Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Day 1 Highlights

 

Well Oracle OpenWorld 2010 has finally arrived. The first thing I’ve noticed is just how many more people appear to be around at the conference this year compared to last. Better economic times and the addition of the JavaOne component have certainly made a difference.

Here’s a piece of advice. Don’t go out drinking lots of cocktails with Oracle marketing folk while still in a jet lagged state, the night before you do a presentation. Although I had a great night, I felt decidedly not quite so great when I woke up at 4am the following morning, which 90 minutes in the gym did little to address. Thankfully a country breakfast at Louise Dinner did a much better job of fixing things up a little.

A timely suggestion by Chris Muir to go to Moscone South to register certainly saved me a potential boring hour or more waiting in the huge queues. I love lots of people and the positive vibe of expectation, one thing I do hate though is long queues.

After registration, I hung out for a while, making last minutes changes to my first presentation on indexing tips and tricks. It was kinda nice being one of the first presentations to kick off the start of the conference. As the next presentation in the room was due to start directly after mine was due to finish, I was conscious of time and not being late getting through the material. As usual, it’s always hard to tell how it was all received and whether I rush things too much, but some positive comments afterwards suggests it went well. I was particularly pleased when a gentleman who was blind said afterwards he enjoyed the talk and could follow the points I made purely by what I said and not by having to necessarily view the content of the overheads.

 

Afterwards I attended Rich Niemiec’s presentation on block dumps which was an introduction of sorts on the subject. If it makes people a little curious on the type of things one can learn and diagnose using block dumps, then it’s always a good thing.

Next I attended Cary Millsap’s talk on Messed-Up Apps and a Study of Performance Anti-patterns. One thing I always learn and enjoy about Cary’s presentations is the art of presenting and how to deliver a good, interesting, thought provoking discussion. He gave some excellent examples of various Apps that were fundamentally flawed, such as a reporting system that printed by default, all receipts in the system from day dot (rather than the more logical default of all receipts from the last time the report was run) and the coach booking system in which it took over a minute to come up and list all possible options rather than quickly listing the first five that were likely going to be sufficient.

The last talk of the day was an expert’s panel and a Q & A session on Web Architecture. Like most of these things, the quality of the session is based primarily on the quality of the questions, which overall weren’t that great. However, the highlight for me and what made me leave the session at the end with some confidence that there is still hope in the world was Paul Dorsey comments on a question regarding why do various programming flavours and current trends come and go and what best to do about it. Paul’s answer was where possible, much programming should be done within the database (which never comes and goes) and which enables a more efficient, scalable and secure solution, much to the distress and discomfort of many of the attendees. I felt like shouting out ‘YES !!”, but I was too tired and simply left at the end with a little smile on my face.

Feeling really tired, I decided to skip the keynote address (having attended the ACE Director briefings in the last couple of days, I already have a fair idea on what is being announced this week) and crashed for an hour in my hotel room before going out on a fantastic dinner cruise in beautiful San Francisco harbour courtesy of the Oracle ACE program. The lowlight was probably when I walked into a window panel which was virtually invisible and looked like a walkway. Highlight was probably when Marcel Kratochvil did exactly the same thing, but much more dramatically leaving a beer stain on the glass. I also had a good chat to Joze Senegacnik, who I had only met for the first time during my presentation earlier in the day. The San Francisco skyline looked spectacular from the harbour and not being the best of sailors, was rather glad it was such a calm and mild evening. Thanks to Lillian, Vikki and the ACE program for putting on such a great night.

Already looking forward to Day 2 …