Oracle Data Vault is released

Actually released is putting it a little strongly. OTN has a page about Data Vault which includes some viewlets. There's no sign of when we will actually be able to get our grubby mitts on it.

Data Vault is a very interesting product which I have been waiting for since seeing a demo of it at OOW2K5SF. Its value proposition is answering two questions:

• How can I stop my DBA reading my sensitive data?
  
• How can I prove that I have stopped my DBA reading my sensitive data?
  

It does this by separating user creation and privilege settings, and the auditing of same, from regular DBA activity. Of course it is not foolproof but if properly implemented it is going to need a conspiracy of at least three people to break Data Vault. A regular database is vulnerable to a single rogue DBA.

There's no details about pricing but the fact that it is listed as a Security Option alongside Oracle Advanced Security and Oracle Label Security should give us a clue.

Fun with password verification

Prompted by a question in the OTN forums I have been having a little play around with the Password Verification functionality. It's quite easy: we just create a function under SYS and add it to the users' profile(s). Oracle provide a sample function that applies some standard rules.

SQL> @C:\oracle\ora92\rdbms\admin\utlpwdmg.sql

Function created.


Profile altered.

SQL> alter user a identified by a
  2  /
alter user a identified by a
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-28003: password verification for the specified password failed
ORA-20001: Password same as or similar to user


SQL> alter user a identified by b
  2  /
alter user a identified by b
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-28003: password verification for the specified password failed
ORA-20002: Password length less than 4


SQL> alter user a identified by abcd
  2  /
alter user a identified by abcd
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-28003: password verification for the specified password failed
ORA-20002: Password too simple


SQL> alter user a identified by a1b2
  2  /
alter user a identified by a1b2
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-28003: password verification for the specified password failed
ORA-20003: Password should contain at least one digit, one character and one punctuation


SQL> alter user a identified by a1b_
  2  /

User altered.

SQL> alter user a identified by a1b_
  2  /
alter user a identified by a1b_
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-28007: the password cannot be reused


SQL> 

So that's quite nice. But wait a minute, what about this:

SQL> alter user a identified by b1b_
  2  /

User altered.

SQL> 

Isn't there supposed to be some similarity checking? It is definitely there in the utlpwdmg.sql script. So why isn't it working? Turns out it does work but only when the user changes their own password. By the way, notice the REPLACE syntax we need now that we have enabled the PASSWORD_VERIFY_FUNCTION.

SQL> conn a/b1b_
Connected.
SQL> alter user a identified by b2b_ replace b1b_
  2  /
alter user a identified by b2b_ replace b1b_
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-28003: password verification for the specified password failed
ORA-20004: Password should differ by at least 3 characters


SQL> 

This part of the checking doesn't work for SYS or any other user with the ALTER USER privilege. There's some helpful in Metalink note #114930.1 which explains Oracle's password management policy. Amongst other things the note says that:

"Oracle recommends that you do not change passwords using the ALTER USER statement because it does not fully support the password verification function."

Apparently we should use the SQL*Plus PASSWORD command or make explicit calls to OCIPasswordChange() to change passwords instead. But apart from the fact that SYS can bypass some of the similarity checking I'm not sure what the differences are. For normal users I think ALTER USER with the REPLACE clause remains a valid option (although using SQL*Plus PASSWORD is probably friendlier).

Object Monkey RIP???

So Jason Gorman seems finally to have pulled the plug on the ObjectMonkey website. True, lately it had turned into a potty-mouthed Private Eye wannabe, with the recent stuff being particularly virulent. Indeed Jason seemed a bit sheepish when I pegged him as Mr ObjectMonkey at the BCS Mini-SPA last year. Nevertheless some of the older material was refreshingly frank and insightful into the realities of software engineering and the project lifecycle, as well as being laugh-out-loud funny. It's like reading an DevX column written by Roger Mellie.

