Category: Oracle

My Open World 2008 slides posted

I’ve been enjoying reading everyone’s OOW08 summaries and thoughts lately, which reminded me that I hadn’t posted the slides that I promised to put up. Unlike some presentations, my slides aren’t usually of too much use without the narrative that I spew in the session. That’s mostly because I try to make slides that have … Continue reading “My Open World 2008 slides posted”

I’ve been enjoying reading everyone’s OOW08 summaries and thoughts lately, which reminded me that I hadn’t posted the slides that I promised to put up. Unlike some presentations, my slides aren’t usually of too much use without the narrative that I spew in the session. That’s mostly because I try to make slides that have just enough information on them to remind me what to say–not to say it for me.

At any rate, I posted the slides for my three sessions. I’m not cool enough yet to use SlideShare–I’ll try that out in the future. Overall, I was pleased with how each of them went and was especially happy that I had more than 80 people at my Thursday at noon session.

If you attended one of my sessions or review the slides for one of them, please let me know your feedback either in comments below or send me a mail.

MSAD/OID/EUS/DB integration session room change, Weds at noon

My session scheduled for Wednesday at noon titled “Integrating Microsoft Active Directory and Oracle Internet Directory with Database Logins: Enterprise User Security” (S300044) has been moved to a larger room. It will now be in Marriott Salon 8, so if you were on the waiting list (there were quite a few of you!), you shouldn’t … Continue reading “MSAD/OID/EUS/DB integration session room change, Weds at noon”

My session scheduled for Wednesday at noon titled “Integrating Microsoft Active Directory and Oracle Internet Directory with Database Logins: Enterprise User Security” (S300044) has been moved to a larger room. It will now be in Marriott Salon 8, so if you were on the waiting list (there were quite a few of you!), you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a seat now as the room holds almost 900 people.

See you there–it should be a fun and informative session!

Random Thoughts on OOW; so far

In no particular order, here are some observations and thoughts on my OOW experiences so far. Everything is about people, who you know, and knowing what those people do. With people and connections, you can learn a lot more than doing it on your own. Identity Management is sort of important, but not important enough … Continue reading “Random Thoughts on OOW; so far”

In no particular order, here are some observations and thoughts on my OOW experiences so far.

  • Everything is about people, who you know, and knowing what those people do. With people and connections, you can learn a lot more than doing it on your own.
  • Identity Management is sort of important, but not important enough to get a session room in Moscone–you have to go to Marriott’s basement to catch an IdM session.
  • It’s pretty cool to be mentioned in the opening keynote address, but it’d be cooler if you knew you were going to be mentioned ahead of time :).
  • Lots of people are taking pictures of slides in sessions even if they know that slides will be posted later. Not sure why.
  • I see about 75% of people taking notes on paper with legacy devices like pens. Why not type them in to a text file instead?
  • It seems that news about “X” is leaking out and if the rumors I’ve heard are true, it’ll be a very big deal. All eyes will be on Larry’s keynote today–hopefully he’ll provide enough technical information to make everyone understand what’s up.
  • Oracle Beehive looks really cool, but personally, I don’t think anyone is taking it seriously since Oracle Collab Suite just died on the vine after a similar launch a few years ago.
  • The OTN Lounge is a great thing and keeps getting better every year. Justin and the OTN gang do a great job making a place for people to do Good Things for the community and magic does happen occasionally.
  • Unconference sessions are absolutely excellent ways to get information and engage in good discussions instead of death by powerpoint.
  • Staying hydrated is, as mentioned by Judy Sim, a great idea.
  • Time zones in SF suck for many people–especially those from Oz.
  • There is a growing community around Oracle and it’s full of great individuals.

Tonight is the “appreciation event” and while the acts aren’t as interesting to me as past years, it still sounds like a fun night and a chance to see more people and have a little fun, too. See you there!

