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Why I picked Postgres over Oracle, part III


This is the final episode of this short series of blog posts on some of my drivers for moving to Postgres from Oracle.
Please do read Part I and Part II of the series if you have not done so. It discussed the topics “History”, “More recently”, “The switch to Postgres”, “Realization”, “Pricing”, “Support” and “Extensibility”.

In summary:

  • Part one focused on “why not Oracle anymore, so much”
  • Part two discussed on the comparison between PostgreSQL and Oracle
  • Part three talks some more on what Postgres then actually is

Community

One of the more important things to be really, really aware of is that Postgres is “not just open source“. Postgres is “community open source“.

Now, why would that be important, you might wonder.

We all know what open source stands for. There are many advantages to an open source system, and in our case, an open open source database.
A number of arguments are in this blog post series. If you take this one step further though, and realize that Postgres is a community open source project, what are  extra advantages?

A community open source project is not limited, in any way, to any one specific group of developers (let’s call them a company). For example, let’s look at MongoDB. This is an open source database, but it is developed by MongoDB inc.
It is, in essence, controlled by MongoDB.

Postgres is developed by the Postgres Developer Community coached by the Postgres Core Team.
This makes Postgres incredibly open, independent and it enables its developers to truly focus on actual business problems that need to be solved. There is no ulterior drive to satisfy commercial goals or meet any non-essential requirements.

Development

A very important discriminator, that only became this clearly and apparent to me, after I dove into Postgres some more, is the development…

The actual development of the database core-software is done by this community, we’ve just identified.

“Well, yes…” you might say, this is what open source stands for. But the impact of this extends well beyond support, as I mentioned in part 2 of this series. The ability to be part of where Postgres goes, to have actual influence on the development, is awesome, especially for a database platform in the current “world in flux”.
Postgres users don’t necessarily have to wait until “some company” decides to put something on the road-map or develop it at their discretion. These company-decisions will mostly be driven by the most viable commercial opportunity, not necessarily the most urgent technical need.

The development of Postgres is more focused on “getting it right”.
One nice example is the Postgres query optimizer. The Postgres community hates bugs. When bugs start to get discussed, it results in many emails within the community, which stand for a lot of reading!
Many bugs are fixed very quickly, so that this email storm stops!
For optimizer bugs therefore, turn-around times (from reporting to having a production-fix) can be as low as 72 hours, so even for mechanisms as complex as a query optimizer.

Invitation

I would like to invite all of you in the Oracle community to take a look at the Postgres query optimizer and share your concerns, worries, bugs or praise with the Postgres community.
If you want to, you can share this with us at the https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/ email list. We are looking forward to your contributions!

Future

Oracle

I can only speak from what I see. What I see is that Oracle is becoming an on-line services company. I see them moving away from core technology like the database and accompanying functions. Oracle is more an more and moving to highly specialized applications aimed at very big companies.
Chat-bots, social media interactions, integrated services and more, delivered from a tightly integrated but also tightly locked set of Oracle owned and operated data-centers, or rather, the Oracle cloud.

Is this useful? Of course, there will be targeted customers of Oracle who will continue to find this all extremely useful, and it will be, to them.
It this for me? No, not really.

Postgresql

In the beginning, Linux was not something anyone wanted for anything serious. I mean, who wanted to run anything mission critical on anything else than Solaris, HP-UX, VMS, IBM? No-one…
And that was just a few years ago. Imagine!
Today in any old data-center, if you would eliminate the Linux based servers, you would not have much left.
This same thing is now also happening in, what I guess is the second wave of open source. More complex engines are being replaced by open source and the ever present relational database engine is one of those.

Why? Price, extensibility, flexibility, focus, you name it. We have seen it before and we will see it again.

EnterpriseDB

If you permit me just these few words.

I think EnterpriseDB is extremely important for PostgreSQL. We have been fighting on the forefront since the beginning, supporting PostgreSQL’s move to the Enterprise. EnterpriseDB has been and will continue to spend a large amount of our resources to PostgreSQL. We are a PostgreSQL support company. We just have been not very good at patting ourselves on the back…
As a company we are doing extremely well, simply because Postgres is rock solid in all facets and ready to take on the word, even the most daunting tasks – and beyond.
This will continue as Postgres will continue in this second wave of Open Source.

I thank you for your attention.
If you have addition questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.


