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Yes, I know the technical content has been non-existent recently but it’s conference season and I’ve started my trip to UKOUG already, despite the fact Birmingham is only about an hour away on the train from my new home! So although a fun weekend in Edinburgh awaits, celebrating a couple of important birthdays before I… Continue reading Ready for UKOUG

Well it’s was an enjoyable few days in Bulgaria, to say the least, although perhaps it tailed off a little towards the end through my own fault! The trip out was fun because between the ACE Director Program and the Bulgarian Oracle User Group all my expenses were covered this time so I treated myself… Continue reading BGOUG Autumn Conference

I always look forward to this time of year as the annual UKOUG conference in Birmingham approaches but this year I think I’m looking forward to it more than ever. As I’ll have delivered both of my own presentations at previous events my slides will be done before I arrive and so, after a nice… Continue reading Upcoming UKOUG Conference

So it’s that time of year again, when perfectly reasonable people decide to deliberately make fools of themselves for a good month and a good cause …. It’s Movember, the month formerly known as November, now dedicated to growing moustaches and raising awareness and funds for men’s health; specifically prostate and testicular cancer. I’m donating… Continue reading Movember

I think it’s time to move on and it’s worked twice before! One of the reasons I love being a contractor is that I get to change clients, projects and directions when it feels right and that helps to keep me fresh. Stay in one place too long and I find it’s too easy for… Continue reading Reverse Job Advert 3

(to me, anyway ….) It’s easy to lose perspective when you’re in the midst of Openworld conference chaos and partying but the most important news I heard this week wasn’t anything to do with NoSQL or BigData or OEM or even Steve Jobs’ passing away, but a horrible email I received one morning. If you… Continue reading The most important news this week

As I mentioned before, Cary Millsap was over in Europe recently and included a short trip to London to deliver his 1-day Mastering Oracle Trace Data seminar. By the time I found out, it was a little late to organise an onsite at my current client’s place and in this business climate it’s difficult to… Continue reading Mastering Oracle Trace Data seminar with Cary Millsap

After a happy and uneventful direct flight (what a joy it is to use those words!) to SFO, I emerged into sunshine and arrived at the Sofitel near Oracle HQ around about tea-time to rest before today’s ACE Director Briefing. Once the Cuddly Toys had settled on their settee … (… and checked the luggage… Continue reading OOW2011 ACE Directors Briefing

Sandwiched in the middle of a busy month or so for me – Cary Millsap’s seminar the other week (more on that later) and Openworld from the end of next week – was my long-awaited trip to the Slovenian Oracle User Group Conference  in Portoroz. I’ve been promising Joze Senegacnik I would go to Slovenia… Continue reading SIOUG 2011 Conference

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been looking at increasing the SQL Monitoring Retention at my current site using _sqlmon_max_plan but, as well as confirming with Oracle Support that they’re happy for us to do so, it would be nice to know what the resulting memory footprint would be to help us come… Continue reading Real-Time SQL Monitoring – Retention (part 2)