OraExplorer

It is good to be back home. The OOW09 trip was exceedingly beyond expectation especially since this was my first OOW. In general, the technical sessions were very good. Most of the time, however, their contents were very basic, I suppose, to accommodate a large audience of diverse skill levels and interests. Besides networking with colleagues and vendors, I would say that the informal settings of the Unconference, and interactions with product managers and developers of DEMOgrounds are what I enjoyed the most about the conference. I made a  rookie mistake of registering too many sessions with only short breaks between them. Because of that, at the end of each day, I felt very exhausted. I will definitely plan better for the next one.

Here are a couple of highlights from the conference:

• One of the pictures I took at the event was used in the Oracle OpenWorld Blog’s Wrapping Things Up.

Attendees walking to the keynote

• SF is decidedly an iPhone town.

• In almost every conference I’ve been to, there are always groups of people dressing weird and shouting out something no one really understands or cares about. (You have to ask them in person if you want to know what they really want.) This one is no exception. I still have no idea what this group was doing on the street in front of the Moscone West.

????

• I’m a pen-addict. I’ve not realized this until I found, as I was packing and getting ready to return home, almost 40 pens collected during the visits to vendor exhibits throughout the week. It is my habit to grab pens when stopping by and talking to the vendors. Please help.

• A long line attracts people even if they have no clue what it is for. I’ve encountered this a couple of times when people came behind me as I was standing in line. After 5 minutes of waiting, they would ask me, “What are we waiting for?”

Tags: OOW, OOW09, OOW2009, Oracle Open World

Today I’ve decided to skip the morning’s keynotes and went for the Unconference. I’ve never attended an Unconference before, but have heard many good things about it from fellow bloggers. And yes they’re absolutely right!. Today’s morning session is the “What’s New in Eleven … Dot Two (that Oracle won’t be talking about)” conducted by Oracle ACE Director Daniel Morgan. (You can’t not go just by reading that session’s subject.)  ;-) The informal atmosphere and a smaller number of participants encourage more interaction which is very great. Daniel is a great resource. His web site – Morgan’s Library has wealth of information about Oracle especially new features in 11g both R1 and R2 (see New in 11gR1 & 11gR2 tabs from his site). I’ll definitely go back for more of Unconferences.

On a lighter note, I (and a lot of people) came to one of the evening sessions 5 minutes late. But somehow the way seats were arranged, it made it very difficult to get into the empty chairs so most people including myself ended up standing in the back of the room. I would assume that in a conference room setting, they would arrange to have at least the access in the middle and on both sides. This way people can get in/out more easily. May be the facility folks thought that if we added more chairs on the sides (leaving no room on the wall side), we would be able to accommodate more people. Brilliant! Ha? This good intention backfired because even though there are more chairs in the room, now there are more empty seats (less utilization) because of less access. Um… I don’t know where I’m going from here. But somehow I feel there is a lesson learned here that good intentions are not enough to accomplish a task, a good design is needed too.

Bad Seat Arrangement?

Tags: OOW, OOW09, OOW2009, Oracle Open World

My first day at OOW 2009 was filled with excitement intellectually and physically. Let’s talk about the physical part first. As I’m staying at Marriott hotel in Oakland, I have to take BART from Oakland to Powell station. Unfortunately, I did not realize that only on Sunday the train station near my hotel won’t be open until 8am.  So by the time of a train ride and VERY fast walking (BTW, I’m just recovering from cold) to the Moscone center, I’ve arrived about 20 minutes late for the first session.

Anyway after that the rest of the day is fun.

My first session is the Demystifying Oracle RAC workload management by Alex Gorbachev. I really enjoyed his presentation especially demos on the connection load balancing (CLB). I’ve learned techniques how to control the CLB’s behaviors in both pre-10gR1 and post-10gR2. His presentation is a must-see if you did not attend his session. At least, you will know what “goodness”  (or badness) in the context of CLB means.

Arup Nanda showed us in his Oracle RAC Performance Tuning the real case studies of RAC performance issues, and how he systematically tackled them. Besides good planning, he recommended that don’t jump into a conclusion by just looking at the AWR wait names without actual diagnostic (a specific sample in the session is that don’t get fooled by “gc” waits considering them as the interconnect issues).

At the end of the day, not only  I stopped by at the demo of the full-rack of Exadata version 2 in the Moscone North to see this product in action, but I also had a chance to say hello to Dan as he is now a part of the X-Team.

Here are some pictures from the events:

Oracle Open World 2009 at the Moscone Center

Oracle Banners outside the Moscone Center

Registration Counters

View of the Moscone Center from Yerba Buena Gardens

Attendees are walking to the keynote

Attendees are heading to keynote's conference room

Goodies at the Welcome Reception

Tags: OOW, OOW09, OOW2009, Oracle Open World