OTN TechBlog

For the first time AFAIK, Oracle ACEs are being formally referenced in a UG technical session - Greg Pike of Piocon will present "ACEs in
the Hole: Learning Advanced SQL Techniques from the OTN Forum Pros" at Collaborate 08. Credit to Oracle ACE Director Dan Norris, a colleague of Greg's, for pointing this out.

Here's a fragment from the abstract:

Although seasoned professionals understand the benefits of solving
business problems with efficient queries or PL/SQL, the volunteer
Oracle experts and ACE contributors on OTN's SQL and PL/SQL discussion
forums raise the query writing bar to an entirely new level. Oracle
professionals at any skill level will find this forum packed with a
treasure chest of tips, tricks and techniques. With over 50,000 topics
and 300,000 posts, it's the mother lode of SQL and PL/SQL education
from recognized experts worldwide.

Nice! Thanks, Greg.

By the way, unfortunately I am not attending this year (but I will definitely see you at ODTUG in New Orleans this summer). Be sure to say hi to Vikki Lira and Chief Installfest Officer Todd Trichler from the OTN team though.

Latin-Americans and Brazilians, you can now read versions of the OTN Web site in your native languages (Spanish | Portuguese).

Yes, we're indeed working hard to make the OTN community accessible to people in developer-growth countries (the infamous BRICK countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea). We now have 4 of the 5 covered, with only Russian left out at the moment (presuming that Indian developers prefer to get information in English).

Any Russians out there who would like to see a Russian-lang version of the OTN Web site?

Got something to share at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco? Sign up for the micro-unconference in the Oracle booth.

Several Oracle product managers already go the jump on this but there are still a few open slots. My favorites thus far:

• Spatial and Semantic Web: Extending the Reach of Web 2.0
• Myths and Realities of Enterprise 2.0 Users
• Ajax Mashups: Easy as 1-2-3

Oracle ACEs, thanks for attending the dinner we sponsored in Denver on Sunday night. Awfully sorry I couldn't be there personally, but I hope to see many of you in New Orleans at ODTUG.

As I traditionally do, I took a tour around the Web 2.0 Expo exhibitor pavilion to snap some photos:


...along the way I "bumped" into Sam Lawrence-on-wheels (CEO of Jive Software, a valued friend of OTN):



More postings to come on the unconference now in session at the Oracle booth.

I am really happy to see that the booth-based unconference is going well. Geoff Lee, product manager for Oracle XML DB, had it tough as the first presenter, but he "kicked the door in" (as he put it).  Subsequent sessions were better attended.

Peter Moskovits (Oracle) on Ajax mashups:



Stewart Mader of Atlassian (and author of Wikipatterns), on wiki-fying your enterprise:



And Charles Armstrong of Trampoline Systems, an up-and-coming purveyor of "intelligent" social networking:



Unfortunately I will experience the conf only vicariously tomorrow due to some needed dental work, but back in the saddle on Friday.

Was there ever a better time to announce this?

The 10.2.0.4 Database Client (+ Instant Client) for Apple Mac OS X on Intel x86 is now available for download on OTN.

Now, move along, nothing else to see here.

I've always had great respect for BEA's developer and architect communities (dev2dev and arch2arch, respectively). For that reason, the closure of the BEA acquisition is really good news not only for OTN, but also for members of those communities.

WebLogic and Tuxedo users in particular are fairly fanatical, and their passion and community-first orientation will make the wider Oracle community that much richer. (It almost goes without saying that there is surely significant overlap here, actually.) Welcome, you guys (and gals)!.

We are already beginning to engage with the BEA teams behind those communities to ensure as smooth an integration as possible. We don't have all the details yet, but rest assured that as we progressively flesh out the roadmap we will communicate the details as we have them.

Remember, dev2dev/arch2arch and OTN are actually quite similar, whether in terms of philosophy/macro-approach, events, Website information architecture, or community tools. So I'm confident that "disruption" will be minimal (although some is unavoidable). And yeah, we'll be looking for some ex-BEA ACEs!

I have created a new group on Oracle Mix specifically for the purpose of answering questions, getting feedback, etc. about this process; I encourage all BEA users to join. Furthermore, we hope to communicate directly via dev2dev and arch2arch channels fairly shortly.

For now, if anyone has any questions here, I'm happy to answer them!

Update (May 7) - thanks to dev2dev EIC Kevin Farnham for his post on this subject!