My OOW Presentations

If you're heading to OOW this year, it'd be great to have you at either one of my following presentations:

Session ID: 02240
Session Title: Angels in the Architecture: An Oracle Application Development Framework Architectural Blueprint
Venue / Room: Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate B
Date and Time: Wednesday 10/5/11, 01:00 PM

Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) in Oracle JDeveloper 11g presents an interesting service-oriented solution with the adoption of bounded task flows and Oracle ADF libraries. Yet unlike its Release 10.1.3 counterpart, in which the tendency was to build one large application from the start, the 11g solution comes with its own challenges in terms of bringing the multiple moving parts into a composite master Oracle ADF application. This session presents a blueprint for Oracle ADF application architecture that can be applied to small and large projects alike to assist beginners in pulling 11g Oracle ADF applications together.

Session ID: 2241
Session Title: A Change Is as Good as a REST: Oracle JDeveloper 11g's REST Web Services
Venue / Room: Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate A
Date and Time: Thursday 10/6/11, 03:00 PM

It can seem like a hard slog to develop SOAP-based Web services, with their contract-first design requirements and over-engineered specification that includes everything but the kitchen sink. REST-based Web services provide light relief for quick Web service development, whereas the constraints of SOAP Web services feel extreme for some short, sharp development. Luckily, Oracle JDeveloper provides support for both styles, and this presentation includes a short and sweet demonstration of getting REST Web services up and running by using Oracle JDeveloper's support for the Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS).

In turn don't forget the day of ADF presentations for the ADF EMG on the User Group Sunday at Open World.

"The Year of the ADF developer" at Oracle Open World 2011

What's one of the worst things about attending Oracle Open World? From my point of view it's the huge amount of marketing. Booooorrrring. I'm a developer, I want to hear technical stuff, not sales talk!!

For ADF developers attending OOW in 2011 this is all set to change. Not only has Oracle lined up a number of ADF presentations during the mainstream conference, but the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group (ADF EMG) has a whole day of sessions on the user group Sunday October 2nd!

Think about it. That's a mini ADF conference just for ADF programmers! Even better it will be hosted by ADF experts from around the world to share their day-to-day ADF experiences with you, not just in a brief 1hr session, but 6 sessions in total. That's a lot of ADF content and an addition for no extra cost to your OOW tickets.

So I officially declare OOW'11 "The Year of the ADF developer".


Who have we got lined up for you? I'm glad you asked. We have such A1 ADF presenters as:

* Sten Vesterli - Oracle ACE Director, author of the latest ADF book "Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development - Made Simple" and best speaker at the 2010 ODTUG Kscope conference.

* Frank Nimphius - Oracle Corp's own superstar ADF product manager who produces near-1000 blog posts a day, the ADF code harvests, articles in Oracle Magazine and is a top contributor to the OTN forums in assisting others write successful ADF applications.

* Maiko Rocha - part of Oracle Corp's own WebCenter A-Team who solves some of the most complex and challenging issues Oracle customers throw at ADF and WebCenter.

* Andrejus Baranovskis - ADF blogging wiz whose detailed posts on ADF architecture & best practices has shown many an ADF novice how to put together a working, optimised application using a huge range of ADF features.

* Wilfred van der Deijl - the author of potentially the most important ADF plug-in OraFormsFaces, which gives you the ability to integrate Oracle Forms & ADF into the same running web pages.

* Steven Davelaar - one of the key brains behind Oracle's JHeadstart, and a well known ADF presenter who shows how to push ADF to the extreme for productive development.

* Lucas Jellema - the Fusion Middleware blogging powerhouse from AMIS in the Netherlands, showing how to solve just a
bout any problem in the ADF and FMW space.


Excited? You should be.

But more importantly what are they presenting?


- 09:00 - Sten - Session 32460 - Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: Starting an Enterprise Oracle ADF Project

- 10:15 - Frank & Maiko - Session 32480 - Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: Learn Oracle ADF Task Flows in Only 60 Minutes

- 11:30 - Andrejus - Session 32481 - Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: A+-Quality Oracle ADF Code

- 12:45 - Wilfred - Session 32500 - Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: Transitioning from Oracle Forms to Oracle ADF

- 14:00 - Steven - Session 32501 - Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodoloy Group: Empower Multitasking with an Oracle ADF UI Powerhouse

- 15:15 - Lucas - Session 32502 - Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group: Gold Nuggets in Oracle ADF Faces



All sessions will be held on Sunday October 2nd, so you need to make sure you turn up a day earlier if you only traditionally attend the main part of the conference.

