Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog

User Group Meetings Next Week (free training everyone!) July 11, 2014

I know, posts about up-coming user group meetings are not exactly exciting, but it’s good to be reminded. You can’t beat a bit of free training, can you?

On Monday 14th I am doing a lightning talk at the 4th Oracle Midlands event. The main reason to come along is to see Jonathan Lewis talk about designing efficient SQL and then he will also do a 10 minute session on Breaking Exadata (to achieve that aim I suggest you just follow the advice of the Oracle Sales teams, that will break Exadata for you pretty efficiently!).

If you are not familiar with the Oracle Midlands events, they are FREE evening events run in Birmingham, just north of the center in Aston, at the Innovation Birmingham centre. See the web site for details and to register. The great thing about them being in the evening is you do not have to take time out from the day job to attend. The disadvantage is they are shorter of course. (And for me personally, I feel morally obliged to pop in on my dear old Mother on the way and listen to her latest crazy theories. I think it’s what Mum’s are for). Samosas were provided last time to keep you going and I know a couple of us will retire to a near-by pub after, to continue discussions.

I’ll be doing just a short talk, along with half a dozen others, my topic being “is the optimizer getting too smart to be understood”.

This is a user group in the truest sense of it, organised pretty much by one chap (Mike Mckay-Dirden) in his spare time, with help from interested people and some financial input from the sponsor Redgate.

I get a day off and then I am at the combined RAC CIA and Database SIG on Wednesday 16th. This UKOUG SIG is probably the other end of the user group experience (as in from an organisational and size perspective). They both fulfill a need and I have no problem being involved in both. In fact, I now notice that Patrick Hurley is going to be at both events too.

The RAC CIA & Database SIG is also free, IF you are a member of the UKOUG. You can also attend if you pay a one-off fee. It’s an all-day event and as it is a combined SIG it is a two-track event. It’s almost a mini-conference! Presenters include myself (doing my intro to Exadata talk, probably for the last time), Julian Dyke, Patrick Hurley, Martin Bach, Neil Chandler, Neil Johnson, Martin Nash (twice!), Ron Ekins, John Jezewski, Alex Evans and David Kurtz. If that is not enough, Owen Ireland is going to give a support update and then we have Mike Appleyard giving a keynote on a brand new 12.1 feature, Oracle Database In-Memory option.

I’d be going along even if I was not presenting or helping run the RAC CIA SIG and I’m retired for goodness sake! (well, sort of, my wife has not ordered me back to the working life yet). And of course, we will no doubt retire to a hostelry after (to count how many Neils and Martins are involved).

I hope to see as many UK people as possible at these two days. As I said at the top, it’s free training, you can’t get better than that.