Should You Go To Oracle OpenWorld Europe? Yes!… But… February 3, 2020
Posted by mwidlake in conference, Knowledge, UKOUG, User Groups.Tags: knowledge, Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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Oracle Open World (Europe) is taking place in London in February. On Wednesday 12th & Thursday 13th Oracle will be giving lots of talks on Cloud, AI, Business Intelligence, Cloud Application Development, and anything else they see as modern and trendy. Oracle Partners will be there, demo booths by Oracle where you can talk to area experts, Safra Catz will be giving a keynote and, for entertainment, there are a couple of well known guest presenter. Go see who.
Stolen outrageously from Oracle web site
I’ll certainly be going along to see what they have to say. And if Oracle is part of your IT ecosystem (or might become part of it) & you are in the UK then I really think you, or someone in your organisation, should be there. Especially if you are making decisions on business applications, where you keep your IT services, or what tech you use. I’d say it’s worth a trip over from Europe for it, especially if you are “close”. Oracle will be telling you an awful lot about what is new and the event is free! Yes, Oracle giving something away for free. The only cost to you is your time. And travel to East London. Maybe a hotel for a night.
Free.
And that is the “But…”. Like any event by any large vendor, what you will hear about will be deeply coloured. Red in this case (though Oracle seem to be going a lot more pastel with their branding these days and I much prefer it). What do I mean by deeply coloured?
- Everything you hear will be at least rose-tinted and potentially unrealistically optimistic.
- The vendor will be pushing what it wants to see growing in it’s order books, not what you currently have.
- You are the “product”, especially if an event is free. “Free” and “Big Vendor” do not really go together, vendors doing this sort of thing are trying to expand market share, or at least preserve it.
- You will hear nothing about any competing services or tech, except how it is not as good as the Vendor’s. Even if the other solution is by far the best option for your business.
This is of course self-evident. A business depends on sales and Oracle is no different. But in amongst all the gloss, free food, carefully crafted messages, and entertainment, somehow the reality gets diluted and people seem to think the vendor has become somehow charitable and are doing this out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.
Would you prefer an event where all the above are not true, or are at least diluted?
Well, In I.T. there is an alternative -or, I should say, a complement – to the corporate marketing pitch.
User Groups.
A good user group is independent of the vendor, just as the UK Oracle User Group is. UKOUG is not funded by Oracle, Oracle has no say in what we do, and we do not simply repeat the current Oracle Marketing Pitch of the year. We say what is bad. We say what is good. Because we will say what is bad, you can better trust us when we say what is good. What is more, Vendors want to know what they are doing bad (and good) – so they listen to us.
Most countries across Europe (and around the wider world) have national or local Oracle user groups that are similar to UKOUG. They are independent of Oracle, they are run by a mixture of volunteers and occasionally small companies and they exist solely to help the user group community get the most out of Oracle and related services & technology. If you use Oracle, you really should be a member of an Oracle User Group.
Why? I’ll use UKOUG as the example (I am biased, I am president of UKOUG – but I present at and have in other ways helped many user groups across Europe and beyond, I’ve had the advantage of being a member of UKOUG for over 15 years).
At UKOUG events we don’t Market Oracle, we have content on:
- Current and older products & tech, the stuff you are using NOW. Stuff that is mostly ignored at marketing events, especially free ones.
- Real world stories which include the real-world “this did not work” or “we had a sod of a time sorting out X”
- Details of how to get something to function rather than a “it’s so simple, it just works”
- Discussions on how to get technology or applications from one vendor to mesh with another, and even how to get your data out. Database Vendors tend to tell you only how to get data in!
And on top of all this we also have the latest-greatest from Oracle. Oracle know that members of the user group are engaged and looking for solutions. Of course they want to present to this group. But we at UKOUG also work with many Oracle product managers, many of whom are keen to talk about stuff over and above current marketing angles. Product managers know that 90% of businesses using their products are way more interested in what they can do with their current solutions (and sometimes they are pretty old current solutions) rather than going latest-greatest
UKOUG – My community.
We have hundreds of engaged members and partners who can help you with the problems you are facing, right now, with the version of whatever you are using in your business.
The way I see it, being a member of an independent user group is a cheap insurance policy for an organisation. You pay a lot of money for large vendor solutions and on-going maintenance, often hundreds of thousands of £/€ or even millions for large companies. Being a member of the UKOUG is small change compared to that (from £45 to £1,628 depending on how much goodness you want from us). Going to user group conferences across Europe is probably cheaper all-in-all than a trip to London, and you get a much more realistic take on the technology you are using. The canapes & coffee won’t be as good, mind, our budgets are very limited.
I absolutely, 100% encourage people to go to Oracle and other big vendor events, especially free ones like OOW Europe. If you want to know what is coming with Oracle, if you want to investigate what options to buy or upgrade are available, or you are simply curious about the state of the art, then get yourself a pass to OOW Europe. Do it now, the event is almost fully subscribed.
If you want to have another source of the truth, one less coloured by Marketing and more coloured by reality, join your local user group and go to their events.
I’m biased of course, but a UKOUG membership is a very, very wise investment for anyone who has already invested an eye-watering sum with the vendor. If you are based somewhere else in Europe, check out your national user group and what they can offer. You can of course still join UKOUG but look local first.
UKOUG will have a stand at OOW Europe. Come over and see us, whether you are a member, want to be a member, or just want a friendly chat. Being a user group, we are pretty friendly!
OGB Appreciation Day: It’s All About ME! October 10, 2019
Posted by mwidlake in ACED, Knowledge, Perceptions, Presenting, UKOUG, User Groups.Tags: knowledge, Meeting, perception, UKOUG, user group
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The Oracle Groundbreakers program, and it’s previous incarnations going back to OTN and beyond, are all about me. Yes – Me!
