Tom Kyte and Richard Niemiec down-under

For any Australian readers who are members of the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG), there's chances you've missed one exciting announcement for the AUSOUG 2008 conference buried in the recent eBulletins:

Tom Kyte, Senior Technical Architect in Oracle’s Server Technology Division has already agreed to present on the Gold Coast on 14 October from 1.00pm - 2.30pm. Rich Niemiec, President of TUSC, USA has also agreed to present at the Gold Coast Conference.

The Gold Coast might seem a long way away for most Australians, but obviously it's far closer than flying all the way to San Fran to check out these 2 well known Oracle personalities at Oracle OpenWorld.

I wonder what other exciting Oracle personalities will be there? Oh, yeah, me ;) I'll be running a JDeveloper Masterclass on the day after the conference for those who can't get enough of the Big-O.

Time to start nagging your boss to let you attend, if not to see Tom and Richard, to see me in action!

Disclaimer: possibly you've caught me on a not-so-shy-day.

Oracle Wiki: Checked out the JDev pages recently?

Oracle's Wiki is moving along at a comfortable pace with more content added each day. A number of wiki users and myself have made efforts to update the JDeveloper & ADF pages with links to articles around the internet and blogosphere beyond the standard Oracle documentation.

In particular check out the following 2 pages that are taking form well:

• Oracle ADF FAQ
• ADF Faces Features Examples

There are also other pages forming as you read this post. Of course more contributors would be great so if you have content to add (hello JDev bloggers!) or links to include please feel free to do so.

Well done to everyone contributing to the Oracle community's knowledge base!

Call for papers: Australian Oracle User Group conference

For those interested the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) has announced their call for papers for the 2008 conference series. This year the series will run in Perth 6th/7th October and Gold Coast (just south of Brisbane) 13th/14th October 2008.

Of course those who have read this blog enough will know that I think Perth is the jewel of the southern hemisphere, and I wouldn't recommend visiting the Gold Coast because it's full of mud! Take your pick ;)

The conference web page gives more details about the event, and the Speaker and Papers Submission page the details required to submit a paper.

Also can you do me a favour please? If you submit a presentation or end up registering to attend the event because of what you read on this blog, please leave a comment. I'm interested to know if advertising such events on this blog actually draws any additional speakers and attendees.

Here's to seeing you in Perth, and maybe brown-muddy Gold Coast in 2008 :)

Collab08: The Aussie DBAs are coming! Tony Jambu and Penny Cookson

Australians have a reputation for being down to earth, hard working sorts who don't ponce about, and I'm happy to advertise two of Australia's best Oracle DBA zero-poncers will be presenting at Collaborate 08 this year, Penny Cookson and Tony Jambu. I recommend you check out their presentations:

Penny Cookson: New Tuning Features in Oracle 11g: How to make managing your database free of stress

Penny was awarded the Oracle Educator of the Year 2004 by Oracle Magazine, Oracle ACE hood in 2008, and has won numerous best paper awards.

Abstract: One of the key problems that has haunted Oracle sites since the introduction of the cost based optimiser is the ability to provide a stable level of performance over time. The very responsiveness of the CBO to factors such as changes in statistics and initialisation parameters can lead to sudden changes in performance levels. Oracle 11g introduces a number of features that will assist the DBA in providing a stable environment for mission critical applications. Excitement is for out of work time, not for managing production databases. This presentation will discuss the best use of these new tuning features to reduce the stress levels of DBAs.

Tony Jambu: Understanding Oracle's Histograms

Tony was awarded Oracle ACE-hood in 2007, Oracle Magazine Consultant of the Year in 2003, and is a well known and popular presenter on the Oracle scene in Australia.

Abstract: Oracle’s histogram is one of the most misunderstood and least used feature. On top of that, there are a number of myths regarding its use. This presentation will look under the cover of Oracle’s histogram.

It will cover the basics e.g. from data distribution, density and cardinality to how to generate accurate histogram and tuning using histograms.

For the experienced DBAs, the presentation will dig into the Oracle dictionary as well as analysing CBO’s trace files.

Objectives:

• Understanding of what a histogram is and is not
• How to gather appropriate histogram data
• Tuning with proper appropriate histogram data

Taking the pain away from SQL*Plus in 11g

Before the Oracle 11g RDBMS release, I noticed that SQL*Plus users on Windows were divided into 2 camps; the users who wanted easy copy & paste, and the users who wanted the ability to scroll through previous commands.

