OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

I got a mail this week from Richard Harrison:

“Hi Martin
See you made it in to oracle magazine this month.That’s the pinnacle of any oracle professionals career – all downhill from here on in “

I was not aware of my sudden raise to fame, but Richard is (more...)

Seeing as I did a blog post about looking forward to my second Norwegian Oracle User Group spring meeting, I suppose I should say how it went.

Given the circumstances, it went well and I enjoyed the conference far more than I would have enjoyed being home for those days. (more...)

Later this month, on April 17-20th, I am presenting again at the Norwegian Oracle user group (OUGN) spring conference {modern browsers will allow you to translate any Norwegian if you need to} . I loved it last year, as you can see from my third-day post on it. I’ve been lucky (more...)

This FF is a bit of a follow-up to the one I posted last week on PL/SQL skills and a comment made by Noons on how much knowledge you need to be an OakTable member.

I have a question to answer and I would appreciate other people’s opinion. Should there be more intro talks at conferences? If so, should the experts be giving them?

I am an OakTable member (and really quite worryingly proud about that) and I guess that means I know a lot about some aspects of Oracle. But also, and this is a key part of being (more...)

This Friday Philosophy was prompted by a discusion between some OakTable people about did we think “good” DBAs should know PL/SQL? Not all the tricks, bulk processing, using all the built-ins, but able to write PL/SQL with cursor loops and some exception handling that could eg cycle thorough tables and archive off data or implement some logon trigger functionality.

My response was “that depends on the age of the DBA”.

If you had asked me that question 15 years ago I would have said Yes, a good DAB would and should know PL/SQL.
If you had asked me 10 years (more...)

Well, I’ve just finished pushing the last few bits into my suitcase for my trip to the US for the Rocky Mountain User Group Training Days 2013.

It is a few years since I went to the US for pleasure (3 years?) and much longer since I went there on a combined work/pleasure trip – as I HATE going through US immigration.

I was tempted into this trip when I met up with a fellow OakTable member Tim Gorman at the Slovenia User Group last October. Tim was a true gentleman throughout that conference (and this is not to (more...)

This has been a good but tiring week. It started with the UKOUG TEBS conference where I saw lots of people I know, a few who I didn’t but now do and I had good times in pubs and restaurants. One evening culminated in my singing part of “Two out of Three ain’t bad” in the style of a munchkin with Nial Litchfield in a pub at 1am, which I am sure he woud rather forget about – so if you know him, ask him about it. For me that was the indicator to go lie down in the dark (more...)

How many of you have read the Oracle Concepts manual for the main version you are working on?

This is a question I ask quite often when I present and over the last 10 years the percentage number of hands raised has dropped. It was always less than 50%, it’s been dropping to more like 1 in 10 and Last year (at the UKOUG 2011 conference) was the nadir when not a single hand was raised. {Interestingly I asked this at the Slovenian User Group 3 months ago and something like 40% raised their hand – impressive!}.

Why do (more...)

The annual UK Oracle User Group Technical and E-Business Suite conference is fast approaching and rather than just say “hey everyone, I’m going to present at a conference” I thought I would say why I present at conferences (and SIGs (and any opportunity I get) ).

The UKOUG TEBS conference is the one that is, in my eyes, the UKOUG conference. It covers E-business suite and the core database stuff – DBA-type things and developer-type things. The things I am interested in. You can see the details and agenda via this link. If you would like to see someone else’s (more...)

A couple of weeks ago I was making my way through the office. As I came towards the end of the large, open-plan room I became aware that there was someone following behind me so, on passing through the door I held it briefly for the person behind me {there was no where else they could be going}, turned left and through the next door – and again held it and this time looked behind me to see if the person was still going the same way as I. The lady behind gave me the strangest look.

The strange look (more...)