2007

It's that time of year again. As I think back to the past year with my Oracle-tinted glasses on, it all feels a little depressing for some reason, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it'll become clearer as I look through the old posts.

Actually, as a side-note, although I've often expressed my lack of interest in blog statistics relative to others, I must profess an occasional craving for reading old blog posts. At first I worried about the implicit vanity, but then realised it's just like having a diary (which I could never be bothered with) and looking back on old memories. I suppose that's a sign I'm getting older It's also useful because it reminds me what I said I would blog about in future!

January

I'll always remember this as the month I spent in Ottawa, working with Pythian. Most of the blog posts that month were related but, looking back, those hotel room mornings were quite productive. As well as ranting away about documentation, there were a few more bizarre personal entries. In fact, the first sighting of unwritten future blog topics appeared this month when I started a series on DBA Documentation, never to be completed! I'd quite like to revisit that at some point, but I have other plans for now.

February

From a personal point of view, February was chaos, as I tried to set up a home office, adjust to working with the timezone differences with head office in Ottawa, deal with the usual personal stuff and worry about Hotsos. In retrospect, it was a much more stressful period than I realised at the time. The biggest issue for North American Oracle users was the impact of the Daylight Savings Time change. Wow, looking back at that one makes me shudder! Of course, it turned out ok in the end, but there were a few weeks when I dreaded anyone mentioning DST to me. Oh, and add 'a closer investigation of OraSRP' to that list of blog topics I didn't get round to

March

March was dominated by my trip to Dallas for the Hotsos Symposium. Looking back, it was a little like UKOUG later in the year in that my enjoyment of it was limited (but only a little) by having left myself with too much to do on my presentation. I can't say I was too happy with the paper, but I still have some good memories, not least sitting in the sun and chatting about Oracle with Marco. There's a picture of that moment in Marco's review of his year.

April

Things came to a head in April as I decided that Pythian and I weren't a great combination. I'd been thinking it over since the end of January actually, but thought I'd give it a month or two. I won't trawl through the reasons all over again, but my improved happiness in the last two thirds of the year proved it was the right decision. I have great confidence in my instincts I'd hoped to keep a working relationship going with Pythian but I settled on what felt right later in the year. That Dirty Dozen series seems like a good idea to me, though, so hopefully someone else will pick them up ...

Of course, this was also the month I proclaimed my love of Vista!! (Which will no doubt invite a deluge of comments I can't answer properly or maybe I can't be bothered answering, to be honest.) Actually, I don't love it, but I must confess I'm utterly puzzled by everyone else's hatred of it, including several people I have tons of respect for. Maybe I'm just getting old and sloppy and these things don't bother me that much. Oh, and I'll *never* forget this morning. Not long later, the next stage of my life started. I've enjoyed it so far, but I didn't start off too well with my Production DBA colleagues

May

This month saw one of the minor scuffles over Oracle's relationship with the blogging community. Although at first sight it can seem like a storm in a tea-cup and just another example of blogger's over-active egos, I suspect it's just a reflection of people's passion, which is no bad thing. Then again, looking at the lack of technical content that month (a listener bug and relinking some products out of the executables), there's no doubt that the community chitter-chatter is ultimately a distraction.

June

The Miracle Scotland Datbase Forum popped it's head round the door this month. Looking back, it was quite a unique event and a great opportunity to see friends like Kurt and Alex in my home town. I wish I'd spent more time with them, but it was two-and-a-half intense days! I'll gloss over the cuddly toy incident because the fall-out from that took a while to dissipate ... probably about as long as it took Thomas Presslie to recover from the organisation! Oh, and there was more ranting about the Oracle ACE program.

July

The month that Oracle 11g documents appeared (although the download didn't appear until August). The first thing I went to look for was to see if anything that smelled like Rob Squier's temporal database work had made it into this release. I can't say for certain, but this looks pretty familiar Having become a little sick of polluting my own blog with all sorts of bizarre nonsense, I decided to split some of the more personal stuff on to another blog. I wouldn't say the experiment has been a big success, but I'll stick with it for now.

August

Saw me sticking up for what I believe, for a change I suppose the only surprise here was when I heard unexpectedly contrary views whilst at Openworld and realised that my feelings may not be as common as I thought. Each to their own, I suppose, but I don't expect my feelings to change any time soon. It's not that I'm naive enough to think I'm right about everything, but some things seem pretty black and white to me. I won't be losing any sleep over it, though On the technical side of things, I was spending my working life on test environment refreshes, so that prompted a few blogs discussing some of the more subtle issues.

September

I seemed to spend most of September fighting with failed installations! On the more interesting side, I started messing around with parallel query in 11g and came across a surprising result. 11g uses Direct Path Reads for non-parallel queries. I must confess I was pretty excited about that. Almost as much as I'm disappointed that three months have elapsed without me pursuing it further. So, if there's one more thing I'm going to play with before working on the course (more on that later), it's that.

October

October was a quiet blogging month, as I spent a long-awaited week on holiday with Mads in Crete and drew breath before the conference season kicked off again. There was the first Reality Gap blog, based on one of the issues I discussed in my presentation at the OUG Scotland conference, and they would appear spasmodically over the next couple of months. They've definitely been a success because they obviously touched a nerve with a lot of people.

November

Was, unsurprisingly, dominated by my trip to Openworld in San Francisco. There's a positive posting deluge there, but I suppose my favourite was this one I really enjoyed the trip and was surprised how well organised the event was to the extent that I never felt overwhelmed or annoyed by the crowds. I got to meet quite a few people for the first time face-to-face too.

December

... and so on to UKOUG. The two conferences were an interesting contrast and, whilst UKOUG may not have the pizzazz of Openworld, I think I'm more comfortable in the rather homely surroundings, amongst people who are becoming old friends (some of them *very* old ). It was a complex week, of course, with the whole plagiarism blog. I'd rather not draw any more attention to it, but it would be deeply dishonest to pretend it didn't happen when most people who will read this already know the story. What I would like to say is thank you to the many people who sent me heart-felt messages of support and to the various User Group representatives who reacted in a very enouraging way. I really saw the good side to the Oracle community that week. December also brought the best news, looking forward to next year, that I'll be going back to teaching and writing a course on my own terms!

So, what have I learned this year? I think the community of Oracle users, like all communities, contains people who I'll always be grateful to have met through attending conferences, blogging and my day to day work. I've made some genuine friends who I have the utmost respect for, even if I don't get to see them too often It also contains people who I don't have the first thing in common with (other than using Oracle) but I'm sure the feeling is mutual and that's cool. It's the way communities work and the internet is making those communities bigger than ever before so I shouldn't be surprised.

But, to elaborate on that point with a happier example, I kept quiet about this at the time because it was a little over the top and embarassing but, during a particularly tense day at UKOUG this year, some Belgians took it on themselves to offer a little moral support by posting a message on the UKOUG's 'comment board'. I was going to keep it quiet, but I saw it on Marco's blog and it made me chuckle to think about it again I can assure you that I have no plans for power!

I wish you all the best in the New Year and I must admit I'm looking forward to it more than normal.

Now, I'm sure there's a glass of Birthday/Hogmanay Champagne with my name on it round here somewhere, so it's time to stop blogging for this year

Cheers!