What a great bunch of people
Well, having hopefully got you hooked in with the ego-laden title and first line, let me explain.
As OracleBase (Dr Tim Hall) describes in this post on Oracle Groundbreakers Appreciation day, today we are celebrating what OTN/ODC/Groundbreakers means to many of us. For me it is quite simple, Groundbreakers, as part of the larger Oracle community, gave me the career and roles I currently have. The knowledge, support, and community they promote made me into the President of the UK Oracle user group. Why do I say this?
Let’s go back in time a little, to the last millennium. When I was first navigating my Oracle career the user community sort-of existed back then. You had big, flappy, paper things called “books” that you could buy and put on your desk. They held loads of information and stuff you did not know. And those of us who were keen to learn would swap white papers and articles by email, which you would also print out and put on your desk, in an ever-growing couple of towers. Why all the paper? We had 14-16 inch screens with terrible resolution, you had no screen space back then, so you programmed on that and had your help on the desk. As for googling things – didn’t exist. At this time I was utterly on the receiving end of community. I was being taught. I did teach back then, but only face-to-face for whichever company was employing me at the time.
Step into the new millennium and I landed a job with the Sanger Institute and the Human Genome Project. The Sanger have a culture of sharing – data, techniques, information, discoveries. As a result I was not just allowed but encouraged to go and talk at conferences. So I did. My first presentations were at Oracle Open World, the Oracle Life Sciences User Group (OLSUG), and the UKOUG conference. Very soon I was helping run the OLSUG events and volunteering at UKOUG events. I just got sucked in. I was still of course on the receiving side of the community, learning from all those great people who present, write, chat etc. But now I was giving to the community too. And there was something about being part of the “giving” community that I had not expected. You learn even more. And you have more fun! I got to meet a lot of fellow presenters, event organisers, and product managers – especially when I was made an Oracle ACE and joined what is by far the largest part of the Oracle community.
The ACE/Groundbreaker program recognises not necessarily the smartest and best people in any given field. It recognises those who put time and effort into sharing, in helping others (which was lucky for me!). You have to know your stuff to teach others (so be technically or business good), but you also need to be willing to, well, teach! To interact with people. So the vast majority of people who are in the program are also friendly & supportive people. Being dropped into that group really helped me.
Not only did I meet all these people from around the globe, I’ve been able to go around several parts of the globe to conferences and meetings. Groundbreakers does a lot to support people going around the world to present and share knowledge. The great thing about travelling is you see other perspectives and cultures. I don’t think we realise how parochial our viewpoint can be until we meet people with different perspectives and experiences.
As a result of my being part of the community and being an ACE/ACED, I’ve continued to learn technically, I’ve got a lot better at interacting with people, my communication skills have developed, and I now know a lot of skilled people in the community. All of these things have of course helped my working career. But where it all comes together is in my role as UKOUG president. I would never have considered putting myself forward for this role if I had not had all this experience with the Oracle community. And I don’t think I’d be very good in the role if I had not learnt all the “soft skills” that I have, and made the contacts that I have.
So Groundbreakers, you made me President of the UKOUG.
I *think* I thank you 🙂
First Lessons, Frustrations, & Funny Stuff – Introducing the iPad To My Mum July 12, 2019
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Knowledge, off-topic, Perceptions, Private Life.Tags: behaviour, Humour, perception, private
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<< Introducing I.T. to an Elderly Relative
<<<< Preparing the device
So, you are are helping an elderly relative or someone else who knows nothing at all about keyboards, icons, internet, or web browsing to get going with I.T. You have set up the device for them, now you need to introduce them to it. This is where it gets… interesting.
As I describe in earlier posts, I bought an iPad for my mum and set it up in a nice, simple way for her. I knew there was nothing she could do to actually break the iPad, it would just be a little confusing and possibly quite a frustrating process showing her how to use it. I was wrong. On all counts.
To do this I drove up to see my mum for the day, taking along the current Mrs Widlake for emotional support. Having arrived and set up the new router we had got from British Telecom (that’s a whole other story of woe) I sat Mum down and showed her the iPad, the on/off button, the volume buttons and the Home button. I got her to turn the device off and on, I pulled up some things on the internet to show her videos & music and got her to turn the volume up and down, and showed her how you touch the screen to do things. I told Mum about plugging it in and the icon that shows how much charge it has. All was going OK. I showed her the keyboard…
“Ohh, that’s complex!” No it’s not, there is one key per letter and some special keys. “Why can’t it have 9 numbered buttons and you just press 3 twice for H?” Because it is not 1995 anymore and this is much easier. I open Messenger for her, start a conversation to me and get her to type, yes you guessed it, ‘Hello World’. “I can’t find the ‘L'”. That’s OK, just take your time…
Mum is punching her finger on the screen as if she is killing cockroaches. You just need to tap it mother “I am!”. More softly (bash bash bash). No, gently (bash bash). If I poked your cat that hard she’d bite me, imagine you are touching the cat (bash bash bash). Mum, the screen is glass – if you hit it like that it will break and cut your finger off! That worked.. sort of (thud thud thud). 2 minutes and liberal use of the delete key later (her aim is poor) we get ‘Hello World’. Great! Well, you are sending the message to me, look that’s my name and a little picture of me! Say ‘Hello Martin’ – “Hello Martin” says Mum. Nooo, type it. “Where’s the L key?” Same place as before, just take your time…
When Mum is looking for a key she hovers her finger over the keyboard, waves it over one area, goes to another area and waves it over that – and then back to the first area… and repeats. Half of the keyboard has some sort of exclusion field around it. Mum, just look along each row until you find the letter you want. “I was!” No, you looked there and then there, 3 times. Trust me, just work along each row. She does.. “There it is! I knew it was there!”. Hmmm
After about 10 minutes of this random messaging (it felt like an hour but my wife, sniggering on the sofa, said it was 10 minutes) I get Mum to practice logging into the device. This, after all, is a vital step.