All sessions are in Moscone West room 2000, though remember to check on the day in case the sessions have been moved.

I hope you’re excited as we are in the ADF EMG sessions at Oracle Open World 2011. We really hope you can attend and spread the word about what we’ve got going this year. Remember the ADF EMG is only as good as it’s members’ participation – it’s your group.

(Thanks must go to Bambi Price and the APOUC for giving us the room to hold these presentations at OOW'11).

My OOW presentations - part II

My 2 presentations for OOW are now available for download from the SAGE Computing Services website here:

SOA Lite: A taste of SOA with a smidgen of Web Services

Oracle JDeveloper 11g JAX-WS Web Services: As easy as 1-2-3: XSD, WSDL, Generate!

My OOW presentations

If you're heading to OOW and would love to hear my Aussie accent, my sessions are:

SOA Lite: A taste of SOA with a smidgen of Web Services

S312176 - Sunday 13:00 - 14:00 - Moscone West L3 Room 3000

Abstract: Attempting to gorge yourself on a five-course SOA meal may result in a stomachache and a bill you can least afford at the moment. Instead, a quick and easy recipe with some simple Web services ingredients will give your systems that little taste of SOA you so crave. This session describes why Web services may be a better fit for you than SOA, discusses qualities of contemporary Web services and what skills to focus on when starting out with Web services, and presents a few hints and tips from the Web service trenches.

Oracle JDeveloper 11g JAX-WS Web Services: As easy as 1-2-3: XSD, WSDL, Generate!

307476 - Tuesday 17:30 - 18:30 - Hilton Hotel - Golden Gate 8

Abstract: Web services used to be hard. Creating XML schemas, long-winded Web Services Description Language (WSDL) code, and back-end Java code took much effort. Today Oracle JDeveloper 11g enables developers to visually design both the schemas and WSDL code by drag and drop and generate Web services based on both of these with the latest Java EE JAX-WS/JAXB Web service standards with just a few clicks. Finally programmers can get back to thinking about the programming problem they need to solve without wasting time setting up the Web service artifacts, which can be tedious, error-prone, and very repetitive. Learn more in this session.


In addition we have three ADF Enterprise Methodology Group sessions, one an official session and the other two part of the Unconference:

Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group

312516 - Sunday 10:30 - 11:30 - Moscone West L3 - Room 3014
+ double session Wednesday 13:00 - 15:00 - Moscone West Floor 3 Overlook 1

Abstract: Although Oracle provides leading-edge software to build enterprise applications, there’s more to creating productive teams and delivering successful projects than just the tools. The Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group, formed by Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) practitioners around the world to fill that gap, considers wider issues such as best practices, maximizing code reuse, optimizing teamwork, and more. In this session, Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF experts, including Oracle staff and Oracle ACEs, talk about such high-level Oracle ADF considerations. The Oracle ADF Enterprise Methodology Group is meeting at Oracle OpenWorld under the banner of the ODTUG Fusion Middleware SIG for 2009.


I hope to see you at OOW!

ADF Methodology Group post OOW08

Now that I'm flying back from OOW08, I've a chance to pen a few words about the ADF Methodology Group at the Unconference.

I was very privileged to be a part of the first live ADF Methodology Group meeting. As blogged by Sten and Avrom, we were very lucky to have 40 odd people turn up to help contribute to the first meeting, including day-to-day expert ADF programmers, Oracle ACEs and ACE Directors, and Oracle staff themselves. Thanks to everyone who attended, beginners and experts alike, and those who contributed directly and indirectly.

The success of any such group is always a sum of the great contributions from the parts, and there was enough active discussion to let us know what we're doing is going to help each other and new people to the group in running successful ADF projects. While the OTN Forums are great for talking about technical facilities, solving bugs and understanding JDev + ADF features, there's far more to discuss in order for an ADF project to succeed, and this is where the ADF Methodology Group fits in. What's the best way to test an ADF app, what infrastructure do you need, what should be part of your estimates, and so on.

I encourage anyone who is interested in JDeveloper and ADF to join the Google Group to discuss these sort of high-level discussions beyond the pure technical that all parties need in adopting new technologies, and to put effort into the Oracle Wiki page for the benefit of all.

We're already talking about holding our next meeting at the ODTUG conference next year, and hopefully we'll see even more attending the OOW session in 2009, including yourself.

