Conference Program

We are entering a new era in database with the introduction of the first ever Autonomous Database Cloud. Oracle Database has also switching to a new annual release model to support this new era. But what does this mean to you and how will it change how you interact with the Oracle Database? This session provides a clear understanding of how our unique Autonomous Database Cloud works and illustrates how it will impact both DBAs and developers. It also provides a unique opportunity to get ahead of the curve and learn what’s new in Oracle Database 20c directly from the Oracle Database development team.

Data analytics is all about finding hidden patterns and correlations in your data and presenting the results in clear and expressive graphics. Many tools are available to do this on numerical data, and many show those results on maps: a good example is Oracle Data Visualization (DV). But very few tools are able to analyze data in a spatial context: finding concentrations of customers, correlating accidents with road conditions etc. Enter Oracle Spatial Studio: a new and innovative tool to analyse all your data from a spatial perspective. We begin by “spatially enabling” your existing data: turning your customer and store addresses into searchable coordinates. We continue by applying a variety of analytics on our data, and finally show the... Read More

Oracle has delivered many enhancements in the optimizer for Exadata and the Autonomous Database, but what about core features? This session introduces you to the changes we have made to core optimizer features starting with the differences between Oracle Database 12c Release 1 and Release 2, and then through to the latest Oracle Database. In particular, it covers the most important differences you will encounter as you upgrade, helping you to understand what you can do to make the upgrade experience as smooth as possible.

The Model Clause adds spreadsheet-like functionality to the SQL language. Very powerful stuff, yet the syntax can be quite daunting. With the Model Clause, you define a multidimensional array from query results and then apply formulas to this array to calculate new values. This presentation will give you a gentle introduction in the complex syntax of the Model Clause and will show you some real life examples where the Model Clause was invaluable.

When databases get ever larger and larger, backing them up using traditional RMAN backupsets will quickly get unfeasible. Completing a backup requires too much time and resources, but more importantly the same also applies to restores. RMAN has always provided a solution as incrementally updated image copies, but they are much less manageable than backupsets. This presentation goes into detail on how to successfully implement incremental-forever database backup strategy together with a capable storage system like Netapp or ZFS Storage Appliance, and on how to build more advanced features on top that platform, like automation and cloning. Prerequisites: Attendees should be familiar with RMAN and have an overview how backup and recovery works in Oracle. In addition attendees should have... Read More

Oracle DBAs are often faced with the task of upgrading the Database and this includes the Oracle RAC stack like Oracle Clusterware, ASM etc. This session will go over the best practices to upgrade Oracle Grid Infrastructure including the steps to upgrade the OS as in the case of Oracle 19c. We will also handle failure scenarios and how to fix the failed upgrade.

When developing a new modern application, there are many pitfalls to be aware of. The cloud is not changing that. On the contrary, the way you code your application now directly translates to (recurring) costs required for cpu, memory, disk, and bandwidth. Reducing your cloud footprint becomes something you may want to take into account. This session will explore the top issues that the real-world performance group encounters during escalations of badly performing applications. We’ll show what coding practices are the underlying root causes, and discuss alternative approaches you should explore.

We all make mistakes. Making mistakes is an opportunity to learn. But as a first step you have to recognize the mistakes you made. If you don’t, those mistakes might evolve into a practice. A bad practice. But you can also learn from someone else’s mistakes. That’s why I crowdsourced “Bad Practices” that people have encountered in the wild. And I was suprised by the numerous examples people came up with. So this session will cover real world examples of practices that are labeled as “bad”. Of course we will discuss why these practices are bad and what would be the better solution.

The plan for a SQL statement can seem complicated and hard to understand. Determining if the plan you are got is the best plan can be a daunting task. This session examines the different aspects of a plan, and explains what info you should be gleaming from the plan and how it affects the execution.

ADW includes a number of technologies designed to enhance and in some cases self-tune performance. This talk presents what they are, how they work, and what they help from a strictly technical point of view. Topics covered will include In-Memory format column cache and how DMLs are handled, Auto-Indexing, ILM, and new performance enhancements for joins in the latest major release.

