About Martin
These “about” pages are generally all the same – dull stuff about their current employment, how long they have worked for which organisations, what positions they have held. So I thought I would break with tradition and say more about who I am and what I do now…
- I’m a “failed” scientist who got to do cool IT stuff due to that science background – learning is always an investment.
- I’ve become an Oracle Name and respected in my field almost totally because I engaged in the community and tried to help people – you get out what you put in.
- You don’t have to be stellar smart or super quick on the uptake to succeed – Slow, dogged, bloody slog can also get you there. But, oh boy, I would have loved to have been a bit more smart & quick.
- The day job is not everything – who lies on their death-bed saying “if only I had given more to the job and less to my loved ones I would be more fulfilled!”.
- Pay no attention to motivational posters and bullet points of life lessons (like this) – wisdom comes, I think, from just sitting with a cup of what you like and asking “what could I have done a bit better”.
First off, I’m now retired. I was an Oracle performance & database design person, I got quite good at it at times, and presented at many conferences. Outside of IT I have a keen interest in biology and science in general and I spend way too much time doing bad DIY and gardening. The work made me pretty happy half the time, the not working makes me pretty happy most of the time.
I passionately believe in people working together and the sharing of knowledge and experience. The best way to learn is doing, the second best is talking about what you did. The third is listening to some old bugger tell you about what (s)he did. The worst is doing none of them and being somewhere between massively average and shit at your job. Despite being retired I am still active in the Oracle user community – I am president of Symposium 42, a group of technical experts and event organisers recognised for being very good at what they do and sharing what they know, but totally independent of Oracle. And I am a member of the Oracle ACE program, which again is all about recognising people who are active in the Oracle user community but it is run by Oracle. I’m also a member of the OakTable but after 10, 15 years of sterling work, the OakTable has now, itself, mostly retired. May it enjoy its well earned peace.
My ancient academic background is genetics and zoology, I did a combined honours degree in those subjects at Leeds University back at the end of the 1980’s. I personally created a new version of moss that was resistant to a common antibiotic. It failed to take over the world. Or a damp log. But I DID IT. My zoological accomplishments involved a lot of locusts and their untimely demise, all made to naught as the photographic department of Leeds Uni destroyed all my cytology photographs and I hope they all died a painful death, unlike my locusts who were anaesthetised. A lot of knowledge has changed since my degree, especially in the field of genetics, but I have kept relatively up to date with the genetics.
I fell into computing by accident really, the UK National Health Service (NHS) were first to offer me a job, as a trainee analyst programmer. Until then I thought I would end up working in a laboratory. I then, again almost by accident, got a job with Oracle UK (it used to be a thing) working as a developer in their healthcare department. Since then I have worked for the NHS or in the biological sciences (as a database expert, not a scientist) several times, as well as lots of more normal businesses like Powergen, British Gas, Lloyds TSB, local government, Betfair, and places I had never heard of but happened to have massive databases or small databases with massive problems.
The most significant role I have had (to me at least) was six years working for the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute as their database service manager. You probably have never heard of the Sanger Institute but you will have heard of the Human Genome Project. The Sanger Institute was the main UK part of the international effort that was the Human Genome Project (HGP). Some USA sources barely recognise the input of France, Japan, Germany, China, UK etc. Even Wikipedia suggest it was mostly the USA but, hey, one of my databases held the raw data, including where it came from, so I know stuff. I believe the Sanger scientists were also mostly responsible for the “scaffold”, the overall structure all the sequences hung off. As well as the HGP the Sanger also did, and still do, other world-leading genetic & biological research, such as the genomics of cancer and other diseases. I can claim to have helped the Human Genome Project, even if in only a tiny, tiny way – and being there did get my genetics knowledge back up to speed.
In the last few years I have spent more time reading about genetics, biology & science than IT, and spent more time breaking things in the house and messing about in the garden than sat in front of a computer. I semi-retired in 2012 when I stopped commuting into London and doing 6, 12 month contracts. For the last decade I have mostly done short term consultancy work focused on Oracle performance, taking off months when I feel like it. Retirement does not *have* to be never doing the old day job, it can be more about doing less of that and more of, well, anything else. And I got to choose if and when I worked. It’s amazing how much happier I was. But as of April this year I officially retired – I finished off my final assignment (working on a data warehouse for the NHS) and I have hung up the work keyboard.
