6.30.2011

1-Day Expert Conference for Oracle professionals

1-Day Expert Oracle-Centric Conference at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - VirtaThon Road Tour @BrainSurface
Thursday, 07 July 2011, 09:00am - 05:00pm

1-Day Expert Conference for Oracle professionals

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Stratton Student Center (W20)
VirtaThon Road Tour @BrainSurface
bsflogoBrainSurface The Collaborative ConnectSpace for Oracle, Java & MySQL Professionals proudly presents the 1st-stop in the VirtaThon Road Tour program; a 1-day Oracle-Centric Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 07/07/2011.

In addition to the physical attendence, the entire conference will be streamed LIVE on the Internet as well.
Hurry - Register NOW! Seats are limited!
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Where & When? Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, MA, USA
Stratton Student Center (W20) -July 07, 2011 9am - 5pm EDT (UTC-4)
Sponsored by: Texas Memory Systems

Session Schedule

Note: All times in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone (UTC-4).

07/07/2011, 9am - 9:45am EDT
Services: How They Work and What To Use Them For - Jeremy Schneider
Services are a powerful but overlooked aspect of Oracle database configuration (for both RAC and non-RAC). We will discuss their advantages in cluster and single-instance databases from version 8i through 11g - incorporating several years of focused investigation and experience. Topics covered will range from a strategic overview of how services best fit into system architecture to in-depth configuration and functionality internals. We will also cover unexpected behavior their impact on distributed db and parallel execution their role in load balancing and failover and new 11gR2 features that impact them. Participants will leave this session with a better understanding of how to use Oracle services for improving performance management and high availability for all of their Oracle databases.

07/07/2011, 9:50am - 10:35am EDT
It's the latency: Stupid - Mike Ault
Learn all about database performance tuning through the expert lens of the author of 25 Oracle books.

07/07/2011, 10:40am - 11:25am EDT
RMAN best practices for Real Application Clusters (RAC) - Syed Jaffar Hussain
Join ACE Director Syed Jaffar Hussain as he talks about his Best Practices for RMAN backup strategies for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC).

07/07/2011, 11:30am - 12:15pm EDT
How to migrate Your Online Oracle Database to RAC Using Streams and Data Pump - Tariq Farooq
Join Tariq for this Do-Not-Miss session as he talks about his Experience, Lessons learned, Tips/Tricks, Recommendations, Best-Practices and a whole lot more about a series of documents/guides that that he has authored to migrate your Online/HOT Oracle Single-Server Single-Instance database to Real Application Clusters on Automatic Storage Management (ASM) using Oracle Streams and Data Pump with VERY minimal downtime along with the luxury of having a synchronized/replicated database for fallback purposes using this approach.

07/07/2011, 12:15pm - 1:00pm EDT Lunch Break

07/07/2011, 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
RDBMS Forensics:  Troubleshooting Database Errors with ASH (case study) - Tim Gorman
Arthur C. Clarke wrote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". This has been proven true in countless examples in Oracle technology, and it makes troubleshooting of that technology seems like art to the unaware.  But it is not art, it is process, and the intent of this presentation is to use a case study (i.e. resolving ORA-03136 "connection lost" error) to demonstrate that process, and also to show how components such as ASH and AWR, typically thought of as "performance tuning" tools, are also useful diagnostic tools.  Attendees to this presentation will learn a forensic, empirical approach to trouble-shooting and also see a demonstration of a complex troubleshooting task following a non-intuitive but empirically sound resolution.

07/07/2011, 1:50pm - 2:35pm EDT
Engineering Better PL/SQL Dr. Bert Scalzo
Many people currently rely on rather simple manual attempts to write better code - such as following generic programming guidelines, adhering to best practice recommendations, and peer code reviews. While these techniques are generally worthwhile, they are nonetheless hard to monitor and in some cases costly. Yet there are now industry standards for conforming to good software engineering practices - specifically those of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and their Capability Maturity Model (CMM). Through efficient and effective use of software metrics - many development shops can produce better code more reliably, and often with significantly reduced overall cost. Moreover there are now software development tools to assist with such efforts. In this article, both the basic concepts and their successful application will be discussed - with examples of "best of breed" development tools and very achievable results.

