Insync 2011 Day 3

First you may be thinking - hang on, there was only 2 days in the Insync conference, wasn't there?

Just like a PL/SQL boolean, there is true, false, and unknown to that statement.
Ooh, did I really go there?

True - there was two days of scheduled presentations.

False - like any conference, there are often fringe events scheduled before or after the main event.

Unknown - for those unfortunate enough not to have heard of the event, in the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre there was an extra day-long session entitled "A Day of Real World Performance". More information can be found here.

It was co-presented by

• Tom Kyte - author of AskTom - directing the core of the discussion with slides in a centre screen, providing a developer perspective.
• Graham Wood - Oracle Database Performance Architect - dishing out Enterprise Manager output as an Exadata box is manipulated
• Andrew Holdsworth - Head of Oracle's Real World Performance team.

It was less of your usual seminar style format, more of a conversational piece - which made it much easier to concentrate after two days of conference presentations. This style also made it more engaging. There was a general script, but Graham mentioned to me at one point that after nine roadshows, none ever really come out the same - I'm not surprised!

They kicked off by loading a terabtye of data into a remote Oracle Exadata box, then used that as a platform to discuss performance issues from compression to statement parsing to index use - but nothing like you've ever really seen before. Andrew kept tweaking settings in the exadata machine to show how they can affect performance - accompanied by a screen full of numbers whaling up and down; Graham showed pretty graphs that illustrated what was going on post-change; and Tom get adding his pearls of wisdom with his easy listening voice.

Mark Lancaster also described the event in his blog and I must agree - if this roadshow comes to a town near you, it is a must see. If you can't, try out the videos. They don't do it any justice, but apparently they have been used to sway decisions by the powers that be in the correct direction.

A little tip - don't book flights for conferences without checking/looking out for these events - I know a few people who missed out because they booked flights too early. Mind you, I also know there are a few people who flew up from Melbourne specifically for this day.

And to cap it off - Tony, Barbara & I finished the day with a beer overlooking Darling Harbour in a wonderful sunny Sydney afternoon.

... but then we had to head to the airport to go home...

Scott