Back from Down Under

Australia is a great country. I was mostly in Sydney this go around so I didn't see much of the country really. But what I did see and the folks I did meet were all good. Cary the restaurant you recommended is gone, so couldn't try it. We were able to find many other splendid places to eat. An Italian place close to Curricular Quay was very good.

Went to Manly (of course!) and hand lunch at the Manly Grill (arr-arr-arr!) right on the beach. Unfortunately it was cold and rainy, it is fall there right now after all. Only a few brave souls were out surfing, and I was not one of them.



The presentation at the Sydney Meetup went very well. Tanel and I had a great time. Alex runs a great group, here is Alex and I just before I started. (Note to self, remember NO beer with Alex until AFTER the presentation next time.)



I hope to make it back soon.

Ric Down Under

I'll be in beautiful Sydney Australia (is there another Sydney in the world?) next Friday (17 April) at the Sydney Meetup doing a presentation on using Oracle Trace data to tune SQL.

Tanel Põder will be there as well doing his "No Slides" gig. I saw this at the Hotsos Symposium this year, and it's a presentation not to be missed. I'm glad that I'll be able to see it twice; hopefully, I can fill in the gaps in my notes from the first go.

Stop by and have some great Oracle training and some beer and Pizza with other Oracle geeks!

Ta, Da! Hotsos Symposium 2010

We have been busy getting the website updated for Hotsos Symposium 2010 and have some great announcements for you:

• Mark your calendars! Hotsos Symposium 2010 will be held March 7 — 11, 2010 at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, TX.
  
  


• Tom Kyte will be the keynote speaker!
  
  


• Tanel Põder is doing the Training Day!
  
  


• We're holding registration prices the same! We've even added a really early bird registration option. If you register before September 30, 2009, you'll pay only $995 for the Symposium. The optional Training Day is an extra $500, but it's worth it to get a whole day with Tanel. To register, click here.


• Want a free registration? Submit a presentation idea, and if you're chosen as a speaker, you get in free for Symposium and Training Day. However, this doesn't include travel and hotel. The call for presentations opens May 5, 2009.


• Registration is capped at 500 attendees to ensure that you have plenty of networking opportunities with the speakers and other attendees.

See our website for more information. We hope to see you there.

Hotsos Symposium Training Day 2009 with Jonathan Lewis

We had a higher percentage of attendees stay for Jonathan Lewis' Training Day this year. Jonathan's topic was "Understanding Troubleshooting".







As always, Jonathan got rave reviews, and we're really pleased to have hosted him again this year.

Hotsos Symposium 2009 - Final Day

For 8:30 on the Wednesday morning after the big party night, Chen Shapira drew a nice crowd (see below) who wanted to learn about the "Seven Sins of Concurrency":





"Oracle Performance for Developers (and the DBAs Who Have to Work with Them)" was presented by Kerry Osborne:



Tanel Põder's "Zero Slides: The Scripts and Tools which Will Make Your Life Easier and Allow You to Troubleshoot Better" was definitely a big "thumbs-up".



Dan Norris tells us how to "Avoid Common RAC Issues":



The lovely Robyn Sands presented an informative "Variance as a Tool: Measuring for Robust Performance".



Captain Morgan? Uh, I mean Ric Van Dyke tells us about "Intelligent Cursor Sharing".



Jonathan Lewis begins the first part of his presentation, "Hints on Hints".



Kyle Towle teaches us how to "Predict Oracle Performance" in his presentation:



Jonathan Lewis finishes up with the second part of his "Hints on Hints".



Last, but definitely not least, Monty Orme presents "Give 'Em What They Need!":



OK, either Gary really secretly liked the earring from his pirate costume, or someone bet him a lot of money that he wouldn't wear the earring during the Closing Ceremony. What do you think?




Enrapt crowd waiting for the Silent Auction Winner announcements:



Bah-bye! We hope to see you all next year!



Thanks to everyone (presenters, attendees, Omni Mandalay hotel staff and Hotsos teammates) who made this Sym one of the best yet!

Hotsos Symposium 2009 Day 2

Bright and early on a Tuesday morning, attendees gathered for the first presentation of the day:



Cary Millsap delivers an entertaining presentation on "Lessons Learned v2009.03":



In this photo, Dan Tow convinces attendees to just say "no" to the safe use of views:



Margaret Norman teaches attendees how to control their environments with the Resource Manager:



Tanel Põder tells us how Oracle SQL Plan Execution really works in this session.



Amit Poddar's presentation was entitled "One-Pass Distinct Sampling".



Toon Koppelaars presents "The Helsinki Declaration, Part I" before lunch:



Mark Bobak and Jan van Mourik have their picture taken with Flat Larry during break:



He's ba-a-a-ack! Toon Koppelaars gives Part II of "The Helsinki Declaration" after lunch:



Below, Dave Abercrombie gives us a captivating tour of the AWR tables:



I'm sure that Bryn Llewellyn gave a very interesting talk on "Using the PL/SQL Hierarchical Performance Profiler". Such a character, he is...



Mark Williams taught us that "Instrumented Code is Better Code":



Oh! And Kerry Osborne and Stephan Haisley pulled the old switch-a-roo on the attendees just to keep them guessing. Stephan spoke about "Streams Optimization and Diagnostics".



Christian Antognini presented "Bloom Filters":



Hotsos' own, Monty Orme, facilitated the speaker panel after the last session:



And finally...the speaker panel:



What a great day it was! Stay tuned for Day 3...

Hotsos Symposium 2009 Day 1

Welcome back to Hotsos Symposium! Gary Goodman opens the proceedings:



Andy Zitelli gives a warm welcome to our keynote speaker, Chris Date:



Chris Date delivers the keynote and a bonus two technical sessions:



Wolfgang Breitling was gracious to fill-in for Joze Senegacnik. Wolfgang's presentation was entitled, Tuning by Cardinality Feedback. Thank you, Wolfgang!



Oh, no! It's Cary Millsap. Cary's presentation is called "Making Friends with the Oracle Database".



Andy Zitelli gives a great presentation entitled "Using Oracle's Extended SQL Trace Data to Quell Disputes".



Joe Johnson gave an awesome presentation (of course, we'd think so, any way!) called "Using Hotsos Tuning Techniques to Find & Fix Performance Issues: 6 Real World Examples"...and no, Joe doesn't work for Hotsos. Yet...



Karen Morton worked her magic with her presentation entitled "Managing Statistics for Optimal Performance". Karen is shown here with Flat Larry. Karen's niece sent us a Flat Stanley, and we took pictures of him in all kinds of places. When Larry Klein couldn't make it to the Sym due to a go-live, we decided to make a Flat Larry.



Gerwin Hendriksen presented "Practical Use of Method GAPP to Find Performance Bottlenecks for Business Processes in Complex Architectures".



Henry Poras gave Part 2 of his presentation from last year, entitled "Queueing Theory Analysis of Statspack Reports Obtained from Database Load Tests".





Tanel Põder presented his extra session entitled "Latch, Lock and Mutex Contention Troubleshooting in Oracle".



Monday was a very good day!