My First Kscope

It’s been several days since Kscope 12 ended and what a conference we had!

The User Group Oracle Development Tools (ODTUG) organized the best conference I have attended so far. Everything was impeccable, starting with the conference site (JW Marriott San Antonio), presenters, activities at the end of the day and of course the party at Knibbe Ranch with an incredible atmosphere, good music, drinks, games, Texas BBQ, and we even attended a rodeo!

Kscope was a great experience and I recommend it to all those who use Oracle tools for application development. Not only the technical content is excellent but it gives you the opportunity to meet and often make friends with other members of the Oracle community.

I finally got to meet a lot of  “Oracle tweeps” that I’ve been exchanging messages with for some time like Jeff Smith (@thatjeffsmith), Chet Justice (@oraclenerd), Patrick Barel (@patch72), Dan McGhan (@dmcghan), Kellyn Pot’vin (@DBAKevlar), Tim Gorman (@timothyjgorman), Cary Millsap (@carymillsap), Dominic Delmolino (@ddelmoli), Alex Gorbachev (@alexgorbachev), Noel Portugal (@noelportugal), Christian Rokitta (@crokitta), Kris Rice (@krisrice), Dan Norris (@dannorris), James Murtagh (@allthingsoracle) among others.

Deciding which sessions to attend was one of the most difficult tasks because in many cases two or three sessions that interested me occurred at the same time. In the end I was satisfied with what I chose and this is the list of my favorites (in no particular order):

Single Table Access Paths by Jonathan Lewis.

Optimizing a Two Table Join by Jonathan Lewis.

Beating the Oracle Optimizer by Jonathan Lewis.

Understanding Optimizer Statistics by Maria Colgan (@sqlmaria).

Top Tips to get Optimal Execution Plans all the Time by Maria Colgan.

Implementing MapReduce with SQL Algorithms and PL/SQL by Dominic Delmolino.

Next year the conference will be held in New Orleans and the organizers promise to surpass the success of this year, and I bet they will. Registration is now open for Kscope 13, so do not think too much and sign up!

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