TOI

As every year, there’s a long list of great speakers with interesting talks to attend at the DOAG (German Oracle User Group) annual conference. Sadly I cannot attend them all, so I’ve got to make a choice:

First day

Datenbank-Upgrade nach Oracle 12.1.0.2 – Aufwand, Vorgehen, Kunden by Mike Dietrich, Oracle

Die unheimliche Begegnung der dritten Art: XML DB für den DBA by Carsten Czarski, Oracle

Advanced RAC Programming Features by Martin Bach, Enkitec

Automatische Daten Optimierung, Heatmap und Compression 12c live by Ulrike Schwinn, Oracle

Second day

Understanding Oracle RAC Internals – The Cache Fusion Edition by Markus Michalewicz, Oracle

Here’s a collection of customer quotes as a follow-up to my last post about the importance of attitude towards Live Virtual Classes (LVCs). They are from courses that I have taught personally this year with an average delivery score of about 96%:

Oracle Database 12c: Managing Multitenant Architecture

When using the Data Guard Broker, you don’t need to set any LOG_ARCHIVE_* parameter for the databases that are part of your Data Guard configuration. The broker is doing that for you. Forget about what you may have heard about VALID_FOR – you don’t need that with the broker. Actually, setting any of the LOG_ARCHIVE_* parameters with an enabled broker configuration might even confuse the broker and lead to warning or error messages. Let’s look at a typical example about the redo log transport mode. There is a broker configuration enabled with one primary database prima and one physical standby physt. The broker config files are mirrored on each site and spfiles are in use that the broker (the DMON background process, to be precise) can access:

The single most important factor for successful digital learning is the attitude both of the instructor as well as of the attendees towards the course format. Delivery of countless Live Virtual Classes (LVCs) for Oracle University made me realize that. There are technical prerequisites of course: A reliable and fast network connection and the usage of a good headset is mandatory, else the participant is doomed from the start. Other prerequisites are the same as for traditional courses: Good course material, working lab environment for hands on practices and last not least knowledgeable instructors. For that part notice that we have the very same courseware, lab environments and instructors like for our classroom courses at Oracle University education centers also for LVCs.

On Thursday, 2nd October, 12:30 CET I will be doing a Live Webcast with many demonstrations about Data Guard Real-Time Query.

The shown features all work with 11g already.

Register here.

Addendum: The webcast was done already.

This a a little discovery from my present Oracle Database 12c New Features course in Copenhagen: The default setting for Controlfile Autobackup has changed to ON – but only for Multitenant, apparently:

It is quite often that I encounter attendees in my Oracle University courses that strive to become OCP or sometimes even OCM, asking me whether they should better go for an older versions certificate before they take on the most recent. The reasoning behind those questions is mostly that it may be easier to do it with the older version. My advise is then always: Go for the most recent version! No Oracle Certification exam is easy, but the older versions certificate is already outdated. The now most recent one will become outdated also sooner as you may think :-)

The corporation announced today that I got the Customer Services Excellence Award 2014 in the category ‘Customer Champion’ for the EMEA region. It is an honor to be listed there together with these excellent professionals that I proudly call colleagues.

When you see that error upon trying to install or upgrade something on your Windows 7 64-bit machine, chances are that it is caused by a Windows Security update that you need to uninstall. There is probably no point in messing around with the registry or the application that you want to upgrade. Instead, remove the Windows update KB2918614 like this:

Open the control panel, then click  Windows Update

Click Update History and then Installed Updates:

With a Data Guard Configuration in Maximum Performance protection mode, don’t go to Maximum Protection directly, because that leads to a restart of the primary database: