University Associate Professor Iuliana Botha, Ph.D., requested an event to be held for her Master’s degree students on NoSQL, Oracle Spatial, Oracle APEX and AI at the University of Economic Studies, Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics, Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Informatics, Romania.
Camelia Ditescu, Program Manager for Romania and Moldova, collaborated with Oracle technical staff, who volunteered to share their knowledge. A successful event with lasting impact was held for 95 participants on November 10, 2025, made possible through the hard work and expertise of Oracle technical volunteers. Their commitment, creativity, and behind-the-scenes effort ensured that every session ran smoothly, and every participant enjoyed a remarkable experience.
The event was created with one goal in mind: to support Master’s students as they navigate the final stages of their academic journey and prepare for the professional world. From the beginning, the atmosphere was filled with curiosity, motivation, and collaboration. After each speaker, a Q&A session offered students the opportunity to engage directly with staff, helping them better understand technical details.
Piotr Kurzynoga, Open Source Data Services Specialist, presented on Oracle NoSQL and how it solves challenges with applications. His live end-to-end demo — which showed generating data with a microcontroller to sending it into the cloud — was a fun way for students to see the connections and how it worked.
“I’m extremely happy to have been part of this session for a second year in a row. The students didn’t hold back with their questions, which really showed their curiosity and growing expertise in the data management space. It’s moments like these that make me confident our future is in great hands,” he said.
Roxana Popa held the second session, on Oracle Spatial. The session illustrated spatial data’s value, covering the core ideas, and playing with map visualization options in Spatial Studio and Oracle APEX. “We were happy to see the students’ interest for the technology. They asked many questions, and this motivates us to repeat this type of experience. It’s always a pleasure working alongside Iuliana Botha, and we are grateful to be involved in such initiatives,” she noted.
Andrei Manoliu held the last session, in which he discussed the fact that structured and unstructured data don’t always need different platforms: A converged database is a database that has native support for all modern data types, analytics, and the latest development paradigms built into one product. His session focused on Oracle Database 23ai, which offers JSON and relational unification with the JSON Relational Duality view. Graph and relational unification use property graph views and vector and relational database working together for semantic searching through the available data.
“I was genuinely impressed by the interest and curiosity shown by the approximately 90 students who attended — they were attentive, engaged, and asked thoughtful, relevant questions. Congratulations on your effort and on the meaningful impact you’re making in the academic community!” he said.
“I am deeply grateful for the time and dedication you offer our students,” said Professor Iuliana Botha. “As always, the involvement of industry specialists brings valuable, up-to-date perspectives that play a key role in connecting academic learning with real-world practice. Piotr offered a focused and accessible introduction to Oracle NoSQL, helping students understand where this technology fits in today’s data landscape. Roxana demonstrated how spatial data can be integrated and visualized using Oracle APEX, turning a complex topic into a clear, practical showcase of modern development tools. In the end, Andrei captured the audience’s attention with key innovations from Oracle 23ai, including JSON Duality Views, vector search, and graph data processing, emphasizing how these features open new possibilities for application design,” she said. “After these engaging sessions, it was great to see so much curiosity and energy in the chat room. The Q&A segment was lively, showing just how much interest your presentations generated.”
First year Master’s student Bianca Picleanu noted, “The Oracle sessions were really engaging. I got my curiosity answered about how Oracle 23c’s JSON Relational Duality Views can make querying and analyzing medical JSON data more efficient compared to MongoDB. I also discovered new technologies like Oracle NoSQL with its easy-to-deploy global tables, explored its multi-model capabilities, and saw Oracle Spatial in action on APEX in the cloud, which gave me a clear view of how modern databases handle diverse data types in real-world applications.”
“The Oracle sessions were highly valuable, clearly showing how Oracle’s integrated database ecosystem delivers scalability, strong performance through efficient indexing, and advanced analytics using SQL and Python,” said first year Master’s student Tudor Ghinea. “The sessions also answered my question about Oracle Spatial versus tools like ArcGIS or QGIS and highlighted the importance of having a solid understanding of both relational and NoSQL databases, supported by practical examples such as Oracle 23c JSON Relational Duality Views, global NoSQL tables, and Oracle Spatial on APEX in real-world scenarios.”
This event highlighted collaboration that made a difference in the learning and lives of students. We thank all of those involved in these engaging learning sessions.
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