Oracle BIWA User Community

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This year we got to listen to two keynotes from Larry Ellision, first one on Sunday and then on Wed. I had recently gotten a chance to learn about the history of Oracle in a talk titled "How Oracle Came to Rule the World" by Richard Neimeic at BIWA Summit, but it was great to listen from Larry himself as he describes how he put his house on stake to get Oracle going some 30 years ago. In today's keynote, Larry did a quick recap of the Linux support and then talked about Oracle VM. The part I liked most was the story of Sales Prospector and how data mining is the core of that product. Interestingly, Larry used the Amazon example to describe use of data mining in everyday life. I had used the same example on my Data Mining talk titled "Machine Learning about Human Learning" on Sunday at the BIWA SIG session. As Charlie Berger the Product Manager of Oracle Data Mining would say it, "it is moving up the maturity curve of BI." It is great that the first o...

This time for a change there was a sneak peak into the exhibit hall on Sunday at 4:00PM on uppper level of Moscone north. To my surprise there was no Oracle DB related product in this section!!! Intel was talking about the PC for the third world school students and had a 11 year old on the exhbition floor demoing the PC! There were motor bikes, Geek Squad car, washer and dryer all all kinds of "green" low energy consuming stuff on the floor. I guess it was this green theme that was in the sneak peak! Now I am getting ready for the first keynote and the tent party on Howard St after that....

Session 3 was split into two parts: Joe Thomas talking about BI, DW and Advanced Analytics sessions Mon-Thursday at Oracle Openworld 2007. Joe is a veteral of 18 Opneworlds and used his experience to point out the sessions that the BIWA attendees can use to make the most of this openworld. He listed the topics in the oder of DW sessions, BIEE related sessions and EPM sessions. I will upload his PPT at http://OracleBIWA.org along with the other PPT's from today. The second half was my talk on A Case Study for BI, DW and Advanced Analytics - "Machine Learning About Human Learning." A got quite a few questions in the Q&A session, which is always a good sign. At this time Jim Raper is talking on "Knowing What you Don't know" - a fairly intriguing topic. Jim has hands on experience with SQL Server and well as Oracle since its early releases. His presentations point out any nuances that Oracle tool face with SQL Server.

Andy Flower talked about Enterprise Information Integration. Some of his comments included "DW is really a proxy for the enterprise." If we have infinite MIPS, perhaps DW would be replaced by data from the operational source and all analytics apps will crunch numbers from data directly from the source. However, is a "real" world, we use DW as the next best option to aggregate all these data in one place. Andy highlighted how Master Data Management (MDM) and Customer Data Hub fits into this landscape.

It all begin's in a few minutes, today will be dedicated to the User Groups and SIG's, except in the evening there will be sneak preview to Exhibition Hall and the inaugural Keynote / Welcome session in the evening. I am now in the 8:30 AM session at Moscone West, 2001 -L2, where all the BIWA track presentations will take place. Connected to the Wiki network, but it seems kinda slow. Ian Abramson is the first speaker, his topic: "My Oracle Features for your Data Warehouse Needs" seems a good database centric topic to kickstart the day! This year the room is much larger (285 capacity )than last year which only accommodated 80. The registration desk at OOW has been spread out this time, you pick up badges at one place (Moscone West) and pick up the goodies at Moscone South, kinda keeps the crowd distributed. Ian is an entertaining speaker, he started of with the comment on the Canadian dollar v/s US Dollar! -------------------------------------- Ian introduced the BI...

Oracle Openworld 2007 starts on Nov 11, it you will be there on Sunday, please stop by at these BIWA track presentations. (those not attending the event, you can watch the keynotes in realtime over the web or see the recordings later): 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM Moscone West 2001 - L2 S292916 IOUG BIWA SIG: The Oracle Database Features that Every DW Has to Have Ian Abramson, Keyrus 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM Moscone West 2001 - L2 S292926 IOUG BIWA SIG Meeting: Information Integration for Enterprise Business Intelligence Andy Flower, Right Triangle Consulting 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Moscone West 2001 - L2 S292935 IOUG BIWA SIG Meeting: Machine Learning About Human Learning Shyam Varan Nath, BIWA SIG/Citco Group (also presentation by Joe Thomas about BI at OOW) 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM Moscone West 2001 - L2 S292944 IOUG BIWA SIG Meeting: BI - Real Power is seeing what you DON?T know Jim Raper, City of Charlotte