Well done! You’ve come up with the killer idea for 2019! You’ve got the best UI design anyone has ever seen! Your modern application ticks all the boxes – serverless, functional, kubernetes, kafka, microservices, API-based, the list goes on. And it runs on every OS and every type of device! But unfortunately … all of this counts for absolutely NOTHING if your data access is slow or you get hacked. And rest assured, if you don’t understand how SQL is processed, you are going to have slow applications AND you are going to get hacked.This session will peel back the covers to show developers the important fundamentals of SQL processing and how incredibly fast it can be when done right.... Read More

Where you are can be important information. Learn how to retrieve your location in an APEX application, how to store it in the database and how to use it for reporting or useful default values. The presentation will contain many real life examples and demo APEX plugins to simplify the development.

Everybody is talking about machine learning. What is it all about and how can I use it? In this presentation we will see some examples of solving real life use cases with machine learning. We will define Tasks and see how those tasks can be addressed using machine learning.

A converged database, such as Oracle Database, is a smart choice for your enterprise data platform since it greatly simplifies application development, security and administration. However there are still cases in which carefully chosen specialized databases can help to complement a converged architecture for specific uses. In this session we will discuss two specialized databases: Oracle TimesTen In-Memory database for ultra-low response times for extreme OLTP, and Oracle NoSQL database for the ultimate in globally scalable key value processing. Both of these databases can be used to augment a converged architecture with their unique capabilities and deep integration with Oracle Database.

Understanding how Oracle Database data and index compression works, what has changed in the latest versions and discussing compression best practices can help you in getting the best results with Oracle Compression. Join Oracle Product Management to gain insights on compression topics that include: when compression occurs during bulk loads and DML inserts/updates, when to use Index Key (prefix) Compression versus Advanced Index Compression, how to track compression using AWR as well as recent Advanced Row Compression and Hybrid Columnar Compression enhancements with Oracle Database. This session is the perfect opportunity to get all your compression questions answered by Product Management.

Through the years I’ve been involved in quite a number of serious data migration projects. Usually trying to fit the data of the custom build applications of one company into those of the company that acquired them. The first thing I learned is that obviously there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for such projects. But there are also things I run into each and every time. From the “it’s run-once code so it doesn’t have to be maintainable” attitude via “we don’t have people available, can you do the testing too” up to deadlines that seem more important than quality. This session highlights some of those experiences, so that if you are about to be pulled into such a data migration... Read More

Both graph analysis and machine learning can be used very effectively to detect anomalies and outliers in datasets. The former is particularly useful when data can be represented as a network in which the connectedness of data, ie. the explicit relationships between entities, play a role. Networks of bank accounts connected by financial transactions are one obvious example, which is why modern fraud prevention applications use graph analytics and pattern matching on this kind of data. Graph analysis can be complemented by machine learning to yield results that are even more accurate. In this session, we will show how a Spanish bank and an Eastern European provider of e-payments are using graph analysis for the purpose of fraud detection. We... Read More

What is deep learning? Where can it be used and how does it work? What are convolutional neural networks and how do they work? In this presentation we will get answers to these questions and many more.

Wikipedia defines infrastructure as code as “the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.” This principle greatly simplifies setting up and managing large server parks, it also helps with repeatability and auditability in all environments. In a traditional Oracle database world we are not yet used to thinking like this, possibly because we are so used to the fact that we scale up and not out. As the number of said sever nodes is so small we can afford to give them cute names and we care about our databases and servers like our most beloved pets. This in turn makes the server configurations unique, not... Read More

Database administrators sometimes need to control or change SQL execution plans. If application code can be modified, then DBAs or database architects might ask application developers to make SQL statement changes or apply query hints. Alternatively, the DBA might change the physical database design or use SQL management objects (such as SQL profiles and SQL plan baselines) and avoid any need for change in the application. Allied to this, some application developers routinely hint SQL statements in an attempt to mitigate any need for SQL tuning later on. There are many approaches to plan stability, and the Oracle Database provides a wide variety of solutions. But what are the pitfalls of each approach and what can the DBA do in... Read More

Oracle Visual Builder is a new platform that simplify the development of mobile and web apps with the latest industry standards tech stack – JavaScript/HTML/REST. In this demo focused session get an introduction to the capabilities of the the platform, and learn how you can leverage it to create new bespoke applications, or extend existing apps with new UIs.