Oracle User Community
I first got involved in the Oracle User Community in about 2002. The Sanger Institute was very supportive of its staff sharing what we did and presenting at conferences. Some of the databases we had were unusually large (and, as someone who had specialised in VLDBs for 10 years by then, I knew they were unusually large!), so people liked to hear about the science and also about the 20 terabyte databases. And while I was presenting I was also learning and finding people who could help me look after these (at the time) fucking massive databases.
Getting involved in the user community changed everything for me. I found I enjoyed presenting, and later blogging, and organising events, and writing articles. I edited UKOUGs “Oracle Scene” magazine for a few years, ran SIGs (special interest groups) for them, helped organise events, then the annual conferences (eventually being the overall content manager) and finally became President of UKOUG. I loved helping people learn. And I was learning too of course. And, even more importantly for me, I was meeting those Oracle Names, finding most were just normal (but very bright) people, and became friends with several of them. I was now in a group of experts who I could ask questions of, check things with, and very occasionally help. For the last 10 years of my working life the main thing I have brought to my clients is not so much what is in my head but also what is in the head of other experts. That, to me, is what being in the community is all about. As soon as you start engaging with the Oracle community you meet people, you help them, they help you, some become friends (we won’t mention the enemies 🤣) and everyone benefits.
I obviously write a blog, as you are currently on it. If you are new to the blog, it is (well, was!) a mixture of technical posts, observations on team management & the soft-skills side of working life, Oracle user group activity, and “Friday Philosophies” {I call them FF, as I am dyslexic} – articles {usually} written on a Friday to end the week with an irreverent or slightly silly take on some aspect of life – which may or may not have any connection with Oracle.
Oddly enough, if I don’t blog for a while, “Friday Philosophies” are the posts people let me know they are missing.
More and more my blog is nothing to do with Oracle and computers, it is about what I am doing as retirement really takes hold – like fixing lawnmowers and going to see TV programs recorded.
I try and support other user groups. There was a Yorkshire Database group for a while, based in Leeds, and Oracle Midlands group based in Birmingham, London Oracle Beers (basically me, Doug Burns, and Neil Chandler wanting to have beers with friends in London) and several more. I either presented at or simply promoted their events and they did all keep going for a few years. When Oracle Poland (POUG) started up a few of us made sure to turn up whenever they asked. I’ll hat-tip Neil Chandler here as it was usually the two of us doing this.
During Covid it seemed like the user community was struggling and there was not much support for those that were trying to keep it going (the presenters, the conference organisers) so a few of us set up SYM42 – it’s like a private club for people addicted to the community. We exist to recognise those who teach others or make the events where people teach others. I’m the first president. It was not my idea to be first president, they asked, but my ego is so massive I accepted.
Despite my dislike of people being slaves to their mobile phones I have become afflicted by Twitter. You can see my latest tweets in the bar to the right and you can follow me if you like. Most of my twittering is more like chatting to friends than promoting my work, so you have been warned.
Finally I will mention the Oracle ACE program. This is Oracle’s official outreach and recognition program. For years they have supported those people who present or write or blog or advice online about Oracle. It’s had it’s ups and downs, it is a vendor program (so it is not independent of the sales direction of Oracle) and they have a points-based system to decide which level you are at. I’ve been an Oracle ACE since 2011, I was made an ACE Director in 2015 – and demoted to ACE (now ACE Pro) last year 🤣. I’m proud to be an Oracle ACE, but it is a vendor program. They do now recognise people who organise events and not just those that produce content, but they only started that after SYM42 started up and made a thing about also recognising the conference organisers out there!
Non-Oracle
Whilst my working life and Oracle was important to me, it was not everything. My academic background is in genetics & zoology as I said and I remain very interested in genetics, biology, and science in general. I did several blogs on Covid 19, trying to explain what it was about, aimed at those with some science but no depth of knowledge about genetics or epidemiology. Several people contacted me to let me know they appreciated them.
The career in computing came about almost as a happy accident. Start a conversation with me about evolution and I won’t shut up for hours. Just don’t ask me to identify any trees or birds, I’m useless at it.
My wife and I live in a house with bits dating back to 1700 or so (and other bits dating back to last year), which means parts of it keep breaking. We also have a quite ridiculously large garden – I wanted an excuse for a sit-on lawnmower. So looking after the house and garden take up much of my spare time. My wife has had her own successful corporate career but now makes hats for a living. She has stolen my purpose-built office and made it into a hat studio. I suppose the reality is that I am a house-husband with a weakness for Oracle technology.
