Past SFOUG Meetings and Presentations
Partial List

Overview of the SFOUG Q3 2010 Meeting: Oracle GoldenGate

It was an evening of Florida rain again [grrr] which meant a test of patience for the members going through the slow traffic to get to the SFOUG meeting. When the presentations started there were about 30 people in attendance for our 3rd Quarter SFOUG meeting on September 23rd, 2010. The event was at our usual meeting venue of Dave & Busters in Hollywood, FL. The group hosted a presentation on Oracle GoldenGate by Catalina Chavarriaga of Oracle.

The meeting included Oracle backpack giveaways, books raffels, [and a few jokes]. The positive feedback confirmed that the GoldenGate presentation was informative and educational with Catalina taking many questions from the members.

Doors opened at 5:30 and the presentation started about 6:10 with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. After the presentation the group took time to socialized with fellow Oracle professionals and participate in several books raffles.

Special thanks to Angie Kaiser of Oracle corporation for sponsoring the event, Catalina Chavarriaga for presenting, Cassio DeSanctis and Yanet Jimenez for managing attendance, and Bettina Faltermeier of McGraw-Hill Professional for providing the Oracle educational books for the raffle.

Oracle GoldenGate (download 5 MB)

SFOUG Opening Slides. (download .4 MB)

Overview of the SFOUG Q2 2010: Double Header - Oracle Exedata, and Oracle Applications Express

It was an evening of Florida rain which meant a test of patience going through the slow traffic to get to the SFOUG meeting. There were about 30 brave souls in attendance for our 2nd Quarter SFOUG meeting on June 3rd, 2010. The event was at our usual meeting venue of Dave & Busters in Hollywood, FL. The group hosted two presentations: Oracle/Sun Exadata Database Machine by Glenn Miller of Oracle, and Oracle Application Express 4.0 by Dan McGhan of SkillBuilders.

The meeting included live demonstrations of both APEX 4.0 and Exadata configuration options. Both topic were informative and educational.

Doors opened at 5:30 and the presentation started about 6:10 with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. After the presentation the group took time to socialized with fellow Oracle professionals and participate in two books raffles.

Special thanks to Angie Kaiser of Oracle corporation for sponsoring the event, Glenn Miller and Dan McGhan for presenting, Yanet Jimenez for managing attendance, collecting entrance fees, and organizing the book raffle.

Oracle/Sun Exadata Database Machine. (download 2.2 MB)

Oracle Application Express 4.0. (download 1 MB)

SFOUG Opening Slides. (download 500 KB)

Overview of the SFOUG Q1 2010: Increase Performance using Results Cache in Oracle 11g

We held our 1st Quarter SFOUG meeting on March 4th, 2010 at our usual meeting venue of Dave & Busters in Hollywood, FL. The group hosted a presentation by Janis Griffin, an expert Oracle DBA who possesses a clear and in-depth understanding of Oracle systems. There were about 50 members in attendance to hear Janis present on the increased performance you can get using the new results cache features of Oracle 11g. The topic was very informative and educational providing content people could take back to work the next day.

Doors opened at 5:30 and the presentation started about 6:00 with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. After the presentation the group took time to socialized with fellow Oracle professionals and participate in several raffles.

Special thanks go to Confio Software and Angie Kaiser of Oracle corporation for sponsoring the event, Janis Griffin for presenting, Cassio DeSanctis and Yanet Jimenez for managing attendance, collecting entrance fees, and organizing the book raffle.

Opening Slides. (download 400 KB)

Overview of the SFOUG Q2, 2009: Tuna Helper - A Proven Process for Tuning SQL, and Sun Microsystems and Open Storage

The 2nd Quarter SFOUG meeting was held on Thursday, June 25th, 2009. We had over 50 people in attendance for our two excellent presentations; one on SQL Tuning and the other on Sun Microsystems and Open Storage. The first topic was presented by Dean Richards of Confio Software, who has over 20 years of Oracle and SQL Server project development experience. The second topic was presented by John McLaughlin, who has been a technologist for over 27 years and is currently a senior sales engineer with Cold Creek Solutions.

You can tune a database but you can't tune a fish... OK I'll leave the tuna jokes to the Confio guys. The Tuna Helper - A Proven Process for Tuning SQL presentation explored the challenges faced by many DBAs and Developers of tuning poorly performing SQL statements. Many tuning projects fail because the process being used is inefficient. The presentation walked through a process Confio Software uses with great success and included topics such as indexing strategies, use of histograms, SQL wait event data, column selectivity and several others which can help you succeed on future tuning projects.

The Open Storage presentation covered: Today's Proprietary Storage Solutions - Trends in the Market place - Flash/SSDs - Challenges for disk - Place for tape? - Storage services (file sharing -- NFS and CIFS; pNFS - block sharing -- iSCSI, FC. - Tiering and HSM - Migration, Replication, cloning, snapshots) Storage Economics - Existence Proofs - Cypress Storage Appliance, Sun Storage 7000 series. This presentation introduced many new approaches for setting up a systems architecture.

