Summer Conference 2011

Hosted by Chevron

August 18, 2011

at Chevron, San Ramon, CA

 



See directions to the conference location near the bottom of this page.


 

8:00 - 9:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast - Refreshments Served
9:00 - 9:30 General Session and Welcome - Iggy Fernandez, NoCOUG President
9:30 - 10:30 Keynote: Optimizing a two table join - Jonathan Lewis
10:30 - 11:00 Break
  Room 1220 Room 1240 Room 1150
11:00 - 12:00
Session 1
Beginner's Guide to Becoming an Expert
by Jonathan Lewis
Private Cloud Database Consolidation
by Randy Hietter, Oracle
7 Data Masking Tips & Tricks
by Ilker Taskaya, Axis Technologies
12:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 2:00
Session 2
Best Practices for Monitoring Oracle on VMware
by Dean Richards, Confio
Oracle In-Memory Database Cache
by Simon Law, Oracle
Riak Top to Bottom
by Andy Gross, Basho
2:00 - 2:30 Break and Refreshments
Last chance to visit the vendors
2:30 - 3:30
Session 3
NFS Tuning
by Kyle Hailey, Delphix
Oracle 11g: Learning to Love the Automatic Diagnostic Repository
by Don Seiler, Pythian
Database Consolidation: Better Data Security at Lower Cost
by Paul Needham, Oracle
3:30 - 4:00 Raffle
In the vendor area
4:00 - 5:00
Session 4
Extreme Performance Data Warehousing
by Rekha Balwada, Oracle
Leveraging Mobile Technology for Oracle Databases Management
by Hanan Hit and Faisal Faruqi
High Performance Oracle Database in a Flash
by Sumeet Bansal, FusionIO
5:00 - ??? NoCOUG networking and happy hour at Izzy's Steaks & Chops, 200 Montgomery Street, San Ramon.  
(Directions: Leaving the conference, turn right on Bollinger Canyon Road, right on Market Place, and left on Montgomery Street.)

Mark your calendar for NoCOUG's Fall Conference and 25 year celebration:
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at Computer History Museum

 


 

Speaker Abstracts for Spring Conference

 

Keynote
“Optimizing a two table join” - Jonathan Lewis


The optimizer is very good at transforming your query into something that you didn't write; sometimes, though, Oracle's transformation is a bad idea; sometimes you can transform a query manually in ways that the optimizer cannot.

In this presentation we examine a single, fairly simple, query to see how many different things we can do to make it more efficient, using strategies which the optimizer, at present, may not consider.

Room 1220
“Beginner's Guide to Becoming an Expert” - Jonathan Lewis


In this slide-free presentation Jonathan Lewis will discuss and demonstrate what it takes to become an expert in areas relating to Oracle performance. There will be NO "rocket-science" in this presentation, just simple demonstration and discussion. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers - and Jonathan will be asking most of the questions.

“Best Practices for Monitoring Oracle on VMware” - Dean Richards, Confio


Databases on VMware? Heard about this lately? Many of our customers are either virtualizing databases or planning to do so soon. Most of our customers have already implemented virtualization on the VMware platform and databases seem to be the last frontier. I also hear from many groups that have tried running their database on VMware but went back to physical hardware because of performance issues. There are many reasons this may have happened, but quite often the decision to go back to physical was not based on hard facts. When virtualizing, many things change including storage configuration, memory settings, CPU allocations, application changes and many more. Most times, when reviewing the details with these customers, their performance problems were not caused by VMware but rather something else that could have been easily fixed. The underlying problem is that they did not have a clear view of performance once they went to a VMware environment and made uneducated decisions as a result.

Did you know that O/S metrics from a virtual machine (VM) are no longer reliable? For example, if a VM is allocated 8GB of RAM, but has a VM memory limit set to 4GB, what is the memory utilization for that O/S if it's currently using 3.8GB? The O/S will report the memory utilization as 3.8 / 8 or 47.5%. However, since there is a VM limit in place, the real utilization is 3.8 / 4 or 95%, which is a much different perspective. This is one of only a handful of problems you will run into when using O/S metrics (including tools that collect their data from the O/S) as the basis for performance data. This is also a root cause of why customers made uneducated decisions about moving their databases off VMware.

More and more companies are virtualizing with VMWare, and databases are the next logical step. This presentation will explore the fundamentals of monitoring databases in a VMWare environment because it can be much different than when running on a physical machine. You will learn business and technical benefits of virtualization, master new terms and concepts, pick up useful planning tips and tricks and cover best practices for maintaining optimum performance in a VMWare environment.

“NFS Tuning” - Kyle Hailey, Delphix


NFS transmission speeds are already on par with fiber channel and could significantly pass up fiber channel by 2012. NFS is easier and cheaper to install, configure and maintain than fiber channel and includes robust error handling. On the other hand NFS has a reputation as being slow. Learn how close FC and NFS are, how NFS can be optimally configured, and how to analyze for NFS bottlenecks.

“Extreme Performance Data Warehousing” - Rekha Balwada, Oracle


Extreme query performance and in-database analytics are key requirements for data-driven organizations looking to uncover revenue opportunities and take action on trends faster. However, the need to ask more complex questions and analyze greater volumes of information can conflict with these requirements.

In this presentation, we'll examine how intelligent optimizations in Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database 11g can improve data warehouse performance by a factor of 10x, reduce storage footprint by 10x, and meet all your data warehousing requirements, from simple ad-hoc queries to complex predictive analytics.