Why I picked Postgres over Oracle, part II

Continuing this short series of blog posts on some of my drivers for moving to Postgres from Oracle.
Please do read Part I of the series if you have not done so. It discussed the topics “History”, “More recently” and “The switch to Postgres”.

Realization

In the last months, discussing Postgres with my Oracle peers, playing with the software and the tooling, I actually quite quickly realized Postgres is a lot cooler, at least to me. Not so much of the overly complicated technology, but rather built to be super KISS. The elegance of simplicity and it still gets the job done.
Postgres handles a lot the more complex workloads than many (outsiders) might think. Some pretty serious mission-critical workloads are handled by Postgres today. Well, basically, it has been doing this for many, many years. This obviously is very little known, because who would want to spend good money on marketing  for Open Source Software, right? You just spent your time building the stuff, let somebody else take care of that.
Well… we at EnterpriseDB do just those things, …too!

And, please, make no mistake, Postgres is everywhere, from your fridge and video camera, through TV set-top boxes up to major on-line banking software. Many other places you would not expect a database to (be able to) run. Postgres is installed in places that never get touched again. Because of the stability and the low to no-touch administrative character of Postgres, it is ideally suited for these specific implementations. Structured on some of the oldest design principles around Postgres, it doesn’t have to be easy to create the database engine, as long as it “just works” in the end.
Many years ago, an Oracle sales director also included such an overview in his pitch. All the places Oracle touches everybody’s lives, every day. This is no different for Postgres, it is just not pitched anywhere, by anyone, as much.

I have the fortunate opportunity to work closely together with (for instance) Bruce Momjian (PostgreSQL core team founding member and EnterpriseDB colleague). I also had the opportunity to learn from him some of the core principles on which Postgres was designed and built. This is fundamentally different from many other software projects I know and I feel it truly answers some of the core-requirements of database projects out there today! There is no real overview of these principles, so that’s on my to-do list.

Working with PostgreSQL

Pricing

Postgres is open source… it is true open source. It is even a true community open source project, but more about that later in the next installment.

Open source software is free to use, it does not cost nothing!

But, wait! Open source does not mean for free! How…, why…, what do you mean??

Well… you need support, right!?
The community can and will help you, answer questions, solve some of your problems. But they will not come in to install, configure and run Postgres for you. You will need to select and integrate your specific selection out of the wealth of tools. You basically have a whole bunch of additional tasks to complete to get your Postgres platform sorted out.
Companies like EnterpriseDB can help you mitigate these tasks. This allows you to focus on the things you actually want to achieve, using Postgres

In comparison to traditional database vendors, the overall price of your solution will absolutely significantly reduce when using Postgres as your open source database engine.

Support

A significant difference between Oracle (for instance) and Open Source support services is interchangeability.
In the end, Oracle support can only be given by Oracle. They are the only ones that have access to the software sources and can look up (and hopefully fix) issues. In the support of Postgres, or any true community open source product, different companies can provide support. If you don’t like the company you work with… you switch. This drives these companies to be really good at delivering support! How is that for an eye opener.

Extensibility

One of the superb advantages of Postgres is its native extensibility. I mean, think about it for a moment… having a relational database platform with the strength of Postgres, the strength of Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server for that matter. Postgres gives you more options to integrate a wealth of data sources, data types, custom operators and many more other extensions than you will ever need! The integration into Postgres is so solid, these extensions function like any other function in the core of Postgres.
And, rest assured, chances that you will ever be faced with having to built this yourself are extremely slim. There are 30 to 40 thousand developers working with larger and smaller pieces of code of Postgres. Chances are that if you find yourself challenged, somebody else faced and solved that challenge before you. That solution will then be available for you to take and use, solve your challenge and move on. That is also open source for you.

This capability is what makes Postgres ultimately suited to fit the central role in any polyglot environment, we see being built today.
Maximizing the amount of information from data available in multiple data silos in an organization. This is a challenge we see more and more often today. Integrating traditional  applications as ERP, CRM, with data-warehousing results, again combined with Big-data analysis and event-data-capture aggregates. This generates additional decision-driving information out of the combination of these silos. Postgres, by design, is ultimately suited for this. It saves you for migrating YUGE amounts of data from one store to another, just to make good use of it.
The open source Dogma “Horses for courses” eliminates double investments, large data migrations or transformations, it just enables you to combine and learn from what you already have.

End of part II

A link to part three of this blog post will be placed here shortly.