Building RAC on VMWare session and Day 1 done

I presented the Building RAC on VMWare for Free session yesterday. It went pretty well and I had lots of questions from the crowd of over 140 (according to badge scans). Luckily, I had the last session before the lunch break, so I was able to carry a few of the Q&A sessions a little … Continue reading “Building RAC on VMWare session and Day 1 done”

I presented the Building RAC on VMWare for Free session yesterday. It went pretty well and I had lots of questions from the crowd of over 140 (according to badge scans). Luckily, I had the last session before the lunch break, so I was able to carry a few of the Q&A sessions a little longer than other presenters since no one was coming up in my room for a while. Unfortunately, I missed meeting Doug Burns who attended the session and had some nice things to say about it. Hopefully, I’ll see him later this week. For all those that attended, thank you! If you have suggestions or comments on how I could improve the session, please contact me directly or comment below on this post.

Following the session, I met with Ignacio Ruiz of databases-la.com for an interview that he’s going to post sometime later. He’s got a great amount of enthusiasm for his venture and I hope he’s able to create a large following for his publications in his part of the world. I’ll post here when he gets the interview (including video) up on his site.

We also had a great turnout at the RAC SIG Birds of a Feather session where we introduced the new officers and facilitated some great discussions. The new officers are excited and motivated to make some great things happen in the next couple of years in addition to maintaining the great offerings that the SIG has been providing since its beginning.

After the day’s sessions, I headed over to the Blogger Meetup that Eddie coordinated. It was a great gathering and well-attended. Thanks Justin for making it possible! I got to meet lots of new people and see all my good friends that I don’t get to see IRL very often.

Oracle Open World 08 Plans, no UKOUG for me this year

A few years ago, I started getting too many events on my schedule for conferences, so I began using a spreadsheet to track all the sessions I wanted to attend, presentations I was scheduled to give, meetings with customers, times I had to be on booth duty, and, of course, social events I had to … Continue reading “Oracle Open World 08 Plans, no UKOUG for me this year”

A few years ago, I started getting too many events on my schedule for conferences, so I began using a spreadsheet to track all the sessions I wanted to attend, presentations I was scheduled to give, meetings with customers, times I had to be on booth duty, and, of course, social events I had to attend. This year’s OOW spreadsheet has 61 lines in it, so I’ll spare you the deep details. Here’s a recap of some of the most important events on my schedule over the next week (a few additions since my last posting of the same):

IOUG SELECT Journal articles on RAC

Here’s a good reason to become an IOUG member or, if you already are a member, a good reason to dig out that username/password to the IOUG website. The most recent issue of the IOUG publication SELECT Journal contains several great articles (if I do say so myself) about Oracle RAC. I contributed one article … Continue reading “IOUG SELECT Journal articles on RAC”

Here’s a good reason to become an IOUG member or, if you already are a member, a good reason to dig out that username/password to the IOUG website. The most recent issue of the IOUG publication SELECT Journal contains several great articles (if I do say so myself) about Oracle RAC.

I contributed one article titled “RAC For Beginners: The Basics” and also helped identify the other contributors to help give the issue a significant focus on RAC. It was a great coincidence that the issue came out just before the RAC Attack! event we held in early August. Each attendee at that event received a copy of the issue as part of their event registration.

You’ll need your IOUG login in order to read the articles, but you can at least browse the article titles on the SELECT Journal website without logging in. If you aren’t an IOUG member, you should consider joining–SELECT Journal is just one of many member benefits.

For potential authors reading this entry, SELECT Journal contributing authors do receive some nice gifts like an exclusive embroidered shirt and other goodies in addition to the 15 minutes of fame (actually 3 months since it’s a quarterly publication!). Hope you enjoy the article and if you have suggestions for improving it, please let me know directly via email.

Also, don’t forget to check out the Oracle RAC SIG website and sign up for membership there to access our document library of more great articles like the ones featured in SELECT.

Concatenating lines in ldapsearch results

Many of us have had reasons to migrate Oracle Application Server (specifically, Portal) environments from one server or group of servers to another. This is often the case when hardware upgrades are needed and the whole environment must be moved to another set of hosts. Recently, I was helping move an Oracle Portal (10.1.2.0.2) environment … Continue reading “Concatenating lines in ldapsearch results”

Many of us have had reasons to migrate Oracle Application Server (specifically, Portal) environments from one server or group of servers to another. This is often the case when hardware upgrades are needed and the whole environment must be moved to another set of hosts.