(actually there is a 3rd camp, users who don't use SQL*Plus ;)

If like myself you lay in the former camp you used the Windows version of SQL*Plus – sqlplusw.exe. The Windows version happily supports Windows copy and paste but had no ability to scroll back through previous entered commands. To me that's no problem because I'm always working with my text editor of choice Ultraedit, copying backwards and forwards between the two, and not interested in what I last entered because it's in the text editor.

If you were in the later camp, the good old Windows Command Prompt (a'la DOS) version sqlplus.exe was great for you. Thanks to the up and down arrows, you could easily scroll through previous commands and even modify previous commands without having to resort to the SQL*Plus command line editing mode which has its roots in Medieval Computing. However if you wanted to copy and paste this introduced the horror of the Mark-Copy-and-Paste interface in the Windows Command Prompt which is just a pain in the b*tt to use. It seems Microsoft really doesn't want us to resort to good old DOS!

Within the 11g release of the RDBMS, Oracle (much to their wisdom ;P) has dropped the sqlplusw.exe Windows version and now suggests we either use the command prompt version or SQL Developer. I'm a big fan of SQL Developer (did somebody say free?!), but I find its SQL Worksheet clumsy and it's not my tool of choice for running scripts. So what to do with the SQL*Plus command line version? How can you use it with the beauty of both a useable copy and paste and historic commands?

One alternative is Console: "Console is a Windows console window enhancement. Console features include: multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles".


Note my emphasis on "text editor-like text selection". Yeehaw! We now have copy and paste. Admittedly and understandable it doesn't use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-P as they have a different meaning in a normal DOS window, but rather Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert to copy and paste. In addition to mark text to copy, you hold down the Left-Shift key while dragging the mouse with the left mouse button held down. It takes a little getting used to but is better than the alternative.

Console is released under the GNU GPL making it free to use. Small note that the current release 2 build 138 is a beta release, so be wary that your mileage may vary. Well done to Marko Bozikovic for this useful little utility.

New Aussie Oracle blogger take 2

There must be something in the water down here (or maybe the lack of it) because all I seem to be doing recently is blogging about Aussies in Oracle-land (and I know I've another Aussie post coming).

I'm happy to have the scoop that Marcel Kratochvil, Oracle ACE, Oracle Magazine PL/SQL Programmer of the Year, and all round Oracle over achiever from Canberra Australia has started a blog on Oracle related content, his speciality being multimedia (and PL/SQL of course).

I'm sure there's some story behind why the blog's name is the Eternal Donut, but with Marcel, a lot of us learn "don't go there" ;)

Good luck to Marcel and his blogging adventures.

Advert: JDeveloper workshops in Sydney and Hobart

The 2nd leg of the Australian JDeveloper masterclass in Sydney and Hobart is just 2 weeks away. SAGE Computing Services in conjunction with the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) are giving you the chance to attend this whole day event on Oracle's latest JDeveloper 11g Technical Preview 3 version.

This 1 day workshop will introduce you to the simplicity of JDeveloper 11g's drag-n-drop facilities, wizard and editor IDE, as well as declarative programming model for quickly developing a web application using ADF Business Component and ADF Faces, without a single line of Java!

Check out the AUSOUG event web page for more information and how to register. We look forward to seeing you there.

An open invite to present in Perth take 2

Last September I posted An open invite to present in Perth, inviting Oracle speakers to drop me an email if they were interested in presenting to the local AUSOUG Western Australian members.

The fruition of this post arrived last night with Chris Spierings from Oracle@Queensland presenting on "10046 Trace File Primer for Developers and DBAs". Thanks to Chris for making the trip all the way over here, though I'm a little suspicious he laid all performance problems of the database at the developers' feet.

I'd like to reopen my invitation to my readers to present in front of our local Oracle members. Unfortunately yes, Perth is a qwzillion miles from anywhere, but that's also its charm (besides the Margaret River region of course).

If you're interested I can be contacted at chrisdotmuiratsagecomputingdotcomdotau (replacing the "dot" and "at" with the appropriate symbols). We hope to hear from you soon.

Next month we're lucky enough to have Connor McDonald presenting again on 10g New Features for Developers.

Creating Printer Friendly JDev ADF Faces pages

I sat in on an Apex 3.0 class last week and was reminded of a feature that JDeveloper's ADF Faces has had for some time, I just forgot to blog about it!

