Oracle
New additions to my Oracle Magazine Collection
I put out a call a few months ago looking for help in completing my Oracle Magazine collection. I also had a letter in the Nov/Dec 2011 edition of Oracle Magazine looking for help.
The following people contacted me in December offering to send me some of my missing editions.
Lisa Dobson – Oracle DBA at Durham University and Vice President of UKOUG
Debra Lilley – President of UKOUG
Christian Antognini – Trivadis AG, Switzerland
Dan Vlamis – Vlamis Software Solutions, MO, USA
Many thanks for your donations.
It seems that people don’t keep their Oracle Magazines!
I’m now just missing a very small number of editions since 1992. Can anyone else help ?
Does anyone have any Oracle Magazines from before 1992 ?
The following table gives the current collection (printed editions). The grey boxes are the editions that I’m still missing, and keep an eye on my Oracle Magazine page for updates.
My first set of Oracle Products
I started working with Oracle back in 1993 and my first project involved working with Oracle 5, Forms 2.3 and for reports RPT.
The Oracle Database and tools were very simple back then, but there was lots of “features” to work around.
Check out this video, for a short demo of Oracle 5 and Forms 2
What version of the Oracle Database do I need ?
Oracle has recently made available a very useful webpage that that lists the functionality available for each version of the 11g Database. So before you decide which version of the database to purchase, check out this webpage.
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/product-editions-066501.html
i-BI : A new name for real BI
I’ve been working in the BI and related fields since the mid 90s. Over the past number of years I’ve gotten a little bit confused about what Business Intelligence (BI) really means. Maybe it’s just a bit of old age kicking in way too early.
It seems to me that the term Business Intelligence has been hijacked by a large number of companies and software vendors. It seems that every “reporting tool” has been re-labelled into a Business Intelligence tool, without providing any really intelligence features. You are still just a reporting tool with no real intelligence features. Yes you do have some nice graphics that can be used instead of just listing numbers. But that is not Business Intelligence.
Business Intelligence is going beyond what these tools are capable off. Most of the skills and abilities for BI comes from the people who are doing it, not the tools. In reality you will need to use a number of tools or to write some custom code to help you gain the extra bit of insight into your data. The “reporting tools” can then deliver the results.
Also Ralph Kimball said a long time ago that the skills of someone working in the DW/BI area was that they needed to be half-DBA and half-MBA.
A quote that I heard recently from the Predictive Analytics World Conference, was “You need to be able to ask the right question”. This is to ensure that you can frame your analytics projects correctly and be able to measure the results.
I think that this question was key back in the mid 90s when I started out in the BI field and I still think it applies to all areas of BI. The thing that we have lost in BI is the real intelligence part of it.
So I’m proposing a new name for really BI. It is intelligent-Business Intelligence (i-BI).
Lets differentiate between BI and the real intelligent BI work.
What do I mean by intelligent BI (i-BI) ? What I mean area skills in Data Warehousing, Time Series Analysis, Advanced Analytics, Data Mining, Predictive Analysis, solving or addressing real business problems, etc.
Or maybe I’m just wrong and have missed some developments in BI over the past 16+ years. Or maybe I’m becoming a bit too cynical.
What do you think ?
Oracle Analytics Update & Plan for 2012
On Friday 16th December, Charlie Berger (Sr. Director, Product Management, Data Mining & Advanced Analytics) posted the following on the Oracle Data Mining forum on OTN.
“… soon you’ll be able to use the new Oracle R Enterprise (ORE) functionality. ORE is currently in beta and is targeted to go General Availability in the near future. ORE brings additional functionality to the ODM Option, which will then be renamed to the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option to reflect the significant adv. analytical functionality enhancements. ORE will allow R users to write R scripts and run them inside the database and eliminate and/or minimize data movement in/out of the DB. ORE will provide R to SQL transparency for SQL push-down to in-DB SQL and and expanding library of Oracle in-DB statistical functions. Packages that cannot be pushed down will be run in embedded R mode while the DB manages all data flows to the multiple R engines running inside the DB.
In January, we’ll open up a new OTN discussion forum specifically for Oracle R Enterprise focused technical discussions. Stay tuned.”
I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the new Oracle R Enterprise, in 2012. In particular I’m keen to see what additional functionality will be added to the Oracle Data Mining option in the DB.
So watch out for the rebranding to Oracle Advanced Analytics
Charlie – Any chance of an advanced copy of ORE and related DB bits and bobs.
Oracle Big Data Videos
Mark Townsend, Database Product Manager at Oracle gave a presentation on Big Data at the UKOUG conference and used the following videos to illustrate how a company can evolve their Big Data into useful and meaningful information.
Big Data – Gold Mine or just Stuff
I’m an Oracle ACE
At 5:20pm today (Friday 2nd December), I received an email from the Oracle ACE program. I had been nominated for the award of Oracle ACE.
“You have been chosen based on your significant contribution and activity in the Oracle technical community. Like your fellow Oracle ACEs, you have demonstrated a proficiency in Oracle technology as well as a willingness to share your knowledge and experiences with the community.”
I am so honoured, considering the experts from around the world that are members of the Oracle ACE program.