07/07/2011, 2:40pm - 3:10pm EDT
Oracle Enterprise Manager Repository – a Second Look Iordan K. Iotzov
Access to timely and comprehensive database information is essential for most DBA activities. Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) is a powerful, well documented and widely used source of database statistics. The OEM repository not only stores the data for dozens of pre-defined metrics, but also allows easy expansion and customization with User Defined Metrics (UDM). Customization of retention and collection parameters provides the flexibility to address a wide array of DBA problems. This presentation will cover a lesser known, yet still very valuable, source of performance and troubleshooting information – the repository of the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM)/Grid Control.

07/07/2011, 3:15pm - 4:00pm EDT
Advanced tools and techniques in Unix environment Riyaj Shamsudeen
Unix environments provides rich set of tools to debug performance issues. Even if the issue is complex to understand, if we use right tool for the job, we can identifiy the root cause of an issue quickly. In this presentation, the speaker will demo tools such as truss/strace, pfiles, pmap, prstat, vmstat, mpstat etc to show how you can debug complex issues. The speaker will also introduce Solaris/dtrace to understand performance issues.

07/07/2011, 4:05pm - 4:50pm EDT
High performance PL/SQL Guy Harrison
This presentation provides guidelines for writing high performance PL/SQL. Each release of the Oracle RDBMS is associated with dramatic improvements in PL/SQL performance. However, the ultimate performance of any PL/SQL program is still in the hands of the PL/SQL programmer.  In this presentation we’ll examine trends in PL/SQL performance, look at tools to identify and tune problematic PL/SQL and examine PL/SQL performance best practices. Topics will include opportunities for improving SQL performance by using PL/SQL code, measuring and diagnosing PL/SQL performance issues, best practices for writing high performance PL/SQL and the use of new 11g optimizations to further turbo-charge application code.

