No, I won't be "securing the Tampa Convention Center"

This is a semi-amusing little postscript to a story that started several months ago. In fact, it began precisely on Friday, August 22, 2008.

That morning I was sitting in a presentation at a conference in Louisville, Kentucky, performing some free association on a notepad. Specifically, I was thinking about presentations that our company could give at the 2009 conference.

But then I began thinking about a presentation that I could give at the Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Unconference. The idea was that I could give the presentation at Oracle OpenWorld, then adapt it for presentation in 2009. (I'm green, so I believe that recycling presentations is good.)

As readers of this blog know, I eventually came up with a presentation idea for the Oracle OpenWorld 2008 unconference. After that I worked on the associated last.fm playlist, found Overlook 3A, went to the overlook, and gave my presentation.

That was 2008. This is 2009...and it's time to figure out how to revamp this presentation for an entirely different audience. As far as I'm concerned, there are two differences between the Oracle OpenWorld Unconference audience and the other audience:

• The other audience is much more knowledgeable about automated fingerprint identification systems and biometrics. While there are people at Oracle OpenWorld who are knowledgeable about these topics, the vast majority of OpenWorld attendees have other interests. Therefore, my OpenWorld presentation included some basic information about AFIS which the average attendee at the other conference wouldn't need.


• The organization hosting the other conference has some specific rules about presentations that are not found at the Oracle OpenWorld Unconference. The 2009 conference is dedicated to exploring the scientific disciplines that are followed by the practitioners who attend this conference. Therefore, it is acceptable to talk about ideas in general, but it is not acceptable to promote a particular vendor. If I were to go to the conference and exclusively talk about my product and the Oracle database, one of the conference executives would literally stand up and stop my presentation.

These differences in and of themselves were not a concern, because I figured that my 2009 presentation would be more of a generic look at three types of biometric systems:

• Biometric systems that are designed to be used for a particular event.


• Biometric systems that are designed to be used at a particular location (or to secure a particular perimeter).


• Biometric systems that are designed for both purposes.

Now back in 2008 in San Francisco, I gave several examples of such systems, and concluded with the "what if" question reflected in the title, "Securing the Moscone Center" - or, in other words, using biometrics to control entry and exit to the Moscone Center during Oracle OpenWorld.

For the 2009 presentation (which would be held in Tampa), I would concentrate on real-life examples, such as biometric systems designed for jail entry/exit, systems designed for an election, and other types of systems. Whether the "perimeter" to be protected was the perimeter of a jail, the perimeter of a school lunchroom, or the perimeter of a country (e.g. a biometric-enabled visa/passport), I wanted to explore the commonality between different types of "event-based" and "perimeter-based" systems.

You see, biometric systems are already classified in some traditional ways, the most common of which is to divide them between criminal, civil, and commercial applications. But I was wondering whether, for example, "event-based" systems would have some commonalities regardless of whether or not the system was criminal, civil, or commercial. For example, would a system designed to investigate a crime be similar in any way to a system designed for the World Cup?

So I wrote a title and a synopsis, although I had difficulty with the title. Ordinarily I would have used the word "classification" in the title, but it turns out that classification has a particular meaning in the biometric world, so I had to find an alternate word that wouldn't mislead my audience. I played around with "taxonomy" (which explains my January 21 reading) but eventually decided that I needed a better word.

But before I found a better word, I read the synopsis of my proposed presentation. After reading the synopsis, I asked myself the following question:

So what?

I was forced to conclude that my presentation idea, as then conceived, didn't really benefit the attendees of the Tampa conference. I still think it's a good idea, and may pursue it someday, but with a different audience.

At this point I'm not sure what the takeaway from this is, other than to note that an idea, once conceived, may mutate into something entirely different from what you originally envisioned. Take the church choir singer who didn't realize that the solution to his problem would also solve my later problem about idea brainstorming.

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iamthenode.com

While at Oracle OpenWorld 2008, I got an OTN mousepad, but I didn't unpack it until yesterday, and didn't look at it until today.

http://www.iamthenode.com/ allows digging into various Oracle materials.

Good start, but it's not my primary interface into Oracle yet.