Why I picked Postgres over Oracle, part I

As with many stories, if you have something to tell, it quickly takes up a lot of space. Therefore this will be a series of blog posts on Postgres and a bit of Oracle. It will be a short series, though…

Let’s begin

History

 I have started with databases quite early on in my career. RMS by Datapoint… was it really a database? Well, at least sort of. It held data in a central storage, but it was a typical serial “database”. Interestingly enough, some of this stuff is maintained up to today (talk about longevity!)
After switching to a more novel system, we adopted DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) VAX, VMS and Micro VAX systems! Arguably still the best operating system around… In any case, it brought us the ability to run, the only valid alternative for a database around, Oracle. With a shining Oracle version 6.2 soon to be replaced by version 7.3.4. Okay, truth be told, at that time I wasn’t really that deep into databases, so much of the significance was added later. My primary focus was on getting the job done, serving the business in making people better. Still working with SQL and analyzing data soon became one of my hobbies.
From administering databases, I did a broad range of things, but always looping back to or staying connected to software and software development using databases.
Really, is there any other way, I mean, building software without using some kind of database?
At a good point in time, we were developing software using the super-trendy client-server concept. It served us well at the time and fitted the dogma of those days. No problems whatsoever. We were running our application on “fairly big boxes” for our customers (eg. single or double core HP D 3000 servers) licensed through 1 or 2 Oracle Database Standard Edition One licenses, and the client software was free anyway…
Some rain must fall
The first disconnect I experienced with licensed software was that time we needed to deploy Oracle Reports Server.
After porting our application successfully to some kind of pre-APEX framework, we needed to continue our printing facilities as before. The conclusion was to use Oracle Reports Server, which we could call to fulfill the exact same functionality as the original client-server printing agent (rwrbe60.exe, I’ll never forget) did. There was only no way we could do this, other than buying licenses for (I though it was) Oracle BI Publisher, something each of our clients had to do. This made printing more expensive than the entire database-setup, almost even the biggest part of the entire TCO of our product, which makes no sense at all.

More recently

This disconnect was the first one. Moving forward I noticed and felt more and more of a disconnect between Oracle and, what I like to call, core technology. Call me what you will, I feel that if you want to bring a database to the market and want to stay on top of your game, your focus needs to be at least seriously fixed on that database.

Instead we saw ever more focus for “non-core” technology. Oracle Fusion, Oracle Applications (okay, Oracle Apps had been there always), and as time progressed, the dilution became ever greater. I grew more and more in the belief that Oracle didn’t want to be that Database Company anymore (which proved to be true in the), but it was tough for me to believe. Here I was, having spent most of my active career focused on this technology, and now it was derailing (as it felt to me).

We saw those final things, with the elimination of Oracle Standard Edition One, basically forcing an entire contingent of their customers either out (too expensive) or up (invest in Oracle Standard Edition Two, and deal with more cost for less functionality). What appeared to be a good thing, ended up leaving a bad taste in the mouth.
And, of course… the Oracle Cloud, I am not even going to discuss that in this blog post, sorry.

The switch to Postgres

For me the switch was in two stages. First, there was this situation that I was looking for something to do… I had completed my challenge and, through a good friend, ran into the kind people of EnterpriseDB. A company I only had little knowledge of doing stuff for PostgreSQL (or Postgres if you like, please, no Postgré or things alike please, find more about the project here), a database I had not so much more knowledge of. But, their challenge was very interesting! Grow and show Postgres and the good things it brings to the market.

Before I knew it, I was studying Postgres and all the things that Postgres brings. Which was easy enough in the end, as the internal workings and structures of Postgres and Oracle do not differ that much. I decided to do a presentation on the differences between Postgres and Oracle in Riga. I was kindly accepted by the committee even when I told them, my original submission had changed!
A very good experience, even today, but with an unaccepted consequence. -> The second part of the switch was Oracle’s decision to cut me out of the Oracle ACE program.

It does free me up, somehow, to help database users across Europe, re-evaluate their Oracle buy-in and lock-in. Look at smarter and (much) more (cost)-effective ways to handle their database workloads. This finalized “the switch”, so to speak.
Meanwhile more and more people are realizing that there actually are valid alternatives to the Oracle database. After the adoption of the Oracle database as the only serious solution back in the early 1990’s, the world has changed, also for serious database applications!

End of Part I

Please follow this link to the second part of this blog post.

SYSAUX LOB segment for auditing bug not released in Standard Edition

Last week we were struck by an issue, which turned out to be a bite from a bug!
SYSAUX table-space had quickly filled up to the “my data-file is full”-limit, which in the end was fixed by adding a data-file.