Featured Speakers
mikeaultOracle ACE Mike Ault has been working with Oracle products since 1990. He has published over 24 books as an author or co-author related to Oracle since 1994. Mike is a frequent, highly rated presenter at local, Regional, National and International Oracle conferences and has worked extensively with Oracle technologies since Version 6. Mike has published numerous magazine article and white papers dealing with Oracle database installation, performance and management topics. Mike has worked in the aerospace, drug, communications and consulting fields dealing with Oracle issues. Mike currently works for Texas Memory Systems, Inc. as their Oracle Guru.
bertscalzoOracle ACE Dr. Bert Scalzo works as a Database Domain Expert for Quest Software and a member of the TOAD Development team. He has worked with Oracle databases for well over two decades. Mr. Scalzo's work history includes time at both Oracle Education and Oracle Consulting. He holds several Oracle Masters certifications and an extensive academic background - including a BS, MS and PhD in Computer Science, an MBA, plus insurance industry designations. He is an accomplished speaker and has presented at numerous Oracle conferences and user groups - including OOW, ODTUG, IOUG, OAUG, RMOUG, BrainSurface and many others. His key areas of DBA interest are Data Modeling, Database Benchmarking, Database Tuning & Optimization, "Star Schema" Data Warehouses, Linux and VMware. He has written many articles, papers and blogs - including for Oracle Technology Network (OTN), Oracle Magazine, Oracle Informant, PC Week (eWeek), Dell Power Solutions Magazine, The LINUX Journal, LINUX.com, Oracle FAQ, Ask Toad and Toad World. Mr. Scalzo has authored 11 books.
timgormanOracle ACE Tim Gorman has worked in IT with relational databases since 1984, as an Oracle PRO*C and PL/SQL application developer since 1990, as an Oracle DBA since 1993, and managing/designing very large data warehouses on Oracle since 1994. He is an independent contractor (www.EvDBT.com) specializing in performance tuning, database administration (particularly performance and availability), and data warehousing. Mr Gorman is an active member of the Rocky Mtn Oracle Users Group (www.RMOUG.org) since 1993, has co-authored five books (three with the Oak Table Press), performed technical review on six more books, is an Oracle ACE, a member of the Oak Table Network since 2002, and has presented at Oracle Open World, Collaborate, and Oracle users groups in lots of wonderful places around the world.
jeremy_schneiderOracle ACE  Jeremy Schneider is a RAC & Linux Certified Expert and has been involved in the various domains of IT since 2005. He has worked on large-scale implementations of various High-Availability technologies such as ASM, Services & RAC. His interests include applying Grid & Cluster technology to large-scale problems and he spends a lot of time working with RAC databases. He is an enthusiastic supporter and participant of User Groups & Open Source projects. He is an active & respective figure within the Oracle Speaking Circuit and is also a popular blogger & author. Jeremy is the author of the RAC Attack Lab handbook.
guyharrisonOracle ACE & MySQL Evangelist Guy Harrison is a director of Research and Development at Quest Software, and has over 20 years of experience in database design, development, administration, and optimization. He is the author of multiple books, articles and presentations on database technology. Guy is the architect of Quest's Spotlight® family of diagnostic products and has led the development of Quests Toad® for Cloud Database. Along with other authored/published books, Guy is the author of the Oracle Performance Survival Guide (Prentice Hall, 2009) and MySQL Stored Procedure Programming (OReilly with Steven Feuerstein).
kaiyu
Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu has been working with Oracle Technologies since 1995. He specializes in Oracle Database, RAC, Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle VM with extensive experiences on X86 servers, SAN storage system, network and Linux. He works in the Dell Oracle Solutions Engineering Lab as a senior engineer/architect. He has authored many whitepapers and given numerous presentations at major oracle conferences worldwide such as OOW, Collaborate, UKOUG, OOW Asia. He was the president of IOUG Oracle RAC SIG and featured in Oracle Magazine Sept/Oct 2010 issue. Kai was the IOUG RAC performance tuning bootcamp manager and HA Bootcamp manager at Collaborate 2010 and 2011. He received the 2011 OAUG Innovator of Year award for his innovative work on virtualizing Oracle EBS Systems. He maintains an active Oracle Blog athttp://kyuoracleblog.wordpress.com/.
riyajshamsudeenOracle ACE Riyaj Shamsudeen  has 18+ years of experience in Oracle with 16+ years as an Oracle DBA/Oracle Applications DBA. He is the principal DBA behind ora!nternals (http://www.orainternals.com - performance/recovery/EBS11i consulting company ). He specializes in RAC, performance tuning and database internals and frequently blogs about them in http://orainternals.wordpress.com. He has authored many articles such as internals of locks, internals of hot backups, redo internals etc. He also teaches in community colleges in Dallas such as North lake college and El Centro College. He is also a proud member of OakTable network. He is the co-author of "Expert Oracle Practices" and "Pro Oracle SQL".
syedjaffarhussainOracle ACE Director Syed Jaffar Hussain has over 18 years of IT experience including 10+ years as a Senior Oracle DBA. He is the first and only Oracle 10g Certified Master in Saudi Arabia. He currently works as the chief database architect at one of the largest financial institutions in th Middle East. His expertise includes Very Large Database (VLDB) High-Availability database environments and deployments. Syed is a Oracle RAC Certified Expert, Oracle 8i, 9i, 10g and 11g OCP DBA. He is an active speaker and a regular contributor within the online Oracle freelists, forums and blogosphere. He is the co-author of the "Oracle 11g R1/R2 RAC Essentials" book.
tariqfarooqOracle ACE Tariq Farooq is an Oracle Technologist/Architect and has been working with various Oracle Technologies for 18+ years. He is the founder of BrainSurface, a Social Networking & IT Collaboration site for the Oracle, Java & MySQL Communities. Tariq is a Oracle RAC Certified Expert and also an active community organizer, speaker, author, forumizer and blogger. He has played multiple high-profile roles in Project Management, Maximum Availability Architure/High Availability Solutions, Real Application Clusters, Database Disaster Recovery/Automatic Failover Strategies, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Performance Tuning, Systems & Application/Infrastructure Analysis & Large-Scale Application/Product Development. He is the author of 100+ articles and is in the process of writing multiple books on Oracle RAC and Oracle VM.

Conference Concept/Synopsis:
This series of events is conceptualized as Non-Profit FREE 1-day Oracle Conferences for the benefit of the community at large with space/room donated by the university/college.

Featuring some of the brightest minds in the various Oracle worlds, BrainSurface | The Collaborative ConnectSpace for Oracle, Java & MySQL professionals www.brainsurface.com has organized a "100% FREE For-The-Community" Oracle-Centric Conference Tour at some of the Top Universities in the world and invite you to attend and benefit from this event.

Speakers who are interested in speaking can submit their session proposals to events@brainsurface.com
*Approved speakers will have to to travel/lodge speak at their own expense.