Oracle BIWA User Community

Returned home from a hectic week at Collaborate, was mainly focusing on the BIDW content and was nice to read this article of how BIDW is doing in the current market. Also read Larry's Q&A about his plans for Sun.. one of the obvious questions in people's mind is will Exadata support extend to SPARC processors, seems like that is not on his mind right now... Thanks Shyam

Sitting in the keynote by Al Smit h of IBM... towards the starts he talks about the importance of BI....liked the analogy of cost the of "dirt" in a landscaping project to the cost of managing the "data" as an infrastructure element in the enterprise. Interestingly, IBM handed DB2 flyers on the way in to the keynote....some of you might have seen the recent a announcement about emulating Oracle DB in DB2. This year IBM and Cognos booth are the same unlike the last year, however, noticed Piocon and TUSC have 2 different booth though both are under Rolta umbrella now. A good example of business case for Master Data Management (MDM. Stat from IBM keynote that managers spend more time looking for data than actually using it. Al gave a good example of series of hardware upgrades with small performance boost, but with dimishing returns as data / database keeps grows. Tomorrow, I am speaking on Oracle Exadata and this a great example of why large DW shops need to inclu

Here are the sessions for Tuesday...

Attend the IOUG SIG Orientation on Sunday at 6PM in Peabody Hotel, opposite the convention center.

It's only a day at Collaborate and I heard some folks asking where are the bars!  Well close to Convention center are the highways and it is not right in any Downtown... but there is plenty to do in Orlando, it is the Entertainment Capital of the World with about 52 million tourists every year! That is little more than Las Vegas (~48 million) or London (~27 million). Orlando has second largest hotels room, next only to Vegas... The top destination is Magic Kingdom, Disney.  Universal Studios and Island of Adventure are close to City Walk, i.e. you get to same parking lot and then walk to City walk (11AM onwards till 2AM!) or go to the Parks Universal Studios (movie based rides) or Island of Adventure (roller coaster like rides)- the two theme parks. City Walk is couple of miles from Convention Center, but I best bet is to drive or take the shuttle from the hotel.  Parking is $12 for cars or $3 after 6 PM (used to be free after 6 but 2009 it changed) These Universal Theme Parks riva

Arrived at Orlando today... to get situated before the event starts... The attendees can expect a "warm welcome"  as it will be 68-90F for the next few days... However, almost all hotels have pools and the shuttle from the conference hotel starts early, so one can easily avoid the hot day outside...unless you are from the Sunshine state like myself where 90F is the norm... Main activites start tomorrow for BIWA SIG... BI Panel will have a few BI experts such as Mark Rittman, Martin Carangelo,Dan Vlamis, Charlie Berger and Michael Schrader  and the mightly Ian Abramson moderating it... so do not miss it Sunday,  May 3   6:00 pm – 7:30 pm:   SIG Reception  -  come by the BIWA SIG table and chat with your Colleagues and Oracle PM's  Monday,  May 4 8:00 am - 9:00 am:     rm W230A   -  IOUG BIWA SIG Orientation  1:15 pm - 2:15 pm:    rm     W230A - BI Panel - Critical Success Factor for BI Projects  2:30 pm - 3:30 pm:    rm    330A  -   BIWA SIG - Meeting  Tuesday,  May 5 7:15