UKOUG 2005 – Day 2

I’ve finally made it home and have some time to catch up on the blog (though in truth I could do without thinking about Oracle for a few hours). Anyway, here’s a summary of my day two.

I went to see Julian Dyke’s ‘Forgotten Features’ after Mogens. I learnt something new, which is always good news, because I hadn’t been aware of the 10g Optimiser Environment view and I liked the fact that Julian (along with a later presentation I attended) just took a big long list of ‘stuff’ and kept going until he hit his time limit. That way you get the most information in the available time without any danger of over-running. Of course you miss the big build-up to a conclusion, but that’s worse if it goes wrong 😉

I was torn for the next agenda slot, because I wanted to attend the second of Jonathan’s CBO presentations, but decided to attend Lisa’s ‘Help! I’m a Newbie!’ instead. I wanted to give her a bit of moral support and so I wandered in, intending to sit at the back, see her get underway and then slip out to go and see Jonathan. Then it occurred to me that that could really put her off, so decided to stay for the whole thing. She did really well for a first attempt, didn’t run over and managed to be pretty funny too. This blog also got a mention. Well done Lisa!

I wanted to attend Steve Shaw’s ‘Load Testing Oracle Databases with Open Source Tools’ next but I was a little late, it was a small hall, full to capacity and so I wasn’t allowed in. Damn!

Then I went for a decent lunch with Thomas Presslie of the Scottish OUG and Gareth Jones (my boss). We managed to settle in to the a table right next to Mogens Norgaard and James Morle without noticing them. Mogens probably thought I was stalking him or something!

Next up was Graham Wood from Oracle talking about ASH, which was a really enjoyable presentation. Although I’m familiar with ASH, it was good to brush up my knowledge. There was one particularly funny line in there too, but I think it’s better left behind at the conference!

Finally I attended Anjo Kolk’s presentation on cross-instance locks. Personally I thought this was great stuff, but it was pretty heavy, last thing in the afternoon. Fortunately, he finished early whilst still doing the subject justice. Hooray! I’d never heard Anjo present before this conference. Now that I’ve attended a couple, he’s very near the top of my must-see list in future.

Tom’s keynote was pretty funny. I got away by the skin of my teeth by not having posted about Oracle Express in the past few days, so no name-check for me! Howard’s blog might not have been displayed, but Tom definitely mumbled his name 😉 This presentation probably included the scariest moment of the week when a tipsy Mark Rittman appeared on the giant projector screen! As far as I could tell, his better half must have given him an eyebrow trim recently, because he didn’t look too bad 😉 The Dog was a little disappointed when I got home that he didn’t make it onto the big screen …

Next up were drinks in the pub with Tony from Apress and various Oak Table members. Having been ridiculed for wanting a pint of lager instead of the real ales that we’d walked 10 minutes to be able to buy(!), Tom baled me out by suggesting that he’d like his second beer to have bubbles.

Back to the conference for more drinks and I managed to grab a chat with Pete S, my boss Gareth, old colleagues Graham Ritchie and others. By the time I made it to the pub, the Champions League football was over and I knew I had a busy day on Tuesday, so it was straight to bed.