Blog

UKOUG Tech Days 2018: Yule Want to See My Presos in Liverpool!

Posted on by jim.czuprynski

For the first time ever, I will be speaking at UKOUG Tech Days this coming December 5-8 in Liverpool, UK. I’ve wanted to carve out enough time to visit England during the Christmas holiday season ever since I explored the eastern edge of the UK a few years back, so it’s serendipitous that I’ll be joining a team of some of the best and most knowledgeable speakers on Oracle technology.

I’m also thrilled that two of my favorite topics were chosen for me to present:

  • Session #51: Everything You Know Is Wrong: DBA Intuition, Meet Hard-Core Metrics explores what goes through a DBA’s head when she’s trying to find the root causes of a particular problem, and how easy it is to let one’s intuition take control when she should be looking at the dashboard instead.
  • Session #47: Caveat Nuba Emptor: Matching Your Organization’s Needs To the Best OPC Database looks at two of Oracle’s Public Cloud offerings and explores the innards of how Exadata Express might make a great addition to a DBA’s capabilities to help her customers – her application developers! – quickly build new applications without fear of overusing critical resources.

Please do check out the schedule here; it could change, of course! – and don’t forget to register for the event. I promise I’ll see you there!

2018 Is Halfway Gone … But Not Forgotten!

Posted on by jim.czuprynski

It’s hard to believe that 2018 is half over already. I’ve had an incredibly busy six months traveling to and speaking at Oracle user groups events and conferences across the country, so it’s been another exhilarating six months for me … and that means you all have access to some great collateral and code!

I’ve added all four of my most popular presentations as PowerPoint slide shows for download. They’re chock-full of interesting insights into where our world as Oracle DBAs and applications developers is headed, plus some great code samples to boot.

Don’t forget to check out my overview of #SmartDB because it’s got some great examples of how to leverage Edition-Based Redefinition (EBR) and cross-edition triggers to make it simpler to handle application migrations and upgrades with no application downtime. And because everything I’ve shown you is a mere soupcon of how #SmartDB works, don’t forget to take at the links I’ve included in that presentation to (much!) deeper dives on #SmartDB by my colleagues and mentors Bryn Llewelyn and Toon Koopelars.

And the rest of 2018 will be equally busy: I’m headed off to South America to participate int the 2018 Latin America Oracle User CODE events in August, then heading over to ECOUG in September, and wrapping up my October with presentations and learning at OOW18. I hope to see you soon at an upcoming event!

Este Agosto, No Te Pierdas Mis Sesiones En LAOUC!

Posted on by jim.czuprynski

I am embarrassed to admit that I’ve ignored my dear colleagues just a few thousand kilometres to the south of Chicago for much too long … so it is a great honor to return to South America as part of the 2018 Latin American Oracle User Group (LAOUC) Developer Community Tour conference series this coming August 2018!

For now, here’s the schedule of where I will be presenting … but be sure to check the official LAOUC web site or the links below for the most up-to-date information on registering for these upcoming sessions:

July 31: Asuncion, Paraguay

August 2: Santiago, Chile

August 4: Sao Paolo, Brazil

August 6-7: Montevideo, Uruguay

August 9: Buenos Aires, Argentina

I’ll be talking about several topics that focus on some of the newest tools we can take advantage of for our developers, including how to choose the right Oracle Cloud for your development tasks at hand, with some really neat examples of how easy it is to use APEX in concert with Exadata Express for Oracle 12cR2 as well as DBaaS with Oracle 18c. I’ll also offer my viewpoints and code examples of how best to bring our developers’ application code back inside the Oracle Database in a sensible fashion through the #SmartDB paradigm.

So if you are going to be near any of these venues this August, I hope to see you there! Hasta luego, mis amigos y amigas!

Oracle DBAs Weigh In: Fear Not the Autonomous Database!

Posted on by jim.czuprynski

I’ve had the honor to share a page in Fortune Voice with some of my most esteemed and respected colleagues – including Michelle Malcher, Nitin Vengurlekar, Russ Lowenthal, and Dan Vlamis – on the topic of what the Oracle Autonomous Database (or what I like to call AuDB) means for Oracle DBAs as they continue to upgrade their careers from DBA 2.0 to DBA 3.0.