Strange thing though, that for a very small footprint database, we now have a very big SYSAUX table-space.

Some investigation brought me to the Unified Auditing being standard active in database 12c (you can read up on that background with my friend Ann Sjökvist here).
We are faced though with a different (and possibly a little more obscure) Bug 20077418 – RECLAIMING THE SECUREFILE LOB SEGEMENT IN 12.1 Standard Edition.
What this bug boils down to is the following:
There is a lot of audit data recorded by default, the ORA_SECURECONFIG profile is running out of the box. I haven’t taken the time to figure exactly out what is written, where and how, but I know it involves a LOB segment (SYS_LOB0000091833C00014$ by SYSAUD) which is, in our case in comparison to the total database size, HUGHE!! The management of this audit data, usually driven by DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT, has absolutely no effect on this segment (at least not on shrinking it).

Searching for the mentioned bug you just find to EE bugs (18109788 & 22272580) but they at least they give _some_ clues… The actual bug is undisclosed and in status 11 (being worked on).
In the end it means that auditing is fine, even in SE, but, for the moment, restrain yourself… The data you gather cannot be managed (yet). And for the rest:

If
select policy_name
from audit_unified_enabled_policies
;

yields any results, consider switching this auditing off (eg.SQL> noaudit policy ORA_SECURECONFIG;)

Hope this helps…

DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS and SE2

This blog post is inspired on work I have been doing on Standard Edition databases and the returning confusion about what is and what is not part of Standard Edition.

DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS is a tool in determining license usage for the Oracle database. It is good to understand the implications of each entry, know what is happening in your database and thus be able to have a substantial conversation about the usage of your license, being SE, SEO, SE2 or EE!

This list is the full list of DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS and I have found no source where there is a mapping of these features to database editions. As it is a lot of tedious work I call upon the community to help complete the list and make it as accurate as can be. So, if you have news, improvements, other bits of information, please send it to me and I will make sure it gets added!

WARNING: Still… with all the work that goes into these answers, it is not the law, it is a very serious interpretation of facts which will pay a part in helping you make the right decision when it comes to database licensing.

