Donal Daly on Database Tools

Oracle Ireland employee # 74 signing off...

2007-07-13T14:29:00.000+01:00

I will shortly be starting my life outside Oracle after some 15 years there. My last day is today.

I've enjoyed it immensely and am proud of our accomplishments. It really doesn't seem like 15 years, and I have been lucky to work on some very exciting projects with some very clever people, many of whom have become friends. I look forward to hearing about all the new releases coming from Database Tools in the future.

Next it is two weeks holidays in France (I hope the weather gets better!) and then the beginning of my next adventure in a new company. More on that later.

I think I'll continue to blog on database tools topics.

Access migration to Application Express without direct SQL Access

2007-07-04T15:05:00.000+01:00

I got asked a question recently how to complete an Access migration when you don't have direct SQL access to the Oracle instance where Oracle Application Express is installed (e.g. apex.oracle.com)?

For dealing with the application part, it is not an issue as the Application Migration Workshop feature of APEX (3.0+) allows you to load the results from the Oracle Migration Workbench Exporter for Microsoft Access, so you can capture the meta data for Access Forms and Reports. You can even download a copy of the exporter from the workshop itself.

The challenge is really the schema and data migration part using Oracle SQL Developer (1.2+). By default SQL Developer expects to be able to make a SQL connection to the target Oracle database. However I did think about this use case as we were designing this new Migration Workbench tool. I will describe a solution below.

The only requirement, is that you have SQL access to any Oracle database (9iR2+), because the workbench is driven using an underlying migration repository. You could use the Express Edition of Oracle for this purpose, which is totally free, if you didn't have SQL access to an existing Oracle database.

So let me outline the main steps involved:

Start SQL Developer 1.2
Make sure you set the following preference: Tools -> Preferences -> Migration -> Generation Options: Least Privilege Schema Migration
Create a connection to your Access database. Make sure you can browse the tables in the access database and see the data
Export the table data to csv format: For each table you want to migrate, use the context menu associated with tables to export as csv format. Make sure you select an encoding that matches your target database. I try to keep everything in UTF-8
Create a connection to an Oracle schema.
Create a migration repository in this connection. You can do this via the context menu on a connection
From your Access connection, context menu, select: Capture Microsoft Access. This will launch the exporter and initiate the capture step of the migration.
Take your captured model and now create an Oracle (converted) model by selecting the captured model and via the context menu: Convert to Oracle Model
With you converted model, you can now create an object creation script using the context menu: Generate
The result of step 9 is presented in a SQL Worksheet, you can edit this to remove objects you are not interested in, then via File -> Save As, save the contents to a SQL file.
Login to your APEX Workspace
To execute the object creation script you have just created. Goto SQL Workshop -> SQL Scripts -> Upload.
Once the script is uploaded, View it and select the RUN action. This should create all your schema objects, view the results to make sure all the object were create successfully. You now be able to view these schema objects in the SQL Workshop -> Object Browser.
To load our CSV files we will use the Utilities -> Data Load/Unload -> Load, selecting Load Spreadsheet Data. You will do this for each table we want to load data into. Select Load To : Existing Table and Load From: Upload File. You may need to apply appropriate format masks to get the data to load properly.

Notes:

You should complete the schema and data migration part of your migration, prior to creating a migration project via the Application Migration Workshop.
You may have some post migration cleanup steps, if you had access auto increment columns in your tables, you will need to reset the values of the sequences we have created.
Another option to explore depending on your data, would be to export the data from Access tables as SQL INSERT statements, and then it just a simple matter of loading and run that SQL script via apex.

Its summer, time to bring the car out for a good drive

2007-06-27T13:02:00.001+01:00

At the weekends, there is nothing better than taking out my Porsche for a long drive drive in the countryside. Much better, than my daily commute! I am a member of the Porsche Club of Ireland, and we had a great drive through the Wicklow mountains recently. The weather wasn't great but the scenery is still dramatic, lots of narrow twisting mountains roads to allow you to eke out the maximum enjoyment. It was fathers day so the kids decided they would both come with me, which was great.

I think we had over 15 members cars out that day. Everybody is very friendly, with a passion for all things Porsche. We started out from the Porsche Center in Dublin and they graciously provided us with coffee before we started and allowed us to gaze over all the new models. Out of my price range of course!

It was a real fun day and I look forward to the next event. We post the pictures from these "drives" on the club web site.

