09 February 2010

RMOUG next week, with a Hands-on University Session

Next week we head for Denver and the Rocky Mountain User Group. This is a great conference; lots of technical talks, lots of networking - sharing ideas and making contacts, and of course, meeting a few friends too!

Some years back the RMOUG committee introduced university sessions on the Tuesday afternoon before the event. Last year I said I'd do this, but I wanted the attendees in my room to bring their laptops and we'd do a hands-on session. By all accounts it was a success. We brought the software and the training material and the attendees installed the bits they needed before setting off.

This year we're doing the same, we're asking attendees to bring their laptops and we're bringing the software for the session. Earlier this year we hosted an Oracle Developer Day and provided a Virtual Machine using Sun's VirtualBox. We learned a lot that day and have spent the last two weeks on and off updating and getting this new Virtual Machine built and tested. The idea is that everything you need is in the Virtual Machine and so once you have finished the afternoon, you can delete the Virtual machine and your computer is the same as it was when you arrived. The added bonus is that we're using Linux as the OS in the Virtual Machine, so can bring you Oracle database 11g Release 2! If you want to join us, bring your own laptop (Windows, Linux, or Mac with minimum 2Gb RAM) and 20 GB free space.

The afternoon includes playing with the Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler and SQL Developer, where we'll do some PL/SQL work and you can play with the latest feature, the PL/SQL Unit Testing. If that's not enough, we also have a few bits for working with Version Control and user defined extensions. The whole afternoon is guided-free format, so you can selected what you want to work on, and then use the guided hands-on sessions - of course a few of us from the team will be there to help with questions.

...and there may be a book prize at the end... see the latest publication SQL Developer 2.1

I hope to see you there. I think there are a few spaces still.

Check out RMOUG to register: http://rmoug.org/training.htm