It’s been awhile since I’ve had the opportunity to see you in person at Oracle Open World. And while a lot has changed since 2019…
- goodbye San Francisco and the Moscone
- hello, Las Vegas and Caesar’s Forum & the Venetian!
- 19c isn’t the new kid on the block anymore
- our event has a new name!
…many things remain constant.
Cloud World continues to be your best opportunity to engage and learn from the product teams
Members of nearly every product team associated with the Oracle Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) will be on hand to meet with customers and share product news and innovations. Many of our teams cover both Oracle Cloud and traditional on-premises technology – so don’t think we won’t have something there for ALL Oracle customers!
What is new – a focus on the practical application of our technology.
Do you ever wonder how some of the sessions are chosen for Cloud World? We as product managers get to submit our talks much like you would as a customer or partner. We had strict directions this year – make sure your sessions are short, to the point, and written FOR THE DEVELOPER.
I have the honor of being asked to deliver a few talks this year, but I wanted to spend a few moments talking about the top skills you could walk away from Cloud World this year as an attendee.
1. Cloud Native and the Oracle Database
It’s called ‘Cloud World’ for a reason! And the Oracle Database is still one of our biggest products. But it’s not till put put the two together does the real magic start to happen. When you can take advantage of the dozens of OCI Services like the Object Store, Notifications, API Gateway…that’s really when your database experience will get turbocharged.
Did you know we have a Database Connections Cloud Service? This can make your applications connectivity with databases in OCI so much easier and straightforward.
Did you know you could use tools like SQLcl to collect instrumentation data for your database and put it into Service Metrics, and then build dashboard over that?
Keep an eye out for [LRN1524], Cloud Native Database Development in your content catalog!
2. REST APIs
Yeah, I said it, again. This remains one of the bigger priorities for our Database Tools team here at Oracle. Developers love APIs, and REST APIs in Cloud are a pivotal component for your apps and automated processes.
We’re going to have a Hands-on Lab for you to learn how to leverage an Oracle Database via HTTPS and REST APIs with a a python program – no driver config or SQL required!
Keep an eye out for [LRN1519], Best Practices for Secure, Performant, and Robust APIs in Oracle Database in your content catalog!
It also goes without saying that all Cloud services are built on top of REST APIs, the better you understand these, the more you can get out of your OCI subscriptions!
3. CI/CD
Continuous Integration + Delivery, in the Oracle Database. That could be your application schemas by themselves, but it could also be your database applications – esp if they’re Oracle APEX. And let’s not forgetting any REST APIs you might have powering your applications. You need a way to deploy those to production, quickly, automatically, and in a controlled fashion.
Both our Database Tools and APEX teams are working hard to make this as easy as possible. Perhaps you’ve heard of SQLcl and Liquibase? If not, here’s your chance to get caught up!
4. The Converged Oracle Database
This is a marketing term of sorts, and I apologize for that. But the IDEA behind this is purely technical. Being able to sort relational, columnar, JSON, XML, in-memory, AI, ML, Blockchains, and more all from a single database engine is a technical marvel – and you’ve got access to that wherever you’re running Oracle Database.
If you search the content catalog for ‘Converged’ you’ll find more than a few talks at your disposal. Or find me, and I’ll give you a quick demo of REST APIs all powered by SQL that handle all of those data formats and workloads.
Need a quick catch-up? I’ve got a playlist for you!
5. The Soft Skills
It does not make sense to be shy at Cloud World. We are literally there to answer your questions. Go to talks, exhibition booths, Live Labs, happy hours, etc. and walk up to a stranger and say ‘Hi!’ Bring business cards, and connect with folks on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter so you can follow-up afterwards.
Have a question about how or why the Optimizer decides on a hash join when you really want it to use Nested Loops? The product manager and development teams will be in Vegas, and we can’t run away 🙂
Meet your colleagues in your industry, network, share war stories. This will make you happier as a person and more valuable in the marketplace.
If you’re an introvert, that’s OK, most of us are too. We’re just good at faking it. If you need help and you see me, come up and say hi. I’ll do my best to introduce you to just the right person who can help you out!
6. The House Always Wins
The skill here is to walk away when you’re up. It’s Vegas, we’re in a casino. Many of you are going to want to gamble. I absolutely love Black Jack and I pretend to understand craps. But I set my limit, I have a lot of fun while it lasts, and if I get up big…I do my best to walk away.
If we want to tie this back to Cloud World, come to the conference with a set of goals. One of those goals should be to take a break from work every now and then and enjoy life. Most of us haven’t had a chance to travel much for work lately, take this opportunity to have you YOU-time. Recharge. And then come back to work with a set of tips and tricks you’ve picked up that you can share with your team.