Oracle Database Plugin for the Eclipse Data Tools Platform

2007-06-21T19:41:00.000+01:00

As a further commitment to the Eclipse Community, Oracle announces an early adopter release of the Oracle Database Plugin for Eclipse Data Tools Platform. This plugin extends the Eclipse Data Tools Platform to connect to and work with Oracle database objects. The initial plugin supports the ability to connect to Oracle Databases, navigate through all database objects, execute stored procedures and functions, and view textual and graphical execution plans.

This release has been tested against DTP 1.0. We will revise the plugin as required once DTP 1.5 is released as part of the imminent Eclipse Euorpa release.

Oracle has published a Statement of Direction which outlines our future plans.

Feedback from the community is important to us so Oracle has created a forum on OTN to provide a means for this feedback to be collected and allow Oracle to respond. Assuming a positive level of interest from the community, we would seek to formally join the DTP project for the purpose of contributing to the Connectivity, Model Base, SQL Development Tools and particularly the Enablement subproject to provide specialized support for the Oracle Database.

Oracle Database Migration has reached the next level!

2007-06-08T10:24:00.000+01:00

SQL Developer 1.2 is now production and with it our new integrated migration workbench. Find out more information on OTN here. Over the last 6 months or so as I have talked about this new product, I used the tag line "Taking database migration to the next level", well... I think we are there now. We are the first database vendor to provide an integrated migration tool into a developers IDE with all of the resulting productivity benefits this brings.

The SQL Developer Migration Workbench is the tool to aid in the migration of third party databases onto the Oracle platform. This tool allows you to migrate your existing Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL databases (including schema objects, data and stored procedures/functions) to Oracle.

Features of this production release include:

Enhanced user interface - This release harnesses the enhanced GUI environment of SQL Developer and works seamlessly with other SQL Developer components. This means that users have one tool to browse third-party databases, migrate selected objects to Oracle and then work with them.
Existing SQL Developer users should find the Migration Workbench familiar and easy to use.
Quick Migration Wizard provides the easiest and quickest means of doing a database migration.
Step driven migration offers control at each stage of the migration process.
Fine grain migration support provides users with the ability to select specific objects for migration.
Least privilege migration - The ability to migrate objects from source to target without the need for dba rights. The workbench will migrate objects it has rights to view so does not require any special privileges to run.
Platform Supported:

Supports Microsoft Access versions 97, 2000, 2002/XP, 2003
Microsoft SQL Server 7, 2000, 2005
MySQL versions 3, 4, 5.

Parallel Online data move - The ability to move the data using a number of parallel connections for increased throughput.
Offline data move script generation - Generates scripts to allow for export of source data and import to target database of offline data move. We also support offline capture as well.
Language Translation Features - Supports translation of stored programs, procedures, functions, triggers, constraints and views defined in Transact SQL or Microsoft Access SQL.
Translation scratch editor - An interactive editing facility for Transact SQL and Microsoft Access SQL allowing for instant translation to PL/SQL or SQL. This editor supports both single-statement translation and translation of entire SQL scripts.
Translation difference viewer - Inline difference viewer for examining translated SQL. This viewer provides color coded side-by-side comparison of translated SQL to display semantic similarities between the source and translated code.
Any many more interesting features for you to find out about....

We have also prepared a number of online demos (viewlets) so you can see this new tool in action. Check them out on OTN here.

I am very proud of what my team has achieved with this release. A lot of work over the past year has gone into it. This is only the beginning, expect further innovative releases from the database tools team in the future.

I would like to thank our early adopters who provided some very constructive feedback. Hopefully you see the results of your feedback in this production release.

Access Migration Tutorial

2007-05-31T19:33:00.000+01:00

Are you considering migrating that Microsoft Access application to Oracle Application Express? Well read on...

Hopefully you are aware of Oracle SQL Developer and that we have redeveloped the Migration Workbench and integrated it tightly with Oracle SQL Developer. An early adopter version of this is available now and will be production very soon. More of that in a subsequent post.

With Oracle Application Express 3.0 we introduced the Application Migration Workshop to assist with migrating your Access Forms & Reports. When I talk about this solution, I get asked do we have a step by step guide or methodology for such migrations. So, we have produced a migration tutorial to address this and have published it on OTN.

We have taken the Microsoft Access sample application, Northwind Traders and migrated it to Oracle Application Express. The tutorial covers this in step by step detail. Following this tutorial would be a useful exercise for any user that wishes to undertake migrating their applications from Microsoft Access to Oracle Application Express. We have called the converted application Southwind Wholesalers. :-)

You can see it running on apex.oracle.com and we have also provided it as a packaged application so you can examine it in detail.