One essay in particular, "The Emperor's New Code", contained a very useful list of advice for a business project manager who needs to make a success of an IT project. Unfortunately the advice is headed Don't be a sh*thead. As a consultant I couldn't give that to a client: they won't read the advice, they'd just think, "He's calling me a sh*thead!". That's the problem with swearing. It is big and it is clever, and a well-timed expletive can be funny. But many people will grep out everything except the cusswords. It's all very well saying, as the Sub-Genius motto has it, "F**k 'em if they can't take a joke" but sometimes it's just not worth it. We end up alienating the people we most need to reach.

Alas, all this, the insights and the profanity, is now 404. Still, unlike Ozymandias, Jason Gorman has left behind more than a few broken links. Thank you Google cache!

Big Trouble In Little Kyoto

The Register has some interesting analysis of the slanging match that has developed between Larry Ellison and Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik sparked by the latter's purchase of JBoss.

"Why should [Oracle] buy an operating system when it can rely on partners like Red Hat and Novell to take responsibility for R&D of the distro themselves?

The only possible justification is if Oracle feels that by owning the operating system, it can also "own" a growing number of open source software developers. These developers can then help drive integration between the distro and Oracle's applications. Owning the operating system would certainly confirm the view Oracle is working towards an open- and closed-source stack that is certified to work together."

Of course, putting out a Linux distro means Oracle will be able to position itself in the same space as Microsoft operates, running MS applications on an MS operating system. Certainly Oracle licences look a lot cheaper when we don't have to pay for the OS licence too.

Incidentally, I see Szulik is claiming Oracle is like the old giants of the American automotive industry and that open source software companies are going to do to Oracle what Japanese car manufacturers did to General Motors in the seventies. The problem with such an analysis is that it misunderstands the nature of those Japanese companies. Really those companies were merely the automobile manufacturing arm of giant combines. These keiretsu were derived from the old samurai zaibatsus and each owned a bank, a ship builder, an electronics company, a white goods manufacturer, etc. Such ownership patterns are forbidden by US anti-trust laws but they gave the Japanese a competitive edge: difficulties in the car market could be offset by boom times in shipbuilding.

So really, Oracle producing its own Linux distro is much closer to the Japanese model than it might seem at first. And I bet Ellison, the daimyo connecting primally to his running water and cut unfinished wood, knows it.

Share and enjoy: online participation

What is it about online communities? The internet was spawned a plethora of community types - lists, forums, message boards, blogs, MMORPGs, open source software - in which individuals contribute their time and knowledge to help others in their community. Yet the stereotypical internet geek is a surly, uncommunicative individual with poor hygiene practices and no human friends. So how come we're such a social bunch?

These thoughts were prompted by an online questionnaire about online participation which was posted by an IS Masters student. If you're reading this then you ought to participate by taking his survey. That would be in the spirit of his thesis, which is about the relationship between social capital and knowledge sharing in virtual communities. That is, why people share in online communities when there's no reward.

First let's examine that assumption about no reward. For some people there is an indirect pecuniary reward for their online participation. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who was motivated to buy Tom Kyte's Expert One-on-One because of the AskTom site. Not just because the site acts as an advertisement for the quality of the book but because I felt beholden to Tom because I had got useful advice from the site. Jonathan Lewis says in his DBAZine podcast that his profile within the Oracle community (due to his activism with the UKOUG as well as his website) does help him get work as a contractor. Mark Rittman's blogging won him the Oracle Magazine ACE of the Year 2005 award, which has rewards (in kind). And I'm sure I'm not the only person who's been approached by headhunters because they've come across my spoor here or in the forums.

However, it is obvious that these rewards are trivial compared to the time we all in our various ways spend in the online communities (certainly compared to our hourly rates in the day job). Furthermore most people who contribute in the various forums, lists and blogs are not authors or ACEs. So why do we do it? Everybody's reasons will be different or at least differently prioritised but here are my reasons.

Firstly, my participation, in the forums and this blog, helps me organise my thoughts. Writing things down is a useful discipline. That's why I think people who dash off blog entries casually, as they would an e-mail, are missing a trick. It's one thing to be the first with a hot scoop, another thing to present an insight into some aspect of database programming or architecture in a way that's interesting and useful to others.

