By Gary Gordhamer, Education Director for the Quest IOUG Database & Technology Community

Welcome to 2020! Nothing will ever be the same again, yet nothing has changed. These might be some of the sentiments you are feeling, and are mirrored in the industry we live in. The last few years have seen the rise of cloud everything. Yet you may say that the day to day work is still a lot of getting projects to execute, working on networking issues, upgrading, and patching one more system.

Sometimes we have to take a much larger view of the world. Looking from December 2019 to January 2020 you will probably feel like it is just one day later. Looking back to December 2009 and a very different view would be seen. The iPhone 3 was all the rage, mobile access was rising, tablets were “new” (again), and cloud was something you looked for if it was going to rain.

Now we debate between iPhone X or 10 or 11, when will 12 show up? Mobile is assumed and everywhere, and everyone has their own mobile application. Every three-year-old and up has a tablet, and a phone, and a computer (I’m sitting here with five devices right now). To some extent, this shows us that as much as we think we know what the future holds, we really can’t predict the exact outcome.

Cloud is still maturing, but its starting to hit its’ stride. Cloud is not ubiquitous like mobile yet, but we are rapidly heading there. A Cloud-first approach for application development is the norm now. Throughout the last 27-year journey, IOUG has been a constant companion to the Oracle database professional. In 2019, IOUG joined the Quest Oracle Community, growing its reach and capabilities. Much like moving your on-premise database to cloud infrastructure to enable access to more technology and features faster.

Quest IOUG Database & Technology Education at COLLABORATE 20

COLLABORATE is the annual user conference that IOUG has been a big part of for over 12 years now. For 2020, we continue to build out great educational content and want to continue to be part of the professional journey of the complete Oracle technical professional.

This year the Quest IOUG Database & Technology Community is proud to bring another great set of content to COLLABORATE 20.

Let’s start with some hands-on labs where you can try out technology in person and possibly work towards certification:

• 102440: “Hands-on Lab – Upgrade to Oracle Database 19c Using Auto Upgrade Feature” by Roy Swonger, Oracle
• 100860: “Hands-on Lab – Keeping your Data Safe – Security for Cloud Databases” by Russ Lowenthal, Oracle
• 102400: “Hands-on Lab – Oracle Machine Learning” by Charlie Berger, Oracle
• 107190: “Certification Cram Session – Autonomous DBA” by Tammy Bednar, Oracle

Maybe your new decade resolution is to get certified. Oracle University will again be on-site providing certification exams for three days of the conference. If you’re not up for taking tests, how about jumping into some of the newest Oracle technology?

• 107280: “The Oracle 19c Best New Features and a Few 20c Tips” by Rich Niemiec, Viscosity North America
• 101100: “What’s New in Oracle Database 20c” by William Hardie, Oracle
• 103290: “Achieving Extreme Scalability & Total Fault Isolation with Oracle Sharding 19c/20c” by Kai Yu, Dell EMC
• 101270: “What’s Your Super-Power? Mine is Machine Learning with Oracle Autonomous DB” by James Czuprynski, Viscosity North America
• 110230: “Powerful: Practical Machine Learning In The Hands Of The DBA” by Craig Shallahamer, OraPub, Inc.

How about digging into analytics, data analysis, data science, or reporting?

• 102600: “Using Google Charts to Visualize your SQL*Plus Reports” by Biju Thomas, OneNeck It
• 100290: “MongoDB for the Oracle DBA” by Mark Sorger, SAIC
• 107800: “Data Engineering and the Death of Visual ETL” by Stewart Bryson, Red Pill Analytics
• 108970: “DBA first steps into Big Data on the Oracle Cloud” by Nelson Calero, The Pythian Group

Perhaps you are more interested in DevOps, CI/CD, development, and emerging technologies.

• 109190: “Journey to the future – All About Git, GitHub, Oracle Developer Cloud Services, and More” by Francisco Munoz Alvarez, CloudDB
• 109340: “Automating Oracle Database Administration Tasks Using Ansible Tower (109340)” by David Aihe, Deloitte
• 110140: “Docker on Exadata and Beyond: Streamlining Database Deployments in a DevOps World” by Ryan Fields, 84.51
• 100750: “Oracle Database 19c Automated Deployment Using Vagrant, Ansible, and VirtualBox” by Yossi Nixon, Axxana

Maybe the new decade brings the idea of new job challenges, career changes, or just trying to increase your role at work.  We have a number of great sessions in those areas as well.

• 110760: “Power Boost Your Career; Learn It, Live It, Share It” by Michael Nelson, Northrop Grumman
• 100430: “The Changing Role of DBA: From Database Developer to Data Scientist in 6 Weeks!” by Charlie Berger, Oracle
• 109250: “Does the Cloud Mean the End of the DBA? Life After Oracle Autonomous Database and 19c” by Francisco Munoz Alvarez, CloudDB
• 110130: “Surviving in an Autonomous World: An Old-School DBA’s Handbook” by Troy Ligon, InComm
• 100340: “Technology Leadership to People Leadership: How to Make the Transition” by Kirby McCord, U.S. Cellular

Cloud is still a hot topic, and a lot of work is still going on moving systems to the cloud, optimizing the cloud, and learning how to take full advantage of cloud technologies.

• 105120: “SQL and PL/SQL in the Cloud” by Michael Rosenblum, Dulcian Inc.
• 109600: “Running Mission-Critical Databases on Amazon RDS for Oracle” by Natisha Solanki, Amazon Web Services
• 110040: “Amazon RDS for Oracle: Deep Dive and Best Practices” by Srinagesh Battula, Amazon Web Services
• 100780: “Oracle Database Security in the Oracle Cloud” by Alex Zaballa, Accenture Enkitec Group
• 105210: “My First 100 days with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” by Rene Antunez, The Pythian Group
• 100490: “Oracle’s Cloud Computing Strategy” by Sandra Cheevers, Oracle

Maybe not last, or least, we bring some of the solid technical content that has been the cornerstone of IOUG for years.  From upgrades to new features, and even if you are beginning your DBA career.

• 101200: “Upgrade and Migrate to Oracle Database 19c: Live and Uncensored!” Roy Swonger, Oracle
• 107490: “RMAN for the Novice DBA” by Nathan Miller, Northrop Grumman
• 103020: “Protecting Oracle RAC DBs with Oracle 20c Autonomous Health Framework Service” by Mark Scardina, Oracle
• 105550: “The Oracle Auto Upgrade” by Michael Messina, Rolta AdvizeX

This list represents just a taste of what the Quest IOUG Database & Technology Community brings to COLLABORATE 20, along with the hundreds of other sessions that the rest of the Quest communities and OATUG will also be providing. I’d like to extend extreme gratitude to the many members of the community that help bring this all together and present their knowledge at this year’s conference and past. We hope you will join us there and that the next decade is even better than the past one.

Additional Resources

COLLABORATE 20 will take place April 19-23, 2020 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada! Don’t miss this chance to share inspiration, insights, and solutions with your peers, vendors, and the Oracle team! Register before March 6, 2020, to take advantage of Early Bird pricing.