Doors opened at 5:30 and presentations started with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. Jay introduced the representatives of the meeting sponsors who were: Gary Hester and Bob Spina of Cold Creek Solutions, and David Waugh of Confio Software. The meeting continued until about 8:00 pm with both presenters providing a very educational evening.

Immediately after the presentation the group raffled off several prizes which included books, Dave & Busters game cards, shirts and an iPod Touch.

Special thanks go to Confio Software and Cold Creek Solutions for sponsoring, Dean Richards and John McLaughlin for presenting, and Tavish O'Leary for managing attendance, collecting entrance fees, and organizing the book raffle.

A special thank you to Angie Kaiser of Oracle for provided funding for the event.

Opening Slides. (download 382 KB)

Overview of the SFOUG Q1, 2009 Meeting: Oracle Exadata Storage and Minimizing the Risk of SQL Forms

We held our 1st Quarter SFOUG meeting on March 26th, 2009 at our usual meeting venue Dave & Busters in Hollywood, FL. The group hosted two presentations; Oracle Exadata Storage and Minimizing the Risk of SQL Forms. The first topic, Exadata, was presented by Shyam Varan Nath, the President and Founder of the Oracle Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics Special Interest Group. The second topic, Risk of SQL Forms, was presented by Alfredo Pantaleon, Senior Principle Consultant, KBACE.

The Exadata presentation look at the HP Oracle Database Platform and the Exadata Storage Server. These are new offerings by Oracle, announced in Open World 2008, to enable Extreme Data Warehousing.

The doors opened at 5:30 and presentations started with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Cassio DeSantis, SFOUG Treasurer. Cassio welcomed the meeting sponsor KBACE Technologies, who are a global services company dedicated to the Oracle E-Business Suite. Keith Burr took a few moments to introduce the group to KBACE and what their all about.

Immediately after the presentation the group raffled off a book by Tom Kyte who was in town for an Oracle Tech Day event.

Special thanks go to KBACE Technologies for sponsoring, Shyam Varan Nath and Alfredo Pantaleon for presenting, and Yanet Jimenez and Cassio DeSantis, SFOUG Treasurer for overseeing the meeting.

Opening Slides. (download 368 KB)

Overview of the SFOUG Q4, 2008 Meeting: Wait-Time Based Oracle Performance Management, and Getting Coherence: Introduction to Data Grids

Wait-Time Based Oracle Performance Management
There are many ways to use Oracle wait events for performance tuning of an Oracle database, but often there is confusion on exactly what the data means. The issue typically centers around the fact the wait event data is analyzed at the wrong level or the collected wait event data is not detailed enough. This presentation will focus on these problems and review several real-life case studies of using wait event data coupled with Wait-Time based performance analysis to solve the most difficult performance related issues.

Getting Coherence: Introduction to Data Grids
Grid-based infrastructures are being developed, deployed and used to achieve unlimited application scalability and continuous availability across multiple datacenters. Understanding the additional capabilities of these infrastructures and how they can be improved with the use of Data Grid technology to solve increasingly difficult and complex problems ensures that your organization is getting the maximum utility from Grid Computing.

Doors opened at 5:30 and presentations started with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. Jay pointed out that the meeting was sponsored by Confio Software and thanked them on behalf of the group members.

The meeting continued until 8:00 pm with presenters providing a very educational evening. Their expertise was obvious and appreciated.

Overview of the SFOUG Q3, 2008 Meeting: Oracle Technology Update and Application Aware Storage

We held our 3rd Quarter SFOUG meeting on September 11th, 2008. We held two excellent presentations. The first topic was presented by Glenn Miller, Consulting Manager with Oracle Corporation. Glenn presented an Oracle technology update, explaining how Oracle is much more than just a database company. The second topic was presented by David Wallace, an Oracle badged engineer and channel partner for Pillar Data Systems. David presented on gaining value and optimization with application aware storage and follow up information was provided by Pillar representatives.

The Oracle technology update explored Oracle's acquisition strategy which is to provide enterprise solutions that are complete, open, and integrated. The Oracle value and optimization with application aware storage presentation explained how to differentiate performance based on application priority to allow users to match multiple application characteristics to the appropriate service levels within a single storage platform.

Doors opened at 5:30 and presentations started with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. Jay pointed out that the meeting was sponsored by Pillar Data Systems and thanked them on behalf of the group members.

The meeting continued untill 8:00 pm with presenters taking many questions from the members.

Date: 04/24/2008
Overview of the SFOUG Q2, 2008 Meeting: Exploring Time-based Oracle Database Tuning - Essential Techniques for DBA's

We held our 2nd quarter SFOUG meeting on April 24th, 2008. For this meeting we explored the essential techniques to take advantage of new enhancements Oracle has put into the Oracle Database 10g and 11g for time-based tuning. Our presenter was Mughees Minhas, Director of Product Management, Database Manageability, Oracle USA.

Mughees presentation covered many new areas of Oracle performance capabilities within 10g and 11g. In Oracle Database 10g a new time model was introduced to facilitate database tuning. This model enables a simple yet effective tuning method that is now Oracle's standard for database tuning. At the core of this method is a metric, db time, which measures time spent by the database in servicing user calls. The presentation described the new tuning method, what db time is and explain how it should be used for tuning all types of performance issues.