ADF Faces and ADF Faces RC have an inbuilt feature to provide printer friendly web pages, that is, pages that in printer mode hide the unnecessary components on the page such as buttons and toolbars that would be unwanted on a printed page, instead just showing the data.

In the adf-faces-config.xml file for JDev 10.1.3, and the trindad-config.xml file for JDev 11g TP3, you can set the option output-mode to printable, email or default (null). I show the 11g version here set to printable:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<trinidad-config
  xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/config">
  <output-mode>printable</output-mode>
</trinidad-config>

It's unlikely you would want to hardcode this for your entire application, so luckily the configuration files also support JSF EL expressions. This allows you to rewrite your configuration files to use a JSF managed bean as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<trinidad-config
  xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/config">
  <output-mode>#{UserOptions.printerMode}</output-mode>
</trinidad-config>

...and then switch in and out of the printable mode dependent on what you do in the bean.

The only thing I don't know is the mechanism of which components know to render themselves or hide dependent on the output-mode. Presumably each component has a hidden EL like expression in their rendered property that pays attention to the output-mode.

I also note Oracle hasn't yet documented in the individual component documentation for 11g TP3 if the component is rendered or not under each output-mode, and in turn how to override this functionality if need be. If a reader discovers either please let me know.

The JDev vs Apex vs Forms wars continue - now in print!

About a year ago I started a mini Internet war on which was the best Oracle development tool: JDeveloper or Apex or Forms; in the following blog post: A career path for Oracle developers - consider JDeveloper!

This was followed by a number comments and posts by Apex bloggers including Patrick Wolf, John Scott and Dimitri Gielis.

Whether you agree or not with the outcome of these discussions the topic certainly hit a nerve and is still a popular point of contention and discussion in Oracle circles.

In the famous words of Kim Jong-Il "can't we all just get along?", a number of Oracle specialists worked together to publish "The Oracle development tool review" article looking at the pros and cons of Apex, Forms and JDeveloper, to help readers decide the relative merits of each tool, in particular what they are suited to.

This article has been published in the UKOUG OracleScene Q1-2008 issue and is also scheduled for print in the Q2 IOUG Select magazine. Hopefully you're lucky enough to be a member of one of these organisations and can pick up a copy of the relevant magazine.

Very special thanks on my part must go to Grant Ronald for driving through the format of the article and providing sage advice, Wilfred van der Deijl for his input on Oracle Forms, John Stegeman for his assistance with the JDeveloper section, and Penny Cookson for the Apex section. All these people delivered a timely response to the article that allowed us to publish.

In addition thanks must go to John Scott, Dimitri Gielis, Bill Ferguson and Patrick Wolf for their contributions behind the scenes, and the UKOUG and IOUG editors and staff for their assistance on publishing this article. There's also thanks to a number of other Oracle staff who helped review the article but will remain nameless, and I'm sure I forgot somebody, so thanks to you to :)

Amazingly the original blog post was March 2007 and the final articles published in March 2008. This shows great patience, persistence and faith from all of those above and I think a great recommendation on how the Oracle community is willing to work together even though they have different opinions. Well done.

Welcome new Oracle Aussie ACEs

I'm happy to have the scoop that a long time mentor Penny Cookson and a well known and dedicated Canberra Oracle personality Marcel Kratochvil have been recognized for their efforts by Oracle and have been awarded Oracle ACE status.

So what makes an Oracle ACE? These two show a staggering background:

Penny's Oracle history:

• 2004 Oracle Educator of the Year awarded by Oracle Magazine.
• President of the Western Australian branch of Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) 2006, conference chair 2007, and still a standing and active committee member.
• Awarded AUSOUG life membership 2003
• Best user paper award at Western Australian and Victorian Oracle User Group Conference 2003 for her paper "Whose fault is it – A review of Application tuning problems"
• Best user paper award at the Western Australian Oracle User Group Conference 2002 for her paper "Oracle Forms and Reports 9i"
• Best user paper award at Queensland Oracle User Group Conference 1999 for her paper "Application Tuning in Oracle 8i"
• Best user paper award at Oracle Asia Pacific OpenWorld 1997 for her paper "Optimising SQL in the Oracle 8 Object / Relational Database"
• 2nd best user paper award at Oracle Asia Pacific OpenWorld 1996 for her paper "Minimum Ingredients for Generating and Application in Designer 2000"
• Best user paper award at Oracle Asia Pacific OpenWorld 1996 for her paper " 20 Application Tuning Tips"
• Best user paper at Oracle Asia Pacific OpenWorld 1995 for her paper "How to Perform a 20 point Health Check on your database"

