Oracloid Blog

… research the comments on online book stores and don’t limit yourself to your regional web sites. This is an example of the very detailed comment that might influence your decision to buy. You, obviously, need to pay attention how credible the author is. Of course, never forget that whatever is printed (in the books as well as in the comments) is not necessarily true and check everything yourself.

“Miracle Open World” is the right name for the conference. There is no “Oracle” in it as I expected, but it definitely is about Oracle. I think it should be called Miracle Orange World:

Poll time now — Who is that in the picture? (I first thought I would ask what that formula means, but every reader of this blog is expected to know that already.)

(more…)

First of all, I should say that the Slovenian Oracle Users Group Conference (SIOUG) has exceeded all my expectations. I had been been told many times that it was a great meeting, but I didn’t really expect such a nicely organized event. The venue, presentations, food, entertainment and whatnot were all on the highest level.

In fact, the SIOUG conference should probably be named our favourite. Why? Because Pythian had three full-blown delegates at SIOUG 07. However, I have to postpone the details until I get the photos from my camera, so I’m afraid you’ll have to stay puzzled about the identities of the other two.

I feel somewhat guilty that I didn’t blog anything during the conference, but I do have an excuse — it’s been so intense that I simply had no time. In fact, I’m typing this on the ferry to Denmark where the first Miracle Oracle Open World (MOOW) is starting today.

Some statistics: I have driven almost 3,000 kilometers in the last week — half of them in the last two days, and the last thousand just today. That means I’m quite tired, and it also explains this very short blog post. But I should tell you exactly why I couldn’t really post anything during previous three days.

(more…)

As I already mentioned earlier, I’m going to Slovenia to participate in the 12th Slovenian Oracle User Group Conference. In just few hours I’m leaving to Germany and, after few days spent with old friends there, driving down to Portorož on Adriatic Sea. The conference takes place in Grand Hotel Bernardin from 23rd to 26th of September 2007.
(more…)

I can’t resist a blog post about Miracle Oracle Open World held at Lalandia in Rødby, Denmark from 27th to 29th September 2007. I will have a privilege to attend this fine event and, boy, am I looking forward to it!

(more…)

While I like a lot monitoring capabilities and extensibility of Oracle 10g Grid Control it’s lacking a lot in Web GUI usability and ease of use.

Currently we are moving from Oracle Enterprise Manager 9i to Grid Control 10g for one of our client. This client uses many features of OEM besides monitoring - job management, Data Guard and others. One of the requirements to move backups to Grid Control 10g is to be able to schedule incremental level 1 backup to run Only Monday to Friday or on certain days of a month.

(more…)

I’m a bit late with that “news” but I have the second article about Oracle 10g Grid Control Extensibility published in Q3 2007 issue of IOUG SELECT Journal magazine.

If you are interested in that topic I should reference you back to my presentation from IOUG where I created a sample MySQL monitoring plugin. It wasn’t meant to become a full blown plugin but rather a handy example. However, I heard recently that some people are actually using this MySQL plugin and looking forward for a new version so it’s time to get back to it.

Today I’ve resurrected my development VMware environment with Grid Control and spent some time adding a new feature for the plugin - dynamic instance property. This property is calculated by an agent instead of being defined by a user like hostname and port. It’s not documented anywhere so I had to research available examples and XML DTDs and so far I was able to capture MySQL version and the plan is to use it later for some conditional metrics that are only valid for certain versions of MySQL or calculated differently. Other plans - significantly extend collected metrics, implement configuration management features and MySQL jobs. Stay tuned - details to come as well as the new version of the plugin.

Few more words about my future plans…

At the end of September, I’ll be at Slovenian Oracle User Group Conference 2007. I’m looking forward for it - agenda is quite interesting and there quite a few well-known international speakers so I will be able to fill every slot with presentation in English. On the other hand, it seems I can understand Slovenian quite well without interpreter — it turned out to be quite similar to Russian. Another, advantage is the location - it’s on Adriatic Sea and I plan to take advantage of that as well! However, nothing comes for free so I will need to put some efforts and finish my presentation on RAC connection management. Another presentation that I’m going to deliver there is about RAC load testing based on an interesting lab project with one of our clients.

After SIOUG 2007, I’m planning to visit Laladia where newly renamed event Miracle Oracle Open World (former Miracle Database Forum) takes place. I’ll be lucky visitor there and won’t have burden of presenting. It’s one of the rare chances where I can just relax and fully enjoy the technical sessions and peer-networking activities.

I have also couple abstracted accepted for Australian Oracle User Group Conference 2007 in Melbourne at the end of November. If my participation is confirmed, I’ll be delivering two presentations there - on Block Change Tracking Internals and RAC load testing. I’m also looking forward to see our Sydney office shake hand of our brave evening oncaller, Paul Moen.

One week later, already in December, I’m heading to Birmingham for UKOUG 07. I’ll have only one presentation there so it will be relatively relaxed visit for me and I could enjoy other presenters and have all the time to chat with Oracle DBA peers.

So this is it for 2007. I’m looking forward to see you on one of those events!