provides a list of the attributes that best define the selected cluster, along with the average value for each attribute and some basic statistical information.

The Cluster Rules tab contains a set of rules that define the cluster in a IF/THEN statement format.

For each cluster in the tree we can see the number of cases in each cluster the percentage of overall cases for this cluster.

Work your way down the tree exploring each of the clusters produced.

The further down the tree you go the smaller the percentage of cases will fall into each cluster. In some tools you can merge these clusters. Not so in ODM. What you have to do is to use an IF statement in your code. Something like IF cluster_num IN (16, 17, 18, 19) THEN …..

Step 3 – Compare Clusters

In addition to the cluster tree, ODM also has two addition tabs to allow us to explore the clusters. These are Detail and Compare tabs.

Click on the Detail tab. We now get a detailed screen that contain various statistical information for each attribute. We can for each attribute get a histogram of the values within each attribute for this cluster.

We can use this important to start building up a picture of what each cluster might represent based on the values (and their distribution) for each cluster.

Try this out for a few clusters.

Step 4 – Multi-Cluster - Multi-variable Comparison of Clusters

The next level of comparison and evaluation of the clusters can be found under the Compare tab.

This lets us compare two clusters against each other at an attribute level. For example let us compare cluster 4 and 9. The attribute and graphics section gets updated to reflect the data for each of cluster. These are colour coded to distinguish the two clusters.

 

We can work our way down through each attribute and again we can use this information to help us to understand what each cluster might represent.

An additional feature here is that we can do multi-variable (attribute) comparison. Holding down the control button select LTV_BIN, SEX and AGE. With each selection we get a new graph appearing at the bottom of the screen. This shows the distribution of the values by attribute for each cluster.  We can learn a lot from this.

So one possible conclusion we could draw from this data would be that Cluster 4 could be ‘Short Term Value Customers’ and Cluster 9 could be ‘Long Term Value Customer’

Step 5 – Renaming Clusters

When you have discovered a possible meaning for a Cluster, you can give it a meaningful name instead of it having a number. In our example, we would like to re-label Cluster 4 to ‘Short Term Value Customers’. To do this click on the Edit button that is beside the drop down that has cluster 4. Enter the new label and click OK.

In the drop down we will now get the new label appearing instead of the cluster number.

Similarly we can do this for the other cluster e.g. ‘Long Term Value Customer’.

 

We have just looked at how to explore our K-Means model. You can do similar exploration of the O-Cluster model. I’ll leave that for you to do.

 

We have now explored our clusters and we have decided which of our Clustering Models best suits our needs. In our scenario we are going to select the K-Mean model to apply and label our new data.

Step 1 – Create the Apply Node

We have already setup our sample of data that we are going to use as our Apply Data Set. We did this when we setup the two different Sample node.

We are going to use the Sample node that was set to 40%.

The first step requires us to create an Apply Node. This can be found under the Component Palette and Evaluate and Apply tab. Click on the Apply node and move the mouse to the workflow worksheet and click near the Sample Apply node.

To connect the two nodes, move the mouse to the Sample Apply node and right click. Select Connect from the drop down menu and then move the mouse to the Apply node and click again. An connection arrow will be created joining these nodes.

Step 2 – Specify which Clustering Model to use & Output Data

Next we need to specify which of the clustering model we want to use to apply to our new data.

We need to connect the Cluster Build node to the Apply node. Move the mouse to the Cluster Build node, right click and select connect from the drop down menu. Move the mouse to the Apply node and click. We get the connection arrow between the two node.

We now have joined the Data and the Cluster Build node to the Apply node.

The final step is to specify what clustering mode we would like to use. In our scenario we are going to specify the K-Mean model.

(Single) Click the Cluster Build node. We now need to use the Property Inspector to select the K-Means model for the apply set. In the Models tab of the Property Inspector we should have our two cluster models listed. Under the Output column click in the box for the O-Cluster model. We should now get a little red X mark appearing. The K-Mean model should still have the green arrow under the Output column.

Step 3 – Run the Apply Node

We have one last data setup to do on the Apply node. We need to specify what data from the apply data set we want to include in the output from the Apply node.  For simplicity we want to just include the primary key, but you could include all the attributes.  In addition to including the attributes from the apply data source, the Apply Node will also create some attributes based on the Cluster model we selected. In our scenario, the K-Means model will create two additional attributes. One of these will contain the Cluster ID and the other attribute will be the probability of the that cluster being valid.

To include the attributes from the source data, double click on the Apply node. This will open the Edit Apply Node window. You will see that it already contains the two attributes that will be created by the K-Mean model.

To add the attributes from the source data, click on the Data Columns tab and then click on the green ‘+’ symbol. For simplicity we are going to just select the CUSTOMER_ID. Click the OK button to finish.

Now we are ready to run the Apply node. To do this right click on the Apply Node and select Run from the drop down menu. When everything is finished you will get the little green tick mark on the top right hand corner of the Apply node.

Step 4 – View the Results

To view the results and the output produced by the Apply node, right click on the Apply node and select View Data from the drop down menu.

We get a new tab opened in SQL Developer that will contain the data. This will consist of the CUSTOMER_ID, the K-means Cluster ID and the Cluster Probability. You will see that the some of the clusters assigned will have a number and some will have the cluster labels that we assigned in a previous step.

It is now up to you to decide how you are going to use this clustering information in an operational or strategic way in your organisation.

 

In my next (fourth) blog post in the series on Clustering in Oracle Data Miner, I will show how you can perform similar steps, of building and evaluating clustering models, using the SQL and PL/SQL functions in the database. So we will not be using the ODM tool. We will be doing everything in SQL and SQL/PLSQL.