COLLABORATE14: A week in review

The week of COLLABORATE organized by some of the most dedicated people was filled with many presentations of varying quality. The event took place at the Venetian Palazzo and Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. While there are many uncountable events, people, presentations, and slot machines I am going to just highlight a few of my experiences on my first trip to Las Vegas.

RAC ATTACK!
My first and probably favorite of all the presentations was "RAC Attack!" Provided by the group at racattack.org this session was a hands-on interactive help session for learning how to setup a two node RAC database. As a disclaimer I don't profess or market myself as a DBA, but I do like to have some what of an understanding of the systems that I use even if my useage of them only touches the surface. Setting up this cluster provided a good insight of what DBAs work with on a daily basis. The group provided much help where ever it was needed, but the instructions they had laid out in the first place were very descriptive and helpful. They tried to have us emulate the setup as if we wouldn't have direct access, which is typical in most settings. Often times a Unix/Linux administrator will have done a lot of the beginning work and have approved programs install, appropriate ports opened, and necessary sudoers access provided. In lieu of needing to emulate the Linux Admin role in addition to the DBA role all security was uprooted: firewall disabled and selinux disabled. The group incentivized people to get engaged by awarding attendees with T-Shirts and at the end providing those who had made it the furthest with prizes. Overall I would call it a rewarding experience, this helped me understand what my colleagues in the DBA role deal with on a daily basis as well as provided a good insight into some of the workings of the Oracle Database product.

More updates may appear here as time progresses.