Secondly, presenting information in public is a good way to get our own misunderstandings corrected and our assumptions debunked. Ideally we do this ourselves by cobbling together a test case before posting . But if not someone else will point out our bloomers. Over the years I am getting better at not asserting things that I have not tested for myself but I still occasionally slip. And then the vultures swoop.

Thirdly, questions in the forums throw up problems from out of left field. Investigating those issues can teach us new techniques or fresh understandings in areas that our work has not yet taken to. This can make us more effective in our jobs. Or more likely it just appeals to our geeky need to know.

So far this is all about me. Well, it is a blog ;) But, what about the "community"? Doesn't that matter ? Of course it is important. To a large extent our existence as individuals is defined by our interactions with other people. Game Theory teaches us that in order to interact successfully we have to approach other with a presumption of trust people and a preparedness to give openly. In return we can expect gratitude and future co-operation. That's the only way any society can work. So perhaps we contribute to ensure there is a still an active community for when we need to ask for help, even if that means answering many more questions than we pose ourselves.

I think there's more to it than just the strictures of mutual grooming and the Prisoner's Dilemma. There is a warm sense of camaraderie among the regulars in any of these arenas. Interestingly this is often reinforced by communal activities in meatspace - drinking whisky around the old oak table, Oracle-L dinners during the Hotsos symposium, Oracle bloggers' dinners at various conferences.

Finally it's fair to say that online communities are not perfect. It's very easy to lose one's rag when interacting via e-mail. And - especially when the participants don't share a common first language - it's common for insults to be perceived when none was intended. We've had to invent new words to describe anti-social activity in cyberspace. Just recently a MMORPG called Roma Victor introduced virtual crucifixion to punish cheating players. And it is possible to overshare.

In conclusion ... Well, let's close the circle of online participation: start a blog and write your own conclusion!

SQL Developer makes Daily WTF

A few weeks into production and already making its mark in the wider software engineering community. Kris and his team must be so proud.

Mind you, it is a sign of the relative merits of SQL Developer as a tool that the only thing they can find to mock is the code generated by the DDL wizard. As several of the commenters say, most generated code is not the prettiest. Still the code as shown is rather revolting. You wouldn't want to work with anyone who learnt how to program PL/SQL by studying this stuff.

Read the whole thread here.

Red Hat buys JBoss

In this press release Red Hat announces that it has bought JBoss for $350m, although only 40% of that is cash. There's another $70m promised, "subject to the achievement of certain future performance metrics".

Well that's one Larry can scratch off the shopping list. If it's true that Oracle were offering $500m for JBoss I wonder why Marc Fleury turned that down but accepted Red Hat's much lower offer a few weeks later.

Update

The Register, diligent as ever, has uncovered a cached version of blog post in which Marc Fleury says what he read thinks, or at least thought, about Red Hat.

Which version of Oracle do you use?

The OTN Raptor forum is running a poll on which version of Oracle people are using. At the moment 9.2 is the most popular flavour with over half the votes. However, only thirty-three people have voted so far and I doubt this sample size is statistically valid. So, if you haven't already, click across and cast your vote!

Penguin to be top dog for Oracle

According to this CBR Report Linux is likely to the dominant platform for Oracle database servers next year, toppling Sun Solaris from the top spot. Interestingly, it's not just bad news for Scott. Some of the sites who say they're moving to Linux are currently Windows shops. I suppose they've got lots of Intel boxes lying around.

This would definitely seem to validate Oracle's championing of the Linux platform. By reducing the cost of the OS they have lowered the TCO and so reduced SQL Server's advantage there. Levelling the playing field in turn makes it easier for Oracle to compete on feature comparison. And all without cutting Oracle's licensing fees.

The meaning of "Raptor"

Recently I was browsing Google Images to find some dinosaur pictures for my son when I was struck by the startling resemblance between the old Project Raptor splashscreen and this picture of a velociraptor. Separated at birth? Or just Photoshop?

From the MantyWeb site I learnt that the name velociraptor means "speedy thief". So you can see why the team had to drop the "speedy" bit - it is written in Java after all ;) But why did they have to drop the "thief" bit too? Perhaps because a certain amphibian might start croaking about infringements of intellectual copyright? Surely not.