Updated Oracle SQL Developer Migration Workbench Early Adopter Release

2007-05-17T11:18:00.000+01:00

We have updated the early adopter release of Oracle SQL Developer Migration Workbench today on OTN. You can get it from here. This is our final preview release, before we go production. We are now functionally complete for this initial production release and are now focused on fixing our final "show stopper" bugs. We have had good feedback from our user community via our feedback application and also via the Workbench forum. They have uncovered a number of bugs, most of which we have now addressed (Oracle9i as a repository and Access data migration issues for example) and the remaining ones we will resolve prior to production. I encourage everybody to update to this latest release and continue to provide us with feedback.

I have been working extensively with different builds of the Migration Workbench these past couple of weeks as we closed in on our goal to refresh the early adopter version. In my "biased" opinion is it looking much stronger and I would like to outline some of the new features in this updated early adopter release.

Quick Migrate
In the orginal Migration Workbench we had a wizard driven approach to simplify migrations and I felt it was important to bring this functionality back. With our Quick Migrate wizard, I believe we have improved from the original wizard, since we will leverage our least priviliege migration capabilities, assume sensible defaults and create/remove our migration repository.

So if you have a schema on SQL Server or a single Access mdb file to migrate to an existing Oracle schema, this should be the easiest and quickest migration option for you. Another nice feature, if you are doing an access migration, is that we have added command line support to our exporter so, we will automatically launch the correct Access exporter for the Access connection that you specify.

Offline Capture
This was a popular feature with our consultants and partner technical services folks, with the original Workbench, as it allowed them to work remote from the customer/partner. We have now added back in that feature.

Migration Reports
We have added in some initial migration reports available under Reports->Shared Reports. This will be an area we will add to into the future, as we can mine our rich metadata repository to provide you with useful information. If you have suggestions for additional reports let me know. I will also publish more details about our repository, so you can develop your own migration reports as well. Maybe we should have a competition for the best contributed report? I think we have a couple of 1GB USB keys left over from our Database Developer Day in Dublin I could use as prizes.

Translation Scratch Editor
We have reworked this feature extensively. I originally wanted to add a feature that would enable you to validate our translated SQL. As we worked through different iterations of how best to implement this feature, we came up with the idea about leveraging our existing Worksheet capabilities, which I think is very cool and I am very pleased with how this turned out.

We have also done a lot of work to improve incremental capture and improve our filtering capabilities from our early adopter release. We have integrated our MySQL parser from the original Migration Workbench and will extend its capabilities in subsequent releases to be as functional as our new TSQL parser and also support SQL statement level translation. (workaround for now, within the scratch editor, is just wrap the SQL statement in a procedure). We have also implemented the ability to update your Access mdb file, to create link tables to point to your newly migrated schema. This was also a feature of the original workbench. We hope to add some additional usability tweaks to create an ODBC OSN on the fly and provide a select list of known Oracle DSN. Hopefully that will make it in before production as well.

We have made fixes to ensure correct generation order for pl/sql procedures to resolve dependencies, so more pl/sql procedures should compile correctly first time. We made improvement to handle inline DDL statements correctly. Temporary tables, normal tables and other DDL are lifted out of the body of the procedure/function and are created separately.

Now for the final bug fix push by the development teams in Dublin and Bangalore. Our QA team, have been doing a good job verifying our fixes and closing off our bugs. The teams have been working hard on this for many months now and I believe we are in touching distance of reaching our goal. It will be very exciting for me personally to see this second generation migration tool reach production. We'll all need some time off when this is done to recharge...

Oracle Application Express 3.0 a credible alternative to Microsoft Access?

2007-04-04T16:45:00.000+01:00

I hope most people know by now that Oracle Application Express (APEX) 3.0 has gone production, is available for download from OTN and our hosted instance, apex.oracle.com had also been upgraded to 3.0. There has been some positive reviews in the press recently, here are links to a number of them:

Oracle Updates Application Express Tool
Oracle updates free Web development tool
Oracle has big ambitions for Application Express
Oracle improves free tool for building Web Applications
Oracle Application Express 3.0 Touts Access Migration

Most customers I talk with have problems with Access and are looking at alternatives, which I guess is the reason I am talking with them in the first place. However, Microsoft Access is a popular desktop database and was updated recently as part of the Office 2007. That said, it is desktop centric and more suited (optimized?) for productivity applications used by individuals or small groups.

On our OTN page about the Application Migration Workshop we have published a high level feature comparison of Access and Oracle APEX.

