OOW2008 day 5 – It’s A Wrap

Written by Paweł Barut
Before I start to summarize my Day 5 at Oracle OpenWorld, I would like to add few words to day 4 (Wednesday).

Managing Very, Very Large XML Documents with Oracle XML Database
It was very good session. It one of those where practical experience was shared. Presenters showed step by step how to load very large XML files to DB:

• Setting up XML schema
• Schema annotation technique and few directives
• Direct Insert Store for XML
• Differences with loading XML into XML DB in 10.2g and 11g

The Appreciation Event.
It was very nice concert on Treasure Island. I’ve especially liked Seal. Beside that there was lot of good food and drinks.

Day 5

I will start with session Oracle’s New Database Accelerator: Query Processing Revolutionized. As I’ve expected it was related to announcement made yesterday. My yesterday’s description was not perfect. Now I will try to fix this. First of all we have 2 new machines. But one them is included in the second one.
Oracle Exodata Storage Server - it is hardware from HP: 2 Intel quad-core processors, 12 disks (300GB, 15RPM or 750 GB, 10 RPM) with disk controller optimized for best bandwidth and 2 InfiniBand connectors to connect to external equipment. The code for this product is HP DL180G5 (at least that was on one of slides). This computer is sold with preinstalled Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.1. The main role of this machine is to store database files. It cannot be used to store normal files.
The second hardware is HP-Oracle Exodata DB Machine - This one is rack box equipped with 14 Oracle Exodata Storage Servers and 8 DB Servers each with 8 Intel processors. On those DB Server runs Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.1 and Oracle RDBMS 11g (11.1.0.7). Even more – 6 such DB Machines can be connected into cluster.
Where is the revolution? In the way Oracle DB communicates with storage. There is new protocol iDB that allows to push query predicated down to storage. With this, number of data transferred from Storage to DB Server is minimized. This feature is called Smart Scan. It can be leveraged only when full table (or partition) scans occurs. And it still keeps all read consistency.
And here is technical spec from Oracle.

And short on my other sessions: Oracle Database Performance on Flash Drives
Very interesting session showing results of different approaches for using Flash drives. As an conclusion there was presented formula, when Flash drives can help with performance, and when it is better to stay with fast rotating drives, and when even with low cost but high capacity drives. As an side note when we consider power usage, Flash drives can be even more economic then traditional rotating drives.

Oracle ACE Director: Birds-of-a-Feather Tips and Techniques
Session lead by Oracle ACE’s: Lewis Cunningan, Arup Nunda, Edie Awad, Mark Rittman, Tim Hall, Hans Forbich and Bradley Brown. The session was Q&A style. ACE’s were answering questions based on own experience, and that is sometimes different that Oracle’s official recommendation.

Real-World XML DB Examples from Oracle Support
This was rather chaotic session, and did not gave me useful information- IHMO waste of time.

And the last session by Tom Kyte Reorganizing Objects
Tom have done great job showing different myths about when DBA’s should reorganize tables and indexes. It was really Great speech. Might be there was too much material for an 1h session, and everything was shown little bit in an hurry.

The day has ended with small party It’s A WRAP
While writing this I’m sitting in hotel and watching Fireworks over the San Francisco Port. Tomorrow I’m leaving San Francisco for 18h trip back to home.

Cheers,
Paweł
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Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Preparing for Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Arriving San Francisco – OOW2008 day 1.
• OOW2008 day 2 – Oracle Beehive
• OOW2008 day 3
• OOW2008 day 4 – HP-Oracle Exadata Server Announcement = Extreme Performance
• OOW2008 day 5 – It’s A Wrap

