I’m a bit late with that “news” but I have the second article about Oracle 10g Grid Control Extensibility published in Q3 2007 issue of IOUG SELECT Journal magazine.

If you are interested in that topic I should reference you back to my presentation from IOUG where I created a sample MySQL monitoring plugin. It wasn’t meant to become a full blown plugin but rather a handy example. However, I heard recently that some people are actually using this MySQL plugin and looking forward for a new version so it’s time to get back to it.

Today I’ve resurrected my development VMware environment with Grid Control and spent some time adding a new feature for the plugin - dynamic instance property. This property is calculated by an agent instead of being defined by a user like hostname and port. It’s not documented anywhere so I had to research available examples and XML DTDs and so far I was able to capture MySQL version and the plan is to use it later for some conditional metrics that are only valid for certain versions of MySQL or calculated differently. Other plans - significantly extend collected metrics, implement configuration management features and MySQL jobs. Stay tuned - details to come as well as the new version of the plugin.

Few more words about my future plans…

At the end of September, I’ll be at Slovenian Oracle User Group Conference 2007. I’m looking forward for it - agenda is quite interesting and there quite a few well-known international speakers so I will be able to fill every slot with presentation in English. On the other hand, it seems I can understand Slovenian quite well without interpreter — it turned out to be quite similar to Russian. Another, advantage is the location - it’s on Adriatic Sea and I plan to take advantage of that as well! However, nothing comes for free so I will need to put some efforts and finish my presentation on RAC connection management. Another presentation that I’m going to deliver there is about RAC load testing based on an interesting lab project with one of our clients.

After SIOUG 2007, I’m planning to visit Laladia where newly renamed event Miracle Oracle Open World (former Miracle Database Forum) takes place. I’ll be lucky visitor there and won’t have burden of presenting. It’s one of the rare chances where I can just relax and fully enjoy the technical sessions and peer-networking activities.

I have also couple abstracted accepted for Australian Oracle User Group Conference 2007 in Melbourne at the end of November. If my participation is confirmed, I’ll be delivering two presentations there - on Block Change Tracking Internals and RAC load testing. I’m also looking forward to see our Sydney office shake hand of our brave evening oncaller, Paul Moen.

One week later, already in December, I’m heading to Birmingham for UKOUG 07. I’ll have only one presentation there so it will be relatively relaxed visit for me and I could enjoy other presenters and have all the time to chat with Oracle DBA peers.

So this is it for 2007. I’m looking forward to see you on one of those events!