UKOUG DE SIG 13-MAR-2007 Announcement

Well it's four weeks until the first Development Engineering SIG of 2007. For the third year running we're doing a mini-conference with the App Server and Modelling & Design SIGs. There are three streams, one for each SIG and delegates can mix'n'match from any of the three streams.

The agenda for the DE SIG has been published for a while. Once again I have striven to cover new technologies and old technologies whilst still coming up with an offering which will justify a whole day out of the office. I hope I have succeeded.

First out of the stalls is Oracle's Grant Ronald talking about "Building Client/Server applications with Java Swing and ADF components". Everybody tends to associate Java with the web so this will be a useful reminder that it is possible to built client/server systems in Java. After Grant we have another Oracle employee, Danny Roach, who will be presenting a case study on
Internet banking. Danny will be talking about a system built using .Net, which is the first talk we have had on that product.

In the much coveted "between you and your lunch" slot is Tim Hall of UPS (although I suspect more people will know him from his Oracle-Base web site). Tim is supposed to be talking about the tools and processes available for tuning PL/SQL programs. Although there's always the chance he will spend the forty-five minutes on kung fu movies and the evils of pipe smoking. After lunch is Grant Ronald again, possibly sporting a fake moustache and a funny accent (make your own joke). Grant will be co-presenting with Peter Sechser from PITSS and they'll be talking about migrating Oracle Forms from client/server to the web.

The final session will be a joint session across all three streams. We SIG chairs are keeping the precise details of this under wraps. Does this mean we don't yet know quite what's going to happen here? You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment. After that there will be drinks in the bar.

The venue is Baylis House in Slough, which is a nice venue and isn't too bad for transport links. The food generally gets good marks in the feedback. Because it's a joint SIG each member organisation can send three delegates for free. Many people think of the UKOUG as primarily about the annual conference, which is the big event but the SIGs are a valuable learning resource too. My UKOUG colleague Neil Jarvis recently wrote about their benefits and his remarks are just as true for developers, designers and PMs as for DBAs. So please come along in large numbers. If your organisation is based in the UK and uses Oracle but isn't a member of the UKOUG, then why the heck isn't it? The membership rates represent very good value.