Michelle, Nitin, Russ and Dan all offered different viewpoints on what AuDB offers to the common DBA, and I concur heartily! I can’t wait to see what the OLTP version of AuDB will bring for us DBAs who are often tasked with keeping hundreds of different databases up and running in good health. It will be an interesting voyage!

 

2017 Is [Almost] a Wrap: Sample Code, Ruminations, & Portents for 2018

Posted on by jim.czuprynski

2017 has been an incredibly busy year! Besides speaking at half a dozen different Regional Oracle User Groups this year, I co-authored two new books, experimented in depth with Oracle Public Cloud, and helped my latest employer, ViON Corporation, build out their Oracle Gold partnership from the ground up, one customer at a time. It’s been an exhilarating experience for me, but for you, it means access to some great collateral and code:

  • I’ve added all three of my most popular presentations as PowerPoint slide shows for download. Many folks have asked me for the sample code in the two most technical presentations on Oracle 12cR2 Database In-Memory feature explorations and Analytic views. Just in case you missed out on seeing me present at one of my numerous conference engagements this past year, I hope these presentations help you with your experimentation.
  •  I’ve also added a link to all of the code examples for my most recent book, PDB Me to Oracle Cloud Pocket Solutions Guide: A Lazy DBA’s Guide to Mastering Multitenant Features on Oracle Cloud, that I co-authored with good friend and fellow Oracle ACE Director Charles Kim from Viscosity NA. It’s a great little handbook that explores some of the neatest features of Oracle 12cR2 multitenancy, including the ability to move a PDB between different CDBs without ever facing any application downtime. Oh, and by the way – it’s all done in the Oracle Public Cloud!
  • Check out my most recent article on IOUG SELECT that include my impressions from Oracle OpenWorld 2017. I review what Larry Ellison’s keynotes revealed for the future of Oracle and what those revelations most likely mean for the role of Oracle DBA in the coming months and years.
  • Finally, Oracle Technology Network just published my latest article that explores the unique advantages of leveraging Oracle Public Cloud’s Exadata Express features for a robust, automatic, and powerful Cloud-based platform, especially for experimenting with Oracle 12cR2 Database In-Memory features at a reasonable cost before investing in it for your on-premises databases.

Enjoy, my colleagues! Here’s to a 2018 that’s full of surprises. Only good ones!

SANGAM17: India, Here I Come At Last

Posted on by jim.czuprynski

At the request of my colleagues in India – especially the ever-persistent Oracle ACE Director Sai Janakiram – I have at last found a window of time during which I can attend the annual SANGAM17 event in Hyderabad. (It helped that Sai apparently recruited our fellow ACE Director Bjoern Rost to call me out as a wimp for not being willing to travel halfway around the world 24+ hours to India and to provide some much-needed mentoring for our younger colleagues there. Hint: Don’t ever call a guy from Chicago a wimp.)

I’ll be presenting three of my favorite topics, plus a brand-new one tailored specifically for my brother and sister Oracle colleagues in India:

DBA 2.0 Is Dead. Long Live DBA 3.0!

Cloud. DevOps. Agile. Big Data. 12cR2. So much to worry about if you’re an Oracle DBA who hasn’t made the transition from DBA 2.0 to DBA 3.0! Let me help you make the transition with a brief presentation – no code samples, just my viewpoints! – about the the future history of the DBA role in the USA.

Oracle 12cR2 Database In-Memory: Adventures with SwingBench TPC-DS

I’ll discuss and demonstrate what I’ve discovered about several aspects of Oracle Database 12cR2’s newest Database In-Memory features, including In-Memory Expressions, ILM ADO Policies for In-Memory Objects, and improvements to In-Memory Joins and In-Memory Filtering.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing: New Analytic View Features in Oracle Database 12cR2

I’ll discuss and demonstrate how to leverage the unique features of Analytic Views in 12cR2 that can save an Oracle DBA and application developers from writing inordinately complex code to solve multi-dimensional analytic queries.

Want to Be Successful In IT? Follow the PRIYA Principle.

As SANGAM17 draws to a close, I’ll be speaking at some length about the essential qualities of a true Information Technology professional. I’m honored to have a chance to present my observations from my 35+ years in IT and explain what I believe you’ll need to do to stay ahead of the curve in the coming years as the demand for professional resources increases.