Thanks again to all for your great efforts.

Phew, now I'd better go and do some paying work ;-)

Link to my OOW presentation

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation at OOW08. It can be downloaded here.

OOW08: I think it's end of day 3

After than a less than amusing 3 hours sleep last night, day 3 of OOW08 was on the agenda. Today was some impressive presentations by the JDev PMs. Even though I've been searching the JDev 11g stack carefully for new features, Steve Muench revealed a massive (no over exaggeration) set of new features in ADF BC I hadn't yet found, Frank Nimphius a range of new security features to fit into WLS, and Juan Ruiz demonstrated the new ADF desktop integration (ADFdi) for Excel, a feature that potentially is going to make BI Publisher redundant as a reporting solution for ADF if the JDev team can in combination squeeze out a MS-Word equivalent.

It's so obvious there's a massive Fusion Apps development hiding somewhere behind the scenes at Oracle. The JDev team are pumping a huge amount of new and improved features into the ADF stack, and it's not because of the Enhancement Requests logged on the JDev OTN forum ;-)

I had a chance to sit in on Robert Nocera's Forms to JDev Unconference session, and in fact I bumped into Grant Ronald from Oracle UK who said all his Forms conversion presentations have been full. It seems Forms conversion is on the tip of everyones' tongues at Oracle Develop, given there are a number of solutions at OOW this year. What a shame the Apex crew are overselling theirs. Have you thought about telling people you can't convert the PL/SQL guys?

Tonight was the Oracle ACE Dinner, a relaxing event to talk to a diverse set of "really" qualified and interesting people. It's such a rare chance to meet so many dedicated people from around the world. Once again thanks to Oracle for organising this, it makes for a great OOW experience.

Like yesterday, Oracle Australia cornered more Australians at OOW today, and you can see Marcel Kratochvil interviewed on YouTube.

Today I did hear a rumour that Oracle has committed to Oracle 11g XE in the future, I'll need to confirm the fact though. Could this be Larry's big X announcement on Wednesday? (teehee) The 11g XE release will be a relief for all us presenters who use it to present. I suspect we'll need to wait till OOW09 though.

Wednesday sees the ADF Methodology kick off at the Unconference. We've 30 odd people registered which is great. Afterwards I'll be in the OTN Lounge for the Oracle ACE Office Hours between 12-1pm, and then squeezing in some more JDev sessions, followed by the Appreciation event.

No rest for the wicked (as much as you can call an Oracle "programmer" wicked).

OOW08: Day 1, or is that 2? I forget

Monday blurred. I missed the keynote (not my thing anyway), bumped into a number of Oracle staff and fellow ACEs and had a good chat (blah blah blah Doug ;), presented at 11:30 (I think it went well – no tomatoes), hit some good sessions (the new JDev DVT features are "way-cool", and I learned how SQL Dev is actually going to improve Apex in a way that vanilla-Apex fails), attended a whirl-wind Asia-Pacific (APAC) reception after-hours (um, what's with all the Aussies wearing suits?), and had dinner with user group colleagues to discuss some very interesting issues (SOA what?). Unfortunately I missed the OTN Night. Doh!

Tomorrow is purely tracking sessions I wish to attend, bugging Oracle staff for answers, then the Oracle ACE dinner which will be fun. Somewhere in there some prep for Wednesday's ADF methodology group.

Anyway, mostly a post about nothing, mainly for the people at home, who think this is a lark and I spend most of my time at the pub.

And just to prove I actually am in San Fran at OOW, you can catch me on YouTube or via the Red Room blog. Thanks to Gareth and Chi for organising this.

Usual disclaimer: I'm at OOW08 under the overly generous Oracle ACE Director program.

OOW08: Day -1: Jet Lag = 1, OOW = 1

Oops, forgot to post about Saturday in San Fran at OOW08.

One of the things I like to do when visiting another country is sit down and read some local newspapers to get a feel for what's happening locally. Though American news filters through the syndicated news channels back to Australia, the pure breadth of coverage is not there.

Of course the news in the States right now is all doom-and-gloom about the economy and Wall Street. Both papers I browsed were 75%, if not 95% about the economic crisis, with a large focus on stocks, federal intervention, politics and the blame game. I was surprised by the inclusion of The Wall Street Journal story As Times Turn Tough,New York's Wealthy Economize. "Oh boo hoo poor American rich people, you can't afford a nose job, I feel so sorry for you." It took me most of the day to find a story that considered the impact on the average American thanks to Time publishing Forget Wall Street. What about the rest of us?

