Speaking

Just a quick note to remind you that the call for papers for E4 is closing in a few days (on April 30).  So if you have anything you think is interesting related to Exadata that you’d like to share we’d love to hear from you. By the way, you don’t have to be a world renowned speaker on Oracle technology to get accepted. You just need to have an interesting story to tell about your experience. Implementations, migrations and consolidation stories are all worthy of consideration. Any interaction between Exadata and Big Data platforms will also be of great interest to the attendees. Of course the more details you can provide the better.

Here’s a link to the submission page:

Just a quick note to let you know I’ll be speaking at the Hotsos Symposium in March in Dallas. I’ve attended every year for the past 6 or 7 years and spoken at several of them. It has consistently been the best performance oriented Oracle conference I’ve attended. This year will be no different with the likes of Maria Colgan, Karen Morton, Tom Kyte, Tim Gorman, Cary Millsap, Frits Hoogland, Gwen Shapira, Alex Gorbachev, Kyle Haily, Carlos Sierra, Kellyn Pot’Vin, Mark Farnham, Toon Koppelaars, Andy Zitelli, Neil Gunther, Stephan Haisley, Marco Gralike, Steven Feuerstein and a host of others. Looks like several of the speakers (including me) plan to be talking about new performance oriented features of the soon to be released Oracle 12c database, so it should be very interesting. One of the best things about the conference is the chance to talk to people (including the speakers) at the breaks.

The 11th and 12th of December and, therefore, the CBO Days in Zurich are approaching. Given the high quality of the speakers that accepted my invitation and the number of people that decided to attend the event, in my opinion it will be a blast! By the way, if you are interested in attending the event, do not wait any longer. In fact, from the 80 available seats, 75 are taken.

Here is a preview of the agenda:

Tuesday 11th December

The company I work for, Trivadis, is very pleased to organize, the 11th and 12th of December, an outstanding seminar with top guest speakers in Zurich. This year’s focus will be on the Oracle query optimizer, also known as a cost-based optimizer (CBO).

The query optimizer is not only one of the most complex pieces of software that constitutes the Oracle kernel; it is also one of the most unappreciated. Why? To make the best and most efficient use of the query optimizer, you definitely need to understand how it works. This is exactly what we are aiming for at the CBO Days.

Enjoy the two days with:
- Jonathan Lewis, JL Computer Consultancy (GB)
- Jože Senegačnik, DbProf (SI)
- Maria Colgan, Optimizer product manager, Oracle Corporation (USA)
- Mohamed Zait, Optimizer chief developer, Oracle Corporation (USA)
- Randolf Geist, Freelance (DE)
- Christian Antognini, Trivadis (CH)

The 2012 Enkitec Extreme Exadata Expo is behind us now. Our video guy (Bob) has been working diligently for the last week or so to get the presentations edited. They will be made available to the attendees shortly. We have already posted a video of the opening session. It is me interviewing Cary Millsap about his impressions of Exadata. One of the things I have found most interesting about Exadata is how it makes very experienced Oracle performance guys re-think things. It’s fun watching them being exposed to Exadata in an intimate way (not just Power Point). The reactions are interesting. There is usually a desire to try to break it although  it’s generally harder than it appears, at least initially.

Just a quick update on my speaking schedule for the rest of the year (I hope this is all).

Big Data Technology Briefing – Texas Rangers Stadium (Arlington, TX) – 8/23/12
I’ll be talking about Hadoopie stuff.

Amazon Commit – Seattle, WA – 9/24/12
I’ll be talking about Controlling Execution Plans and also about Creative Problem Solving.

Oracle Open World – San Francisco – 10/2/12
I’ll be talking about Hadoop and Exadata.

UKOUG – Birmingham, England – 12/4/12
I’ll be talking about Controlling Execution Plans (again).
Presumably 12c DB will be released by then so some brand new stuff should be in this one.

Oracle DW Global Leaders Forum – Dallas – 12/13/12
I saw a flyer saying I was talking about “Big Data”.

Hope to see you at one of these events.

We started on an interesting mad scientist kind of project a couple of days ago.

One of our long time customers bought an Exadata last month. They went live with one system last week and are in the process of migrating several others. The Exadata has an interesting configuration. The sizing exercise done prior to the purchase indicated a need for 3 compute nodes, but the data volume was relatively small. In the end, a half rack was purchased and all four compute nodes were licensed, but 4 of the 7 storage servers were not licensed. So it’s basically a half rack with only 3 storage servers.

This is just a short post to point out that the company I work for, Trivadis, is organizing 3 classes with Cary Millsap. The topic, as the title suggests, is Cary’s 1-day class entitled “Mastering Oracle Trace Data”.

The following dates and locations are planned:

• September 11, 2012 – Münich (DE)
• September 13, 2012 – Zürich (CH)
• September 18, 2012 – Vienna (AT)

For detailed information have a look to the flyer. Note that the early bird registration period, that entitles you a 15% discount, ends on August 1.

It’s almost time for Hotsos’s 10th annual Symposium. This year’s conference will be held March 4 – 8 in Irving, Texas. The Hotsos Symposium is probably the best performance oriented Oracle conferences in the world. I am happy and humbled to be speaking at it again this year as the lineup of speakers is once again world class. It’s great to have several other Enkitec’ies on the bill as well. Both Karen Morton and Tanel Poder will be presenting too. Enkitec is also a sponsor of the event this year, so we’ll be hosting a couple of Exadata focused happy hours as well. There’s still time to register. Hope to see you there.

I’ll be speaking at a couple of conferences over the next month or so. Here’s the schedule:

February 16th, in Denver at RMOUG Training Days 2012 - Topic: DIY Exadata
February 23rd, in Redwood Shores at NoCOUG Winter Conference - Topic: DIY Exadata
March 7th, in Dallas at Hotsos Symposium 2012 - Topic: Exadata Optimization – Case Studies