Events – Page 6 – dannorris.com blog

Oracle Identity Manager Advanced Workshop

I spent the past three days at Oracle’s office in downtown Chicago working on the Oracle Identity Manager Advanced Workshop. Ananth Kini and Sid Choudhury from Oracle did a fine job explaining the product and it’s various use cases to us. Most of the time was allocated to working though extensive and applicable lab exercises where we were guided through tasks like putting new logos on the login page, customizing look and feel, configure prepopulate adapters, configuring and customizing notifications, extending an existing connector (provisioning), and developing, implementing, and testing a complete connector from scratch.

The class was offered to Oracle Partners for free and is the second workshop in the series. The basic workshop happened several months before (I wasn’t able to attend). Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post the contents of the workshop (you have to be a partner to get access to the content). If you’re an Oracle employee, you can download the lab exercises and virtual machines from an internal Oracle website (you’ll have to contact the IdM PM team to find out the site if you don’t already know it).

Overall, what I took away from the class are these thoughts:

Almost no one really uses OIM in the “standard” or “out-of-the-box” configuration. Every implementation will require extensive configuration and very likely, some customizations for look and feel.
A background in Java development or at least a strong understanding of programming and OO principles will be very helpful when navigating and using the OIM Design Console.
The hot deploy feature in OC4J is completely underrated. Our test environment used JBoss (which doesn’t have a hot deployment option), so we frequently had to restart it. Restarting took anywhere from 30-60 seconds to handle initialization.
There are plenty of people interested in OIM. Our class was about 13 people. This workshop is being held 3 times in the US (based on the last schedule I saw) and many people came from near and far to attend this session.
The OIM product has impressive capabilities, but it takes more work than expected to take advantage of those capabilities. For a non-programmer-type like me, understanding why 3 properties files all contain the same or similar information still doesn’t make sense, but apparently that’s the way many Java deployments are handled when deployed with i18n.
Connectors include not just provisioning parts (add, modify, delete), but also reconciliation parts.

If you’re a partner and have a chance to attend this event, I’d recommend it. There’s another one happening in November in Reston, VA. Ask your friendly sales rep about it and they should be able to get you the invitation information. Make sure you and your system meet the prerequisites. The workshop uses VMWare images, so having 2Gb of RAM available will be important.

Paying the bills

As some of you already know, I’ve recently changed jobs. I now work at Piocon in Chicagoland. Our office is currently in Naperville (pretty close to my house). I’m a Practice Manager and will be working with a couple of other fine technologists (read some of their good stuff at SingleQuery) leading efforts in the … Continue reading “Paying the bills”

I’d like to keep most things here technical, so pardon this interruption. I’m still available for consulting, so contact me at dannorris(at)dannorris(dot)com if you would like to engage me or one of my team members. Please update your address books if you have my old contact information in there. As you’ve read, I’ll be at OOW (shaping up to be a busy week already!) and I’m also going to be participating heavily in pre-conference activities for Collaborate 08 as one of the IOUG DBA track managers, so you can count on seeing me there as well.

Call for speakers: Collab 08 and Hotsos Symposium

The spring (in the US) conferences on my hot list are always Collaborate and the Hotsos Symposium. While I’ve never been to the Hotsos Symposium (due to budget constraints), I’ve always wanted to attend. All in the past couple of weeks, both events have opened their respective calls for speakers. See the links: IOUG call … Continue reading “Call for speakers: Collab 08 and Hotsos Symposium”

The spring (in the US) conferences on my hot list are always Collaborate and the Hotsos Symposium. While I’ve never been to the Hotsos Symposium (due to budget constraints), I’ve always wanted to attend. All in the past couple of weeks, both events have opened their respective calls for speakers. See the links: IOUG call for speakers (Collaborate08), OAUG call for speakers (Collaborate08), and Hotsos Symposium call for speakers.

I would highly encourage you to consider presenting. As anyone who’s heard me present recently, I close almost all of my sessions with a plug for becoming a presenter (if I haven’t run short on time). Presenting a technical topic or case study can be a lot of work, but it is also very rewarding both professionally and economically (free conference pass!). While some employers aren’t keen on sending their staffers to conferences all-expenses-paid, the negotiation gets a lot easier when you cut 50% off the total budget by snagging a free pass.