Of course it's also a fascinating time with the race for the American Presidency, from both inside the States and out. One thing I've always found odd as an Aussie travelling to other countries is how patriotic other countries are, and in turn how much the general population is willing to visibly show their preference for political parties. Across from the hotel I'm staying at somebody has placed an Obama for President poster 8 stories up on a balcony nobody can see, and yesterday I spotted this poster near China Town. I just can't in living memory remember somebody in Australia putting something similar up, like a "I Love Kevin" poster, or a glowing picture of Little Johnny's glowing mug.

Of course OOW is far away from the local economic and political issues.

Saturday afternoon proved a great day to catch up with fellow Oracle ACEs and bloggers, Doug Burns, Tim Hall, Lucas Jellema, Marcel Kratchovil, with much speculation about the big OOW announcements.

Given that I've just sat in on the Sunday ACE Director meeting where some of the announcements have been either made or hinted at, it's a fun game to think back to our discussions yesterday to see how correct they were. Some of the announcements are completely embargoed until the keynotes so we can't talk about them. And as I have such poor memory of what we can/can't talk about, I'll keep mum till each keynote .

Monday's my Back to Basics Web Services presentation and the start of the Oracle Develop sessions I'll attend. Should be an interesting day as long as the jet lag doesn't kick in.

Disclaimer: I'm at OOW08 as part of the Oracle ACE Director program.

OOW08 Day -2: Jet lag = 1, OOW = 0

14,726 kms later (9,150 miles) I've touched down in San Fran for OOW08. Once again the epic battle between jet lag and OOW rages on. Today jet lag definitely wins with no sign of sleep on the plane. However over the next week the excitement of OOW will throw itself at jet lag, and we'll see who comes out triumphant.

All in all a rather silly post to let others at OOW know I've arrived and keen to catch up, so drop me an email.

Oh, and if anybody would like to recommend a good coffee joint San Fran downtown besides the usual franchises please let me know. Is it even possible to get a "flat white" in the USA?

Alternative OOW08 show badge Mikons

Justin Kestelyn through Matt Topper had the excellent idea of adding Mikons to the OOW show badges for 2008. I thought I'd propose some of my own, because as Justin says, Mikons negate the need for minor chit-chat when meeting new people at OOW.

Imagine all the minor chit-chat you're going to avoid wearing these beauties! ;-) Maybe you'd like to propose some of your own.

Like last year, it's a rather slow blogging time while I prepare for OOW and the AUSOUG conferences in October.

Splotlight on me about a spotlight on me

A small post to spotlight the fact that the OOW team published a spotlight on my upcoming OOW session.

A presentation trifecta

I'm happy to announce that my presentation "Back to basics: Simple database web services without the need for an application server" has been accepted at 3 conferences, namely:

Oracle Open World (Session S301704) Monday 22nd Moscone West Room 2014

AUSOUG Perth conference 6th/7th October

AUSOUG Gold Coast conference 13th-15th October

I note the OOW Room 2014 holds 300 delegates, but that we're down to 294 available seats,so the rush is on!! Make sure you reserve your seat now before the two-hundred-and-ninety-four other seats go! ;)

Thanks to Oracle and OOW for running via the Mix the vote-a-session program and all those nice people for voting for me (hi Mum!); I'm appreciative of the chance to present on the official OOW agenda, as well as freak out in such a big room. Make sure you sit at the front so you can see me sweat.

I also be presenting the last leg of the JDeveloper masterclass in the Gold Coast, and helping out with the ADF Methodology at the OOW Unconference, so a busy conference schedule for me.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing and meeting Oracle enthusiasts both sides of the big blue bit. See you there :)

The 1st OOW08 Unconference session! - An ADF Methodology for the masses

2008 sees Oracle continue to expand their Oracle Open World offerings, with a greater participation from delegates as well as the usual "speaker mob". Last year Oracle and specifically OTN offered the Unconference for the first time, a great chance for anybody "off-the-streets" to sign up and present on any topic they felt interesting.

I'm excited to announce that the OOW08 Unconference is up and running and the ADF Methodology is the first cab out of the ranks.

As many of us know, a software development methodology is designed to assist experienced and uninitiated technology practicionist standardise their approach to software design & development. A methodology can help highlight common decision points, outline best practices, promote code reuse, and propose standard deliverables among many other things.