Another year goes by, and most likely, another data access framework has been invented. It will claim to be the fastest, smartest way to talk to the database, and just like all those that came before it, it will not be. Because the best database access tool has been there for more than 30 years now, and that is PL/SQL. Although we all sometimes fall prey to the mindset of “Oh look, a shiny new tool, we should start using it,” the performance and simplicity of PL/SQL remains unmatched. This session looks at the failings of other data access languages, why even a cursory knowledge of PL/SQL will make you a better developer, and how to get the most out... Read More

Autonomous Database Services have expanded well beyond their original scope of heavy analytical workloads (ADW) and hybrid transaction processing / reporting workloads (ATP) to include dedicated Cloud-based instances to eliminate contention between “œnoisy neighbors” in the same region and domain. This session demonstrates how Oracle DBAs at any skill level can immediately leverage Autonomous resources as force multipliers to free them from most mundane administration tasks so they can concentrate on mastering the new skills required to become an Enterprise Data Architect – the emerging post-DBA role – and shift their focus towards building better enterprise systems in concert with their organization’s application developers, business analysts, and business units.

Flashback Data Archive (FDA) provides the ability to track and store transactional changes to a table over its lifetime. FDA provides a mechanism for tracking changes to production databases that is secure, efficient, easy to use and application transparent. FDA allows organizations to configure historical data capture in a matter of minutes and provides a centralized, and seamlessly queryable, historical data store that can help reduce your cost of compliance. Flashback Data Archive provides many benefits over traditional application and trigger-based methods for maintaining historic data. FDA data is tamper-proof — no database users, not even privileged users, can change the FDA maintained data. Flashback Data Archive is useful for compliance with record stage policies and audit reports. Please join... Read More

Part of the Oracle database since Oracle8, Oracle have discontinued Oracle Multimedia as of Oracle 19c. This leaves existing customers with a dilemma, either keep their multimedia on 18c and put off the inevitable for as long as possible, or find another solution for image processing. We’ll take a look at some of the alternatives available to APEX and PL/SQL developers. In particular how to use RESTful web services to call a range of cloud providers to process images. Image resizing, watermark creation and other manipulations will be demonstrated.

This session will focus on basics of what Machine Learning is , different types of Machine Learning and Neural Networks , supervised and unsupervised machine learning , autoML for training models and this ends with an example of how to predict workloads using Average Active sessions and different algorithms as an example and also how to predict maintenance windows for your databases. We will also use different open source frameworks as well as some of the tools in the Autonomous Database cloud to do this. If you are a DBA and want to learn something about machine learning and use the tools to perform your tasks more efficiently and automatically

Oracle APEX, the low code application framework included with Oracle Database, has quietly grown into a mature, modern and robust application development and deployment platform loved by hundreds of thousands of developers around the globe. Using a minimal amount of code, developers are able to quickly build scalable, secure enterprise apps, with world-class features, that can be deployed anywhere. Best of all, APEX is included for free with all versions of Oracle Database, including the free Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) and the Oracle Autonomous Database on the Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Oracle APEX delivers on the promise of low code, and enables organizations to be more agile and solution driven. Oracle APEX appeals to professional developers, line of business... Read More

Who says setting up and managing a database needs to be hard? Come to this session, to be introduced to Oracle Database Cloud Service, a new approach that allows anyone to build and manage cloud environments. In this session, you will learn how to create a cloud database from scratch, including: – How to set up your environment – How to create your database – How to set up OS secure authentication, generate a key and create a storage container; – How Oracle Database Cloud can be scaled up in real time adding memory, CPU and storage; – How to apply Patches; – Experience the database monitoring and administration console available via web access; – Backup methods; – Migration from... Read More

Oracle database 18c introduces Polymorphic Table Functions. This session will tell you about Polymorphism. How can you apply this in pre-18c databases? I will show you what problem and the solution when your data or structure changes. I will also show you an example of a Polymorphic Table Function and how this can help protect you from changing table structures and how you can apply the same code to different table structures without changing or even recompiling the code. After this session you will understand when to use which technique.