I tell her the password is my name. I decided on my name as she (probably) won’t forget it and it is more secure than a number that she will remember. “With a Y or an I?” Huh? “Martin with a Y or an I?” What did you name me? “Martin”. With a Y or an I? “Well, an I of course.” Well it’s with a bloody I then! “Some people spell it different…”. Why would I set your password to my name but spelt the wrong way? It’s an I you silly old Moo. (yes, it’s getting to me).
She types Marti.. “There is no N key”. It’s there. “Oh yes”. I tell her to press DONE. She does, the home screen comes on. I get her to turn it off and put in her password again. “What is my password?” Martin. “I just typed that”. Yes, we are practising. “OK – (thud thud thud… thud….)”. The N key is there, Mum (thud). And DONE… (thud) “I’m in!”. Excellent. Now do it again so you have done it without any help.
(thud thud thud….thud…..) “The N key has gone!” – It’s… {breathes a little…} there! “Oh yes! I knew that!” But she does press DONE on her own.
Now do it again. “Why?” Because I need to know you can do it easily. (thud thud…thud thud…….) “Where…” It’s there! There! THERE!!! You’ve pressed it 4 times in the last 2 minutes, it’s ALWAYS there, it does not bloody move!!! IT’S THERE!!!! I can feel veins throbbing at my temples…
Sue pipes up “Shall I make us all a cup of tea and we can go look at the fish in the pond?” She’s a saint.
After a break and some calming down, we go through it all again (with fewer issues and less swearing) and I show Mum ‘Messenger’ again and how she can communicate with me. I show her how to type a message and send it and how to call me and we do a few trials and she seems OK with that. She keeps forgetting to press the plane icon “why is it a blue arrow?” It’s like a plane, you send the message. “It looks like an arrow”. OK, it’s an arrow, you are firing the message to me wherever I am. “How does it know where you are?” Magic Pixies.
By now we are both getting really annoyed with each other but she can turn the device on, log in, use the keyboard (well, sort of) and she can message me. That is enough for day one – and I need alcohol in a way that is slightly worrying.
We drive home and later that evening we get a message off my mum. It’s almost indecipherable as she has forgotten where the delete key is, and she does not seem to understand that she can check what she has typed, but it’s sort-of a success. I started to reply about where the delete key is, but something in my head steps in and quietly suggests to me that remote support for my confused mother after all the wine I consumed is probably a poor idea. I send a brief “we got home” message – and a picture of a cat.
Next day she calls me on Messenger. Hi Mum, how are you? “{small scream} – is that you, Martin?” Yes, you called me. “No I didn’t!” Err, yes you did. “I didn’t, I sent you a message”. Did you press the blue arrow. “Yes!”. The one next to the text you typed “No, the one at the top of the screen”…. At the top of the screen?… Does it look a bit like a telephone? “Yes!” That would be the telephone then. “Oh! How do I send this message?” After I end the call mother, press the blue arrow. 30 seconds later my phone rings. Hi Mum… “(smaller scream) – it did it again!” So, why do you think it did it again? “I pressed the wrong key?” Yes.
Over the next few hours I get a few messages (no more calls) and slowly the random strings slowly become things I can understand. We are getting there.
She Bricked the iPad
Next day she calls me on Messenger… Hi Mum? “{small scream…}” We repeat the previous day. Typing is better.
Next day, no call, no messages.
Next day, no call, no messages.
Next day, the phone (real phone) goes “I’ve broken it, it won’t work!” Hello Mum. OK, what is broken. “It’s broken, it won’t let me in! It won’t accept my password”. OK pick up the device tell me what you are doing… We work through it, she is entering the password (with an I not a Y, I checked) and “it’s not working” is actually she is getting a message saying the device is disabled. I ask Mum if maybe, perhaps, she got the password wrong a few times and it asked her to wait 5 minutes before trying again? “No, I got my password right – but it would not let me in and after a few times it said that!”. OK… So, leave it alone for an hour and try again. “I did that yesterday!” I’m getting a bad feeling about this… ” And after I tried it, it told me to wait again… and it still could not remember my password and then I left it all day and now it says it’s disabled and needs to be plugged in. I plugged it in!”
I explain that she has actually done the one thing that can brick(*) an iPad. She has repeatedly got the password wrong enough times and persistently enough to cause it to believe it is stolen. It is useless to her. It needs to be plugged into a computer and reset. *sigh*. I asked her why she did not call me when “it forgot her password”. She did not want to bother me…
So now I had to organise a day to drive over there, factory reset the damned thing, and set it up again. And I was going to change her password to a simple number.
It had not been a little confusing, it had been utterly baffling. I had not found it quite frustrating, I had been turned into a swearing lunatic. And she had indeed broken the iPad.
I rang my Brother. I told him the inheritance is all his – I am adopted.
(*) Brick – turn an electronic device into something as responsive and useful as a house brick.
Free Conference (*) in May! May 4, 2018
Posted by mwidlake in conference, Knowledge, UKOUG.Tags: knowledge, Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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How do you fancy going to a full-day, five stream conference, for free? With a great agenda including Pete Finnigan talking on the hot topic of GDPR; Chris Saxon, Nigel Bayliss and Grant Ronald giving us the latest low-down on optimizer, 18C database features for developers and AI powered apps? Stalwarts of the Oracle community like Robin Moffat, Zahid Anwar and Andrew Clarke giving their real-world view?
