Pythian Group

Yesterday we had a great day in London discussing all things related to Exadata. The day provided a walk through on everything you needed or wanted to know about Exadata.

Starting off we had Dan Norris explaining the resource manager. Next up was the equally excellent Tanel Poder talking about the metrics and wait events in Exadata, explaining how to check that your Exadata machine is doing smart scans. His book is out soon and if it’s anywhere near as interesting as his presentation then this is a must purchase. David Henderson then explained the proof of concept process that you need to go through with Oracle to get Exadata. But don’t worry, you don’t necessarily have to go through this with Oracle, we at Pythian would be more than delighted to help you with the planning, and process, just contact us.

After a fantastic lunch, it was my turn. My presentation was on an Oracle Exadata implementation that we carried out and that I support on an ongoing basis. The presentation went well and everyone seemed to enjoy it, there were plenty of questions afterwards. We even managed to start a room discussion on columnar compression. The last presentation of the day was from Stewart Bryson on Agile DW with Exadata and OBIEE. All in all, an excellent day which was well run by UKOUG.

Just one question: Dan Norris had the dessert, I didn’t, yet I am the fat one. Life is not fair sometimes.

This edition of Log Buffer is my first article on the Pythian Blog. It seems appropriate that, as I start a new chapter of my life in Canada and am looking to the future, a lot of the blogs this week are doing the same.

After the shock of the Oracle takeover the MySQL community is full of hope. Mark Callaghan has written about the new storage engines for MySQL and also suggestions for what the MySQL community could be doing while they wait to hear what Oracle has planned.

Kaj Arno has looked to the future and he thinks he has found some answers.

With the media constantly bombarding us about economic meltdown and pandemics, its nice to read someone who sees something positive. Selena Deckelman sees hope in the world after a conversation with the Paul Vallée.

But its not just the MySQL world that is looking forward—DB2 users are too, with the imminent release of versions 9.5 thru to 9.7.

The always readable Jonathan Lewis celebrates his millionth visitor by comparing himself to Susan Boyle. For this milestone, Jonathan deserves a kiss, too, don’t you agree? Read the rest of this entry . . .