ESTI Consulting Services - Oracle Openworld 2007 - Geoff Beauregard

OpenWorld 2007 Summary

by Geoff Beauregard

With over 41,000 attendees this year in the city of San Francisco, California, Oracle OpenWorld was billed as the most successful OpenWorld to date. The conference featured more that 1,600 sessions and more than 350 demos covering all that is Oracle. Oracle used OpenWorld 2007 as a way to showcase the newest innovations and technologies to their partners and costumers.

2007 marked the 13th anniversary of Oracle OpenWorld, and they kicked it off with Larry Ellison (Oracle CEO and co-founder) and Safra Catz (Oracle Present and CFO). Ellison gave the 30 year history of how Oracle started from a four person company to a global technology giant, and how he sold the company's first database to the CIA. Opening night was billed as Sunday Night Live (SNL) and featured former cast members of Saturday Night Live, Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson, and Darrell Hammond. The skits they preformed made fun of Oracle's spending spree of purchasing smaller companies. The night finished with an Oracle band named Gear Driver (made up of costumers and Oracle employees) performing their signature song 'Oracle Always Rocks'.

Keynotes

The Keynotes speakers at OpenWorld were very informative. All the big names in the IT world, with one notable exception, were represented in at least one keynote address. HP, AMD, Sun, Intel, Dell, and of course Oracle were all represented. The room was always jam packed from wall to wall with attendees. The main theme of the keynotes was going green and saving energy to make the world a more power efficient place while saving the environment at the same time.

Oracle President Charles Phillips spoke about Oracle's three business components (database, middleware, and applications). He was very pleased to say that the Oracle database has more than a 45% market share. He then demoed some of Oracle's new fusion middleware and business intelligence applications. Oracle Vice President Thomas Kurian talked about Oracle's Fusion Middleware and how Oracle was leading the industry in acquiring software companies and "fusing" them with the overall Oracle product.

Sun Microsystems's President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz had a very informative Keynote address as well. He stated that 90% of the mobile devices in the world use Java as the platform. Schwartz was very satisfied that oracle also made a commitment to Java in the JDeveloper product. Sun was leading the way in energy efficiency and performance with their data centers because of the way they were virtualizing data storage units. Energy efficiency is needed because the cost of powering a server is becoming greater than the cost of the server itself. It is very important to work with competitors to better serve their customer's needs. Sun has already partnered with IBM and announced at OpenWorld that Sun would be partnering with Dell. Dell will now provide costumer support for Solaris and vice versa.

Michael Dell emphasized how important "Going Green" is to Dell. 1.5% of all the power in the United States goes to data storage. Dell demoed Oracle OVM on a dell data center and how there was no downtime on the server when applying patches with the virtual system. Michael Dell couldn't resist showing off a few of Dell's new products that will be released just in time for Christmas. A new laptop/tablet has the multi-touch functionality as well as a fancy new flat screen panel that is a TV/monitor all in one.

Larry Ellison announced that Oracle has supplied complete support for Linux for the past year and was very successful. Ellison unveiled Oracle VM. Oracle VM is a complete software stack and a source for server virtualization and Linux. It runs on both Linux and Windows, it is open source, and it can do live migrations from machine A to B.

The Keynote addresses were very informative and it was interesting to hear the big names of the companies speak. One of the most memorable moments was when Billy Joel introduced Larry Ellison and joked with Ellison about throwing the biggest parties he was seen.

Exhibition Halls

There were two exhibition halls at OpenWorld. There were always snacks and drinks provided at the halls. It always seemed like a good place to grab a donut and juice and look at some interesting products and services. At most booths in the hall free gifts (from pens to umbrellas) were given out to everyone. The only catch is you had to let them scan your badge and they would send information about their product/service. Of course it was impossible to visit every booth but I did manage to spend a lot of time walking amongst the booths and checking out the new technology.

