Coming off of the ’24 holiday break, I had an idea jump into my head:
I'll be sharing Oracle Database blogs from our PM team, every working day this month.
— SQL.ProductManager.Oracle.Databases (@thatjeffsmith) January 6, 2025
💡- Flashback Time Travel – from @Killianlynchh https://t.co/yCW1brxF2a
I managed to keep that up for the month of January, and so today I would like to share in the chronological (and no other ranking), the posts I shared with you (on X, BlueSky, & LinkedIn).
Day 1: Flashback Time Travel
Post
Author: Killian Lynch
My take: this feature can save your behind when something ‘bad’ happens to your data. Killian is a great blogger, and shares the technology with handy tips and easy-to-use code samples.
Day 2: Data Pump Trick, Views as Tables
Post
Author: Daniel Overby Hansen
My take: DATA PUMP is a very mature and powerful feature of the database. A lot of people take it for granted, and miss out on a lot of use cases it could be useful for. I learn a lot just by following Mr. Hansen.
Day 3: Docker Compose to combine the ORDS and 23ai FREE containers (for using MLE JavaScript in your APEX app development)
Post
Author: Martin Bach
My take: Martin’s handle implies he’s a DBA, but he consistently puts together and shares some of the best developer-minded content from our database product management team.
Day 4: Securing your ORDS REST APIs with JWTs issued from Azure Entra
Post
Author: Chris Hoina
My take: Microsoft’s Active Directory, now known as Entra, product is being used nearly everywhere for managing identity and privilege management. Being able to tie into that to gate access to your Oracle Database REST APIs is super useful.
Bonus post: same thing, but with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and our IAM service.
Day 5: an invitation to help our friends in Southern California
My take: the devestation from the deadly fire outbreaks in Ventura, LA, and Orange counties was and is a human tragedy.
Instead of sharing a ‘dumb tech post,’ I shared one of a few charitable organizations that I thought would be trustworthy to get resources to the people that needed it most, the United Way of Ventura County.
Day 6: using ‘Generated by default on null as identity’
Post
Author: Connor McDonald
My take: IDENTITY columns are super useful, but in many cases they require flexibility. That is, you want them to generate a value for you…unless you already have one of your own.
Day 7: Don’t give away the farm with your Oracle Database security implementations
Authors: Chris Saxon & Richard Evans
My take: Did I cheat by sharing a YouTube video, yes. Can we talk about security enough, no. Is Richard a great resource for database security, yes. Am I teaming up with him for a topic this Spring, yes!
Day 8: Sorting HTTPS/SSL for ORDS in your Containers
Post
Author: Scott Spendolini
My take: Scott’s the former OG product manager for APEX, and when he has the time, he enjoys teaching and writing. We’re lucky he still has a passion for technology and helping others, AND makes the time. You’ll see a I shared quite a few posts this past month on containers. I’ll share why, later.
Day 9: APEX 24.2
Post
Authors: Simon Hunt & Chaitanya KoratamaddiÂ
My take: APEX isn’t going anywhere, or rather, it’s going places! Innovation (it’s not JUST AI) and especially care taken to developers wanting to implement CI/CD practices and pipelines are some of the themes in store this year. I also wanted to introduce folks to the new lead PM for APEX, Simon.
Day 10: Running Graph algorithms in your Jupyter Notebooks
Post
Author: Ramu Murakami Gutierrez
My take: Oracle isn’t ONLY a relational database. If you follow Ramu, you’ll soon see why. She works with both our Spatial and Graph database technologies.
Day 11: GraalVM and a year in review for 2024
Post
Author: Alina Yurenko
My take: this share was more database-adjacent than a pure Oracle Database topic. However, GraalVM has a big part to play in both our core database technology today on both the server and client. Alina is a great advocate for technology, if you see her on the local European speaking circuit, go attend a session!
Day 12: Getting started with Exadata on AWS
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Author: Tammy Bednar
My take: yes, you can run our most powerful and most performant for the price solution directly on AWS. Tammy shows you how.
Day 13: Database 23.6 is available and a note on containers
Post
Author: Gerald Venzl
My take: Gerald is obsessed with making it as easy and fast as possible to run Oracle Database directly on your development machine.
Day 14: Interactive AI holograms, oh my!
Post
Author: Paul Parkinson
My take: Oracle isn’t innovative, Oracle is a big dumb relational database…NOT! Paul puts together very cool solutions truly showing off the potential of the Oracle stack!
Day 15: Using the Oracle Autonomous Docker Container
Post
Author: Anders Swanson
My take: yet another way to run your entire dev stack locally, but in this one, it’s a single container vs multiple stitched together.
Day 16: Getting Oracle Database running on your Apple Silicon Macs
Post
Author: Matthew DeMarco
My take: now that we have an ARM port of Oracle Database, you have a very clean path to running the best database on your M1, M2, M3, …
Day 17: Running SQL via MongoDB’s API…against an Oracle Database
Post
Author: Hermann Baer
My take: the benefits of a ‘schema-less’ approach, but with the goodness of SQL, and zero compromises. It sounds like a fairy tale, right? It’s not! Fun fact: working with Hermann cured me of the notion that Germans don’t have a sense of humor.
Day 18: All about Domains in 23ai
Post
Author: Ulrike Schwinn
My take: data modeling is becoming a lost art (and science), but some folks are keeping up the faith! And in the database you can have your domains come to life as proper database objects. So you can define how an ‘address’ is defined, once and for all! That’s a win-win, baby!
Parting Thoughts
- I cheated one day and shared one of my own posts
- This was completely ad-hoc, don’t confuse me for a planner
- BlueSky engagement is great, and Twitter/X is mostly dead
- One of our (Oracle Database) themes this year is engaging developers and delivering features and content to make your lives easier, if not FUN. So the only planning I did for this month was looking for developer-friendly content to share.
- I started to wish I had picked February, instead
- I started a bit late in the month, but no one was working those first few days after the New Year
- I will try this again, sometime
Results (?)
The shares seemed to be popular. Engagement was super low on X, but my engagement rate did tick up a percentage point or two. BlueSky doesn’t offer analytics, but I had tons of people interacting which is super nice.
And on LinkedIn –
