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NoCOUG's August 21, 2003 Conference

 

Our August 21, 2003 was held at the ChevronTexaco campus in San Ramon. Some of the presentations from the meeting are available for download.

Conference Description

The August 21, 2003 Conference had three parallel tracks of technical presentations covering topics such as database administration, application development, and data warehousing.

The agenda and session descriptions were as follows:

8:00 - 9:00

- Registration opens. Continental Breakfast.

9:00 - 9:30

- General Session - Vendor Introductions

9:30 - 10:30

- Keynote: "The Burden of Proof" by Jonathan Lewis, President, JL Computer Consultancy

10:30 - 11:00

- Break

11:00 - 12:00

- Parallel Session #1:

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

"How the CBO Works" by Jonathan Lewis, President, JL Computer Consultancy

"Database Development with Oracle9i JDeveloper" by Brian Fry, Senior Product Manager, Application Development Tools, Oracle Corporation

"Extending Materialized Views" by Noel Reed, Director of Product Management, Bradmark Technologies, Inc.

12:00 - 1:00

- Lunch

1:00 - 2:00

- Parallel Session #2:

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

"More Examples of Interpreting Wait Events to Boost System Performance" by Roger Schrag and Terry Sutton, Database Specialists

"Introduction to Using Oracle with Perl and Perl's Database Modules" by Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting

“Managing Performance Through Versioning of Statistics” by Claudia Fernandez, Technical Services Manager, LECCO Technology, Inc.

2:00 - 2:15

- Break

2:15 - 3:15

- Parallel Session #3:

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

"More Examples of Interpreting Wait Events to Boost System Performance" by Roger Schrag and Terry Sutton, Database Specialists

"Introduction to Using Oracle with Perl and Perl's Database Modules" by Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting

"Supporting Multiple Development Databases Without Multiple DBAs" by Brian Hitchock, DBA, Sun Microsystems

3:15 - 3:45

- Break and Raffle

3:45 - 4:45

- Parallel Session #4:

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

"A Successful Performance Tuning Methodology Using the Database Health Check" by Robert Wijnbelt, Systems Consultant Manager, Quest Software

"Converting Oracle Forms and/or PL/SQL to Java" by Jennifer McNeill, President & CEO, CipherSoft

"ETL-There is a New Sheriff in Town - Oracle" by Bonnie O'Neil, Apex Solutions, Inc.

4:45 - …

- NoCOUG networking and happy hour at O'Kane's Irish Pub, 200 Montgomery St., San Ramon (Leaving the conference, turn right on Bollinger Canyon Road, right on Market Place, and left on Montgomery Street.)

 


 

"The Burden of Proof" Oracle is a subtle and complex piece of software with literally thousands of features and capabilities. Despite this, there are still many so-called experts who insist on publishing quick hints and tips that are supposed to fix everybody's biggest problems.

 

In the absence of proof - no "expert" should be trusted. Without at least a test case, no tip should be considered relevant or valid.

 

This key-note discusses why it is important to insist on a reasonable level of proof before accepting any hint or tip as being worthwhile.

 

"How the CBO Works" The Cost Based Optimizer has been around for many years, but still suffers a lot of criticism because there rarely seems to be any connection between the cost of a query, and the speed with which it performs.

 

This presentation looks at the underlying mechanisms of the CBO and explains why this is the case.  We start with a basic example in Oracle 8, and then move on to some of the Oracle 9 features that are designed to make the issues of earlier versions of Oracle non-existent.

 

Time and legal restrictions permitting, we will then have a quick look at any interesting details in Oracle 10 that might make a difference.

 

"More Examples of Interpreting Wait Events to Boost System Performance" At any given moment, every Oracle server process is either busy servicing a request or waiting for something specific to happen-a condition we call a "wait event." The Oracle instance maintains detailed statistics of all wait events-how many times each session has waited for a specific event, total time waited, and exactly what events are being waited on right now. This information can be used to gain insight into the performance of both your application and database. In this presentation, we will quickly define what wait events are, detail how to extract wait event information from the instance, and discuss enhancements to the wait event interface in Oracle9i.

 

We'll spend the bulk of the session learning how to interpret the wait event data we collect by way of new examples. Many of us have heard of wait events and know how to query the v$ views, but in this presentation we'll walk through real life examples of how to use wait event data to diagnose problems and boost system performance.

 

"A Successful Performance Tuning Methodology Using the Database Health Check" Tuning Oracle goes well beyond SQL and simple reactive troubleshooting.  A successful performance tuning methodology will chart a path to detect, diagnose and resolve database issues for both proactive and reactive tuning.  Using a health check involves profiling of the respective database, collecting information at a defined interval, analyzing those collections, and presenting the findings with information that takes the guesswork out of tuning.  This presentation will define and outline the health check procedures as well as how to employ this practice as the core of a successful tuning methodology.