Well, if you are a member of the UKOUG you can – and even if you are not a member, there is a way! All levels of UKOUG membership, even bronze, allow you to attend at least one SIG (Special Interest Group) meeting – and the Northern Technology Summit is classed as a SIG, even though it is as large as some smaller conferences. The 5 streams cover Database, RAC, Systems, APEX, and Development (I know, APEX is part of development – but it gets a whole stream to fit in the large range of speakers, who are mostly end users with real stories to tell). You can see the full agenda here.
Park Plaza. Leeds.
The summit is being held in Leeds, at the Park Plazza hotel, on the 16th of May. The Park Plaza is so close to Leeds train station that you could probably hit it with a catapult from the entrance. It is also about 2 minutes from where the M621 (a spur off the M1) ends in the city centre. You can sign up to the event by clicking here.
Is Leeds far away? No. Trains from Kings Cross take only 2 hours and you can get there and back for £50 or less. Check out Trainline.com and similar websites. Of course, coming in from Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle etc is even quicker and cheaper (except maybe Brum, for reasons I cannot fathom) Even Edinburgh is less than 3 hours away.
SO you are not a UKOUG member – You can still come, and still come for free as I said – well, sort of. The cost of a SIG for a non-member is £170 plus VAT, which is pretty cheap for a whole-day event full of technical content and an absolute steal for a 5-stream mini-conference. But if you become a Bronze member of the UKOUG for five pounds less, i.e. £165, you get a SIG place – so you can come to the Northern Technology summit. The UKOUG have waived the usual joining fee of £50 to ensure it is cheaper to become a bronze member than simply pay for this event. And, if you become a higher level member, (silver, gold, platinum) the UKOUG will still waive the joining fee. You can see full details of the offer here
As well as the excellent agenda we will be having some fun. We are having a meet-up the night before in Leeds, at Foley’s Tap House where we have reserved an area. This is one of my favourite pubs in Leeds, I seem to end up in it for a pint or two whenever I visit the city. There are already over half a dozen of us going and I’ll buy a round. The park plaza hotel is just next to the latest shopping centre in Leeds. If you have never visited the city before, or did so a long time ago, it’s become a very vibrant city centre over the last 10 years or so. I suspect after the event some of us will end up in the Scarborough hotel opposite the train station before we wander home.
So, sign up and get yourself over to a whole-day, 5-stream conference full of both the official information from Oracle on 10 topics and end-user/partner opinions on 25 more.
Free Webinar – How Oracle Works! September 15, 2017
Posted by mwidlake in Architecture, internals, Knowledge, Presenting.Tags: Architecture, knowledge, performance, Presenting
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Next Tuesday (19th September) I am doing a free webinar for ProHuddle. It lasts under an hour and is an introduction to how some of the core parts of the Oracle RDBMS work, I call it “The Heart of Oracle: How the Core RDBMS Works”. Yes, I try and explain all of the core Oracle RDBMS in under an hour! I’m told I just about manage it. You can see details of the event and register for it here. I’ve done this talk a few times at conferences now and I really like doing it, partly as it seems to go down so well and people give me good feedback about it (and occasionally bad feedback, but I’ll get on to that).
The idea behind the presentation is not to do the usual “Intro” and list what the main Oracle operating systems processes – SMON, PMON, RECO etc – are or what the various components of the shared memory do. I always found those talks a little boring and they do not really help you understand why Oracle works the way it does when you use it. I aim to explain what redo is, why it is so important, what actually happens when you commit, how data is written to and read from storage to the cache – and what is actually put in the buffer cache. I explain the concept of point-in-time view, how Oracle does it and why it is so fantastic. And a few other bits and pieces.
I’m not trying to explain to people the absolute correct details of what goes on with all these activities that the database does for you. I’m attempting to give people an understanding of the principles so that more advanced topics make more sense and fit together. The talk is, of course, aimed at people who are relatively new to Oracle – students, new DBAS or developers who have never had explained to them why Oracle works the way it does. But I have found that even some very experienced DBA-types have learnt the odd little nugget of information from the talk.
Of course, in an hour there is only so much detail I can go into when covering what is a pretty broad set of topics. And I lie about things. I say things that are not strictly true, that do not apply if more advanced features of Oracle are used, or that ignore a whole bucket full of exceptions. But it’s like teaching astrophysics at school. You first learn about how the Sun is at the centre of the solar system, all the planets & moons revolve around each other due to gravity and the sun is hot due to nuclear fusion. No one mentions how the earth’s orbit varies over thousands and millions of years until you have the basics. Or that GPS satellites have to take into account the theory of relativity to be as accurate as they are. Those finer details are great to learn but they do not change the fundamental principles of planets going around suns and rocks falling out of the sky – and you need to know the simpler overall “story” to slot in the more complex information.
I talk about this picture.
I start off the talk explaining this simplification and I do try to indicate where people will need to dig deeper if they, for example, have Exadata – but with a webinar I am sure people will join late, drop in and out and might miss that. I must remember to keep reminding people I’m ignoring details. And amongst the audience will be people who know enough to spot some of these “simplifications” and I think the occasional person might get upset. Remember I mentioned the bad feedback? I got accosted at a conference once after I had done this talk by a couple of experts, who were really angry with me that I had said something that was not accurate. But they had missed the start of the talk and my warnings of simplification and did not seem to be able to understand that I would have needed half an hour to explain the details of that on thing that they knew – but I had only 50 minutes in total for everything!