My Next Book: Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Testing Tools and Techniques for Performance Stability

Posted on by jczuprynski

I am excited to announce the pre-release of my third co-authored book in as many years: Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Testing Tools and Techniques for Performance Stability.

My extremely talented and loquacious co-authors include database performance benchmarking expert and Oracle ACE Dr. Bert Scalzo,  and Oracle ACE Director Deiby Gomez, the youngest Oracle ACE in the world. We are leveraging our combined years of experience working with Oracle Databases to provide a new look at the testing tools that are built into Oracle Enterprise Edition.

Our book will be looking closely at the myriad different tools available for Oracle 12cR2 SQL performance tuning techniques, but we’ll also be diving deeply into the rich feature sets of Real Application Testing Suite and Database In-Memory. We’re also focusing our efforts on getting everyone ready to tune application workload performance in an Oracle Cloud environment; we have actively leveraged the same environments that any Oracle DBA can use on either a free or subscription basis to prove out techniques that measure the impacts of switching from on-premises hardware to Cloud-based data centers.

Our book won’t be available until just before Oracle OpenWorld 2017, but you can pre-order it via Amazon.com or just stay posted on its release date here. And while you’re at it, be sure to check two other books that I’ve co-authored, Oracle Database Upgrade, Migration & Transformation Tips & Techniques from Oracle Press, and Oracle Database Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Handbook. All three of these books are available in either soft-cover and Kindle format.

Is the Future of Oracle DBAs Cloudy, or Brighter Than Ever?

Posted on by jczuprynski

onx-black-200

So you are your company’s newest (or oldest) Oracle DBA, and that means you’ve just finished getting back up to speed after the 2016 holiday season (which probably meant scads of patches and upgrades to your systems while everyone else was enjoying eggnog with their families). You’ve spent your spare time between crises to be ready to move to Oracle 12c Release 2 as soon as it’s out … and now your CIO and CTO are bugging you about moving everything to the Cloud to help reduce costs, and you’re still trying to figure out what the difference is between CAPEX and OPEX. It’s enough to make you wonder if your Oracle DBA role will still be around in 2017!

If this sounds even a little bit like your career today, then be sure not to miss my upcoming webinar on Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 1:00 PM CST (2 PM EST, 11 AM PST). My presentation – DBA 2.0 Is Dead. Long Live DBA 3.0! – will present my vision for the future of the Oracle DBA role in 2017 and beyond.

Registration is free but filling up quickly. And don’t forget to send me some feedback on my forecast!

Forestall Failure Before You Upgrade With Oracle 12cR1 RAT

Posted on by jczuprynski

TIOUG_Logohe second part of my two-part series entitled Regression Analyzed, Tout de Suite: Leveraging Oracle 12c Database Real Application Testing (RAT) Suite has just been published in IOUG SELECT Journal’s 4th Quarter 2016 edition. This part of the article series show how I leveraged RAT’s Database Replay features to evaluate Oracle Database 12.1.0.2’s Database In-Memory features. If you don’t have an IOUG membership, you can still browse a copy of my article in PDF format … but seriously, shouldn’t you become a member of one of the best Oracle User Groups in North America?

 

Catch 12cR1 RAT By the Tail, and Learn More About Security Risks

Posted on by jczuprynski

IOUG_LogoOnce again,  I’m honored and excited to have an article in IOUG SELECT Journal’s 3rd Quarter 2016 edition. This time, I’m delving deeply into the latest features of Oracle 12cR1 Real Application Testing in the first part of a two-part series entitled Regression Analyzed, Tout de Suite: Leveraging Oracle 12c Database Real Application Testing (RAT) Suite. I’ve recently leveraged that tool to experiment with multiple scenarios for evaluating Oracle Database 12.1.0.2’s Database In-Memory Features … which I’ll explain in the second part of the series, of course! If you don’t have an IOUG membership, you can still browse a copy of my article in PDF format … but seriously, shouldn’t you have membership in one of the best Oracle User Groups in North America?

I also enjoyed interviewing my able colleague Der’ly Guiterrez from OnX Enterprise Solutions for his article entitled The Wolf Is Always at the (Hospital) Door: Reducing Information Security Risks for Health Care Organizations.  Der’ly’s role as OnX’s Security Practice lead gave us a chance to explore some of the typical challenges that security breaches of IT organizations can cause, especially when that organization is responsible for sensitive PHI or PCI data.