Room 1240
“Private Cloud Database Consolidation” - Randy Hietter, Oracle


Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Exadata and Oracle Real Application Clusters enable consolidation of multiple applications on clustered server and storage pools - providing unbeatable fault tolerance, performance and scalability.

This session will discuss how to consolidate your databases onto a private cloud - and realize the efficiencies of mixed workload consolidation, workload and resource management, and dynamic provisioning for elastic scalability.

“Oracle In-Memory Database Cache” - Simon Law, Oracle


In today's fast-paced business environment, every second counts. The ability to access, capture and analyze data in real time with low latency and high throughput is a competitive advantage for many companies. In this session, learn how Oracle In-Memory Database Cache enables application developers to use standard SQL and database APIs to dramatically improve application response time and throughput by caching performance-critical subsets of an Oracle Database in the application tier. The in-memory cache grid enables applications to easily scale-out without service interruption, making Oracle In-Memory Database Cache ideal for a wide-range of applications with requirements for extreme performance in the application-tier.

“Oracle 11g: Learning to Love the Automatic Diagnostic Repository” - Don Seiler, Pythian


Oracle 11g has introduced a whole new system of collecting diagnostic information, the Automatic Diagnostic Repository, or ADR. Gone are the familiar bdump, cdump and udump directories, all hail our new XML overlords! Where's my alert log? And why on earth is it producing so much trace data?!? Like it or not, the ADR is here. It's time to embrace it with both arms to get the most out of our Oracle databases.

In this session, learn about the core ADR features that every DBA will want to be familiar with, including file locations, retention policies and using adrci to view alert log information with some helpful filters. Then go through a scenario to demonstrate the new ADR-based packaging system for Oracle Support Services.

“Leveraging Mobile Technology for Oracle Databases Management” - Hanan Hit and Faisal Faruqi


Nexscience's technical architects conducted a comprehensive study of how mobile platform and cloud computing can be leveraged to manage Oracle databases in a Software-as-a-Service model. What are the potential benefits, what are the risks and who are the major players currently working on developing solutions for mobile databases management. We intend to present these technical findings for the benefit of the Oracle user community.

Room 1150
“7 Data Masking Tips & Tricks” - Ilker Taskaya, Axis Technologies


Data Masking is the act of replacing sensitive data with fictitious but realistic data in order to eliminate the risk of exposure to unauthorized parties. Implementing a sustainable data masking program in a modern enterprise environment can be surprisingly challenging - not just technically and organizationally, but culturally. The reactions and concerns you may encounter from your development and QA teams are understandable. You're not just introducing new controls over confidentiality exposures in development and testing systems. You're shutting off developers' and testers' unfettered access to live customer Production data - something that's been quite normal and convenient for them to date, something they think they just can't do their job without. Any project is only as successful as its level of buy-in from all involved. Getting colleagues to "do things a little differently" than they have traditionally means getting them on board early and anticipating their concerns. This presentation recounts lessons learned from years of implementing data masking programs at some very large companies with Oracle database and applications such as PeopleSoft.

“Riak Top to Bottom” - Andy Gross, Basho


In this talk Andy Gross, Basho's Principal Architect, will give you an overview of Riak, Basho's open source, "NoSQL" database, with an emphasis on real world applications and deployments, and what today's DBA can expect when working with Riak in production.

Tentative talk agenda is as follows:

  • Riak - An Overview
  • Riak for the Ops Professional
  • Riak and Relational DBs - Can they coexist?
  • Riak in Production

“Database Consolidation: Better Data Security at Lower Cost” - Paul Needham, Oracle


More and more organizations are consolidating their databases and taking advantage of private cloud computing environments to drive down IT costs. But since two thirds of sensitive data in most organizations resides in databases, did you know that consolidation can also improve data security and regulatory compliance?

In this session, you will learn how replacing costly and insecure database silos and adopting a database defense in depth strategy will help safeguard all your mission critical enterprise data. You will also learn about the new Oracle Database Firewall, which offers unprecedented capabilities to monitor database traffic and block threats before they even reach your databases.

“High Performance Oracle Database in a Flash” - Sumeet Bansal, FusionIO


Many organizations are deploying NAND Flash Solutions in their Oracle Database environments. This presentation will cover the following topics:

  • Centralized Database architecture vs. Distributed Database architecture
  • Goals of NAND Flash based architectures
  • Oracle ASM and NAND Flash solutions
  • Single Instance Oracle environments
  • Oracle RAC environments
  • Setting up High-Availability with Data Guard for a NAND Flash based Oracle Database
  • Real World examples of ioMemory deployments

 


If you have suggestions for future meetings or would like to offer feedback on previous conferences, then please complete our online survey or send us an email.

Directions to Chevron Park in San Ramon:

Address:
6101 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583

Please note that the conference building is just after the Chevron Campus.
Upon arrival, enter the building at the East entrance where you'll find NoCOUG representatives ready to sign you in.

From Highway 680 South:
Exit at Bollinger Canyon Road. Turn left onto Bollinger Canyon Road (heading east over the freeway). After passing Chevron Park Circle West, turn right into Bishop Ranch 1. Address 6101 is the first building after entering the parking lot. Park anywhere not restricted.

From Highway 680 North:
Exit at Bollinger Canyon Road. Turn right onto Bollinger Canyon Road (heading east). After passing Chevron Park Circle West, turn right into Bishop Ranch 1. Address 6101 is the first building after entering the parking lot. Park anywhere not restricted.
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