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It's never too early to solicit ideas for Oracle OpenWorld 2009

OK, I have now officially posted my first Oracle OpenWorld 2009 post - and the conference won't start until...well, until late 2009. (October 11-15, according to the OpenWorld 2008 site.)

Not that I was the first one to start asking about Oracle OpenWorld 2009. Somewhere around Tuesday or Wednesday during Oracle OpenWorld 2008, Marius Ciortea and others began talking about holding a brainstorming session during the Unconference. This was scheduled for Thursday morning - as I noted, I attended the session. (And you thought I just played some games.)

The gist of the meeting was captured in the Oracle Wiki (see the http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Brainstorming+Oracle+OpenWorld+2009 URL). Let me highlight a couple of items in which I have a rabid personal interest:

• In essence, the Conference and the Unconference were entirely separate. While barcamp purists might argue that this is a good thing, many in the Thursday session thought that people were missing out because of the relative invisibility of the Unconference. Yes, I know the Unconference was publicized throughout Oracle material, and I know that the schedule itself was visible in a couple of ways, but it often took a couple of extra mouse clicks to get to the Unconference material - and that, in the view of many of us, is a couple of extra mouse clicks too many. In my view (and I think some shared this view), integration of the Unconference into the Schedule Builder, as well as use of similar session times (Unconference 9:00, 10:00, and 11:00 start times didn't coincide with Conference session start times - a complaint that was also raised last year), will make it easier for people to participate in the Unconference and enjoy the content.


• In a similar fashion, there are a number of different silos for official Oracle OpenWorld information. You have the Schedule Builder, you have Mix, you have the wiki, you have the OpenWorld blogs, and you probably have some other official sources that I just plain don't know about. I'm not sure if anything can be done about this - each of these sources have different purposes - but perhaps someone has some ideas for better integration.


• At one point we got into an interesting discussion about what the cool kids do. One idea that was floated was the idea of being able to see what sessions other people are attending - the idea being that crowd suggestions might help people find valuable content. But one concern, as recorded in the wiki, was that "people go where the big names go... trendsetters." Personally, this doesn't concern me; I'm not going to attend a session only because I see that Tom Kyte or Eddie Awad or whoever is attending it. (Heck, even Dan Norris' presence wouldn't necessarily sway me to attend a session.)


• Due to time pressures, I didn't really get a chance to venture my opinion on one item - namely, the suggestion that the keynotes got too technical. For those who don't know, I am not a technical person, and when Charles Phillips and Chuck Rozwat got into some technical discussions during the keynote, some of it went completely over my head. Yet this didn't bother me, because I recognize that a lot of people at Oracle OpenWorld are technically oriented, and I don't want the keynote speakers to have to dumb down just so I can keep up.

Well, this was a good session, and 20 people attended. This means, however, that approximately 42,980 people didn't attend this session.

So I've launched an "idea" thread on Oracle Mix to capture additional suggestions for Oracle OpenWorld 2009:

https://mix.oracle.com/ideas/60909-does-anyone-have-any-ideas-for-oracle-openworld-2009

(Note that you have to be an Oracle Mix member to participate in the discussion.)

Presumably other people have started, or will be starting, similar efforts. (In fact, if you want to start similar things in Mix, just be sure to use the "openworld09" tag.) While Oracle OpenWorld 2009 is over a year away, this is a good time to capture ideas, while Oracle OpenWorld 2008 is fresh in our minds.

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The Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Summary Post Thingie

I was blogging and tweeting off and on during Oracle OpenWorld, but there are some things that I didn't discuss at all, or only briefly.

SUNDAY

• Oracle PartnerNetwork stuff, which is partner-specific. Briefly mentioned here.


• Swag! (Or is it spelled schwag?) While I appreciated the alumnus jacket, the thing which I've used the most is the Oracle/Symantec water bottle. Small, but very useful.


• I heard portions of the Matalin/Carville keynote, including a previous speech by Ed Begley Jr. to which I tangentially referred during lunch on Monday. Incidentally, I was going to listen to the keynote from the OTN Lounge, but everyone (including Justin Kestelyn) was kicked out at 6:00 pm. By the time I got to Moscone North, I was actually able to get into Hall D.