Anyway, the Extension SDK is now available for the minimal JDeveloper install so I can start to work on my idea for a SQL Developer addin. Or at least I can once JDeveloper has restarted. I see Shay Shmeltzer has posted some tips for making JDeveloper go faster. Might be worth a gander.

Update

In fairness I must report that restarting JDeveloper took less than a minute. It's only when we start it up the first time after a reboot and the JRE is not instantiated that it takes long enough for a coffee break.

California Dreaming

I have just received an e-mail from the UKOUG. Oracle are looking for volunteers to participate in a Beta lab for the forthcoming Data Vault product. This is a very interesting development in database security and one which I have been awaiting since I attended a presentation at OOW2K5SF. So I'm very keen to participate.

The only problem is, the event is in a fortnight's time and the location is Redmond, CA. Somehow I just don't think I'll be able to get this past the bosses. In fact, the phrase "a snowball's chance in Heck" comes to mind.

Oracle XE on Mac: if not now, when?

As soon as Oracle announced XE lots of people asked the question, "When will it be available on Mac?" I'm not aware of any statement from Oracle about why XE is not available for Mac - or Unix come to that. I'm not interested in running XE on a Mac but it turns out this question offers an interesting perspective on Oracle's database licencing policy.

If you look at platforms which are supported for XE - Windows and Linux - what they have in common is the Intel chip. So perhaps the answer to the question lies in the need to restrict Oracle XE to a single CPU. XE does this by binding to a processor at start-up, and apparently this is a lot easier to do with Intel chips than other chip architectures. So my guess is we might see ports of XE to Solaris for x86 and also those new Macs running on Intel chips but not for other *nix flavours.

Incidentally, this came up when I was talking with a Unix sysadmin about Oracle per processor licences and the possibility of Oracle limiting non-XE databases to the number of processors licenced. The conversation started with a discussion of whether Oracle really consider capped Solaris 10 Containers to be hard partitions for the purposes of per processor licensing. Sun say yes, but he thought Oracle might take a harder line on this, seeing as how Containers are essentially dynamic. Anybody have a definitive ruling on this?

Anyway, the upshot is, just because Oracle have built a CPU restriction into the XE install it doesn't mean we're likely to see similar enforcements in the licenced products any time soon. And that means if you've got a tweleve CPU server you need twelve per processor licences, even if you want to run Oracle on only one of them.

Oracle profit announcements

Oracle has just announced profits up 42% on a revenue increase of 18%. That's a pretty good margin they're making. Most of this is from Applications rather than selling more database licences. Apparently, Oracle's strategic acquistions of PeopleSoft and JDEdwards is already bearing fruit.

So that's only another seventeen billion dollars to go before they've paid off the cost of all those acquisistions. Still, at least Larry will be able to sleep soundly at night instead of worrying about whether he can pay more than the monthly minimum on his credit card bill.

New HTMLDB book out

Amazon are now selling Oracle HTML DB Handbook from Oracle Press. I guess nobody told Larry or Bradley that the name was about to change to Oracle Application Express. Interesting that Amazon have chosen to pair it with the Oracle Press book on Oracle Application Server 10g Web Development because TAFKAH is all about building Oracle web apps in as simple a fashion as possible and OAS, er, isn't.

Buy the book now

UKOUG Combined SIG 2006 Report

This was the second time three UKOUG SIGs - Development Engineering, Modelling & Design, and App Server - have combined to offer a shared experience. I like this event because it offers the crucial aspect of the conference (choice) without the boring bits (keynotes from marketing VPs).

The DE Stream

I'm very happy with the DE Stream of this event. Each presentation was valuable and worth attending (no, honestly).

Ivan Pellegrin's presentation turned out to be only tangentially related to Customer Data Hub, which was a bit disappointing. However, his summation of Service Oriented Architecture was very good and interesting; I have sat through a lot of talks on SOA, BPM, BRM and BPEL recently and Ivan's was the most coherent overview of the topic I've heard.