The goal of the ADF Development Methodology is to propose just such a methodology for JDeveloper Application Development Framework (ADF) based projects. With the experience of real-world experts, including Oracle ACEs and Oracle staff, we'd like you to join us to put such a methodology together.

Obviously a methodology is a huge undertaking. The intention of the OOW08 Unconference session is not to define a complete methodology at this time, but begin the process of constructing the methodology, to be filled in and expanded upon at a later date. All proceeds from the Unconference session will be placed on the Oracle Wiki allowing all to access the outcomes for their own use.

If you're interested in attending, it would be great if you could register your interest to assist us in planning please.

And as Shay Shmeltzer recently blogged, we've also started a Google Group to discuss the methodology before and after the event. Feel free to check it out and join, all participants welcome.

Thanks to Justin Kestelyn and the OTN team for their assistance behind the scenes, and to Shay for his blog post.

3rd most popular OOW08 session!

On returning from running a training course in Adelaide South Australia I had a chance to go back to mix.oracle.com yesterday and check out how my proposed OOW08 sessions are going. I received a pleasent surprise finding that my session Back to basics: Simple database web services without an application server is at equal 3rd spot!

I'm pretty happy with this outcome; I thought a pragmatic database programmers presentation would be a good idea, and it's the sort of thing I prefer presenting on. Hopefully it will cut the mustard and Oracle will include it the OOW08 schedule. If it doesn't at least I know it's a popular topic given the votes and I can use this to propose the session at other conferences including user group events.

I also note local Aussie Richard Foote is currently in 5th place with Indexing Secrets With Richard Foote. That's a good turn out for the Australians.

If you haven't had a chance to vote on the OOW08 sessions listed at mix.oracle.com (registration required), head over to the site and help us create a conference driven by what the delegates want to hear and see!

OOW08 sessions on the Mix

Recently Justin Kestelyn blogged that Oracle is giving us the opportunity on the Mix to submit and vote on proposed presentations for Oracle OpenWorld 2008. Neat! Now we can all vote on Larry doing the Chicken Dance during the keynote!

I've taken the opportunity to post 4 sessions around the theme "back to basics" to assist those new to JDeveloper and Web Services. I hope you'll take time out to vote for them on the Mix as well as other presentation ideas you like:

• Back to basics: Simple database web services without an application server
• Back to basics: Understanding JDeveloper's ADF Business Components
• Back to basics: Understanding JavaServer Faces; the underpinnings of JDeveloper's ADF Faces Rich Client technology
• JDeveloper 1day educational - Building web apps with ADF Business Component and ADF Faces RC

Conference widows

Filed under "I'm really all pink and squishy inside."

I've just come off 3 weeks of conferences, having visited OOW in San Fran, the Perth Australia leg of the AUSOUG conference, as well as the Melbourne leg too. Conferences, whether you're just attending or actually participating, can take up a fair amount of work and home time in preparation, during the conferences and the lead up time. Multiple that by 3 and you'll know that I've recently had a very busy time.

In all the excitement of attending such events, it can be easy to forget the "significant other parties" who make a pretty clear sacrifice to allow us to attend these events.

My partner said to me the other day that she felt like a "conference window" over the last few weeks, having looked after our baby daughter, kept the house running with the usual array of chores, and working part-time to boot. All of this without me around to lend much of a hand at all while I swanned around the world. As you can imagine, an ever-so-small-incy-wincy-tiny-bit of guilt invaded my conscious.

So here's a small public thanks to my partner, and all the other wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, family, children, friends and work colleagues, who kindly and patiently put up with all of us who follow the conference trail, who understand and support us while we pursue our passions and interests, who nod and humour us when we return and rant about the latest Oracle 11g feature, the future of Fusion Middleware, or how many free Toad shirts we scored this year.

Thank you very much.

At least until next year of course.

Post OOW 07 - a green summary from TreeHugger

....filed with the "I'm a greeny so live with it" department.

As follow up to my recent post about Oracle's greening efforts at OOW, TreeHugger covered the event with a good range of posts which I hope you may find interesting. For the uninitiated, TreeHugger is the SlashDot of the environmental world.

Of particular interest:

• Michael Dell from Dell and Jonathan Schwartz from Sun received some points for their "green" message during the keynote, but Oracle's Larry Ellison received a big fat zero. Come on Oracle, you're not alone in this big wide world!