As I said, this is the first Webinar I will have done. I am sure it will be strange for me to present with “no audience” and I’m sure I’ll trip up with the pointer and the slides at some point. I usually have some humour in my presentations but that might not work with no crowd feedback and a worldwide audience. We will see. But I am excited about doing it and, if it works, I may well offer to do more.
As a taster, I explain the above diagram. A lot. I mostly just talk about pictures, there will be very few “wordy” slides.
I invite you all to register for the talk – as I said, it is free – and please do spread the word.
Friday Philosophy – Your Experience can Keep You Ignorant November 18, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Knowledge, Perceptions, performance, SQL.Tags: behaviour, knowledge, perception, performance, SQL
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This week I was in an excellent presentation by Kerry Osborne about Outlines, SQL profiles, SQL patches and SQL Baselines. I’ve used three of those features in anger but when I looked at SQL Patches I just could not understand why you would use them – they looked to me like a very limited version of SQL Profiles.
There is a prize for spotting Kerry without a baseball cap
So I asked Kerry about it during his presentation (he had been encouraging us to ask questions and I was curious). The answer? They are almost identical in how they are used and the impact they have but, yes, they are more limited. You can only enter one line of hints (I think it can be more than one hint but I have not checked {update, see comment by Jonathan Lewis – it is 500 characters of hints you can add, so you can comprehensively hint most statements}) with a SQL Patch. But, and this is the crucial bit, they can be used without the tuning pack and can be used on Standard Edition. Which makes them very useful if you are limited to using a version of SE or have not paid for the extra cost tuning pack option on Enterprise Edition. Kerry told me the first part about no cost and Kamil Stawiarski the part about being available on SE.
That’s a really useful thing to know. Why did I not know it? Because nearly all my experience of performance work has been for clients who have Oracle Enterprise Edition and the tuning pack. Most companies who are willing to hire someone to do Oracle Performance work have paid for Oracle Enterprise Edition and usually for many of the options. A company who is saving money by having SE is far less likely to have the money to hire external consultants (more the pity, as I would really like to spend time working for smaller companies where you can usually get more done!)
My experience, or rather lack of it, had blinded me to the possible uses of an Oracle performance feature. I wonder how much other stuff I don’t know or appreciate about an area I claim to be knowledgeable and skilled in – because my experience is mostly for clients with a very full Oracle tool set? How true is this in all sorts of areas of my technical and personal life? Quite a lot I suspect. That can be a little dis-spiriting.
But mulling this over later that evening (with beer of course) four things occurred to me:
- If someone claims skills in an area but does not know things you do, it could well be simply down to their personal experience to date. It does not mean you know more, it means you know different stuff.
- How much does someone have to not know before you decide they are not the expert they claim?
- Do we partial experts keep ourselves slightly ignorant by not asking questions – as we fear that second point?
- I felt I did the right thing in asking a question about something I felt I should know – but did not. As now I know the answer (and two people at least got to show they know more than me).
I know I have said this before, as many others have. The more you know, the more you realise what you do not know. You just have to keep asking and remember that, we are all ignorant about something until someone tells us about it.
Friday Philosophy – Struggling To Learn Something? You Still Rock April 1, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Knowledge, Perceptions, Private Life, working.Tags: behaviour, knowledge, private, UKOUG
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When did you last learn something new about the tech you work with? This week? This month? This year? 2003?
I fell off THAT? No wonder it hurt.
{This blog is a bit of a personal story about my own recent career; how I fell off the log and managed to climb back on it – just so you know}.
For me it was (as I type) this week. In fact, it was today! It was in an area of “my tech”, stuff that I know back to front and left to right. I’m an expert in it, I’ve been using this area of Oracle’s tech for two decades and I simply “Rock at this stuff!” I mean, I know quite a bit about it (sorry, went all “USA” on you there for a minute). But still, despite all my experience in it and even teaching others about it, I learnt something new today – And thank the heavens I did.
Why am I so happy about learning something that, really, I perhaps should know already?
About 3 years ago I stepped back from the whole Oracle arena. I’d been struggling with the tech for a while and I was really not enjoying most of the roles I took on. Which is odd, as I was able to choose between roles by this point to some extent, and had no problem saying “no” to a job I did not like the look of. I know, it’s a privileged position to be in – but I pretty much feel it was a position I put myself into by working hard, developing my skills and (which may seem counter-intuitive to some) sharing them.
So, I had finished a job I was enjoying (which had become a rarity) and I had taken on a new role… and I was hating it. And I was especially hating learning stuff. And I had no desire to, once more, pour 10% of my learnt skills down the sink (as they had been superseded) and learn 20% of new stuff. Why do I say once more? Because, as the Oracle tech has rolled on, that is what I and all of you in a band around my age has had to do every few years.
Back in the early 90’s I knew how to get Forms and Reports to work in ways many did not. I would edit the source files for these tools, I could use tricks with the triggers to do stuff and I also knew PL/SQL in a way few people at the time did. But my position as a leading expert went out the window as things progressed and everyone (everyone? OK no, but a good fraction of people) caught up – and then exceeded – my skills in those areas. And some tech was retired. But I had moved onto database skills by then and I knew stuff about segment creation and space management that few others worried about. Which Oracle then made redundant and I had to move on again…
I’m not alone in this, most of you reading this (be you 60, 50, 40 or 30) can relate to this and have your own stories of managing skills and moving on as the skill set you knew evolved.
But as I said, around 3 years ago, for me it ended. I hit a wall. I was simply too tired, cynical and… yeah, pissed off, to keep letting go of some skills and learning new ones. I’d had enough and I stopped learning. Within 12 months I was not pissed off- I was screaming inside to get out of the industry. And I did. If you have followed my blog you might be able to see the pattern if you look back over the posts. I certainly can, looking back over them.