ORDS, the Oracle Rest Data Services, has evolved from just a supporting component of Oracle Application Express to the de facto standard tool for delivering RESTful API services for the Oracle database. In this session we will cover – what is Oracle Rest Data Services – set up Oracle Rest Data Services to talk to your database – use Oracle Rest Data Services to get data of all sorts in and out of your database – create documentation for your API’s – secure the calls through Oracle Rest Data Services In the end it will be clear, it is not magic. It is the best way to get even more value out of your Oracle database! This presentation will cover... Read More

Discover how Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) protects your critical data by enabling data-at-rest encryption in the database. It protects the privacy of your information, prevents data breaches and helps meet regulatory requirements. TDE enables data-at-rest encryption by encrypting the physical files of the database. Data is encrypted automatically, in real time, prior to writing to storage and decrypted when read from storage. As a result, hackers and malicious users are unable to read sensitive data from tablespace files, database backups or disks.

Oracle Data Guard and Oracle Active Data Guard have long been the answer for the real-time protection, availability, and usability of Oracle data. Attend this session to get an in-depth look at several key new features that will make your life easier and protect your data in new and more flexible ways. Learn how Oracle Active Data Guard 19c has been integrated with Oracle Database In-Memory and offers a faster application response after a role transition. See how DML can now be redirected from an Oracle Active Data Guard standby to its primary for more flexible data protection in today’s data centers or your data clouds. Leave this technical session with a glimpse of upcoming new features.

You’re a busy Oracle DBA. Your phone rings. It’s your most troublesome user, once again complaining that her query is running slow. You take a quick look at the execution plan, find a possible choice for a new index to improve its performance, and drop it in place: Problem solved. Or is it? Even an experienced DBA may not immediately realize the impact that new index will have on the performance of dozens of other queries and DML statements. Finally, there’s a better way: Let the database decide. This session will show how Automatic Index Creation (AIC) – one of the newest features of Oracle Database 19c – provides an intriguing alternative to reactive performance tuning methodologies for index creation.... Read More

Data Protection is becoming more relevant, especially now that GDPR is a thing. Of course it is easy enough to add predicates to your reports and restrict the data shown. But how do you handle data entry? Implementing this level of security can be handled by the application, but we all know this is not the way to do it. What if the user downloads SQLcl or SQLDeveloper and sets up a connection to the database? What if we want to expose part of the data as REST Services? The most logical place to protect data is as close to where the data is stored, being the database. The Oracle database offers several methods to keep data private, such as... Read More

Autonomous Database is one of the hottest Oracle products where we have attempted to use Machine Learning for several aspects of the service. We take a view on our current state of ML in the Autonomous Database Cloud and how do we process this data in ADW/ATP with zeppelin notebooks to find anomalies in them to troubleshoot them at a scale of several petabytes a year and conduct AIOps. We will cover some sample notebooks to some use cases we will cover are a Log Anomaly timeline which we reduce significant amounts of logs using semi-supervised machine learning techniques to reduce logs and match them in near real time. Some of the other use cases is to use convolution filters... Read More

Oracle RAC is one of the key differentiators in the Database world. It is critical to understand how this works below the covers so DBAs can help troubleshoot problems in their environments. In the new world with SSDs and NVMe’s, Cache fusion is adapting to these changes. We will cover these changes and provide internals on measuring these new capabilities. This will help DBAs to architect their solutions to benefit from Oracle RAC.

Do you shut your Oracle-based system down for application upgrades? Do you upgrade only at nights and weekends (when you are tired and angry) for minimizing downtime? I don’t, for more than 6 years now, because I use Edition-Based Redefinition (EBR). Join this session and learn from my experience. EBR is a powerful feature of Oracle (added in version 11.2), that enables application upgrades with zero downtime, while the application is actively used and operational. I have been using it on a daily basis in a production site that requires frequent application upgrades with very limited downtime, and find it very useful and fascinating. Join this session to learn how to use EBR, see many live examples, and get tips... Read More

Not too long ago, successful applications could focus on feature functionality alone. Today, they must also be beautiful, accessible, and intuitive. In other words, designed for user experience (UX) – because when they are, users are far more productive, more forgiving, and generally happier. Who doesn’t want that? This session will explore the psychology behind a great user experience, examine the key principles of good design, and illustrate how we can apply them to our own projects. Together, we can make user experience a priority, and by doing so, win the hearts and minds of our users.