I’m mildly dyslexic. It has not held me back much (as I mostly ignore it), I only mention it as you will probably spot typos or the wrong word (or tense of the word) being used occasionally. Sorry about that, modern spell checkers help a lot but cannot correct all mistakes (and can even change a mistake to a worse one!). So if you spot any such oddities in my articles, feel free to mention them to me or just let it quietly go by :-). I have no time at all for people who hold their dyslexia or autism up as a badge of having super powers. They are not super powers, both conditions are a fucking pain in the arse (yes I am autistic too). I’m tired of the modern trend to make any disability or challenge some sort of blessing. Everyone has something, the majority are a pain in the arse. Some more than others. I’m also face blind, have rotten tinnitus, visual migraines, Munchausen syndrome (I don’t, but some of you will get the joke), a shit memory, and I’m very short (think Danny DeVito). Oddly enough I am still waiting for people to announce being short, face blind, have tinnitus, or visual migraines as super powers – but who knows. Being short is still 100% fine to take the piss out of it seems.
I go hill walking two or three times a year despite being scared of heights, I try to run regularly despite being very poor at it, and I taught myself to juggle as I could never seem to catch things. Why do I insist on doing things I’m not very good at?
I like cats and beer.
If you insist, the work history
My first job, from 1989, was as an analyst programmer for the NHS in Bristol. We used a language called MUMPS on VAX & PDPs. I could already program when I joined, having had a home computer for many years. I also did a lot of train of staff to use our systems.
Whilst longevity is no guarantee of expertise, I worked with Oracle technology from 1992 – when I joined the Oracle UK healthcare group. I only worked for Oracle the company for just under 3 years but I continued to work with the technology for well in excess of 3 decades. After Oracle I became a contractor, working at places like British Gas, Severn Trent Water, the NHS, Powergen – mostly places with massive billing systems and using the latest version of Oracle (which, looking back, was very lucky). I became an expert in VLDBs, performance, and PL/SQL. My roles were nearly always as a performance expert, database designer, or Oracle technical lead, with some development work thrown in to keep my feet in the real world. Oddly enough, I was never a real production DBA. I’ worked in finance, utilities, betting (very like finance but with more honesty about what they are really doing!), healthcare, local government and academia. Over the last few years I concentrated on shorter engagements providing consultancy and issue resolution services, with some training courses thrown into the mix. I did enjoy running training courses, even though they are so demanding.
My working highlight was between 2001 and 2007 when I stopped being self employed and was the Database Services Manager at a place called the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. See above for more details about the Sanger. Obviously, the role combined my two passions of Oracle and Genetics and my team were working with the latest Oracle technology, with Oracle corp and some of the largest IT companies (IBM, HP etc) helping us along. Gene sequencing produces massive volumes of data and we held some of it in Oracle databases. We had a 40TB database in 2007 (which I had designed and built) and it grew, after I had left, to close to half a Petabyte. On behalf of the team, I was named Oracle Beta Tester of the year by Oracle magazine in 2003 for the work we did on Oracle 10. I’m proud of that but I never forget it should have been for the whole team.
It was during that time that I started presenting and sharing our experiences with the wider Oracle community, something that academic institutes are very supportive of, and being recognised as someone doing significant and challenging work with Oracle technology. It was also where I learnt about managing teams and people. Contacts I made then, both within Oracle and in the user community, lay the foundations for my becoming someone who shared knowledge. I think I owed my place in the industry and community to that role.
Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog 
I am also very much proud of my 2TB database, and yes I also ‘foolishly’ yes to most of my employer’s demands, but that has always resulted in learning new skills and pushing my limits.
Very informative blog Martin.
Oracle people love tinkering with very large databases. Though I am not into Oracle, but delivered few apps. on Oracle back-end too.
I want to create a sample VLDB, but not following how to gather data.
Is this a bug?
Hey Martin, I stopped by to learn more about BLEVELs and have to say this is actually a very good about page.
You could have been describing me: for work I do Oracle performance tuning and database design myself. I majored in biology and love science and have too nice of an astrophotography telescope. And I use great DeWalt power tools to do bad DIY. I love gardening & orcharding, and I’m not bad at either.
I’m 70 and still working because I just can’t leave the Oracle stuff yet.
You have an excellent blog all around.
Mike Milligan
Hooper, Utah
Thanks for that Mike – and yes, we do have a lot in common!