In this industry, if you stop learning you “die”. It might take a while, especially if you are just ticking over in a role where nothing changes and no new features are used. But the nearer you are to the bleeding edge of the tech, the faster you fall off that edge. For 24 years I had either tested the next version of Oracle before it was released or been the person telling (whatever company I was at) how to use (or avoid!) the new features of the latest Oracle release. But now I had stopped learning.
I started having chats with some friends about it and most were sympathetic and understanding and, well, nice. But I still had that wall. My career was based on being near, on or beyond the leading edge. I learnt stuff. I moved with the times. And now I did not as I was… tired. Drained.
But then I had a weekend in America skiing and relaxing after a conference in Colorado and I spent a lot of time with a good friend Frits Hoogland and I told him about where I was. He was also sympathetic – but he also said (and this is not a quotation but a general indication of his intent, as I remember it):
“I can’t tell you how to care about it, it’s up to you. But if you are not driven to learn the tech you won’t learn it. I can’t give you that drive – you have to find it for yourself”.
No one else had said that. Frits had summed up the situation and given it to me straight. You don’t learn by passive osmosis, you need to want to learn. And I’d fallen off the learning log and I didn’t know how to get back on it.
I thought on that for about 12 months. I also hid a little from the Oracle sphere and being “an expert”. And you know what? He was totally right. I needed a reason to learn the latest stuff and keep developing and it had to be something I wanted – be it a career, kudos, being the best I could be, putting kids though college (just checked, I never had kids), anything! But it had to be a drive. Because learning all this stuff is hard work.
It took me 12 months to work it out, but eventually I realised what I did and did not like about my working life. I hated commuting, office politics, dealing with people who were in charge but did not know (and had no desire to know) about tech, seeing the same mistakes repeated – All that stuff we all hate. But for me I was no longer able to balance that with the nice bits. Solving problems, making things work faster, creating programs and tools to help people achieve things and… teaching people.
So I took the decision to spend a year or two doing less work (and not earning much) and being more involved in the UKOUG, technical blogging (I’ve not really done so well on that front), writing articles, doing conferences and smaller user groups.. Basically, doing more in the user community. And I have, even to the extent of being involved in a book.
It took a while but I know it worked. How? I started learning again. I don’t mind if it is stuff that maybe I should already know – if I’m learning I’m not just improving but I am being engaged by my job (whatever my “job” is).
If you are in I.T. and you are still learning stuff, I would suggest that over all, everything is fine. Even if the learning part hurts a little – it does seem to get a bit harder each year to put new stuff into that cerebral cortex- you are not stagnating.
If you are in I.T. and not learning stuff, I’d suggest you might want to think about why – and if you should be changing what you do or where you do it. We spend most of our adult lives working, if there is any way you can make that part of your life more satisfying, I really think you should try and do it. Even if, as in my case, it pays a hell of a lot less!
Friday Philosophy – If You are reading this You are probably Pretty Smart September 11, 2015
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, humour, Knowledge.Tags: behaviour, Humour, knowledge, perception
11 comments
I bet I can predict a few things about you. And I mean You, the person reading this on my Blog right now.
At senior school (when you were aged between 11 and 16-ish) you were at the top of your classes. At least most of them. You were in the top few in your year for most science subjects and probably Maths too.
And you were not bad at any of your subjects once you had a choice over them, but there was at least one subject you were glad to get rid of as you were poor at it. But if you think back, I bet you were simply *almost average* at it, there were as many kids or more worse at it than you then there were better than you at it. You were just not as stand-out good as you were in other subjects. Come on, I’m right aren’t I? Even your poor subjects you were OK at compared to all the other kids.
You almost certainly went to college and, if you are under 35, you did to study a STEM subject – Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths. If you are 40-50 you did not study computing but you ended up working in it anyway. 35-40? You either studied computing, thought about it or took options in your course that had a major element of computer programming.
However, you were probably not quite the smartest kid in your year at school.
What makes me think this? Because I can mind-read(*)?
No, I think this simply due to the fact that you work in corporate IT or something very similar. You use your brain to solve issues or get tasks done. I think that the generally high level of intelligence is a more common trait in IT than the other thing I can probably predict about you – you don’t feel you are a people person, not really. Using myself as an example; I present at conferences, I have run training courses and I usually have something to say in a large group or discussion; I even partly run London Oracle Beers, a social Oracle user group. But I can’t make small-talk with people I don’t know and I am uncomfortable meeting new people.
We have to be intelligent to make a career in IT and most of us were probably drawn, at least in part, towards computers and software as we could work on it on our own and the computer did not have any feelings to dent or make any social demands on us. However, many (most) people are social nervous and so I think the more defining trait of people in IT is that they are intelligent – and intelligent in the way that IQ tests measure intelligence: A mixture of learnt patterns and various problem solving/logic/deduction skills. If you have had your IQ tested I am sure you are 120+. I would not be at all surprised if you score 130+. But you still have a little way to go to beat… my wife.
You probably were not the smartest kid in your year at school as the smartest kid either went into medicine/vet school, academia, law or crime – something more way-out-there.
So what point am I making? None really. It’s more just an observation. Though I do think you should occasionally take time to say a prayer of thanks to Pythagoras (or whoever you think is listening) and remind yourself how lucky you are. Most of your intelligence is inherited and the smaller (but not insignificant part) is due to schooling and your own efforts (note, I’m talking intelligence, not what you know – the two are different but aid each other). Your brains were given to your by your parents and grandparents, no matter how hard that can sometimes be to believe :-). I was on a PL/SQL course with Steven Feuerstein about 10 years ago and he took a minute or two to passionately state how lucky all of us on the course were to have our brains, to be making our living by thinking and not back-breaking toil or dull manual work. It was a sentiment I whole-heatedly agree with. I actually love spending time digging a ditch or chopping down trees but I would hate having to do it every day for a living.
