Oracle OpenWorld: Data Warehousing and Bitmap Indexes

The slides of my OpenWorld presentation “Data Warehousing and Bitmap Indexes: More Than Just Some Bits” are now available on Slideshare.

Oracle OpenWorld: Future of OWB

At the Oracle DEMOgrounds I talked to Robert Costin Velisar, Director of Software Development for Oracle Data Integrator. I asked him about the planned integration of Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and wanted to know what we should recommend to our customers that use OWB in many of their projects. His answer was more or less what is written in the updated version of Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle Warehouse Builder Statement of Direction (May 2011), but a bit more concrete.

Oracle OpenWorld: In the Oracle Bookstore

In the Moscone West building at the OpenWorld, there is a bookstore full of Oracle books (they also have Oracle teddy bears, Oracle T-shirts, Oracle bags, Oracle water bottles and other advertising stuff). I spent some of my rare spare time between the sessions to grub in many interesting books.

Oracle OpenWorld: Meet the Oakies

In his OOW session, Joze Senegacnik called them ironically the “bitter old men”: the members of OakTable that still run queries on V$-views in SQL*Plus instead of using Enterprise Manager. But the fact is that they are not only some of the most experienced Oracle performance specialists and famous book authors, but also excellent speakers – at least those which I had the chance to see in a presentation.

Oracle OpenWorld: The Green Conference

The organizers of the OpenWorld are very proud about their investment to save the environment by recycling PET bottles and using dishes made out of paperboard instead of plastic. This is definitely a good beginning, but there are still a lot of other things to do before the conference is really “green”. My proposal is to reduce the power of the air conditioning at the Marriott Marquis conference center. The rooms in the Moscone center are cool, but the ones in Marriott Marquis are really cold. Sitting in a session in this building is similar to a polar expedition. How many kilowatts could be saved by change the temperature to a moderate level?

OracleOpen World: Keep Your Data Warehouse in Memory

The approach is not really new: To avoid disk access and improve performance, load all of your data into memory. I remember the cool feature called “RAM disks” on an  Apple][ when I went to school.