In this presentation I will introduce MySQL to Oracle Database Administrators. I will show key features and tasks, including database creation, security, data selection and manipulation, backup and recovery. I will give an overview of key MySQL concepts, highlighting MySQL features that will surprise and impress someone familiar with Oracle.

Many Oracle Cloud services, including the Oracle Database supports Powering On/Off, Scale Up/Down and/or Scale In/Out operations. This session will give an overview on which services support dynamic scaling and how you can automate these tasks within OCI. The session will include a live demo.

In this session, we’ll look at 5 things you might not have known about the Oracle Database – or that you might have known about but never realized how they could benefits you. For each topic we will provide a detailed explanation of the functionality and demonstrated the benefits using real-world examples. The topics covered are applicable for any one running Oracle Database 11g and 12c Standard Edition, with only a couple of minor exceptions. After this session, we hope that you’ll understand a little more about these features and how they’ll benefit you and your organization.

It’s been 6 years since Oracle APEX was first presented at the ilOUG Training Days, and a lot has changed since then. Oracle APEX includes support for declaratively integrating datasources from remote databases and extending applications running in the cloud. With REST-enabled forms, you can now easily create full read/write applications using remote datasources. The data loading capabilities of Oracle Application Express have been completely rearchitected, providing far easier and more scalable functionality for moving data into your database. And new data reporting components enable you, the end developer, to deliver powerful data reporting solutions that every user can use immediately. In this session, see these new capabilities and some of the other numerous enhancements to Oracle APEX.

Starting with Oracle Database 12c a new In-Memory column store is available and it is compatible with all existing applications. But how does it work and what steps are required to get started? Rather than answering these questions with a traditional PowerPoint presentation, this session will be conducted via SQL*Plus. Step by step examples will demonstrate how Oracle’s in-memory dual format enables both superfast analytics and online transaction processing. This session will also show how Database In-Memory integrates with Oracle’s existing performance features (i.e. the optimizer, indexes, PQ, etc.). By attending this session, you will arm yourself with the necessary knowledge to not only get started with Database In-Memory but to dramatically improve the performance of your analytic workload.

Oracle 19c introduced an unusual set of new SQL functions: Aggregation functions to create a bitmap: BITMAP_CONSTRUCT_AGG,ֲ BITMAP_OR_AGG Relational operators: BITMAP_COUNT,ֲ BITMAP_BIT_POSITION,ֲ BITMAP_BUCKET_NUMBER What they do and how to use them may not be obvious at first, so this talk will explain each of them in turn and their utility, and then show you a way to use them to get better performance from COUNT( DISTINCT ) operations – an operation that can be a performance drag when running queries

The aim of the presentation is to learn how to use simple stress tools and which scenario fits for each one of them. Objectives: – Understand important characteristics of stress tools – Know how to use the tools – The Right Tool For The Right Job

NDB Cluster 7.x has been focused on Telco and networking applications. With NDB Cluster 8.0 we extend the scope to more application categories such as Key-value stores, financial applications, computer gaming applications and even distributed file systems. We will show a number of benchmarks that shows the limits on database sizes, transaction throughput and query processing capabilities. These benchmarks are all executed in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

This session will focus on 19 troubleshooting tips and tricks for DBAs covering tools from the Oracle Autonomous Health Framework (AHF) like Trace file Analyzer (TFA) to collect , organize and analyze log data , Exachk and orachk to perform mass best practices analysis and automation , Cluster Health Advisor to debug node evictions and calibrate the framework , OSWatcher and its analysis engine , oratop for pinpointing performance issues and many others to make one feel like a rockstar DBA

At Wix Engineering, we are using JSON in blobs Data Type as far back as MySQL 5.5. In this talk, we will share both our wins and losses, our successes and our challenges, when it came to migrating our blob JSON data to JSON data types, and how we use the new data type to improve search time and reduce IO cost.

Modern web applications all use connection pools as a means to interface with the database. Simultaneously executing Java threads timeshare these connections into the database to get SQL executed. A common issue that we encounter in the real-world is oversizing of the connection pool, especially when these pools are configured to dynamically grow as the workload increases. They then give rise to a phenomenon called “oversubscription”. We will explain in detail what this issue is and how it impacts the behavior of the database server. Next we’ll introduce the underlying concepts that enable us to talk sensibly about connection pools and their sizing. And we’ll provide guidelines how to correctly size your connection pools.