• Jena Thompson from The Conservation Fund spoke on the importance of C02 offsets in context of the gathering criticism.

• Michael Dell talks among other green initiatives at Dell, the concept of the Green Print where organisations go beyond just looking at their CO2 emissions, but look at collaborative efforts among all departments within an organisations to reduce their CO2 footprint.

• Recorded by video are some enlightening opinions from the punters at the conference on what being green means, moving from the marketing corporate hype of it all to what the "common folk" are concerned about.

For more check out the complete set of OOW tagged posts. Well done to TreeHugger for capturing the green issues around such a large event. I look forward to their coverage next year.

On a secondary note, thanks to a change of federal government and a general public tired of a government ignoring the environmental issues and concerns of the Australian voters for over 11 years, Australia's new government has finally ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Officially "Hurrah!" Now I don't feel so embarrassed about being an Australian. This mean the USA is the last industrialised country to not make the leap. Come on America, pull your socks up!

My cursed presentation

For the frequent readers of my blog, you may know more recently I've been running my "Take a Load Off!" presentation at Oracle Open World Unconference, as well as the 2007 AUSOUG Perth and Melbourne conference legs. This presentation took time out to look at load and stress testing the latest web technologies, in particular those from Oracle such as Application Express (Apex) and JDeveloper.

This presentation has turned out to be in fact "cursed". There's no other description that's suitable.

The presentation contained a significant amount of live demos ("oh-no" I hear you say). Yet regardless of the amount of preparation I put in and the number of successful dry-runs I had before my presentation, the live demos kept on failing right at the critical point of my "live stand up routine". First at OOW my database exploded taking 99% of my CPU making my presentation drag to a halt. Then in Perth Apache JMeter and JDeveloper refused to talk and I had to rely on good ol'Apex to demonstrate what I wanted to show. Finally in Melbourne my laptop's Firewall went nuts right at the last moment, and I later discovered I was running on battery power for the whole demo. This is of course not to forget the same morning my database Listener wouldn't talk to my database and I had to desperately call my boss and her ever handy DBA expertise to sort it out.

Read my lips: "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"

There's a line in Australian television acting circles (I'm sure it crosses international barriers), that you should never work with animals or children during live broadcasts. I'd like to extend that to Oracle products during presentations for the foreseeable future! ;)

As somebody pointed out to me today though, the common denominator in the presentation wasn't the various technologies that failed, but in fact the operator himself. Being an Aussie, you can imagine my response to that ;)

Anyway, I've learned my lesson. From now on, it's all canned demos with Powerpoint content. At least until my confidence returns. I'd love to hear other presenters' "disaster stories" if you're willing to share.

For those overly keen on the whole load and stress testing gig, as well as checking the latest database tuning and Apex presentations from my boss Penny Cookson, head along to the Sage website to download the content. However I make no promise that my presentation wont destroy your PC.

OOW - Development tool usability surveys

I've often been told by other Aussies attending Oracle events in the States that Oracle is a very customer focused organisation. Over the last few years I've been part of a few surveys and phone questionnaires, and certainly have not been shy on lodging enhancement requests on the JDeveloper OTN forums which by-and-by the Oracle PMs are good in a least humoring me (I'm hoping they don't shake their heads too much when I email them each time ;) Yet this has all been at such a distance that I've never really emphasized with the whole customer focused idea.

At my first OOW however, hanging-out in the OTN lounge, it's been very interesting to participate in a number of surveys on the usability of Oracle development tools. Today I met Kristyn Greenwood, a manager for Oracle development tool usability and interface design. Kristyn and her team have been running a number of surveys asking various questions on Oracle development tools and their usability, as well as visual surveys demonstrating potential mockups of future development interfaces, specifically a reworked Help Center for JDeveloper. It's been an interesting experience to be part of the discussion on the IDE design before the products even go beta, and more so to meet some of the team behind the scenes, or more specifically behind the more visible product PMs.

The UI development team has a website that you can visit if you're interested in participating: http://ui.oracle.com, or alternatively you can participate in the same surveys that have been at OOW here (note that if you're at OOW, there appears to be a problem with the wifi and getting to these sites.... however after OOW if you're still having trouble accessing these links, let me know and I'll verify the URLs again). Otherwise you can even contact the team directly at devtools_ux_ww@oracle.com.

Disclaimer: I'm at OOW under the invitation of Oracle and the Oracle ACE Director program.

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