Conference Sessions

The conference sessions allowed attendees to learn about Oracle's new products and technologies. The first two days of OpenWorld I attended Developer sessions. These sessions focused on developing products using development tools. They were demo-heavy and for the most part very easy to follow along and get a feel what is like to get started using the tools. The last two days I spent at miscellaneous sessions geared toward new technologies. Here are some of the highlights:

Microsoft and .NET (Visual Studio)

Oracle 11g is compatible with Windows Vista
MS and Oracle work together for flexibility and costumer choice
Oracle is fully integrated with MS Visual Studio 2005 and 2008
11g will support ASP.Net developers
Visual Designer (i.e. table view design)
PL/SQL debugger (SQL plus built into Visual Studio)
Query builder/designer with Explain Plan
Automatic code generation
New feature in 11g to build Oracle database project
New set of Oracle wizards to make programming in .NET with Oracle easier

Web 2.0

Oracle has projects such as Ideafactory, Mix, OpenLab, and Connect that use Web 2.0 design.
Social networking can be used for business, not just for personal use.
Oracle Connect is like Facebook but used internally for Oracle employees
Oracle Connect makes it easy to find experts in a certain field within Oracle
Uses a kudos system instead of wall posts were people can congratulate each other on a job well done
New website mix.oracle.com used to communicate better with customers that use the 2.0 methodology
Mix allows users to share ideas, join groups, network, and get answers

SQL Developer

SQL Developer is a GUI to the Oracle database (much like Toad and Rapid SQL).
Open platform, does not need Oracle home
Multi-database support (Oracle, Access, MySql, SQLServer )

New features in next release

Schema compare and copy
Increased support for Java
New DB export wizard
Table creation on imports
Increased support for multiple connections/worksheets
Enhanced search PL/SQL features
Remote debugging tool

JDeveloper and ADF Swing

JDeveloper uses Java Swing classes to implement UI that binds item for you
ADF (Application Development Framework)
Handles model interaction to persistent layer
Simplifies data bound swing development (do a lot without writing a line of code)
Specialty ADF Swing components (toolbar, status bar, model driven labels)
Deployment - local, Java Webstart, or applet
ADF Swing could be used as an alternative to Oracle Forms

JDeveloper and Web 2.0 Session

Visual html, JavaScript, and CSS editor
Oracle is pushing JSF in the right direction with JDeveloper
100+ AJAX enabled JSF components in new 11g release
More than just components (skinning, templating, data streaming, dialog and popup, drag and drop, partial page rendering, complete JavaScript API)
Can create a fairly complex webpage without writing to much code

Interesting with JDeveloper

Auto complete/suggest code
Can automatically surround a block of code with a statement (example if statement)
Can create your own code template
Automatically adds try/catch statements for parts of the code that require exception handling
Remote debugger
Quick key navigation
User defined extensions can easily be extended onto JDeveloper (example: a PMD extension insures quality code)

The overall feel of the sessions was that oracle is pushing JDeveloper as their primary development tool. JDeveloper is a very powerful development tool and one session was solely about tips to make programming quicker and more efficient. The only negative thing that was said about the product is that it slow at times, but they are working on it. Although Forms Developer was rarely mentioned, one lecturer assured attendees that Oracle was not planning on phasing out Oracle Forms and Reports.

OpenWorld AfterDark

OpenWorld also provided many activities to do after a full day of sessions. Every evening drinks and appetizers were provided to the conference attendees. Entertainment such and go-go dancers and live music were provided almost every night. An 11g upgrade party where users could upgrade to 11g themselves was featured at one of the hotels. Seeing Billy Joel, Lenny Kravitz, and Stevie Nicks performing at the Cow Palace during the appreciation event was the entertainment highlight of the trip. Hearing 'Piano Man', 'Landslide', and 'American Woman' all in the same night was definitely worth the trip.

San Francisco

OpenWorld kept me very busy with keynotes, sessions, exhibition hall, and after dark parties which left me with very little time to do much touring around, but I did manage to take some time to see what San Francisco had to offer.

Fisherman's Warf is San Francisco's primary tourist spot. Sea Lions, Hard Rock Café, a wax museum, and an aquarium are many of the touristy things one can do while at the Wharf. I just took a few hours to walk around the Wharf to check out some of the sights and sounds. Alcatraz was another interesting stop. No tour guide was needed just a headset to guide you through the prison. It was interesting to learn and hear about the prison from some of the actual prisoners and guards in the self guided audio tour. Hearing about the prison riot and escape were the highlights of the tour.

Downtown San Francisco is definitely a site to see. The stores and shops downtown were in abundance. If I was a fashion guru I might have been more inclined to enter and purchase from such stores as Gucci, Ralph Lauren, and Bloomingdales.

Conclusion

With 41,000 other attendees it would have been easy to have been overwhelmed during OpenWorld but Oracle made everything so easy on the attendees. It was the most organized event I have ever attended and the event staff members were always very friendly and helpful. Oracle provided not only a valuable learning experience but provided an entertaining and enjoyable week.

Some Pictures

Mascone

Keynote - Larry Ellison

Sea Lions @ Pier 39

Alcatraz