Besides the fun and rewarding experience of presenting your knowledge to others, you also become recognized as the authority on something and many times, follow up questions trickle in for weeks or months later (as people download your session materials). These follow ups can often lead to friendships and (if you’re in consulting) additional business. There’s also the great opportunity to meet or reunite with many people you know from the Oracleosphere online from places like Oracle-L, OracleBlogs, OraNA.Info, and OTN Forums. I learn as much or more from talking with individual conference attendees as I do from attending technical sessions.

Anyhoo, it’s a great time and you meet lots of great people (like me!). Not to mention, there’s usually a pretty nice “appreciation event” (read party) at the major conferences too.

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I’ll look forward to seeing you…at the lectern with a microphone!

OpenWorld 2007 News: The Big Party & Session Listings

I wasn’t sure how to top last year’s Elton John show. (By the way, I was also partial to AC/DShe at last year’s show.) However, for my tastes, I think they may have topped it with this year’s lineup. On top of the news about the appreciation event, there’s also news on the session list … Continue reading “OpenWorld 2007 News: The Big Party & Session Listings”

On top of the news about the appreciation event, there’s also news on the session list for OOW. I’ve got session S291026 during the regular conference and also two more sessions during IOUG’s Forum program on Sunday as well (these will likely be added to session planner later).

Please do plan to attend the Sunday program. As I’ve been more involved in this year’s Sunday program, I think it will be one of the best yet. I’d love to have a chat about anything related to Oracle Database Identity Management, or SCUBA diving, so let me know if you’re going to be there on Sunday (or post a comment here) and we’ll try to meet up onsite in SF!

I’ll post more on Sunday’s schedule as soon as it is made public.

OpenWorld 07 QuickConnect

Oracle OpenWorld has been on my mind lately as I just got confirmed acceptance of my regular conference session presentation late last week. Today, I created my QuickConnect card. I have seen other posts about this card thingy, but I didn’t realize how interesting it is (or at least it may be) until I got … Continue reading “OpenWorld 07 QuickConnect”

Oracle OpenWorld, IOUG, and New Job (oh my!)

I’ve been MIA for a while as I’ve had a number of events all happening at the same time. They say when it rains, it pours, and the last 2 weeks or so have been pouring! First, I’ve been busy working with the IOUG to help coordinate some sessions for the IOUG Forum event on … Continue reading “Oracle OpenWorld, IOUG, and New Job (oh my!)”

I’ve been MIA for a while as I’ve had a number of events all happening at the same time. They say when it rains, it pours, and the last 2 weeks or so have been pouring!

First, I’ve been busy working with the IOUG to help coordinate some sessions for the IOUG Forum event on Sunday (November 11) at Oracle OpenWorld. I’m going to be involved with two sessions that day, first will be a repeat of the “High Availability Options for Oracle Database” session and the second is a co-presentation with my friend Matt Topper titled “Is That Really You? Prove It!” detailing some of the new features available in the Bharosa product set acquired recently by Oracle. During the regular conference, I’ll be presenting an updated “RAC For Beginners: The Basics” session (not sure when yet).

I’ve also been invited to join the IOUG SIG Council. This is a group within the IOUG that is focused on advancing and developing the various IOUG Special Interest Groups and a great team of people to to work with. Judi Hotspillner and Michelle Malcher lead this group and I’m excited about joining and becoming more active in the IOUG.

Last week, I was also informed that I’ll be one of the three IOUG DBA Track Managers for the Collaborate 08 conference in April 2008. Of course, my work will be long over by the time April rolls around as the track managers are responsible for reviewing and selecting presentations to fill the session slots at the conference. Watch for the call for presentations on the IOUG website in the next few months.

I’ve been busy with transition duties as well since I’m leaving IT Convergence for another opportunity. Don’t worry–I’m still going to be lurking in the usual places and working on Oracle-related things. More about my new gig once I get started there in another week or two. Stay tuned. Obviously, this move and the period leading up to such a decision make for a busy time even when there’s nothing much else going on. So, now that the choice is made, I’m looking forward to writing a bit more often than I have recently (which shouldn’t be too hard!).