Recently, I was helping move an Oracle Portal (10.1.2.0.2) environment from one host to another. This was due to a company spin off, so the “sticky” part of this move was that the domain name and resulting realm changed (more on that in a minute).

First, if you’ve had to perform this task, you should have already identified Metalink Note 251776.1 which describes the process necessary for moving users and groups from one OracleAS Infrastructure to another. The note’s step 3 mentions that the LDIF file must be edited to replace all references to the old realm with the new realm in the target system. However, this can prove difficult if you do actually have to change the realm name because of the way that ldapsearch produces output. The LDIF standard specifies that lines can be continued on the following line if a space is the first character on the line. The corresponding ldapadd command can properly import lines that are broken into multiple lines, but the standard search and replace tools (in notepad, vi or any other standard text editor) can’t find the occurrences properly to replace them. So, some entries are able to be replaced easily like this one (assume we need to replace “dc=dannorris,dc=local” with “dc=newcorp,dc=com“): Continue reading “Concatenating lines in ldapsearch results”

ORA-1555 after switchover to standby

This week started with diagnosing an interesting situation that didn’t seem to be talked about much (maybe because it is a relatively “old” problem–explanation in a minute), so I thought I’d share the experience for everyone’s benefit. The situation involves a 10.2.0.1 (<gasp>) database on Linux 32-bit RHEL 4. The database is in flashback mode … Continue reading “ORA-1555 after switchover to standby”

This week started with diagnosing an interesting situation that didn’t seem to be talked about much (maybe because it is a relatively “old” problem–explanation in a minute), so I thought I’d share the experience for everyone’s benefit.

The situation involves a 10.2.0.1 (<gasp>) database on Linux 32-bit RHEL 4. The database is in flashback mode and has a single physical standby database with Data Guard configured in maximum availability mode. The standby was configured relatively recently and had never been tested with a switchover. The switchover was scheduled and conducted without much issue. Continue reading “ORA-1555 after switchover to standby”

Spotlight On…

I forgot to mention last Friday that my 3-question email interview with Oracle OpenWorld was posted in a series dubbed “Spotlight On…”. As one of the selected Mix session winners, we were all asked to provide responses to some simple questions about our session and tips for having a great OOW. See my spotlight on … Continue reading “Spotlight On…”

I forgot to mention last Friday that my 3-question email interview with Oracle OpenWorld was posted in a series dubbed “Spotlight On…”. As one of the selected Mix session winners, we were all asked to provide responses to some simple questions about our session and tips for having a great OOW. See my spotlight on the Oracle OpenWorld blog.

On a related note, hat tip to Jack Flynn and team for keeping excellent content flowing in the blog using an upbeat, comfortably informal tone as well. Nice work, Jack!

Corrupt download caused installation to hang, unzip lessons learned

I’m posting this because apparently it hasn’t happened to anyone else except me (heavens knows I searched for help!). The root cause certainly wasn’t obvious to me, so hopefully, this will help someone (maybe me, once I forget about it). All I needed to do was install a default Oracle Database 11g R1 environment with … Continue reading “Corrupt download caused installation to hang, unzip lessons learned”

I’m posting this because apparently it hasn’t happened to anyone else except me (heavens knows I searched for help!). The root cause certainly wasn’t obvious to me, so hopefully, this will help someone (maybe me, once I forget about it).

All I needed to do was install a default Oracle Database 11g R1 environment with a starter database for some experimentation. Seems simple.

I had archived a copy of linux_11gR1_database.zip from OTN, so I copied that to my Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 U1 virtual machine and unzipped it (no errors or warnings, mind you). I proceeded to launch the installer as the oracle user and it ran me through the 4-6 screens of questions, prerequisite checks, etc, then the summary screen and started installing. The progress bar on the first task (copying files or similar) quickly progressed to 38% and then stopped…forever (I waited an hour). Continue reading “Corrupt download caused installation to hang, unzip lessons learned”