 

"Database Development with Oracle9i JDeveloper" In addition to its support for Java and XML, Oracle9i JDeveloper is a complete environment for SQL and PL/SQL development and debugging. This session explores the database development aspects of Oracle9i JDeveloper - including creating database objects, editing and compiling PL/SQL code, running and debugging PL/SQL and Java stored procedures along with executing and tuning SQL statements. DBAs and database developers will learn how to use Oracle9i JDeveloper for their development work.

 

"Introduction to Using Oracle with Perl and Perl's Database Modules" Randal L. Schwartz introduces the Perl DBI database interface.  Prior knowledge of Perl is very helpful.  Knowledge of basic database concepts such as SQL and tables will be presumed.

 

"Converting Oracle Forms and/or PL/SQL to Java" With the emergence of Oracle 9i and Oracle 9iAS, users are trying to understand how to migrate their applications into the new "web enabled" environment.  As well, many of these application developers are finding that this migration can be time consuming and overwhelming.  As they move their applications into the Java environment they are looking for the ability to facilitate a smooth transition.  Users want to move quickly to take advantage of new technology without having to spend enormous time and financial resources.

 

This presentation discusses the technical aspects and challenges of moving Oracle Forms and PL/SQL into Java and XML and reviews the pros and cons of migrating the applications.  It also reviews automated tools that are available to perform this conversion.  Detailed discussion is provided around the benefits of utilizing the new technology available in 9i and 9iAS.

 

"Extending Materialized Views" From Summary table management in Oracle Discoverer to a valuable tool for Decision Support and Data Warehousing, Materialized Views can increase by many orders of magnitude the speed of queries that access many hundreds of thousands or millions of records.  With the use of Materialized Views, a user is able to query terabytes of detail data in seconds or less, through the use of pre-computed summarizations and joins, which greatly reduces the size of the original source data.

 

However, there are limitations within Materialized Views.  We will discuss overcoming three of those biggest limitations:

 - No LONG support

 - Complete refreshes over slow or bad connections can sometimes never finish

 - ORA-01555 on a complete refresh (or even a fast refresh) in a busy database

 

"Managing Performance Through Versioning of Statistics" Learn how to use versioning of statistics in Oracle 9i to manage and enhance application performance. This presentation will exemplify how statistics between different environments such as development and production can be imported/exported to simulate production data volumes and manage performance changes.

 

"Supporting Multiple Development Databases Without Multiple DBAs" Development databases tend to be smaller and less critical than production databases, or at least that is the general perception. For developers working on a critical release date, their perception is somewhat different. The number of DBAs dedicated to support development database is usually limited and in many cases, there aren't any at all. Using a set of simple cron scripts and email, it is easy to continuously monitor, backup and gather performance statistics for multiple development databases. While this approach lacks sex appeal, it is also free. The process to install the scripts and use the results is covered in detail from real-world experience of using this process for the last year. The scripts reviewed are provided.

 

"ETL-There is a New Sheriff in Town - Oracle" ETL (Extract, Transformation and Loading) is having a paradigm shift. Previously, ETL was done with tools outside the database. Ab Initio, Data Stage and Informica were kings of the ETL world. However, there were major disadvantages to this paradigm. Third party ETL tools required a separate box because they had no controls on the consumption of CPU resources.  Third party ETL tools were not ingrated into the database. This meant that ETL developers became experts in running the tool; however, had no knowledge on how the tool related to the database. In order to create fast and efficient ETL process, you needed to know both. Oracle 9i is changing the ETL paradigm. This presentation will cover these Oracle 9i ETL features and explain why you want to join the paradigm shift and do ETL in the database.

 

Using Oracle Workflow to Automate Warehouse Jobs This seminar will introduce you to the standalone version of Oracle Workflow for the purpose of automating warehouse jobs. Using a real world implementation scenario, you will get an overview of the architecture used to implement Workflow into an existing warehouse. Learn some of the potential issues and changes required to use Workflow with multiple databases and with retrofitting existing code to run within the Workflow framework.

 


If you have suggestions for future meetings or would like to offer feedback on previous conferences, then please complete our online survey or send us an email.

Directions to ChevronTexaco Park in San Ramon

Address: 6101 Bollinger Canyon Road San Ramon, CA 94583
Please note that the conference building is just after the ChevronTexaco Campus.  Upon arrival, enter the building at the East entrance where you'll find NoCOUG representatives ready to sign you in.

From Highway 680 South: Exit at Bollinger Canyon Road. Turn left onto Bollinger Canyon Road (heading east over the freeway). After passing ChevronTexaco Park Circle West, turn right into Bishop Ranch 1. Address 6101 is the first building after entering the parking lot. Park anywhere not restricted.

From Highway 680 North: Exit at Bollinger Canyon Road. Turn right onto Bollinger Canyon Road (heading east). After passing ChevronTexaco Park Circle West, turn right into Bishop Ranch 1.  Address 6101 is the first building after entering the parking lot. Park anywhere not restricted.

Map

 

Copyright © 2003 NoCOUG. All rights reserved.