Of course, intelligence of the IQ type is not everything and it does not make you a better person. I’m sure we have all known some very smart assholes and some wonderful people who can’t think themselves out of a damp paper bag. Some people have average IQ and yet have talents most of use would struggle with, like making a violin sound anything but bloody awful. I’ve known academics with an IQ somewhere Way Up There but who had about as much common sense as a pigeon. I have come across a few examples of intelligence bigotry in my time too. I know one guy in an academic institute who tried to insist that the highest grade you could achieve and the top of your salary band be dictated by your best academic qualification. No one without some sort of degree should get above level 5, No one with less than a 2(i) allowed in grade four and to get to grade 2 a PhD was needed. He was a very smart asshole. I’ve known a couple of people without a degree in this business of IT and both of the ones I’m thinking of right now are very, very good at what they do.
So be grateful for that brain of yours and just remember that most people are not as intelligent as you, so show patience in explaining and working with them. And if you are not patient, you could well be an intelligent asshole. You might need to learn to not be like that.
(*) Just as an aside, deducing things about groups of people and, in fact, traits most people have is not hard. It’s called cold reading. It’s what mediums, mind readers, psychics and other intelligent assholes use to hoodwink people. Part of it is things you can guess at given one piece of information or even none. I can deduce things about you because you work in IT. I know you feel you’ve never reached your potential and you have more to give as *almost everyone does*. No one wants to be seen to be selfish but we all know we are, at least at times. Even Mother Theresa thought so at times. The other aspect to it is reading body language and empathy, which is why I can’t make a living as a psychic. I just don’t get people….
Just thinking on this aside for a second, maybe mediums and psychics could get less abusive jobs as data analysts? Deducing things about people based on averages and correlation is Big Data Business right now.
(Update – thanks to the person who quietly contacted me to point out my spelling error/poor grammar with “patience” and “patient” – in my section in intelligent assholes too! He showed real patience with me)
Friday Philosophy – At What Point Can You Claim a Skill? June 26, 2015
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Knowledge.Tags: behaviour, knowledge, perception
10 comments
I’ve just installed Oracle 12C on my laptop {I know, why only now?}. I went for the option to have a Container database with a pluggable database within it. {It is easy and free to install Oracle on your own home machine – so long as it is for personal use only and you are singed up to OTN (which is also free) }.
12C with pluggable databases (PDBs) is a little different to the last few versions of Oracle as it introduces this whole concept of the Container database that holds portions of the data dictionary and, within that, what we used to think of as Oracle instances plugged in underneath it. It is not *quite* like that – but this post is not about the technical aspects of Oracle 12C multitentant databases. And you will see why.
Whenever something I know well has changed more than a bit, I tend to hit this wall of “Whoa! it’s all changed!”. It isn’t all changed, but sometimes some of the fundamentals, the basics are different. For the last 15 years, once I have my database up and running I will have created my test users and some objects within 10 minutes and be playing away. Not this time. How do you create a user in a multi-tenant DB? How do I tell Oracle to create my users in that PDB? Hang on, how do I even check what I called my PDB? My ignorance is huge.
I popped over to Tim Hall’s site, OracleBase and the section on creating users under multi-tenant Oracle, scanned Bryn Llewellyn’s White Paper on it. A few google searches as well and soon I was there. My standard test to make sure the DB is alive, “select sysdate from dual” – only I altered it to show the PDB:
select SYSDATE from Dual
So I am logged into my working PDB on 12C, I have selected sysdate from DUAL, created my new user. I have used Oracle 12C and multitentant.
Next step?
Update CV to claim 12C expert and experience of Multi-tenant Oracle Database
This is of course a joke on my part.
Sadly, some people would actually do this.
It is something that has always annoyed me and often seems rife in the I.T. industry – people claiming skills or even expertise in something they have barely touched, let alone understood. And often about a thousand miles away from any legitimate claim to Expert. I chortle whenever I see a CV from someone with only 2 or 3 years’ experience of Oracle but list 20 areas they are expert in. Before I throw the CV in the bin.
Maybe part of the issue is that I.T. moves so fast and people feel they need to be seen to be on top of the changes to be worth employing or being listened to. Well, it’s nice to be leading edge – for much of my career I’ve been lucky enough to be exposed to the latest version of Oracle either as soon as it is out or even before (beta programs). But much more important is to have some integrity. Claiming to be an expert when you are not is incredibly dangerous as anyone who really does know the subject is going to suss you out in no time at all. And you will be exposed as a fraud and a liar. Gaining any respect after that is going to be really hard work, and so it should be.
Sadly, you do get the situation where people get away with this sort of deceit, usually by managing to deceive non-technical management but annoying the real technicians around them. Many of us have suffered from this.
This issue of claiming a skill before you had was very common with Exadata when it came out. Lots of people, it seemed, read the white papers, looked at some blogs and maybe saw a couple of talks – and then started talking to people about Exadata as though they knew it inside out. I actually saw a “professional” presentation like this at a conference, on Exadata, where it was soon clear that the presenter had probably never got as far as “select sysdate from dual;” on an exadata box (not that there is any difference for that statement 🙂 ). I could not help but interrupt and query a statement that was utterly untrue and at that point the presenter checked his “facts” with a more senior member of his company in the crowd. To his shame, the senior member of staff repeated the error of claiming knowledge he also did not have to back the presenter up. Every time I come across that company now, I think of that.