+ the following presentations:

(For your reference most of these presentations are available from the Sage website)

• Quality Assurance of Data Models - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1994
• Oracle Forms Standards - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1994
• Using Oracle Case for easily Maintained Applications - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1995
• How to Perform a 20 point Health Check on your database - Oracle Asia Pacific Openworld - 1996 - Oracle User Group Conference (VIC, WA, QLD, ACT) - 1995+1996
• Using Oracle Reports in a Financials Data Warehouse - Oracle Asia Pacific Openworld - 1996
• 20 Application Tuning Tips - Oracle Asia Pacific Openworld - 1997 - Oracle User Group Conference (VIC, ACT) - 1996 + 1997 - Singapore OUG Conference - 1998 - Malaysia OUG Conference - 1998
• Minimum Ingredients for Generating and Application in Designer 2000 - Oracle Asia Pacific Openworld - 1997 - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1997
• Designing Applications for Performance and Ease of Maintenance - Oracle User Group Conference (ACT, QLD) - 1997 - Oracle Asia Pacific Openworld - 1997 - Singapore OUG Conference - 1998 - Malaysia OUG Conference - 1998 - Oracle Asia Pacific Conference (Sing) - 1999 - Oracle N.Z. Conference - 1999
• Optimising SQL in the Oracle 8 Object / Relational Database - Oracle Asia Pacific Openworld - 1997 - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1998
• Oracle Forms 5 New Features - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1998
• Developing Form Builder applications for a - Oracle User Group Conference (QLD) - 1998
• Web and Client Server environment - Oracle Asia Pacific Conference (Sing) - 1999 - Oracle N.Z. Conference - 1999 - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1999
• Oracle Forms 6 New Features - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1999 - Oracle User Group Conference (ACT) - 1999
• Creating Libraries and Templates for 100% Definition in Designer 2.1 - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 1999 - Oracle Asia Pacific Conference (Sing) - 1999 - Oracle User Group Conference (ACT) - 1999
• Application Tuning in Oracle 8i - Oracle User Group Conference (QLD) - 1999 - European Oracle User Conference (Madrid) - 2000 - Oracle N.Z. Conference - 2001
• WebDB Mini Lesson - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 2000 - New Zealand conference - 2000
• Managing the Cost Base Optimiser in Oracle 8i (Full Day Tutorial) - Eurpoean Oracle User Group Conference (Madrid) - 2000
• Oracle Portal Components - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 2001
• Materialized Views for Summary Management - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 2001 - Brisbane Oracle Masters conference - 2001
• Indexing Strategies in Oracle 8i - New Zealand conference - 2001
• Converting to Oracle Web Forms - New Zealand conference - 2001 - Brisbane Oracle Masters conference - 2000
• Whats in Oracle 9iAS - Oracle User Group Seminar (WA) - 2001
• Understanding the Oracle Portal API - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 2002
• Oracle Forms and Reports 9i - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 2002
• Whose fault it it – A review of Application tuning problems - Oracle User Group Conference (WA) - 2003 - Oracle User Group Conference (VIC) - 2003
• Content management with Oracle Portal - Oracle User Group Conference (VIC) - 2003
• Oracle 9i Features for developers - Oracle User Group Conference (WA, VIC, SA) - 2003
• Oracle 10g New features - Oracle User Group Conference (WA, VIC, QLD) - 2004
• Oracle Portal Case Studies - Oracle Openworld Melbourne - 2004
• HTMLDB mini lesson - User Group Conference (VIC, QLD) - 2004
• Masterclass – Database and application tuning - Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Hobart, Perth - 2005
• Development techniques for HTMLDB - User Group Conference (WA) - 2005
• Lost Without a Trace - User Group Conference (WA) - 2005
• Whose fault it it – A review of Application tuning problems - Oracle Openworld (USA) - 2005
• Masterclass – Database and application tuning - Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch NZ - 2006
• Oracle Application Express (mini lesson) - Oracle User Group Conference (WA, VIC) - 2006
• How can I tune it if I can't change the code - Oracle User Group Conference (WA, VIC) - 2006
• Oracle Application Express (mini lesson) - NZOUG Conference - 2007
• How can I tune it if I can't change the code - NZOUG Conference - 2007

And for Marcel:

• 2007 New Scientist Sleek Geek Winner
• 2004 PL/SQL Developer of the year
• 2002 Australia Recognition Award for building Strang Shipping System
• 1999 Oracle Asia Pacific User Conference Paper (Joint paper: voted 2nd)
• 1993 Asia Pacific Oracle Conference – Best Paper