• The blogger meetup, which was a very enjoyable time (again). Thanks to Eddie Awad for organizing this, and to the Oracle Technology Network for funding this. Oh, and to Judy Sim's good friend Dan Norris for the ribbon.

MONDAY

• The Phillips/Rozwat keynote.


• I then went to a regular Conference session on Oracle Enterprise Manager, which went well.


• After lunch, I attended the first of two Unconference sessions by Brian "Bex" Huff. See this post about his "Enterprise 2.0" talk.


• NTN/Buzztime at the Beale St. Bar & Grill. Three posts here.

TUESDAY

• This was pretty much a day of private meetings and a private dinner. However, I did attend Jake Kuramoto's geek-speak Unconference session, which perhaps wasn't as interactive as Jake would have liked, but was still a good session with some interaction. Oh, and I created a FriendFeed room.

WEDNESDAY

• I attended the second Brian "Bex" Huff Unconference presentation - this one on communication and this one also excellent. At some point I hope to delve into some of the issues a little more thoroughly.


• Some Larry guy gave a speech, which resulted in a grand total of five picture and blog posts. I also tweeted about the Larry Ellison Drinking Game. The only thing that I have to add to what I already wrote is that I again missed something from not being in Hall D. After the keynote, I subsequently heard that people in Hall D were disappointed that HP's Mark Hurd was not physically present in Hall D. Because I was watching on TV in the Database Lounge, I basically saw Ellison in a red box on the left, and Hurd in a blue box on the right. Looked good on TV, although to U.S. attendees it looked positively electoral.


• For the first time in my four years of attending Oracle OpenWorld, I actually went to the Oracle Appreciation Event. This politically correct carnival had a Ferris wheel, a dart game (with prizes), and cotton candy. Oh, and there was music too - the Gin Blossoms, the Psychedelic Furs (argh argh), and Seal (in the dark).

THURSDAY

• After checking out of my hotel and checking in for my flight right at Moscone (recommended), I joined Oracle Marketing and others at a brainstorming Unconference session.


• I wrapped up the week by giving my Unconference presentation on "Securing the Moscone Center." Here's what the room looked like before the presentation. To visualize what it looked like during the presentation, just add two people - myself, and the one attendee (who did not contribute to the playlist). However, things worked out well, since the attendee had a biometric background (though not an AFIS background), and I was able to tailor the presentation to meet her needs. During the brainstorming session, it was noted that the non-technical presentations had fewer attendees than the technical sessions; my experience seems to bear this out, although in all of the cases (the two Huff presentations, the Kuramoto Unconference presentation, and my own presentation) the audiences, though small, were appreciative.

So that's a grand overview of my Oracle OpenWorld experience. Now I just have to write my two formal trip reports...

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Debra Lilley gets a lift from the Oracle Mix community

I never got around to blogging about this one, since everybody else was blogging, but it occurred to me that the vast majority of my readers hadn't heard the story.



Also see the Oracle OpenWorld Blog, the OTN Tech Blog, and this series of posts from Debra herself. Best quote:

When they said make sure you have an elevator pitch for Larry I didn't think I would have this long to rehearse it :)

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Overlook 3A

Relaxing before the 1:00 pm "Securing the Moscone Center" presentation at the Oracle OpenWorld unconference.

My luggage is already checked in, so after this presentation, it's off to the airport and back home...

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Exadata, Machines, and Blogger Giveaways

Dear Larry,

I was sitting in my hotel room, packing up to leave Oracle OpenWorld 2008, when I ran across this article from Venturebeat (as shared by Sarah Perez):

HP, one of the country’s biggest computer companies, is boasting that it boosted its PC sales by 10 percent in May after it leveraged the blogging community to promote the launch of one of its computer systems....

I talked with Scott Ballantyne from HP, VP & General Managers for Personal Systems Group, who oversaw the program. He said HP didn’t pay the bloggers a dime. All HP did was give away 31 new HDX Dragon computer systems to 31 influential members of the PC blogging community, so that the blogs could give them away in a competition among their readers. The bloggers went nuts. They made videos of the systems, wrote up engaging posts and cross-linked to each other — all of their own accord. The publicity this created spurred an increase in sales, according to Ballantyne. Since the bloggers were credible to their readers, and they were talking about the HP systems on their sites, the readers went out and bought systems even if they didn’t win one in the competitions.