Is Oracle Application Express 3.0 a credible alternative to Microsoft Access?

What do you think?

Oracle SQL Developer Migration Workbench Early Adopter Release

2007-03-12T14:11:00.000Z

Last week we released on OTN the early adopter release of the Oracle SQL Developer Migration Workbench. You can find more details about it here. It was a very important release for us, and marks the start of a new generation of migration tools.

It is nearly 10 years ago when the original Oracle Migration Workbench was released, we supported migrating SQL Server 6.5 to Oracle8 then. At that time, I believe we were the first to introduce a GUI tool. Previously we had provided a series of migration scripts (shell based + SQL) and a stored procedure converter utility. We went on to add support for Access, Sybase, Informix, DB2 utilizing the same user interface by leveraging our plugin architecture. Over the years we have seen our database competitors and others release similar migration tools for their databases.

With this release, I believe we have made the same dramatic shift again that we did back in 1998. By integrating our migration tool as a extension of SQL developer (our very popular tool for database developers) we have provided our users with a modern intuitive UI tightly integrated into an IDE, that should make users even more productive as they carry out database migrations. I don't believe any of our competitors have delivered such tight integration.

This initial release supports Microsoft SQL Server, Access and MySQL. We are introducing support for migrating Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with this release. These third party databases represents the most popular downloads for our existing Oracle Migration Workbench. We will add further platforms in the future. We have also architected this solution, to make it even easier to extend and leverage the rich core migration functionality that we have developed. We hope that others will also extend this tool going forward adding support for additional databases.

The focus now, is on completing some features which missed the cut for the early adopter release, (more on that in a later post) , getting feedback from our user community and fixing as many reported bugs to ensure the highest possible quality release, when we go production, as SQL Developer 1.2. I encourage you to try it out and provide us with feedback. We have setup a comment application which you can provide us with feedback. You can access it here.

Some of my favorite features of this new release includes:

Least privilege migration - You no longer need dba privileges
Online Data Move - We have enhanced the online data move and provide parallel data move and the degree of parallelism is configurable
New T/SQL parser - We have completing rewritten our T/SQL parser. If I'm honest, it was long over due, but this new parser, provides us with the right foundation for a much greater level of automation in converting complex objects (stored procedures, views, triggers)
Translation Scratch Editor - allows for the instant translation of Transact SQL or Microsoft Access SQL to PL/SQL or SQL.
Translation Difference Viewer - a color-coded side-by-side viewer to display semantic similarities between the source and translated code.

Looking forward to reviewing the feedback from our user community, getting those missing features completed and getting this new tool to production status as part of SQL Developer 1.2

Consolidation is the key driver for Migration from Microsoft Access to Oracle Application Express

2007-02-15T20:01:00.000Z

I have just been reviewing the survey results and feedback received from early adopters of the Application Migration Workshop a new feature of Oracle Application Express to assist with migration of Microsoft Access Forms and Reports to Oracle Application Express.

Looking at the data, consolidation is the key reason. In fact, it was twice as popular as the next given reasons of company direction and performance.

So what does consolidation really mean in this context. It is 1 to 1, i.e. one Access database to a unique schema in Oracle or is it a many to 1, removing duplication and increasing the shared access to a "single source of truth". I think it is a mixture of both.

In talking with customers over the last year or so, some customers have told me that they have thousands of access applications and refer to it as their "access problem". Clearly it would be a stretch to think that they have thousands of unique applications, so there must be a lot of duplication and redundant access databases.

So how do you define an appropriate access migration strategy. Well I believe firstly, you need more information about your access databases. This is really an assessment phase. In doing an assessment of a large number of access databases, I would split it into two parts:

Technical Assessment
Business Assessment

Technical Assessment

In the technical assessment phase, you are trying to build up some key data about these access databases. I refer to it as a technical assessment, as hopefully you could have a utility to collect this information. Data to collect would include:

Name, Owner, Size
Date created, Date last modified
Version
# of Tables, Forms, Reports, Queries, Pages, Modules,
Links

links to other mdb files
linked data e.g. link tables via ODBC to Oracle, SQL Server, ...

Location (server)
...

Business Assessment (Business Level Discovery)

This requires human involvement, and is critical for a subsequent analysis phase. Data points here would include:

Business Owner (by department, group)
Description (purpose)
Application Type (data entry, reporting, ...)
Priority (Business Critical to Redundant)
Action (migrate, ignore, duplicate, remove, ...)
# of users

I can see this being the basis for a nice Oracle Application Express Application, that would support the data entry of business level data, and the generation of useful reports and charts. This would then facilitate the next level of analysis and allow you to ask some interesting questions:

What is my spread of versions of Microsoft Access?
How many copies of project.mdb or tasklist.mdb do I have? :-)
What's my largest / average access database size?
Which access databases are most heavily used?
...