+ the following presentations & podcasts:

• How to Multimedia - Enable Your Applications with Oracle Multimedia - Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco - 2007
• Podcast: Best Practices using Mod PL/SQL - On the external - donut web site - 2007
• Podcast: Multimedia - On the external - donut web site - 2007
• Podcast: Being Locked In - On the external - donut web site - 2007
• Podcast: Question Everything - On the external - donut web site - 2007
• Podcast: Extreme DBA Programming - On the external - donut web site - 2007
• Preach and Teach: Configuring the Mod PL/SQL Gateway - Oracle User Conference – Melb / Perth - 2006
• Conditional Compilation and Ajax - Oracle User Conference – Melb / Perth - 2006
• Developing Multimedia Applications for the Internet - Edinburgh User Group May 2006 - 2006
• Who wants to be a DBA - ACT User Group - 2005
• Web Based Interfaces - Chicago PL/SQL Conference - 2005
• Multimedia and PL/SQL - Chicago PL/SQL Conference - 2005
• Internet Security - Chicago PL/SQL Conference - 2005
• Hierarchical Queries and XML - ACT Oracle User Group - 2005
• Enterprise Manager - ACT Oracle User Group - 2004
• RMAN - ACT Oracle User Group - 2004
• Building Web Services - ACT Oracle User Group - 2004
• Oracle XML Roadmap for Developers - ACT Oracle User Group - 2003
• Oracle Database Objects - ACT Oracle User Group - 2002
• New Features in 9i R2 for Developers - ACT Oracle User Group - 2002
• Donuts for DBAs - Australian SELECT Magazine - 2002
• Understanding Mime Types - ACT Oracle User Group - 2001
• Dynamic SQL in Oracle8i - ACT Oracle User Group - 2000
• Good DBA – Bad DBA - Australian Oracle Open World - 1999
• Top Ten Oracle 8i features for a Database Administrator - QLD Oracle User Group 1999 - 1999
• Rapid Application Development and Oracle - ACT and QLD Oracle User Group 1999 - 1999
• Understanding the Business Issues behind a Data Warehouse - A Business Perspective - Oracle Business Conference 1998 - 1998
• Using Oracle8 to Web Enable the Data Warehouse - OpenWorld 1997, QLD Oracle User Group 1997 - 1997
• An overview of the Oracle8 Database Server - Federal Dept of Social Security - 1997
• Using Oracle8 to address the Child File Design - Federal Dept of Social Security - 1997
• Issues in establishing a world wide web site for a business - Canberra local seminar - 1997
• A Review of the Development of Commercial Applications for the World Wide Web - OpenWorld ’96,
• Australian Computer Society ‘96 - 1996
• Tips and Techniques for designing and building an application using the Oracle WebServer product - OpenWorld ‘96 - 1996
• Oracle PL/SQL Course Notes - Over 20 training courses - 1996
• Moving to a Proactive Database Environment - ACT User Group 1995 - 1995
• Implementing Repeating Fields within the Relational Model using PL/SQL and Oracle7 Release 7.1. - ACT User Group 1995 - 1995
• Implementing Hyper Indexes using Oracle7 Technology - Submitted to Oracle Magazine Jan 1996 - 1995
• Advanced uses of Oracle7 Technology - OpenWorld ‘94 - 1994
• Advanced Uses of Oracle7 and Oracle Glue in the Desktop Environment - OpenWorld ‘94 - 1994
• The Centralised Database Model vs. The Distributed Database Model - Local Seminar - 1994
• Understanding the Rowid and Rownum Pseudo Columns - Never Presented - 1994
• Using Oracle7 and Forms 4 Technology to address the problem of poor performance in the Client/Server Environment - Federal Department of Health - 1994
• Managing the external Oracle environment - OpenWorld 1993 - 1993
• Query Optimisation and Database Fine Tuning - OpenWorld 1992,IOUG 1993,QLD Oracle User Group 1992
• Managing Client/Server Technology - OpenWorld 1993 - 1992
• The User Authorisation System - OpenWorld 1990 - 1990

And there is more..... Sheesh, over achievers or what?

Penny works for Sage Computing Services as the MD in Perth Australia and Marcel at Piction in Canberra Australia. I know Penny's presenting at Collaborate 08 this year, and I'm willing to bet you'll have the chance to see Marcel at OOW08.