Data is getting bigger at an ever increasing rate. Does this mean it is time to ditch your relational database and look at BigData alternatives? Perhaps not if you take advantage of the partitioning options at your disposal in Enterprise Edition. We’ll look at the various types of partitioning, how to decide whether you should be using it (since its an extra cost option), how to get the best out of it, and where it might trip you up.

Oracle Forms aren’t obsolete despite 2 decades of development it is still the backbone of thousands of mission critical applications worldwide. But where does our tried and true Forms stand while everything starts moving to the cloud? In this session, we will show that Oracle Forms is not only alive and well, but it is now a full-fledged member of Oracle’s cloud ecosystem. We will review the 4 ways that you can extend your existing Forms investments to the cloud, including: 1. “Lift-and-Shift” your Forms servers to IAAS 2. extending your applications to new user experiences using Oracle’s rapid development tool Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS) 3. leveraging existing business logic through Chat interfaces using Digital Assistant cloud service 4. doing... Read More

MySQL shell is the MySQL client of the future. It will help you in your daily operations, whatever they are. It doesn’t matter if you are a developer or an administrator, if you want to work with relational or non relational data, if you want to setup or monitor your cluster, if you want to work with SQL language or javascript or python.

Security is one of the best things in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. In this session you will learn the Oracle Cloud full solution architecture, highlighting security features and how to use them to protect your data. Get a comprehensive, end-to-end understanding of Oracle’s security products and how they work together to provide unique and effective solutions to modern security challenges. Main Topics: – Secure shell and ssh key management – Access – Network – Firewalls – Transparent data encryption – Oracle Database Vault – Oracle Database Firewall and Audit Vault – Security on Autonomous Databases

Platform selection criteria and APEX benefits Overall solution architecture APEX for side-by-side extensions for your application SaaS/Cloud multi-tenant alternatives Considering commercial aspects

Do you like working from the command line in sqlplus? Then you will love doing so in SQLcl. You don’t like working from the command line, but have to? Then you will like it a lot more in SQLcl. SQLcl (previously named SDSQL) is the new command line tool that is built by the same team that brings us the GUI SQL Developer. It does everything SQL*Plus does, but on top of that lots and lots more. For example: easy csv creation and loading, querying data from another database without a database link, aliases, repeating queries a set number of times, generating ddl scripts, scripting with e.g. javascript and much more. New features constantly get added, which alone is more... Read More

Oracle recently announced the Oracle Cloud Free Tier, and this includes collection of fully functional cloud services which are free forever (as long as you use them). In this workshop, you will create your own free Oracle Autonomous Database and participate in a number of hands-on-labs which cover loading of data into your database, creating REST endpoints to data in your database, and creating and deploying responsive Web applications using the low code application development framework, Oracle Application Express (APEX). If you’re familiar with SQL, you know everything you need to know to participate. Requirements: 1)  Participants will need to bring a laptop that has Wifi connectivity, and a modern Web browser installed.  You need to be mindful of any... Read More

In this hands-on lab, experience productive visual development with a REST/HTML/JavaScript stack. Leverage Oracle Visual Builder Cloud service  to create mobile and web apps that leverage the cutting-edge UI capabilities of Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (Oracle JET). Also see how to simplify development with a visual approach that drastically reduces the mundane coding of building JavaScript apps.   YOU MUST BRING YOUR OWN LAPTOP  TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS HANDS-ON LAB.

This workshop provides a detailed step-by-step, hands-on experience with Oracle’s Autonomous Data Warehouse. With Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse we make it quick and easy for you to create a secure, fully managed data warehouse service in the Oracle Cloud which allows you to start loading and analyzing your data immediately.

In this workshop the attendees will use the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for building an auto scaling Webserver environment based on Compute, an auto scaling Webserver environment based on Containers, and an Autonomous Database. Prerequisites: each attendee will need to bring their own laptop. The Laptop can run Windows, MacOS or Linux. They need to have enough permission on the laptop to create an SSH / Putty session and use a web browser.