Northwest ORACLE Users Group meeting notes

Notes from the
 Northwest ORACLE Users Group Meeting of Winter 1992

User Group Business

The first half of the morning was devoted to business related to the revival of the NorthWest ORACLE Users Group (NWOUG). Topics discussed and voted upon included:

    Electing officers

    The attending members, constituting a quorum, elected to     accept nominations for officers and get biographies from     each nominee. The biographies and a ballot will be     distributed to each conference attendee, who will complete     that ballot and return it to Andrew Drake sometime before     the end of February. Officer positions include: Chairman,     Vice-Chairman, Treasurer, Enhancements Liaison (to ORACLE),     Journal Editor, Membership person, IOUG liaison, and Seminar     coordinator.

    Discussion of regional group structure

    The distributed character of the group was emphasized. A     main reason the former NWOUG group failed was that     responsibility and officer seats belonged to only a few     people. The group was directed by only a few people. One     of the goals of the new and improved (hopefully) NWOUG is to     distribute responsibility throughout the group while     retaining a degree of individual accountability in each     position. That is the reason for so many officer positions.     Each office may be held by exactly one person. That person,     however, may engage as many "affiliates" as he or she is     comfortable with. That way many people get to participate,     and there is a point-of-contact (and accountability) for     each office.

    Newsletter

    The current newsletter was distributed. It was assembled by     Andrew Drake of Spacelabs in Bellevue. The "Journal of the     NorthWest ORACLE Users Group" is a quarterly publication.     Papers of all flavors are solicited, for audiences of all     levels.

    Discussion of SIG's

    There are presently no Special Interest Groups (SIG's) in     the NWOUG. SIG topics were solicited with sign-up sheets.     Judging from the sheet, there is quite a bit of interest in     a DBA SIG, and some in SIG's for various development tools,     i.e., SQL*Forms, Pro*C, etc..

    Journal only membership in the East Coast ORACLE User Group

    A motion to allocate $5 of the $15 user membership fee for     journal-only membership in the East Coast ORACLE User Group     was passed. This gets NWOUG members a $25 value for only     five dollars per person -- another advantage of being an     NWOUG member!

The results of the officer election and the first financial report of the new NWOUG will be published in the next issue of the NWOUG newsletter (April 1992).

Ask ORACLE Panel

This session was an open question and answer session with a panel of four representatives from ORACLE's Seattle/Bellevue office. Topics included availability of future releases of Version 7 of the RDBMS kernel, and Version 4.0 of SQL*Forms. Also discussed were problems wit ORACLE Financials, and details on how to get rapid response from ORACLE tech support by using the online RTSS system, a dial-in, BBS-like interface to the ORACLE customer technical assistance database.

ORACLE RDBMS Version 7 Architecture

This session presented the architecture of version 7 of the RDBMS, focusing especially on the parallel server capability of the new release. Version 7 also will support shared SQL (a statement used many times is parsed just once for faster performance), stored procedures, and the improved security features that accompany the added functionality. Also supported will be database event triggers, and application transparent distributed (two-phase) commit.

Forms 2.3 to 3.0 Conversion Panel

This session was a set of three presentations of the experiences and lessons learned by three people who have gone through the 2.3 to 3.0 conversion process -- some with automated conversion tools, and on who did the conversion by rewriting forms from scratch. The consensus was that an automated trigger conversion tool, followed by hand-tuning of the SQL*Forms 3.0 code it generates, is probably the most cost-effective way to convert 2.3 forms to take advantage of 3.0 functionality.

Local Groups / Open Discussion / Networking

This time was for attendees from the same geographic area to get together and "network". There were groups for Portland, the Tri-  and the Seattle area.

Creating the conference / The future of the NWOUG / Miscellaneous

Sixty-six people attended this reorganizational meeting of the NWOUG. It was good to see so much interest in keeping a group going in the Northwest. The conference attendance was more than enough to pay for the conference. The NWOUG even has money to pay for mailings, etc., now. In the opinion of most of the attendees I spoke with, the conference was a success, and definitely worth attending. So it looks like the NWOUG has new life (and funds!), and is again serving ORACLE users in the Pacific Northwest.

Jeff Nye
Information Systems & Services, Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories

snail:  PO Box 999, Mail Stop K6-10          voice: (509) 376-4571
        Richland, WA 99352                   email: jp_nye_at_pnl.gov