The Oracle ACE Award is issued by the Oracle Corporation and the award is made to people who are know for their strong credentials in the Oracle community as enthusiasts, advocates and technical knowledge.
Oracle Big Data & Analytics Sessions at UKOUG Conference
There are a number of BIG Data and Analytics presentations at the UKOUG Conference in Birmingham (4th Dec – 7th Dec).
I’ve worked my way through the agenda grids for each day of the conference and I’ve come up with the following list. If you are interested in BIG Data and Analytics these presentations are a must see
| Monday | 12:15-13:15 | Exadata Live – Graham Wood – Hall 7A |
| 5th Dec | ||
| Tuesday | 9:00-10:00 | Big Data-Are you ready – Mark Townsend – Hall 1 |
| 6th Dec | 10:10-10:55 | Who’s afraid of Analytic Functions – Alex Nuijten – Hall 5 |
| 11:15-12:15 | Analysing Your Data with Analytic Functions – Carl Dudley – Hall 9 | |
| 16:40-17:40 | Mobile Analytics using OBIEE 11g – Jon Mead – Exec Room 1 | |
| Wednesday | 9:00-10:00 | Oracle 11g Database Automatic Parallelism – Joel Goodman – Hall 9 |
| 7th Dec | 15:20-16:05 | How to Deploy your Oracle Data Miner in a Live Environment – me |
Exalytics Events over the next week
The BIWA SIG is hosting a techcast called “Using Oracle R Enterprise” on Wednesday 30th November, 2011 at noon EST (approx 6pm GMT).
The TechCast is being presented by Mark Hornick, Senior Manager, Oracle Advanced Analytics Development
URL for TechCast: https://stbeehive.oracle.com/bconf/confDetails?confID=334B:3BF0:owch:38893C00F42F38A1E0404498C8A6612B0004075AECF7&guest=true&confKey=608880
— Web Conference ID: 303397
— Web Conference Key: 608880
— Dialup: 1-866-682-4770, ID 5548204, passcode 1234
Several analytic tool vendors have added R-integration to their software. However, Oracle is the largest company to throw their weight behind R. On October 3, Oracle unveiled their integration of R: Oracle R Enterprise (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/features-oracle-r-enterprise-498732.html) as part of their Oracle Big Data Appliance announcement (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/512001).
Oracle R Enterprise allows users to perform statistical analysis with advanced visualization on data stored in Oracle Database. Oracle R Enterprise enables scalable R solutions, while facilitating production deployment of R scripts and Hadoop based solutions, as well as integration of R results with Oracle BI Publisher and OBIEE dashboards.
Check out the Oracle YouTube video (5min), that demos how an Exalytics application that can analyse almost a billion records instantly.
If you are attending the UKOUG Conference in Birmingham, Jon Mead (RittmanMead) is giving a presentation called “What can Exalytics do for me?” and is on Tuesday 5th December @15:35, in the area above the box office.
Oracle Ireland: Data Centre Transformation Event 7th December
Oracle in Ireland is hosting a session called Data Centre Transformation on 7th December (9:30-13:00), in the Guinness Storehouse, St James Gate, Dublin 8.
The agenda for this session is
| 9:00 | Registration & Coffee |
| 10:00 | The 21st Century Data Centre, Delivered by Oracle Solaris – Mike Ramchand |
| 10:30 | Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c – John Caulfield, Solutions Director |
| 11:00 | Oracle Virtualised Systems (VM 3.0) – Dave Patterson, Oracle Hardware |
| 11:30 | Coffee Break |
| 12:00 | Transformative Oracle Storage Solutions – Neil Caughey, Oracle Storage Business Unit |
| 12:30 | Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata and Exalogic – Brian Grant, Oracle Exalogic Business Development Manager |
To book your place on this event email oracle.events@ketchumpleon.com
Or register by following this web link.
I wont be at this event as I’ll be presenting in the afternoon at the UKOUG conference in Birmingham.
How Many Sleeps to Santa
select
to_date(’25/12/2011′,’DD/MM/YYYY’) – trunc(sysdate) “How Many Sleep to Santa”
from dual;
How Many Sleep to Santa
———————–
34
Call for Presentations : OUG Ireland Conference 2012
The call for presentations for the annual Oracle User Group Ireland conference has been posted in last few days.
The conference is planned for March 2012 and the venue will be picked over the next few weeks.
I’m on organising committee this year. It is hoped to have a number of parallel streams covering core Database Technology, BI (&EPM), Development (including Fusion).
If you are interested in presenting a short presentation of approx. 45 minutes (including time for questions), then you will need to submit your Topic and Abstract using the following link : www.oug.org/Irelandpapers
The conference is not limited to presenters from Ireland and it is hoped to get a number of well known Oracle experts and Oracle ACEs to come to Dublin for the day.
What kind of topics are of interest. Well pretty much anything Oracle. We have all come across something interesting in our jobs that we could share, be it using a particular technique, new features, sharing experiences, best practices, product demos, etc
I’ve already submitted a presentation on Oracle Data Miner.
There is a Twitter hash tag for the Oracle Conference #oug_ire2012. So add this to your Twitter tool to follow developments and announcements about the conference.
If you have any question about the conference drop me a email.
Ora-lytics 
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