OpenWorld San Francisco 2007

I just got word from the IOUG that they are going to send my session “RAC for Beginners: The Basics” on to the Oracle OpenWorld conference team to fill one of IOUG’s 24 OpenWorld session slots. So, it looks like I’ll definitely be at OOW this year, though between my involvement with the RAC SIG … Continue reading “OpenWorld San Francisco 2007”

I just got word from the IOUG that they are going to send my session “RAC for Beginners: The Basics” on to the Oracle OpenWorld conference team to fill one of IOUG’s 24 OpenWorld session slots. So, it looks like I’ll definitely be at OOW this year, though between my involvement with the RAC SIG and other volunteer events, I don’t expect to miss any future OOW conferences.

Tune in to the hype on the conference on the Oracle OpenWorld SF website. They’ve already opened registration. The various user groups are also working to fill their allocated technical session slots. The OAUG just closed their call for papers this weekend and IOUG is obviously making their selections too. Watch this space for updates as the event gets closer!

ODTUG, Day 3

Today was the end of the ODTUG conference. I presented my last session of the conference in the smallest session room ever imagined. Regardless, we had a good group of about 15 people for the session and answered a lot of questions during the session. Following the session, I attended a session on APEX that … Continue reading “ODTUG, Day 3”

After lunch with Matt Topper, we headed to a session on the new features in Web Center Suite. It looks like a great tool that has potential change a lot in the Oracle development landscape. Time will tell.

After the session, I had to head to the airport to start my journey home. I’m not sure how I got so lucky, but I managed to score exit row seats on both of my flights home and my bags came out on the carousel pretty quickly too. Overall, it was one of the smoothest trips home I’ve had in a while–and it included both ATL and ORD airports which almost always introduces at least a little delay.

Tomorrow, I’m off to take the Oracle beta certification exam for Oracle RAC expert. We’ll see how that goes…

ODTUG, Day 2

Today started with some customer meetings until Matt Topper’s Identity Management session at 11am. Matt gave a great review of the past Oracle IdM options as well as a survey of the new (acquired) products including typical deployment scenarios for both. He had about 15 people attend–not bad for a topic that is just getting … Continue reading “ODTUG, Day 2”

After lunch, I was the ODTUG Ambassador for another Identity Management session by Eric Marcoux from Fujitsu. His session was more like a set of case studies for several implementations he has conducted. He focused completely on the “new” IdM products from Oblix and OctetString.

Following that, I was the ambassador for Lewis Cunningham’s Streams session. He detailed some past work he did to set up some streams for change data capture (CDC) between 9i and 10g for a customer.

At 4pm, I had to retreat to my room for a couple of meetings to wrap up the day. Working in EDT for a company that’s got a large presence in PDT is hard–time zones aren’t always your friend.

By 5:30pm, I was ready to go to Daytona USA for the evening. I met up with Matt Topper and had some dinner at the conference buffet before heading over to the event. We almost fixed the broken car in the amusement ride. It’s controller software was written on top of DOS, so we had fun playing with it (though we probably shouldn’t have been doing so). I got completely beat on the race simulator, though I think I would have done better if someone hadn’t hit me right near the start.

Matt Topper, Matt Vranicar, and I teamed up to try the pit crew challenge where you change a tire NASCAR pit crew style. We had a terrible first run of 25 seconds, but our second run was about 13 seconds–not bad.

We retired back to the hotel and enjoyed the usual overeating by topping off the night with a stop at the local Cold Stone.

ODTUG, Day 1

Looks like this day is going to be no different than most days at conferences–start early and end late. This morning started at 7am (!) with an ODTUG SIG Leaders breakfast meeting. The meeting was a great opportunity to provide ideas to Mike Riley, the ODTUG SIG VP, as well as other leaders in the … Continue reading “ODTUG, Day 1”

Looks like this day is going to be no different than most days at conferences–start early and end late.

This morning started at 7am (!) with an ODTUG SIG Leaders breakfast meeting. The meeting was a great opportunity to provide ideas to Mike Riley, the ODTUG SIG VP, as well as other leaders in the group. We have lots of great ideas and will be working to make the SIGs serve their members’ needs better in the coming months. If you have ideas for the SIGs, particularly the Development DBA SIG, please contact me so that we can improve the group.

One significant note–I finally got a chance to meet Mark Rittman in person. He’s relatively famous, especially in the Oracle BIEE space, and has one of the oldest (and currently very active) Oracle-related blogs.

As this is the first day of the conference for most people, the first session of the day is the main general session and keynote for the week. The keynote speaker, Ted Farrel, is a VP in the Fusion Middleware division, Continue reading “ODTUG, Day 1”