So when can you claim a skill? If you look at my screen shot you will see that I failed to actually log into my PDB database with my new user – #fail. Of course I can’t claim these skills based on reading some information, seeing some talks and all of an hour’s practical experience.
I think you can only claim a skill once you can tell for sure if someone else also has that skill. Or more significantly, tell when they are claiming a skill they lack. Personally, I tend towards not claiming a skill if I doubt my abilities. Don’t worry, my huge ego balances that British self-doubt quite well 🙂
I used to give introductory talks on Exadata as I got so tired of the poor information I saw being given on the subject. Also, all the best talks were soon about the details of smart scans, the storage cells and patching. Not much for newbies. Interestingly, even as an intro talk, most times I did the talk I learnt something new in discussions at or after the talk. But I’ve retired that talk now. Why? Well Exadata has moved forward 2 versions since I last used it and 3 since I used it in anger. I could no longer tell you if something someone claimed for V5 of Exadata was true or not. So I am no longer skilled in Exadata.
Only claim skills you have.
Distrust those who claim skills they lack.
Try to teach those who seek your skills – you will only get better for it.
Guaranteed Method of Boosting your Oracle Skills May 21, 2015
Posted by mwidlake in Knowledge, Perceptions.Tags: 12Cbasics, behaviour, documentation, knowledge
7 comments
I can tell you how to be a better Oracle DBA, Developer, Designer, Architect – whatever your flavour of role or aspect of profession, if Oracle tech is part of your working world I can hand you the key to improvement. And it is easy.
I am totally assured(*) I can do this. It will work for every single one of you reading this post (except for you two, you know who you are). And you must send me $100 before I tell you how…
Hell, no you don’t! This is not some bull-droppings selling piece, it is just advice. And some advice aimed directly at myself too.
When did you last read the Oracle Server/Database Concepts manual? You know, that fairly short book (in fact, from 11G it is really short, with links through to other chapters in other books) that explains how Oracle TM (Copyright), actually does stuff? What it can do? It does not go into too many details but rather gives you a brief introduction of each concept and the fundamental “how it works” information.
Thanks to Kevin Fries who pointed out it would be nice if I linked to the online concepts manuals (as he did in his comment):
Here is the online 12C Database Concepts manual.
Here is the online 11GR2 Database Concepts manual for those still with 11GR2.
Here is the online 10GR2 Database Concepts manual for those trapped in the past with 10GR2.
Read it. Read it this week. I am confident that if you read the latest Oracle Database Concepts manual you will be ahead of the game by a massive step.
Oracle 7 instance diagram
Why am I so sure? Because we forget what Oracle has been able to do for years and we miss new abilities if our day-job has not touched on them since they came in. I think there is a growing move to learning only what you really need to know to get the job done (as we are all so busy) as we know we can search the web for the rest. My friend Neil Chandler came up with a name for it, JIT learning: “Just In Time” learning). Only, you can’t easily search for what you don’t know (or have forgotten) is possible with the tech you use. If you go through the concepts manual you will be reminded of stuff you forgot, things you missed or {and this is key to newbies} gain an outline understanding of what Oracle can do.
I became fascinated with how many people read the concepts manual about a decade ago and started asking a question when I presented on any Oracle topic. “Who has reads the concepts manual for the version of Oracle you mostly work with?”. In the last 10, 12 years the number of hands has decreased from well over 50%. In 2012, at a UK meeting, it hit the bottom of the barrel, no hands whatsoever. Oddly enough, a few weeks later I was in Slovenia (for none-European people, a lovely country bordering Italy and Austria – google it if you need more help) and the same question resulted in 40% of the audience raising a hand. When I was in the US 6 months later, no hands at all again. In the UK and Europe since, no hands or occasionally, one hand – and a few questions usually nailed down that it was a prior version of the manual they had read.
I took some time to ask this question again at a UK user group meeting about 4 months ago (no hands came up of course) and asked “why?”. The consensus was “we know most of what is in the concepts manual, we just need to know what has changed” – with an undercurrent of not having time to read the now-huge set of Oracle manuals. A few people suggested just reading the New Features. This was a crowd who did not know what a table cluster was (“Ha, look at ME! I know what a table cluster is! Hahahahaaaa – OK, no one uses them.”). (British ironic self-depreciation there).
Reading “New Features” is certainly better than nothing but I feel it is not enough as it does not remind us of the established stuff we have forgotten. I am on a bit of a personal Jihad to explain the basics of Oracle to any Newbie who cares to listen and I have to keep checking my facts with the concepts manual and some chosen expert friends (thank you VERY MUCH expert friends) and I keep stumbling over stuff I don’t know, misunderstood or forgot. And I have been an “expert” in Oracle since… Well, before the millennium bug or Android phones or iTunes had been invented. THAT LONG! I know my shit – and some of it is, well…. wrong.
Actually, I have a confession. I have not read the 11g or 12C concepts manual. I told you this advice was aimed at me too.
So, Go Read The Oracle 12C Concepts Manual. Go ON! Go and read it!!!! Oh. Still here? Well, I AM going to read it – as I last read the 10G concepts manual properly. And as part of my current push to present, talk and blog about the basics of Oracle, I will blog what jumps out at me. I know one thing – I will not be quiet any time until August if I follow my own advice, I will be posting blogs left, right and center about what I learn..
I’ll use the tag 12Cbasics.
Let the learning of basics begin.
Oracle 7 or Oracle 8, 1.5 ” of pure info
Thanks to Joel Garry for digging his old manuals out the basement and doing this shot for me 🙂
(*) it won’t work if you already read the latest concepts manual. But most people have not! Heck, I did not charge for the advice, so sue me if you read it already.
Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog 