Tag Archives: User Groups & Conferences
Oracle Openworld 2013 Day 1 : User Group Forum, News on Oracle Database In-Memory Option
The Sunday before Oracle Openworld proper is “User Group Forum Sunday”, with each of the major user groups and councils having dedicated tracks for topics such as BI&DW, Fusion Development, Database and so on. Stewart, myself and Venkat were honoured to be presenting on behalf of ODTUG, IOUG and APAC covering topics around the new 11g release of the BI Applications, Hyperion/EPM Suite, and agile development using OBIEE, ODI and Golden Gate. Links to the presentation PDFs from each of our sessions are listed below:
- Deep Dive into OBIA 11.1.1.7.1 – Overview (Mark Rittman)
- Deep Dive into OBIA 11.1.1.7.1 – Data Integration (Stewart Bryson)
- Agile BI Development using OBIEE, ODI and Golden Gate (Stewart Bryson)
- Hyperion Profitability & Cost Management – Integration of Standard & Detailed Profitability (Venkatakrishnan J)
All of the sessions drew a good crowd, and I was especially pleased to see the number of people that came along to the BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 sessions, and that there were a few early-adopters in the audience who’d either completed their initial implementations, or had carried out pilot or PoC exercises. Feedback from those attendees was as I’d expected – some initial early adopter issues but generally positive feedback on the simplified architecture, and use of ODI. Stewart’s session on the data integration aspects of this new release included content on its new Golden Gate integration, and the new Source-Dependent Store ODI concept that it supports, again which went down well with an audience looking for more technical details on how this new release works.
After the user group sessions finished, it was time to go over to Moscone North for Larry Ellison’s opening keynote, where three new products were announced. First up was the new In-Memory option for the Oracle Database, which adds an in-memory, column-store capability to Oracle databases on all platforms, not just Exadata. Aimed at the upcoming 12.1.2 release, this new feature will provide a column-store capability alongside the existing on-disk row-store, with the column-store being used for DW-style queries whilst the row-store will continue to be used for OLTP.
The way this in-memory column store will work, is as follows:
- The DBA will enable the in-memory feature by setting the database parameter “in memory_size = XX GB”, with the memory then being allocated in the database’s SGA (System Global Area, one of the shared areas in the overall database memory allocation)
- Tables, partitions or sets of columns will be enabled for in-memory storage by an “alter table … in memory” DDL command
- Existing query indexes on the source tables can then be dropped
The database will then take care of copying these tables, columns or partitions into the in-memory column-store area, and then refreshing those tables on a regular basis, so that the database will have both row-store, and column-store versions of the tables available at the same time.
Oracle’s assertion is that the overhead in maintaining both the row- and column-store versions of the tables will be balanced out by the removal of the need to maintain query indexes on the source tables, and performance improvements of 100x to 1000x were quoted for DW-style queries, and 2x for OLTP-style queries. Unlike the Hybrid Columnar Compression feature announced a couple of years ago at Openworld, none of this is Exadata-specific, but it will be an option for the Enterprise Edition of the database, and it will require the 12.1.2 release, so you’ll need to budget for it and you’ll need to be on the most recent release to make use of it.
Other than the in-memory option, the other two product announcements in the keynote were:
- The M6-32 “Big Memory Machine”, with 32TB of DRAM and a SPARC M6 chip architecture – positioned as the ideal server for the in-memory option
- The “Oracle Database Backup, Logging and Recovery” appliance, a server designed to receive and then store incremental database backups for private and public clouds, and then restore those databases as necessarily – basically a backup server optimised for database backup and recovery.
So that was it for today – more news tomorrow once the main conference sessions and keynotes start.
Oracle Openworld 2013 Day 0: Previewing the Week Ahead
It’s the Saturday afternoon before the start of Oracle Openworld 2013, and whilst I’ve been here since last Wednesday, my colleagues from Rittman Mead in the Europe, the USA and India are arriving today and tomorrow ready for their sessions later in the week. Myself and Stewart Bryson are taking part in User Group Sunday tomorrow, presenting on BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 for ODTUG and IOUG, whilst Jon Mead, Jérôme Françoisse, Venkat and James Knight are presenting later in the week on TimesTen, ODI 12c and Oracle EPM Suite. Full details on where to find us can be found on our Rittman Mead at Oracle Openworld 2013 website page.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been in San Francisco since Wednesday, at Oracle’s headquarters in Redwood Shores for the annual Oracle ACE Director product briefing. Over two days, Oracle brief members of the ACE Director program on the major announcements to be made at Openworld, plus what’s happened in product development over the past twelve months, all under NDA until the various announcements are made during the week.
As most of us on the ACE Director program know each other from conferences and events around the world, it’s a good opportunity to catch-up with other Oracle “experts” and share ideas and product experiences, and this year we were lucky to get some excellent late-summer weather – which has now finished in time for Openworld proper, with rain today in SF just in time for the America’s Cup races….
As I said, the various announcements due for Openworld are under NDA until at least Larry’s keynote on Sunday – but one planned announcement that’s fairly common knowledge (if only because of the posters down at the Moscone) is the one around the new in-memory option for the Oracle Database.
The main details of this new feature will be announced by Larry Ellison tomorrow evening, and check back here after the keynote for more details – also keep an eye out for announcements around TimesTen, Exalytics and Oracle’s other “in-memory” products later in the week, which we’ll again be covering as they’re made.
Other than that – hopefully we’ll see some of you in San Francisco this week, and be sure to check back on the blog during the week as we cover what’s new, and what’s coming, as announced at Oracle Openworld 2013.
Rittman Mead at Oracle Openworld 2013 – Session Details
Most readers of this blog will be aware of Oracle Openworld, Oracle’s annual conference and exhibition held in San Francisco, California. Openworld is a particularly import event for us as it’s when most of the key new product announcements are made, and it’s also a chance for us to catch up with our customers, colleagues and friends in the industry, and share our experiences implementing Oracle’s BI and analytics products.
This year we’re pleased to have six speakers representing us at the Openworld conference delivering sixteen sessions in total, with Jon, Mark, Stewart and Venkat joined by James Knight (Head of Advanced Analytics) and Jérôme Françoisse, who’s been heading-up our ODI 12c beta program participation in Europe. We’re pleased to be taking part in the ODTUG, EOUC, APOUC and IOUG User Group Sunday Symposiums on the Sunday, and presenting as part of the main conference from Monday through to Friday. Mark, Venkat and Stewart will also be taking part in the Oracle ACE Director / Oracle ACE activities, and we’ll be at the Authors Symposium and the DW Global Leaders’ forum during the main week – so say hello if you see one of us!
We’ve put together a page on the website outlining our sessions and where you can find us over the Openworld week, with links to the relevant Content Catalog entries and some general information about Oracle Openworld. We’ll also be running a series of webinars after Openworld closes, so if you’d like some more information on Rittman Mead at Oracle Openworld 2013, check out the website page.
UKOUG Partner of the Year 2013
We are honoured to announce that Rittman Mead have been nominated in 5 categories for the UKOUG Partner of the Year Awards. We have been nominated in:
- Business Intelligence Partner of the Year
- Training Partner of the Year
- Managed Services (Outsourcing & Operations) Partner of the year
- Emerging (New Products) Partner of the Year
- Engineered Systems Partner of the Year
We believe these awards should be a recognition of both the services we provide to our customers, and to information and thought leader we provide to the wider community through activities like the blog and conference presentations. These awards are voted for by Oracle end users and community members.
The fact that we have been nominated in 5 awards hopefully shows the growth of the company and moreover the growth in the significance of data, analytics and Business Intelligence to companies as a whole.
Below is a little bit of information about the categories and what we have been doing in each to get nominated. If you’d like to vote please click here.
Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence is our core competency, which we have won three times in the last five years. We pride ourselves in our deep technical ability, delivery methodology, though leadership and knowledge sharing.
Training
Ever since we started the company training has been at it’s heart. We have trained hundreds of people in the Business Intelligence and Data Integration community, both in paid-for bootcamp style courses, and in workshops, labs, and various sessions at conferences and other similar events.
We believe our blog is one of the key sources of OBIEE knowledge globally, pretty much everyone we meet in the industry has used it at some point in their career.
Managed Service
Last year we put significant focus and investment into creating a global services team with the goal of providing different levels of business as usual and post implementation support to our clients.
The type of services include operational continuity/business relevance, expert advisory, engineered systems (Exalytics) and a virtual Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC).
Emerging (New Products)
Rittman Mead has always looked to balance its skills across Oracle’s core Business Intelligence and Data Integration tools and the bleeding edge ones. The last 12 to 18 months has seen a significant change in the landscape of these tools, especially with the advent of Big Data and Oracle’s acquisition of Endeca.
Rittman Mead implemented the first post-acquisition UK-based Endeca project, are running the first Real Time Decisions (RTD) project of this Oracle fiscal year, and have done a significant amount of work with R, including a pioneering study of the New York transit system.
Engineered Systems
Rittman Mead has been at the forefront of the Business Intelligence Engineered Systems (Exalytics) wave. Since its announcement at 2011 Oracle Open World, we ordered the first Exalytics server to be bought in the UK. Since then we have been working with Oracle and several of our customers to fully understand it and work out how to maximise its benefits to clients of all sizes.
Awards like this are great recognition for all the hard work our team put in, so I would ask you to register your vote here.
Rittman Mead BI Masterclass India Tour – Update
Just a quick blog post to give an update about our Masterclass tour in India in partnership with ODTUG. As you probably know, Mark Rittman (Oracle ACE Director & Rittman Mead Co-Founder), Stewart Bryson (Oracle ACE, Rittman Mead America Managing Director) & myself (Oracle ACE, Rittman Mead India Managing Director) will be doing a master class event in 3 cities – Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai in October 2013. If you want to hear & see about the latest in Oracle BI technologies from experts like Mark & Stewart, this is the event to attend. This event is run immediately after Oracle Open World 2013. Amongst the 3 of us, we have close to ten sessions in OOW2013. If you would like to know what is the planned direction of the Oracle BI/EPM products this is the event to attend as we will all be coming fresh out of Open World(watch out for the BI Analytics/EPM Product Update from Mark in particular).
Following are the topics covered in the 1 day event (in each city)
9.30am – 10.00am: Registration and Welcome
10.00am – 10.30am: Oracle BI, Analytics and EPM Product Update – Mark Rittman
10.30am – 11.30pm: Reporting against Transactional Schemas using OBIEE11g – Stewart Bryson
11.30pm – 12.30pm: OBIEE 11g Integration with the Oracle EPM Stack – Venkatakrishnan J
12.30pm – 1.30pm: Lunch & Networking
1.30pm – 2.30pm: OBIEE and Essbase on Exalytics Development & Deployment Best Practices – Mark Rittman
2.30pm – 3.30pm: Oracle BI Multi-user Development: MDS XML versus MUDE – Stewart Bryson
3.30pm – 4.00pm: Coffee Break & Networking
4.00pm – 5.00pm: Intro and tech deep dive into BI Apps 11g + ODI
5.00pm – 6.00pm: Metadata & Data loads to EPM using Oracle Data Integrator – Venkatakrishnan J
We have few slots left in each event. If you would like to register yourself or your team, you can register directly using the links below.
- Bangalore, Fortune Select Trinity Hotel, Whitefield: October 15th 2013, 10am – 6pm (IST)
- Hyderabad, Westin Mindspace, Hyderabad, Hitec City: October 17th 2013, 10am – 6pm (IST)
- Mumbai, Courtyard Marriott, Mumbai: October 19th 2013, 10am – 6pm (IST)
The events are also being run in partnership with ODTUG, a world-wide user group focusing on Oracle tools and technology including BI, and EPM. We’re very pleased to have ODTUG’s involvement in the event, and we’ll be giving away ODTUG materials and associate membership at each event.
More details about the event can be found here.
