Oracle Midlands - ClubOracle

It as taken me a while to get to an Oracle Midlands event - this was the 9th and I've been saying I'd go since number 1.. The venue in Birmingham was easy to get to from the train station, there is easy parking at the venue (once you are through city centre traffic!)

I was surprised at the number of attendees.  There were 30 there and I think there would have been more if it weren't for the dreadful weather on the day combined with the unusually heavy traffic.

The group was really friendly and I was pleased to see people I immediately recognised both from twitter feeds and from previous jobs.

The first speaker at #om9 was Joel Goodman.  I think that was a bit of a scoop. Joel is amazing.  He is a walking oracle encyclopaedia combined with some of the best training (and presentation) skills I have ever known.  He trained me on Oracle 8i Backup and Recovery more years back than I am prepared to admit to.

His session was on Oracle Distributed Transactions. Clear and concise fundamentals including2 phase commits and the killer "this is how it can bite you" information.

I knew by 7:05pm my train ticket had paid for itself when the fog started to clear on some of the reasons for in-doubt transactions and the chain of table locks.  Another one of those 'I'm sure I knew this once but I really ought to know it all the time" moments.

There was a break for a snack and a chat, a which point the penny dropped for a few of the people I'd been talking to like old friends who I actually was and that they talk to me on-line fairly regularly.  And the same for me as people introduced themselves.  I love how friendly DBAs are.

The second session was Datapump.  I'll kick back on this I thought, I know this one. Wrong!  Rich Harrison pulled the "oh, I didn't know that" out of the bag a number of times.  He is also a really smooth presenter and one to watch out for in the future.  The next day at work a colleague was having a slow running export nightmare and I was all "did you know you can do this?" !  Felt good.

So If you are in the Midlands region (or passing through), I recommend this user group. It is free to attend (sponsored by Redstack Techologies) and in the evening.  What's not to like.

Have a look at the up and coming events here.