UKOUG 2005 – Day 3

I was up early, skipped breakfast and ready to go on my busiest day of the conference. I’d volunteered to chair a few sessions to do my bit for the UKOUG but they’d all fallen on the last day!

First, Connor McDonald’s ‘Evolution of SQL and PL/SQL’, which was the usual top-notch, energetic presentation. He ran a little short of time, but there was certainly no padding. I didn’t get anything new from this, but it did make me think of a couple of amendments I might make to the CASE paper in future to make some of the examples a bit more elegant.

Next was Gaja Krishna Vaidyanatha’s ASH presentation. I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I hadn’t attended Graham Wood’s presentation the previous day, but Gaja’s clearly an accomplished speaker.

After a brief break, it was time for the Server Technology Panel session. The user group had asked me if I’d sit on this – probably because I’ve done it before at other conferences in other countries and to have a balanced panel. So there were a couple of Oracle Product Managers – Lilian Hobbs and Larry Carpenter; a couple of Oak Table members – Jonathan Lewis and Niall Litchfield; and a couple of instructors (ex, in my case) – Carl Dudley and me. I saw my role as being just a jobbing DBA and not any kind of expert. With the type of questions you’re asked, a lot of the time it’s about sharing opinions and I have no problem doing that 😉 The questions were really interesting and hopefully people got something from it. I think a session like this at least gives a balance to the agenda because it’s a little more interactive and light-hearted. What was ever-so-slightly embarassing was that the last question we were asked was what we had got from the conference (or something like that) and, despite having spent some time explaining to Jonathan over dinner why I thought his first presentation was wonderful, I didn’t mention it today. Niall rubbed it in by praising it of course 😉 Another funny part of the last question was that Jonathan and I were talking before the panel session and he was raving about Bill Ferrari’s presentation on Partitioned IOTs. I’d seen this in Scotland already and thought it was excellent too. So for his highlights, Jonathan started talking about how much he’d loved Bill’s presentation this morning, giving it a great review. At which point I thought it worth pointing out to Jonathan that the questioner was Bill Ferrari. I asked if perhaps that was why he’d asked the question? To which he simply replied – ‘That was a good answer’ 😉

As we were leaving the hall, Mogens was lurking because he wanted me to help him step through setting up his blog. Now he’s up and running I think you can expect some hilarious blogging if his presentations are anything to go by.

Time for a flapjack and then off to Jonathan’s Hints presentation. This was terrific and I think Jonathan’s getting better and better at fine-tuning his message. I’ve always loved his stuff, but I think he’s mastered the art of getting across some fairly complex ideas very clearly. That rat-bag Finnigan walked away with the raffled book, so I’ll need to get my order in to Amazon.

Literally a couple of minutes break and then it was my last duty of the conference, introducing Carl Dudley’s Data Pump presentation. Carl’s a mate and someone who I admire in many ways, technical and human, so I was keen to introduce him and he had his usual touches – hand-outs (which you need because he includes so much information) – a little cynicism here and there and some handy tips. By now I was deeply tired of Oracle (it doesn’t happen often) so I needed a presentation like this to keep me going.

Then it was time for the trip home. I’m delighted to be home but I had a great time at the conference, mingled much more than I have in the past and didn’t have the pressure of presenting. So thanks to everyone else who helped make it fun and hopefully most of us will be back next year.

One negative to finish on, though, I got back home and The Dog has got absolutely nowhere with the server build. I think the directly-attached disks are what’s confusing him!

Back to work tomorrow …