OOW2008 day 4 – HP-Oracle Exadata Server Announcement = Extreme Performance

Written by Paweł Barut
Today is very busy day for me. It’s just after Larry Ellison keynote on which first Oracle Hardware was presented. I’m a little big skeptic if Oracle is realy going for hardware business. It is rather that Oracle had great idea how to solve problems with really big databases and growing demand for storage, and joined forces with HP to create new quality in data processing. So, how it looks: in one box we have 2 intel 4 core processors and 12 disks as storage – it is called The Exadata Programmable Storage Server. This machine is not storage, and is not pure DB Server as well. It can process queries (so it is DB), and it stores Data (so it is Storage). But it needs separate DB Server to work at full performance. How it works: DB Servers receives request for data. It then retries data from Exadata Storage Server, but data get initially filtered, so number of data transferred from Storage Server to DB Server is reduced. It allows much better overall performance.
At least this is my understanding. I will go also to DemoGround to get direct look at this machine, and more detailed specification.

Today I’ve also participated in few sessions.
Soup-to-Nuts RAD Development Using Oracle SQL Developer and Oracle Application Express It was quick show how to create simple application using APEX and SQL Developer. It focused on modeling capabilities of SQL Dev, and integration between APEX and SQL Dev. It was shown, how to view APEX objects in SQL Dev, and how to leverage this integration. There was also presentation of new functionality in APEX to migrate Oracle Forms to APEX.

Agile Database Testing Techniques (IOUG) This was very interesting session giving practical inside on how to organize unit tests in DB, how to validate that upgrade scripts run successfully, and how to prepare DB environment for Daily Builds. Presenter shared his real world experience and this was the biggest value of this session.

SQL Tuning Roundtable with the Experts This one was rather boring, as topics and answers were almost exactly the same as on session “Inside Oracle Database 11g Optimizer: Removing the Mystery” that I was participating yesterday.

Now I’m sitting in OCP Louge, and in few minutes I’m going for last session Managing Very, Very Large XML Documents with Oracle XML Database and then for The Appreciation Event.

Cheers,
Paweł

BTW. This is my post # 100.
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Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Preparing for Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Arriving San Francisco – OOW2008 day 1.
• OOW2008 day 2 – Oracle Beehive
• OOW2008 day 3
• OOW2008 day 4 – HP-Oracle Exadata Server Announcement = Extreme Performance
• OOW2008 day 5 – It’s A Wrap

OOW2008 day 3

Written by Paweł Barut
This day was quite good for me. I’ve finally overcome problems with jet-lag.

I’ve started day on session “Inside Oracle Database 11g Optimizer: Removing the Mystery”. It was very good session explaining how new features in optimizer works. It provided inside on Plan Profiles, improved bind variable picking, improved performance for statistics collection and new statistics for correlated columns.

My next session was not exactly what I was expecting. “Global-Scale Web 2.0 Data Platforms: Sharding with Oracle Database”. I was expecting technical inside, but it mostly was marketing speech on “why Oracle is better then MySQL”. Break between sessions I’ve used to ride on Cable Car:


I’ve ended day on session “Top 10 Things You Wanted to know about ASM”. As I were not using ASM yet, it was good overview of features, and best practices for using ASM. Now, I’m going to rest to be prepared for next day, and big keynote by Larry Ellison.

Cheers,
Paweł
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Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Preparing for Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Arriving San Francisco – OOW2008 day 1.
• OOW2008 day 2 – Oracle Beehive
• OOW2008 day 3
• OOW2008 day 4 – HP-Oracle Exadata Server Announcement = Extreme Performance
• OOW2008 day 5 – It’s A Wrap

OOW2008 day 2 – Oracle Beehive

Written by Paweł Barut
This day started with Keynote presented by Oracle President Charles Phillips. He spoke about Oracle acquisitions, and more complete portfolio of products that Oracle have now. What caught my attention most was announcement of new product, new collaboration platform Oracle Beehive. It joins features of email, calendar, document sharing, web conference and few more in one suite. What is most important those tools are open, so user can use ex. MS Outlook to access mails or calendar entries. Security is one of the key features. When you share document with others, they can see document in theirs workspace. They can even make local copy of this document. When document is deleted by original author, then all copies of the document become unusable for anyone. This is because all shared documents are encrypted and signed. While opening document there is validation of access rights for document. For me it seems as this is based on technology acquired from Stallent. It seems that this product will try to get market from MS Sharepoint and IBM Lotus.