Larry, notice that it's your buddies in HP who did this blogger promotion. Funny, I just heard that you've been doing a couple of things with HP yourself.

So why don't you talk to those guys in HP, then talk to the A-list bloggers that have been here at Oracle OpenWorld. They could then hold a blog giveaway for an HP Oracle Database Machine.

Now THAT oughta spur up some publicity. You know that the kids are looking for places to store all that music.

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Making cotton candy

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My prize for popping a balloon with a dart

Do I name it Larry, Charles, or Safra?

[LATER: AFTER SOME THOUGHT, I FINALLY SETTLED ON CHARLIE.]

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Darts

I got 1 of 3.

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Ferris Wheel 11gR1

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From the Ferris Wheel

That will be the extent of my riding tonight, more than likely.

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Carnival!

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A politically correct carnival

It's green week in Larry-Land.

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Oracle Appreciation Event 2008

Treasure Island.

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Other reactions to the Exadata Programmable Storage Server and the HP Oracle Database Machine

I live-blogged the announcements of the Exadata Programmable Storage Server and the HP Oracle Database Machine, but obviously couldn't get all the pertinent points in my posts.

Luckily, the @oracleopenworld account helpfully tweeted the link http://www.oracle.com/exadata/index.html.

Oracle Exadata is a family of high performance storage software and hardware products that can improve data warehouse query performance by a factor of 10X or more. Oracle Exadata Storage is a combination of smart storage software from Oracle and industry-standard hardware from HP. Overcoming the limitations of conventional storage, Oracle Exadata uses a massively parallel architecture to dramatically increase data bandwidth between the database server and storage. In addition, smart storage software offloads data-intensive query processing from Oracle Database 11g Servers and does the query processing closer to the data. The result - faster, parallel data processing and less data movement through higher bandwidth connections.

The Oracle Exadata Storage Server is based on the HP ProLiant DL180 G5 server, and is a fast, reliable, high-capacity, industry-standard storage building block. With a choice of SAS or SATA drives and a storage capacity up to 12 TB, it has Oracle Exadata software pre-installed. In addition to extremely fast query processing for your large data warehouses, the massively parallel architecture offers linear scalability and mission-critical reliability.

Oracle Exadata Storage provides the foundation for building dynamic storage grids, and is the building block for the HP Oracle Database Machine. Designed for large, multi-terabyte data warehouses, the HP Oracle Database Machine is a complete package of software, servers, and storage. Simple and fast to implement, it has the power to tackle large-scale business intelligence problems immediately and can scale linearly as your data warehouse grows.

And information on the HP Oracle Database Machine can be accessed via http://www.oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/database-machine.html.

The HP Oracle Database Machine is a complete system, including software, servers, and storage, designed to run large, multi-terabyte data warehouses 10x faster than conventional data warehouse systems. At the heart of the Database Machine, is the Oracle Exadata Storage Server, which has smart storage software that offloads data-intensive query processing from Oracle Database 11g Servers and does the query processing closer to the data. The Database Machine also includes Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Enterprise Linux, all the required Infiniband infrastructure and related hardware. Simple and fast to implement, the HP Oracle Database Machine has the power to tackle large-scale business intelligence problems immediately and can scale linearly as your data warehouse grows.