Most interesting fact: SOA is the Dutch acronym for STD (that's the medical STD not the telco meaning).

Jonathan Ellard gave a thorough overview of Oracle's new XML Publisher. Now that Oracle have extracted it from Apps and packaged it as a standalone product this looks set to replace Reports as the tool of choice for producing documents. By modularising the various aspects of a document - data logic, layout and format - it makes documents easier to manage and quicker to modify. It also hands control of the appearance back to the business users. Jonathan demonstrated the cardinal virtue of having a demo in your presentation: you can squeeze it if you're running short of time without affecting the overall shape of the talk. Although he really ought to have had the licensing details to hand. People will always ask that question.

Most interesting fact: Oracle Apps has ~90,000 RDF files.

Rob Baillie's talk on Agile Database Development was really interesting. He avoided the sort of buzzwords that seem to annoy people (refactoring, pair programming) and concentrated on the practices that are key to success in a database project regardless of whether it's "agile": properly implemented source control, a simple, robust and tested build script, and clear demarcation of development code from working code. Rob started his presentation by saying that he hoped everybody else in the Oracle world was building systems liked this and that therefore everybody would feel he had wasted their time. I think it's safe to say that nobody in the audience felt they had wasted their time listening to Rob. It was his first presentation but you wouldn't have guessed it: he was fluent and confident, and his talk was well-structured.

Most useful piece of advice: Assume that the person performing the upgrade is an idiot.

We had a full house for Sue Harper's demonstration of SQL Developer, which I think is testament to the interest there is in this part of the tool space. Sue's an old hand at UKOUG presentations but she's only been on the SQL Developer team for a couple of months so I think it was still an edgy prospect for her. In the course of the demo she discovered a couple of (very minor) issues to raise when she got back to the office. Overall, a good introduction to an exciting new product.

Most interesting fact (actually not from the presentation but gleaned whilst chatting to Sue afterwards): every person on the SQL Developer team (even the managers) has to build and maintain an addin as their own personal project. I think this is a very good idea: it keep everybody aware of the quality of the user experience and it should provide some useful extensions.

The event overall

As it goes, so it went.

I must say that the turnout was a little on the low side, disappointingly so. Down a third on last year. Why is this? Slough's not that bad. Perhaps it was due to the lack of Forms presentations but I doubt it. Rather it is symptomatic of the broader problem we have on the development side of things. We usually have a much smaller turnout for developer/designer/deliverer SIGs than the DBA-oriented SIGs get.

I confess to being a bit puzzled by this: on any project I've ever worked on, the DBAs have been outnumbered by analysts, designers, developers and project managers by at least five to one. So how the disparity in turnout? I have a couple of theories. One is that the UKOUG memberships tend to be managed by DBAs. This kind of makes sense: Oracle's a database and the DBAs manage the database so why not have them manage the user group stuff too? But I suspect that many memberships are managed by gatekeepers who attend the meetings they are interested in but don't publicise the other SIGs to people throughout their organisation.

My other theory is that developers are only allowed to attend meetings that deal with stuff that is immediately relevant to their current job. This also makes sense. Sending someone out of the office for a day costs, both in lost productivity and expenses. The DE SIG has to cover a very broad waterfront: traditional tools like Forms and Reports, new kids like JDeveloper and TAFKAH, plus PL/SQL, XML and Java generally, third party products, development practices, architecture, etc. It's a rare individual who's going to have a job that requires immediate knowledge of all of those things. But in the fast moving world of technology it is important to have an awareness of all the things that are going on, even if we're not using them right now. So you're a Forms shop: does that mean Java is not relevant to you? Even now Java is a way to add functionality into a Forms application. But Fusion is coming and Fusion is going to be pure J2EE. Once Oracle Apps has completely replaced all its Forms how long will Oracle keep the tool going? Well the roadmap says Forms will be supported at least until 2013 but that's actually not very far away (Forms 6.0 is almost as old now as Forms 10 will be by then).

What is the solution to the case of the missing developers? I haven't got one yet. I think it's what Sherlock called "a three pipe problem".

