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MOOW, Day 1

Comments Published by Dan October 24th, 2008 in Events, Miracle OOW, Oracle

Miracle Oracle Open World is claims to be the best conference in the world. It claims that the “best” rating is not because of the number of attendees, but I disagree–the (relatively small) number of attendees is one of the things that makes this event great! There are less than 200 attendees here, but a high percentage of those are some of the most highly respected Oracle experts in the world (at least in my book).

Last night, I attended the opening session which included a technical presentation from Toon Koppelaars called “The Helsinki Declaration.” The session discusses the trend of the last 6-8 years where we’ve seen less use of database features and fatter middle tier applications. His plea was that we reverse the trend and return to using the database features (that customers pay a lot of money for) and shrink the middle tier bloat. This, Toon contends, will make more maintainable, more optimized applications overall. Forget about “database independent applications” since that necessitates using the database for little more than a spreadsheet. Toon encourages the use of Oracle Application Express (APEX) which promotes putting almost all application components in the database. I’m not sure I see that APEX is the best tool for every job, but I do see a lot of opportunities for APEX in the coming years and think it certainly could replace Oracle Forms once APEX matures.

My Day 1 included presentations from Martin Jensen (Oracle), Cary Millsap (Method R), Tanel Poder (PoderC), Carel-Jan Engel (DBA!lert), and Graham Wood (Oracle). In making my choices, I had to miss presentations by Karen Morton (Method R), Jozé Senegacnic (one of my house mates), Anjo Kolk (Miracle Benelux), and James Morle (Scale Abilities, and another of my house mates). You’d think that with only 3 rooms to choose from at each time slot, it’d be relatively easy to choose a session to attend, but it’s impossible. As James put it just a moment ago, “There’s no fluff at this conference.” How true.

While it is a long trip to get here from Chicago, even just this first day of presentations is worth the trip. The networking opportunities are abundant and I prioritize this event higher than many others that I could attend closer to home. If you spend any of your time developing on or managing or consulting with Oracle environments, I would be willing to bet that you’ll get more out of these 2.5 days than you would out of most 4- or 5-day conference events. Most importantly, you will have opportunities to make contacts that remain intact for years to come.

Tonight is the Gala Dinner and Beach Party in the fun and interesting Lalandia water park facilities. I hope that I remember to get to sleep as I’m sure that some won’t and the program starts tomorrow at 9:30am!

Unfortunately, while I brought the USB cable for my camera, I don’t have the proper drivers or software on my laptop, so pictures will have to wait until I get home.

  • it is a long trip to get here from Chicago, even just this first day of presentations is worth the trip. The networking opportunities are abundant and I prioritize this event higher than many others
  • Yep, the trip was totally worth it. I just realized too that I haven't blogged anything about the visit since I returned, so all I have here is Day 1! Hope I still have my notes--maybe I'll write up day 2 as well.

    I'll definitely put it on my list for future years!
  • Nick
    Thanks for sharing Dan. I never heard of MOOW until reading your post. Hope to attend next year!
  • Hi Nick,

    It is a great event and small enough to get close to speakers too. The location is a bit remote--you wouldn't likely go there unless you were looking for a family vacation spot in eastern Denmark--but it's a great event for sure.

    Hope the Collaborate planning goes well this year! Hope to see you in Orlando for sure!
  • Dan,

    I'm curious about your comment -

    "once APEX matures."

    APEX has been around in one form or another since around 1999, being used internally by Oracle at that point, with "Project Marvel" (one of the stepping stones to the current APEX) announced at Oracle OpenWorld in 2002. The first public release of HTMLDB (the name prior to APEX) was in 2004.

    So whilst many customers are new to APEX, the tool itself has quite a long heritage and is extremely stable as a production environment.

    Of course, I'm an APEX Evangelist and my views are biased ;)

    John.
  • To be clear, I don't think Toon said that part--I added that myself.

    You're right, but there are still people running Oracle8. I personally believe that APEX is ready for the masses now (from what I've seen--I'm not a developer). I sense that there are many that still view it skeptically and hesitate to adopt it. The typical reasons I hear and/or sense for the avoidance are:
    1) We're a forms shop, long live forms!
    2) It's free? We don't use open-source products. (Clearly, they don't understand.)
    3) We don't know HTML.
    4) We don't have time to train our team on a new tool

    While many of us will gladly argue most of these points away, I think the real truth is that people fear what they don't know. As evidenced by some sites that have "taken the plunge," it's a fine tool and capable of doing most of the things that most sites need.

    Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment here.
  • Dan,

    Absolutely, I agree with you that the perception of if something is 'new' or 'old' depends on your frame of reference.

    It was actually a very 'timely' comment, as at OpenWorld one of my presentations was 'Dispelling Myths About APEX' which covers most of the common myths/FUD/misconceptions etc that I've come across and the 'it's unproven/too new' type of argument comes up all the time.

    John.
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