Now I think that would be a very useful data collection utility and Oracle APEX application.

Oracle APEX Application Migration Workshop is now on OTN!

2006-11-30T23:10:00.000Z

While the road to release has not been as smooth as I would have liked (down to me in parts :-) ) , we have finally published the early adopter version on OTN.

We very much welcome your feedback on it. Our plans is to have this as a standard feature of Oracle APEX 3.0, so you have the chance of your feedback making a difference in the final product in a short timeframe. I look forward to receving your feedback and making the product better because of it.

You will find more details about it here.

Enjoy, Donal

Design Goals for the Oracle APEX Application Migration Workshop

2006-11-29T16:18:00.000Z

We are in the home stretch now, to make the early adopter version of the Oracle APEX Application Migration Workshop available on OTN. We have released some more information about it on OTN and have created a new OTN forum to host discussions about migration from Microsoft Access to Oracle Application Express.

I thought it would be an opportune time, to outline some of our design goals behind this development. Firstly, we want to promote Database Refactoring, once you have gotten your schema and data migrated using the Oracle Migration Workbench. The better your Data Model is, the easier it will be to create good Oracle APEX applications. Currently we identify tables without primary or foreign keys and also promote the usage of UI defaults, a feature of Oracle APEX. We hope to expand on this in the future, based on feedback. A possibility could be to identify tables that could be leveraged as List of Values (LOV's) or try to identify incorrect usage of data types, e.g. dates being stored as varchar.

Our approach is one of Design Recovery. We want to provide as much information about the original Access Application that we could recover from the Access mdb file. We have taken a workshop approach, to provide the developer a productive environment to decide what Access objects they are interested in and should be in scope. You deal with any errors reported, so additional objects can also be included. By default all Access objects which we analyze and determine are valid are included in the scope your migration project by default.

Our goal is to only generate a native Oracle APEX application. We are not interested in emulating unique Access functionality. Access Applications could be classed as "rich client" applications whereas Oracle APEX applications are Web (Browser) based. It's a different UI paradigm, and this needs to be respected if you are to create, intuitive and useful applications. We don't migrate any VBA code, but we will show you the VBA code contained in your modules. You could then determine if this logic is still necessary and if so, could be reimplemented as PL/SQL procedures/functions.

We can generate either an application based on selected Access Forms or Reports or generate a maintenance style application which is a Report and a Form on each selected Tables and Views.
Our application generation leverages the Application Model behind the create application wizard.

I am looking forward to feedback on this new feature of Oracle APEX. I believe we have built a good foundation, to address additional feature requests we might receive. With input from the community we can ensure that the Application Migration Workshop increases the productivity of developers who seek to migrate Access applications to Oracle APEX, when it becomes a standard feature of Oracle APEX 3.0

Now back to the last round of testing...

Database Tools Talks at UKOUG next week

2006-11-09T20:03:00.000Z

Next week I'll be in Birmingham at the UK Oracle User Group Conference. I am looking forward to it, as it gives me another opportunity to talk about our new tools. This year, I think the database tools team is well represented.

Mike Hichwa, VP of Database Tools (main architect behind Oracle Application Express & my boss!) will be giving a presentation on Thursday morning @ 9am titled - An Insight into SQL Developer and Application Express

Sue Harper, PM for SQL Developer is giving a presentation on Wednesday on SQL Developer: Using Oracle's Graphical Database Development Tool. As you probably know by now, we have released an evaluation copy of SQL Developer 1.1 on OTN, so I am sure Sue will cover all the new cool features in 1.1 and answer any questions you might have.

Alex Keh, a PM whose focus is on our windows technologies is giving a presentation on Tuesday about .NET and Oracle Best Practices: Performance, Deployment and PL/SQL Tips. So if your preferred development environment is .NET be sure to attend his talk. I think we do a lot to make a .NET developers experience productive with Oracle database technology.

For myself, lucky me has 3 presentations!

On Tuesday I will be talking about: End the Microsoft Access Chaos - Your simplified path to Oracle Application Express. I will be demoing our new Oracle APEX Application Migration Workshop. This should also be making an appearance on OTN real soon...

