DOAG conference review (Nuremberg, 21.-23.11.2017)

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Time flies by - so it's time now to reflect the 3 days at the DOAG conference this year at Nuremberg. It was my second time I have held a presentation at this big event, this time it was about "Flashback Database, Backup and Recovery for Oracle Database 12c Release 2". The presentation was held at 9am at the second day and it was astonishing, the room was filled up in total. 

As the main goal of my presentation was to sensualize the administrators how to avoid traps in the new default “Single-tenant” architecture, some of the spectators may have had problems to divide between my advices for best-practice and “things not working” in database release 12.2. But they can download the presentation in the next days and I think they will see the differences then.

In addition to my own presentation, the DOAG conference was full of news and interesting other slots. I tried to follow topics I like most – tuning for example, and I have seen some really good presentations there (with new ideas for my daily work). In addition, I have met a product manager responsible for the cost-based optimizer and discussed with him the “Autodesk” tuning problem (details can be found at an older post here). I’ll send him the dump and the selects and I am wondering, which outcome I’ll get later (I'll keep you informed).

Another cool presentation was held by a Swiss employee of trivadis, regarding connecting the “Keepass” freeware to the oracle database to avoid using open passwords in database scripts. This could be something for some of my customers, too.

A lot of presentations are now without any live demos. I didone, but the lady that was presenting at my room just before me had a lot of problems with her live demo - she broke everything. I have tested my live demo two evenings before I held the presentation - and the virtualbox with my Oracle Linux crashed. My disk was full and I needed two hours in the late night to get everything running again. Thank god I did this test (because otherwise this were happen at the presentation time) and at the end it worked, but I can  comprehend, why more and more speakers don't do live demos anymore.

My German colleagues had some cloud workshops - unfortunately, cloud does not seem to be a big topic for DOAG participants. There were not so many people which wanted to do some hands on. That was really a pitty.


A funny presentation was the one from Chris Saxon, where he was doing "More SQL magic!". Magic tricks with PL/SQL and SQL options - the small room was really filled up and even if I have known the technology behind each trick - it is really nice to see what is possible within the database and Chris was able to make a show out of it. Our daily work does not seem to be magic or funny all the time, so it was really a great moment to see him. One of the tricks he showed at the DOAG you can find at youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgXstJZETm0) and I think it's worth to follow him (and his blogs) as a developer as well as a dba (http://www.chrissaxon.co.uk/).

Most impressive are presentations which do not have anything to do with our daily work – at least at a first glimpse. One of the keynotes were held by a German Lufthansa pilot trainer and it was a very impressive presentation. He took some aircraft accidents and told in detail why they happened – and why people died or why not, and what the aircraft industry is doing to avoid crashes from a team member perspectives view. At the end, it is all about respect – trust – teaming and avoiding hierarchical levels at the cockpit (for sure they exist) for the time two pilots are working together. The aircraft industry is more or less forced since years to do a lot of the stuff, other industries are talking about now: Knowledge clusters, flat hierarchies, trust, responsibility and respect. All people on a plane are co-workers and all are doing everything to bring “my aircraft” safe home.

In total, the DOAG was again a big success, I think, for the referents as well as for the participants. You can attend dozens of presentations over 3 days – but with a high number of presentations in parallel, you sometimes decide to attend the wrong presentation. I had that only once this time. The DOAG is THE place for the DACH region to learn, to share, to see, to be seen and to meet old friends and new, interesting people!
The next DOAG conference (the 31st) will again be at Nuremberg in November 2018 - so if you understand German, you should attend. One of the main topics there, I think, will be the database release 18. The first release with the new naming convention. I’m looking forward to that…

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