Openworld day 4

Its the penultimate day at openworld

First up was Gwen Shapira’s (http://www.pythian.com/news/author/shapira/) talk on Big Data and its integration into the "enterprise" and database.  This was perhaps the most relevant of big data talks this week, because I imagine anyone at an Oracle conference already has some (significant) investment in what could be called "conventional" database technology, and might be looking at how "big data" is going to fit into that picture.

So Gwen gave an excellent overview into how this might occur, why it might occur, and some strategies on how to do it without spectacularly failing :-) 

Next was a "least used features" of Oracle database.  Enjoyable talk, but not really what I expected – it was more of a survey of Oracle professionals around the world in terms of what they liked and disliked about Oracle.  (Re-reading the abstract, it basically says that this IS what the talk was going to be about, so my fault on that one, not the presenter!)

Spent some time in the OTN lounge.  Its amazing what the RAC attack guys have managed to produce.  Attendees bring in their laptop, and typically, in less than one hour, they have a fully blown RAC cluster running in VM’s on their laptop.  Very very impressive.  Google for RAC attack and you’ll get all the details you need to do this yourself.

After lunch, I popped into the Enkitec (www.enkitec.com) session on patching Exadata, where live patching was done during the session.  These guys really know their stuff, and (like non-Exadata) the general message is that 11.2.0.3 and upwards are where you want to be if you want the easiest adminstrative experience from the Oracle database.

I missed Tom Kyte’s "PLSQL and SQL features" talk at 5pm because of the blogger’s meetup – its a pity that such things clash at OpenWorld, but I suppose its unavoidable.

Took the bus over the treasure island to watch Kings of Leon and Pearl Jam.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed KOL more.  Sound during the Pearl Jam set was a bit iffy which took the edge off, but both still put on an energetic show, which I imagine would be somewhat difficult for a band when they perform to a group that is probably not their "core demographic" 🙂

Tomorrow is the last day before the long flight home.  No more San Fran until next year 🙂

Thanks again to the ACE Director program for their support of this trip.