Doors opened at 5:30 and the presentations sarted about 6:00 pm. Presentations kicked off with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. After this brief overview, Jay handed things over to Mughees and featured presentation.

Immediately after the presentation the group raffled off several prizes including SFOUG shirts, Books, and Oracle shirts and hats.

Special thanks to Cassio DeSanctis for assisting with the event.

SFOUG's Q3 2007 Double-Header Presentations - Database Security and Oracle 11g Database
On September 6th we held our Q3 2007 meeting. For this meeting we had a double-header presentation, with one presentation on Database Security and another presentation on Oracle 11g Database. We saw a lot of new faces among our longtime members with over 60 people in attendance.

The meeting information on database security provided an overview of the current status of database security as well as likely trends for the near future. This information was presented by Jacob Bardin and Todd DeSantis of Sentrigo.

Doors opened at 5:30 and presentations started just after 6:00 PM with an overview of the mission of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. Following this brief overview, Jay introduced our presenters for the evening.

The presentation included slides and demo-like overviews describing types and techniques of attacks, specifically SQL Injection attacks on both web applications and built-in database stored program units. The presentations showed how simple SQL Injection can be used to own the database server through the means of privilege escalation. We reviewed ways of preventing SQL Injection attacks - ranging from secure coding practices to various external tools that will alert and prevent SQL Injection attempts, and demonstrate how hacker techniques of evasion can be used to subvert them.

Special thanks go to Cassio DeSanctis for assisting with the event, Sentrigo for Sponsoring, Jacob Bardin, Todd DeSantis and Glenn Miller for presenting, and Sherlock and ORACLE for providing support and raffle items.

Opening slides and agenda.(download 496k)

SFOUG's Q1 2007 Presentation - Oracle's Business Intelligence Platform:
On March 22nd the SFOUG held our Q1 2007 meeting and presentation, with over 60 people in attendance. The meeting information focused on Oracle as an integrated Business Intelligence platform rather than a collection of tools for data warehousing, reporting, OLAP, data mining and other data exploration tools.

Doors opened at 5:30 and presentations started just after 6:00 PM with an overview of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. Jay reviewed the agenda of evening activities and reiterated that the mission of the SFOUG is to provide an educational environment. Following this brief presentation, Jay introduced our presenter for the evening Shyam Varan Nath. Shyam is the President and Founder of the Oracle Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics Special Interest Group (http://OracleBIWA.org).

The presentation included a demo-like overview of the Oracle BI technology. The presentation also highlighted the growing importance of real time analytics in a world where the advertising and campaigns are undergoing paradigm change due to do not call lists, spam blockers, digital media recorders etc. There was much discuss around Oracle's data mining tools which can be used to empower the underlying analytics. This presentation also cover how Extraction, Transform and Load (ETL) can be done in the Oracle database, leading to data for advanced reporting, analytics like data mining and OLAP and for the automation of critical decision making in a business organization to lead to actionable tasks. Shyam closed the presentation by taking several question from the members.

Immediately after the presentation the group raffled off several prizes including SFOUG shirts, Books, and Oracle shirts and hats.

Special thanks to Cassio DeSanctis for assisting with the event, and to ODTUG, Sherlock and ORACLE for providing support and raffle items.

Opening slides and agenda.(download 496k)

Presentations and Live Demonstrations at our Q2 2006 Meeting:
The second quarter, June 29th 2006 SFOUG meeting was on the much anticipated Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). You probably heard of web services, a technology for systems to call each other over the Internet. Often information is shared via XML messages between application servers. As businesses move more and more to using web services, the messaging and bundling of program logic can get complicated. That is where business process execution language comes in. BPEL is emerging as the standard for assembling services into an end-to-end process.

The presentations started just after 6:00 PM with an overview of the group and an update of current events by Jay O'Leary, SFOUG President. Jay reviewed the agenda of evening activities and reiterated that the mission of the SFOUG is to provide an educational environment. Following this brief presentation Jay introduced the meeting sponsor; Ed Marciniak of AUXIS. Ed took a few moments to provide a brief overview of his organization and participation with the SFOUG. Ed and his company AUXIS have sponsored the SFOUG in the past and we very much appreciate their ongoing support. Ed provided complimentary coffee mugs to all the participants.

Next up on the agenda was our good friend Glenn Miller, Consulting Manager with Oracle Corporation. Glenn conducted and excellent overview presentation on Oracle's 10g Fusion Middleware and how it supports and integrates Business Process Execution Language (BPEL).

The presentation was followed by live demonstrations of BPEL in action. Jason Oskamp, Senior Consultant with Oracle, demonstrated how Oracle's powerful tools built BPEL services without the need to write a lot of code. Jason's demonstrated how the service could load files on a scheduler, map data and stored results in database tables. Using the management console, users could monitor the entire process in detail, which avoided the risk of working in a unknown black-box.

Immediately after the presentation the group raffle off several prizes including SFOUG shirts, and Oracle shirts and hats.

Special thanks to Cassio DeSanctis and Sam Ling for assisting with the event, and to (AUXIS) for sponsoring.

Opening slides and agenda. (download)