Feature Standard Edition
Active Data Guard – Real-Time Query on Physical Standby NO !
ADDM NO !
Advanced Replication NO !
Application Express YES
ASO native encryption and checksumming NO – EE option !
Audit Options NO !
Automatic Maintenance – Optimizer Statistics Gathering YES
Automatic Maintenance – Space Advisor YES
Automatic Maintenance – SQL Tuning Advisor NO !
Automatic Memory Tuning
Automatic Segment Space Management (system) YES
Automatic Segment Space Management (user)
Automatic SGA Tuning YES
Automatic SQL Execution Memory YES
Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor NO !
Automatic Storage Management
Automatic Undo Management
Automatic Workload Repository
AWR Baseline NO !
AWR Baseline Template NO !
AWR Report NO !
Backup BASIC Compression
Backup BZIP2 Compression
Backup Encryption
Backup HIGH Compression
Backup LOW Compression
Backup MEDIUM Compression
Backup Rollforward
Backup ZLIB Compression
Baseline Adaptive Thresholds
Baseline Static Computations
Bigfile Tablespace
Block Media Recovery NO !
Change Data Capture NO !
Change-Aware Incremental Backup
Character Semantics
Character Set
Client Identifier
Clusterwide Global Transactions
Compression Advisor
Crossedition Triggers
CSSCAN
Data Guard NO !
Data Mining NO – EE option !
Data Recovery Advisor
Database Migration Assistant for Unicode
Database Replay: Workload Capture NO ! 1
Database Replay: Workload Replay NO ! 1
DBMS_STATS Incremental Maintenance
Deferred Open Read Only
Deferred Segment Creation NO !
Direct NFS
Dynamic SGA
Editioning Views
Editions
EM Database Control
EM Grid Control
EM Performance Page
Encrypted Tablespaces
Exadata
Extensibility
File Mapping
Flashback Data Archive NO ! 2
Flashback Database NO !
GoldenGate NO – EE option ! 3
HeapCompression
Hybrid Columnar Compression NO !
Instance Caging NO !
Internode Parallel Execution
Job Scheduler
Label Security NO – EE option !
LOB
Locally Managed Tablespaces (system) YES
Locally Managed Tablespaces (user)
Locator YES
Logfile Multiplexing
Long-term Archival Backup
Materialized Views (User) NO !
Messaging Gateway NO !
MTTR Advisor
Multi Section Backup
Multiple Block Sizes
Object
OLAP – Analytic Workspaces NO – EE option !
OLAP – Cubes NO – EE option !
Oracle Database Vault NO – EE option !
Oracle Java Virtual Machine (system) YES
Oracle Java Virtual Machine (user)
Oracle Managed Files
Oracle Multimedia
Oracle Multimedia DICOM
Oracle Secure Backup
Oracle Text
Oracle Utility Datapump (Export)
Oracle Utility Datapump (Import)
Oracle Utility External Table
Oracle Utility Metadata API
Oracle Utility SQL Loader (Direct Path Load)
Parallel SQL DDL Execution NO !
Parallel SQL DML Execution NO !
Parallel SQL Query Execution NO !
Partitioning (system) YES
Partitioning (user) NO – EE option !
PL/SQL Native Compilation
Quality of Service Management NO !
Read Only Tablespace
Real Application Clusters (RAC) YES 4
Real-Time SQL Monitoring
Recovery Area
Recovery Manager (RMAN) YES
Resource Manager NO !
Restore Point
Result Cache NO !
RMAN – Disk Backup
RMAN – Tape Backup
Rules Manager
SecureFile Compression (system) YES
SecureFile Compression (user)
SecureFile Deduplication (system) YES
SecureFile Deduplication (user)
SecureFile Encryption (system) YES
SecureFile Encryption (user)
SecureFiles (system) YES
SecureFiles (user)
Segment Advisor (user)
Segment Shrink
Semantics/RDF NO !
Server Flash Cache
Server Parameter File
Services
Shared Server
Spatial NO – EE option !
SQL Access Advisor
SQL Monitoring and Tuning pages NO – EE option !
SQL Performance Analyzer NO !
SQL Plan Management NO !
SQL Profile
SQL Repair Advisor
SQL Tuning Advisor
SQL Tuning Set (system) YES
SQL Tuning Set (user)
SQL Workload Manager
Streams (system) YES 5
Streams (user)
Transparent Data Encryption
Transparent Gateway YES – option
Transportable Tablespace NO ! 6
Tune MView
Undo Advisor
Very Large Memory
Virtual Private Database (VPD) NO !  7
Workspace Manager
  1. Unless used for upgrade to Enterprise Edition.
  2. Unless used without history table optimization.
  3. Goldengate can also be used with Standard Edition, it is a separate product.
  4. RAC on Enterprise Edition is an option.
  5. No capture from redo.
  6. Import transportable tablespaces in all editions.
  7. Policies on XDB$ACL$xd_sp in sys.v_$vpd_policy are internal ( “out of the box”) policies that are used by XDB to control the access to certain internal tables. All the logic is implemented in the xdb.DBMS_XDBZ package and there is no way one can control / influence the way this is working.

Oracle Standard Edition 2, a bright new future

Okay, it is not very much more than smoke, since Ludovico Caldara found MOS note 2027072.1 about the support of Standard Edition 12.1.0.2.0 and blogged and tweeted about it.

Despite Ludovico’s disclaimer, there is, nevertheless, some smoke… And Twitter quite quickly filled up (at least the early where I take interest). Dominic Giles stated: “More to come soon!” And Ann Sjökvist urged calmness by saying: “let’s wait for facts!” And of course she is right.

Why then this blogpost?

As one of the founders of the Oracle Standard Edition Round Table (#orclSERT), this interests me. Standard Edition One comprises the most cost effective software stack around. For a deeper dive on that statement, please visit an orclSERT session at an Oracle Usergroup event near you, or drop me a line.
Obviously some kind of news of this category has been long expected as the development of “ever more cores per socket” kept increasing. We have been eagerly awaiting this for a few years actually, hesitant to speak about it… For obvious reasons 😉

Where there is smoke, there is fire, especially when PM’s speak. And as the note states that the release of SE2 is foreseen for Q3 of 2015 (which coincidently is THIS quarter) I would like to prepare myself…

This is what we have to go by for now:

Beginning with the release of Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 Standard Edition 2 (SE2), Standard Edition (SE) and Standard Edition One (SE1) are replaced by Standard Edition 2. SE2 will run on systems with up to 2 sockets and will have the ability to support a two node RAC cluster. 12.1.0.1 was the final edition that we will produce for SE and SE1. Customers running SE or SE1 will need to migrate their licenses to SE2 to be able to upgrade to 12.1.0.2.