Then on Thursday, I have two presentations: Oracle Application Express: Features, Futures and Customer Tales In this presentation, I give a brief overview of Application Express, What's in 2.2, what's coming in 3.0 and some demos and finally Oracle Migration Workbench: Taking Database migration to the next level where I will demo the new Oracle Migration Workbench integrated into SQL Developer. This should be making an appearance on OTN in 2007.

I am also looking forward to hearing customer feedback at the Oracle Development Tools Roundtable on Wednesday afternoon.

Having had a look at the agenda there are many talks which I want to attend. Looks like it is going to be a good week. Now to put the finishing touches to my presentations...

I won't get much work done this weekend....

2006-11-04T22:22:00.000Z

Not a work related post, but...

I was asked by the Porsche club of Ireland (of which I am a member) would I be willing to write a car review for their newsletter as the Irish Porsche dealership offered them a car for the weekend. I could pick what I wanted, so I went for a 997 C4S manual.

In the picture is my son Daragh, and Alan from the Porsche dealership. In Ireland cars have high taxes , so this car costs €160K/$203K.... The car is on my insurance, so I have to be careful :-)

I had promised Julie I would sort out the garden this weekend and deal with all the leaves, sorry not this weekend!

All the migration demos worked!

2006-10-27T16:17:00.000+01:00

Well that's another Oracle Open World over... This year was a lot of fun being able to preview our new migration tools: Oracle Migration Workbench integrated into SQL Developer and a new feature of Oracle APEX, the Application Migration Workshop, for Microsoft Access application migration to Oracle APEX. Below is a picture of me standing by our demo pod...

The migration workbench demo, we got finally working about an hour before my presentation. Barry and I got a code drop from the guys back in Dublin that morning and we sat on bean bags in the hall between Moscone North and South, while a long queue of attendees filed in for Chuck Rozwat Keynote ensuring that everything worked as predicted. When I gave the presentation later that morning, everybody seemed to like it at lot.

Both Barry and I did lots of demos to attendees and it was very satisfying to get positive feedback on what we as a team have been working so hard on. We have definitely taken the right approach and need to keep focused to deliver a high quality solution in 2007.

On my laptop I had a pre-release of 10.2.0.3 with Oracle APEX 2.2.1 locally. I had this configured using EPG (Embedded Pl/SQL gateway) which I think is cool, so no Apache, everything just running out of the database. This is the same setup as the Oracle Express Edition. I'll blog next week on the steps required for this setup.

My next focus will be to get an early adopters release of the Oracle APEX Application Migration Workshop available. We will post more information about it on OTN next week, and I'll blog about the design goals I had when designing this new feature of Oracle APEX.

I'm looking forward to going home now and being back with my family, it has been a long trip and I never seem to sleep great, when I'm on the west coast...

On a lunch break I did make a trip to the Virign Megastore, where my CD collection was added to...

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi battles the pink Robots in 5.1
Ray Lamontagne - Till the sun turns black
The Killers - Sam's Town
John Legand - Once Again

Oracle Open World is nearly here again....

2006-10-20T15:03:00.000+01:00

Well it looks like it is going to be the largest Oracle Open World ever.... It will be a busy week. The whole team have been working very hard, many long nights getting our new tools ready to preview next week. I will be giving a presentation on Monday 23rd @ 10:45

Session title: Oracle Migration Workbench: Taking Database Migration to the Next Level
Track: Database Application Development
Room: Franciscan Room C - Hilton Hotel

I will be giving a preview of our new Oracle Migration Workbench and Oracle APEX Application Migration Workshop (for Access Application Migration). I'll post more information after Monday.

Along with Barry McGillin, development manager for the Migration Workbench, we will be on the Database Demogrounds in Moscone West (Demo pod D44) Drop by and say hello and see a demo of our new tools

Now, back to getting my presentation finished and getting my laptop ready for demos...

A picture paints a thousand words...

2006-10-20T14:54:00.000+01:00

I was looking for a good picture of me on my laptop, though I have a number I don't think any of them are suitable, so I will just have to go with this for now. Do you know what it is...

Well... Let's kick this blog off then...

2006-10-20T13:44:00.000+01:00

Hi,

As you can see from my profile I have worked for Oracle for over 14 years...
I work in the the database tools group part of our Server Technologies Division. My major focus area for nearly 10 years has been on migration tools, making it easy to migrate 3rd party databases to Oracle. Though, being part of the database tools group I am lucky enough to be able to contribute to SQL Developer & Application Express. So expect posts on happenings in Database Tools which I hope will be of interest to Oracle Database Developers everywhere