Last word

I did a quick survey of blog awareness amongst the audience. Whilst just about everybody used some forum or other less than half of them read any blogs. And only six people actually maintained one (including me). Everybody else must have a life or something.

Rumours of JDeveloper's svelteness have been exaggerated

A couple of years ago some of my J2EE colleagues switched from JDeveloper9i to Eclipse. They were not using ADF and they complained of feature bloat. Now there may have been a certain amount of "CV engineering" in this but they did have a point. The JDev download was then about 320MB compared to Eclipse's skinny 80MB. This was not because Eclipse had less features. It was just that Eclipse offered a bare framework and then we downloaded addins whereas JDeveloper made us download everything but we could switch off the bits we didn't want.

When I tell my friends in Oracle this they point out that JDeveloper has changed its approach now and it too offers a bloat-free framework with the option to just install what we need. Er, up to a point, Lord Copper.

I was talking to someone today about SQL Developer and how we could build addins for it, when I realised I had a really keen idea for an extension that would make my life a lot easier. It's a rather obvious idea and I'm sure people out there are already working on it. But it seemed like a good excuse for me to reinvigorate my rusting Java skills. So I thought I would download JDeveloper and have a look at building the addin for myself.

I downloaded and installed the base version, fired up the Update Centre to get the Extension SDK, and ... nothing. Turns out the ESDK has a dependency on the J2EE version of JDeveloper, which is not documented in the Feature Matrix. For reference, that version (without JRE) is 181MB compared to the base install which weighs in at a Jodie Kidd-like 52MB. I'm sure there are very good reasons why the ESDK has to use some J2EE components but bloating out JDeveloper by an additional 300% just to look at the feasibility of building a SQL Developer addin seems a bit daft.

If there is a way to install the Extension SDK without downloading all this all stuff I would glad to hear of it. Otherwise I shall just have to wait until somebody else builds the addin for me.

Update

Yes I do realise that the Mark Twain quote I am alluding to is "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated." But I don't think I should change the title as it will break the URL in OraBlogs.

Update #2

In some late-breaking news it turns out that the dependency on J2EE resides not in the ESDK itself but in some of the examples. Apparently a crack team of JDev ninjas is working on separating the two types of examples even as you are reading this.

SQL Developer is now in production!

SQL Developer build 1467 is the Production 1.0 release. So that's just seven months after the first unveiling of the Raptor stealth project at OOW2K5SF. Obviously a lot of the foundation had been done under the JDeveloper project but it's still pretty good going.

I think Kris Rice and the rest of the team have delivered a very useful product. The key issue they face now is trying to meet the demands for additional functionality (I want to be able to specify a default directory for PL/SQL files and it would be helpful if we could use SQL Developer to edit Java Stored Procedures, although I suspect that's not a simple one to solve). Of course, this is a nice problem to have, much to be preferred over releasing applications to user indifference. Some cheeky blighter (alright, me) has posted a question on the forum asking for a roadmap of future releases, as they cannot maintain the recent flurry of EA releases.

The timing of the announcement is sweet, because tomorrow Oracle's very own Sue Harper will be doing a presentation on SQL Developer tomorrow in the DE SIG stream of the UKOUG Combined SIG. So I think that will be its first official outing, at least on this side of the pond.

My first Oracle WTF

Fame at last! Oracle WTF has accepted my first submission. This was a suggestion in an OTN forum thread on recovering passwords; the poster proposed amending the password verification function to store the username and password in a normal table. It takes a rare kind of mind to come up with ideas like that, subverting the password checker to ensure that every password is long, strong and known to everyone with SELECT ANY TABLE privilege.

Oracle neglects its tools?

CBR reports the outcome of a Evans Data survey of IDE usage (it looks like the actual survey results are only available to Evans Data's subscribers). The top IDE is MS Visual Studio followed by Eclipse. No surprises there. The most liked IDE is Rational Application Developer.

So where did the Oracle tool set come? Well, a lot of people are using Developer Suite, but:

Significantly, popularity did not necessarily translate to satisfied customers. Oracle had plenty of developers who ranked it at or near bottom in almost every category. Of course, it could be argued, the more developers, the more chance to have dissatisfied customers.