1. SE2 will run on systems with up to 2 sockets.
– This is not different from the current SE1 rule;
– This means that a 4 socket SE installation will have to be revised, either migrate up to EE or revamp to 2 sockets;

2. SE2 will have the ability to run a 2 node cluster.
– RAC will become available across the board in the Standard Edition realm.
– How many sockets will a full SE2 cluster be able to support? 2 sockets, if you would follow current rules, 4 sockets if the license would be optimal!

And it is always good to speculate about price… And mind you, this is smoke! The best educated guess so far, 3/4 between SE1 and SE, which could (hopefully) bring the price to round about 10k euro per socket, but… who knows? Perhaps, as Ludovico also stated, socket licensing could become history?

The great news is, Oracle Standard Edition will remain available as the alternative to the Enterprise Edition installations. For more information we will just have to hold our breath a little longer.
But, be assured, during the next session of #orclSERT we will be able to tell you (much) more!

Meanwhile I will keep preparing (and talking about it), for this change will have some impact yet…

OUGN15, The “boat conference” revisited

Jan at shipsport
Reflections on OUGN

Sometimes things in life can change quickly! It is only two years ago that I came to Oslo for the first time to join the Scandinavian Oracle crew on a boat trip to Kiel.
At that time I had never actually participated in this kind of experience and I wasn’t into presenting either. Together with my good friend Philippe Fierens I discovered a whole new world back then. You could have read about these experiences in some blogpost, but this was lost in the move to my own site, sorry!

And this trip couldn’t have been more different though! With three presentations accepted the two days at sea will be a reunion with the friends I made over the last years, as well as a way to contribute to one of the most tight knit tech communities I know. And this will be in a scene that I remember vividly from being a newbie… And this is somewhat strange, believe me

After a quick and pleasant flight I touched down in Oslo, flying from Amsterdam with a decent sized crew of Dutch Oracle enthusiasts, including my good friends Patrick Barel and Alex Nuijten. Waiting in the Oslo airport for Luís Marques, I catches up with Gurcan Orhan, which was a great surprise.
Later that day we found ourselves in the Oslo harbor for the speakers dinner. You can imagine the collective amount of Oracle knowledge packed into that one restaurant!

frits
Enkitek’s Frits Hoogland on Ansible

After a somewhat restless night we arrived, on Thursday morning, at the ship Color Fantasy with the Heli Helskyaho-company, just in time for the keynotes. It was good to see Mark Rittman and James Morle made it on board too. Especially as James was up for the delivery of version 2.0 of his vibrant keynote! Next we proceeded to bring our luggage to our cabins and grab a spot of lunch on the exhibition floor down in the belly of the ship. The setup of the exhibition was quite nice and gave a good opportunity to mix and mingle.
The afternoon was spent on sessions, where I visited Frits Hoogland with the Ansible talk, and preparation for my own session at 18:00. This is the last run of this APEX presentation, as I have retired it after OUGN15. The slides will be archived here.
After finalizing the preparation for the third edition of the Standard Edition Round Table (aka “slide polishing”) with the #orclSERT team, comprising of Ann Sjökvist, Philippe and myself, it was time for the souree and for diner in the grand restaurant on board. It has been a good first day!

Diner
Dinner with the international crew on board the Color Fantasy.
Gin-tonic
Warm reception at Kiel port.

The second day of OUGN15 started with a multitude of sessions including the third edition of the Oracle Standard Edition Round Table, which was actually quite busy and interactive. We had some good discussions, and that at 09:00, so thank you, everybody.
Of course, as was declared a tradition, Björn Rost was present in the Kiel harbor. With the famous “Basil smash Gin & tonic” and sandwiches we were welcomed on German soil.
My afternoon comprised 3 sessions, starting with my own called “Okay, and now my database server crashed…” which was quite nicely received. Next Alex Nuijten on 12c new features for developer, topped off with Tim Gorman who taught us to be CSI people, in finding issues in the database.
After an enjoyable evening in the various bars and discotheques of the ship we retired the official part of the Oracle User Group Norway Vårseminar 2015, thanking the board and of course especial Øyvind Isene, for their hard work.

If you want to catch up further on the unconference communications surrounding this event, please do checkout the Twitter hashtag #OUGN15. This will also include a great set of snapshots and pictures taken along the way…

Oslo, until the next time!