One of the great things about working the OTN lounge during OpenWorld is it gives you a chance to sit in on some of the 'Meet the Expert' sessions. Here are some of the things I learned ...
During Tom Kyte's (Ask Tom) talk he challenged his listners to list the version of the database that saw the introduction of the 'Connect By' clause the winner walking away with a copy of Tom's new book. After several answers of different versions of 6,7,8 and 9 -- Tom coached them lower -- the correct answer is ... Version 2 -- apparently there was a customer willing to buy the database if it included that functionality - so they wrote it in.
While sitting in on Mary Anne Davidson talk on security, an IT manager from one of our partners lamented the fact that you never know if you have done enough to be in compliance. The reason for this is that although there are external auditors who need to sign off on it, they don't have an accepted common standard, so it really varies from auditor to auditor. Mary Anne said that she is currently working with NIST to see if they can come up with an acceptable common standard. All of the attendees seem to think this would bring about some welcomed clarity.
After finally emerging from the SF traffic at 10:09 I found Werner Puschitz and a bunch of Oracle on Linux enthusiates engaging Wim Coekaerts in conversation. One of the questions centered on how to optomize I/O for linux based Oracle configurations. Wim stated that for tuning asysnc IO set it to 1MB, but also pointed out that if you are using ASMlib you do not need to do this because it has it's own interface to the kernel.
Immediately after his Meet the Experts session, Justin showed up and we recorded
Wim's podcast in which he explained why OCFS and ASM complement each other and also how oracle has been working with the linux community.
Now that OpenWorld is done, I am off with the family to Winnipeg - will check back in with you when I get back.