More information is available in the PDF for the HP Oracle Database Machine:

HP Oracle Database Machine Hardware
(all hardware components in one standard (42U) rack)

8–HP Proliant DL360 G5 database servers, with
• 2 quad-core Intel Xeon Processor E5430 (2.66GHz)
• 32GB memory
• 1–HP InfiniBand Dual Port HCA
• 4–146GB SAS 10K hard disk drives
4–24-port InfiniBand switches
14–HP Exadata Storage Server Hardware—each is an HP ProLiant DL180 G5, with
• 2 quad-core Intel Xeon Processor E5430 (2.66GHz)
• 8GB memory
• 1–HP InfiniBand Dual Port HCA
• 12–300GB SAS or 12–1TB SATA disk drives
1 48-port Gigabit Ethernet switch (used for management connectivity to servers and switches)
Keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) hardware
Oracle Enterprise Linux Release 5.1
HP Hardware Warranty, 3 year parts/3 year labor/3 year onsite, 4 hour, 24x7
On-site installation and configuration

Key Capabilities (per rack)

HP Oracle Database Machine Hardware SAS 300
• Up to 14GB/sec of raw, uncompressed I/O throughput
• Up to 1TB/hour data loading
• Up to 14TB of user data
1
HP Oracle Database Machine Hardware SATA 1000
• Up to 10.5GB/sec of raw, uncompressed I/O throughput
• Up to 1TB/hour data loading
• Up to 46TB of user data1

HP Oracle Database Software (sold separately)

• For database servers: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition, Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle
Partitioning
• For storage servers: Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software

High-Availability Features

• Redundant power supplies for all servers
• Redundant InfiniBand switches
• Oracle Automatic Storage Management: All database files mirrored; disk failures do not interrupt query processing
• Oracle Real Application Clusters: database server failures are tolerated
• Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software: storage server failures are tolerated
• Backup is performed using Oracle Recovery Manager
• Point in time restores are performed using Oracle Flashback Technologies

Manageability Features
• HP Lights-Out hardware management
• Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control

eWeek reports:

In a move meant to shake up the data warehousing market, Oracle has unveiled a data warehouse product focused on high performance.

Dubbed the HP Oracle Database Machine, the appliance is aimed squarely at challenging data warehousing vendors Teradata and Netezza. At the core of the product is the ‘Exadata Storage Server’, which can support up to 12 terabytes of raw storage data and leverages InfiniBand connectivity.

Mark Rittman:

So, the mystery “X” product was a database / data warehouse appliance, using HP Hardware and a custom storage server that takes predicates provided by the database and filters the data locally, returning just the results / columns back to the database rather than whole blocks of data.

In his post, Rittman links to Kevin Closson's Oracle Blog:

I would like to take my first blog post on the topic of Oracle Exadata Storage Server to reiterate the primary value propositions of the solution.

* Exadata is fully optimized disk I/O. Full stop! For far too long, it has been too difficult to configure ample I/O bandwidth for Oracle, and far too difficult to configure storage so that the physical disk accesses are sequential in nature.

* Exadata is intelligent storage. For far too long, Oracle Database has had to ingest full blocks of data from disk for query processing, wasting precious host processor cycles to discard the unrelated data (predicate filtering and column projection).

Oracle Exadata Storage Server is Brute Force. A Brawny solution.

And now that the word is out, people from Oracle are talking. Jeff Erickson:

[A]t an Oracle Magazine lunch on Tuesday I sat next to a beta participant for the Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Once we had established that I was on the inside of the project, he shared a story that made me look forward to the announcement even more.

Without ever mentioning the product by name, the beta participant told me that the first time he used Exadata, he and his team thought they had made a mistake. The query came back too fast. They spent two hours on the line with Oracle trying to fix the problem. But there was no problem; Exadata was simply faster than anything they had experienced before.

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HP Oracle Database Machine

The only stat I got was 168 terabytes of storage. Over 100 cores. Lots of memory.

I think Ellison referred to Oracle Enterprise Linux as the OS.

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X = Exadata Programmable Storage Server

Joint HP-Oracle effort. Database logic in server. Returns query results, not disk blocks.

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I'm watching TV.

Oracle Database Lounge, 300 level, Moscone South.

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Tools to cover the Ellison keynote

A TV. (I may be in the Oracle Database Lounge in the 300 area of Moscone South.)

Twitter (especially the @oow account).

FriendFeed (both the Oracle OpenWorld room, and a list I previously created of various attendees).

Others in the room (IRL is good).

I'll try to post a mobile blog at the Xact time. Otherwise, follow http://friendfeed.com/ontarioemperor - for whatever it is I do.

Better tip: http://twitter.com/oow - and don't forget that replies to @oow can be echoed to all.

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