This is where it be nice to see a breakdown of the IDE users. CBR reports that "the study claims Oracle has neglected its tools" but that's not wholly fair. Oracle has been putting a lot of effort into its JDeveloper tool albeit to a large amount of indifference from the larger Java community and its existing Developer Suite customer base, if our experience at the UKOUG DE SIG is anything to go by. There is also Oracle Application Express (FKA HTMLDB) and SQL Developer (FKA Raptor) so recently there has been a lot of work within the Oracle Tools group.

What is true is there has not been much good news in the traditional areas: de-supporting client/server Forms alienated many customers and Oracle's treatment of its Designer tool has driven a fanatical set of users to starting developing their own modelling suite ("The Tool", based on Dulcian's BRIM product). So perhaps Evans Data just spoke to a lot of disgruntled Forms and Designer developers. Or a bunch of Java heads who resented having to use a proprietary tool instead of some cool amalgam of Eclipse, Hibernate and Spring.

Blatent plug: UKOUG members can find out more about what's happening in the Oracle Tools space by coming along to the DE SIG stream of the UKOUG Combined SIG day next week in Slough.

UKOUG Super SIG - 14-MAR-2006

Just over two weeks until the UKOUG Super SIG and we chairs are just figuring out what we're going to say in the start and end sessions. I do know there will be only a minimal mention of the F-word (that's Fusion, mister!)

The Super SIG is a joint day between the Development Engineering, Modelling & Design and Application Server SIGs. It's a bit like the conference only without keynotes and an exhibition i.e. just the interesting bits (am I allowed to say that? Oh well, I've said it). These SIGs have an overlapping audience but we frequently don't get the level of attendance that the database and Applications SIGs get, for reasons that are both complicated and mysterious. So last year UKOUG decided to have a combined SIG day with three streams. This was a roaring success and we've decided to run it again this year. If the success is repeated the Super SIG will become a permanent fixture in the UKOUG calendar.

I put together the DE SIG stream and I think it is a strong one. We have my colleague Ivan Pellegrin talking on Customer Data Hub and Data Quality. The whole Data Hub thing is one of Oracle's initiatives that seems like a good idea but doesn't seem to get a lot of attention. Then we have Jonathan Ellard of Oracle Consulting presenting a case study on XML Publisher, placing it in the context of Oracle's other reporting tools. Mark Rittman may think we're stepping on his toes but tools are part of our remit and a couple of attendees at previous SIGs have expressed an interest in finding out more about XML Publisher and how it compares with Reports and Discoverer. Jonathan hasn't yet got written clearance from the client, so he may have to present the case study in an anonymised version, which is always a tough on to pull off.

Next up is the blogosphere's very own "Bobalicious" Bob Baillie (providing he survives his snowboarding holiday in one piece). As those familiar with his blog may have guessed, Bob's going to be talking about applying Agile practices to Oracle development projects. Lastly, Sue Harper, who we got on a free transfer from the M&D SIG, will be giving an overview of SQL Developer (AKA Raptor).

What is unusual about this line-up is that there are no presentations on Forms or Java. For a long time the DE SIG has really been the Forms SIG; in the last couple of years as Oracle has started to position Forms as a J2EE tool and to put the spotlight on JDeveloper we have done lots on Java. Our Oracle buddy is the very wonderful Duncan Mills after all. Still, there's a lot more to Oracle development than GUI tools and I hope this SIG will emphasise the fact.

The afternoon will finish with all three SIGs coming together for a presentation by Debi Platt of the Department of Work and Pensions on assistive technology for building accessible software. This is an important area which doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves, and which legally we are obliged to give it. That is why we decided it ought to be a joint session rather than be assigned to one SIG's stream.

The other SIGs have equally interesting agendas. The venue, Baylis House in Slough, is very pleasant and the lunch last year was top notch. If your organisation has a UKOUG membership then please come along. Because there are three SIGs on the same day each membership can send along three delegates. So, if your membership is dominated by one or two people who go to everything then this is the perfect opportunity to attend for free. Hope to see you there.