Today I took some time to see Exhibition Hall, and walk around the city. While walking I’ve found one interesting bus – I was Bus that was advertising Microsoft SQLServer:

It looks pretty old :). Microsoft does not want to be absent in San Francisco during Oracle’s big conference.

I’ve also participated in few session on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and AIA (Applications Integration Architecture). Basically I wanted to have better understanding of Oracle offering in SOA area.

Cheers,
Paweł

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Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Preparing for Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Arriving San Francisco – OOW2008 day 1.
• OOW2008 day 2 – Oracle Beehive
• OOW2008 day 3
• OOW2008 day 4 – HP-Oracle Exadata Server Announcement = Extreme Performance
• OOW2008 day 5 – It’s A Wrap

Arriving San Francisco – OOW2008 day 1.

Written by Paweł Barut
My trip to San Francisco went well. No delays, no problems with flight reservation – see what happened to Tim. I had small problems with hotel reservation, but finally everything is fine – I’m in different hotel then I’ve reserved. I’m suffering little from jet-lag. I slept an hour or two in plane, and then I could not sleep during night. So I feel little tired. The weather in SF is great, especially when comparing to very cold and rainy weather in Krakow last week.

My first experience of San Fracinsco is not very good. Seems to be not very friendly, and is definitely not of my style. I might change my mind when see more places in SF. But Oracle Conference is organized very well, so my attitude is improving :).

For today, I’ve planned mostly session regarding Security and Identity management. First of those session “Oracle Security Risk” was very good. Especially speaker Tanya Baccam from SANS.org was impressive. Presentation was about common problems with security in web based and forms application that use Oracle DB as backend. One type of attack was new to me: CSRF – Cross Site Request Forgery.

Next one was Security Roundtable – lot of questions from audience on variety of topics. Most hot one: applying CPU patches, Auditing, DB Valut, Encrypting data and transmissions.

Then was Oracle Identity Management lead by Matt Topper. Good overview of identity products from Oracle stack.

My last one session “Storage: A New Paradigm for Database” was also very good session. Ari Kaplan show now storage solutions can improve Backup/Restore times for database and decrease demand for storage space. He also presented new RAID-DP concept, and claims that it can provide better performance, with lower storage demand, and provide higher availability. This is something that I need to investigate in more details.

For the evening I’m going to take part in Bloggers Meetup.

Cheers,
Paweł
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Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Preparing for Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Arriving San Francisco – OOW2008 day 1.
• OOW2008 day 2 – Oracle Beehive
• OOW2008 day 3
• OOW2008 day 4 – HP-Oracle Exadata Server Announcement = Extreme Performance
• OOW2008 day 5 – It’s A Wrap

Preparing for Oracle OpenWorld 2008

Written by Paweł Barut
It's just few days left to Oracle OpenWorld 2008. First of all my trip starts on Saturday 20th at 13:00 in Kraków, Poland. Then I switch planes in Munich, Germany, and land in San Francisco at 19:20. Just 6 hours ahead, but when I add 9 hours difference in time zones, that it adds up to over 15 hours travel. The worst thing will be adaptation to totally different timezone. I will stay in Americas Best Value Inn at Hallam Street - I hope this is in reasonable walking distance from Moscone Center. I've created an map on Google Maps - the street view feature is great - now I know how the hotel neighborhood looks like. I've also checked transportation services by BART.
And the most important thing - My OOW2008 Schedule:

I do not expect big changes in this schedule, but still, some smaller changes are possible. I could skip one or more sessions to see Exhibition Hall or go for Unconference.
I'm also looking forward for meeting other Oracle Bloggers during Blogger Meetup organized by Eddie Awad.
Update: I forgot to mention about After Dark at Oracle OpenWorld where are evening parties listed.

See you in San Francisco,
Paweł

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