Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

A quick update as I’m off to Ireland on Sunday.

I’ve had a couple of papers accepted for
Collaborate’06,
the joint event being run by the IOUG, OAUG and Quest International. The event
is being held over in Nashville, Tennessee during April this year and I’m doing
a couple of presentations that are being sponsored by Oracle. The first one is
with QDecisions, one of our customers,
and is a case study on a packaged mortgage analytics application we’re building
with them using Oracle OLAP 10g and Oracle Business Intelligence Beans 10g. The
second is one I’m working on with the XML Publisher product team on integrating
Oracle XML Publisher with the OLAP Option; there’s a bunch of new functionality
coming with the next release of XML Publisher including the ability to do OLAP-style
analysis on datasets – this presentation will look at taking this one step
further and integrating XMLP with the OLAP Option and should be pretty
interesting if you’re evaluating either of these two products. If anyone who
knows me is going along too, or even better presenting, let me know and we can
meet up.

A couple of people have mentioned that Steven Feuerstein has started up a
new blog. I’ve always been an admirer of Steven as much as for his politics and
activism as his work with PL/SQL; one of the first memories I have of getting to
know of some of the personalities in the Oracle world was reading about Steven
and the controversy that built up around the examples he used in his Oracle
PL/SQL Programming Guide to Oracle 8i Features book. Steven’s view was that all
the examples we normally get in Oracle (or any other database) book have an
implicit "business centric / consumer orientated / people as numbers" standpoint
and he wanted to take this opportunity to do something different. In his
follow-up article
"I
Don’t Like Your Examples", he explained,

"I’ve been writing intensively about PL/SQL since 1994, and I have a
great time doing it. At the same time, I must admit that I have
simultaneously grown a little bit bored with using the same set of examples
again and again (yes, those infamous emp/employee and dept/department
tables), and I’m also very concerned about the state of the world as we
approach the end of the twentieth century. Sure, things could be worse, but
things could be a whole lot better (with my examples and the world).

"Given these twin preoccupations, I have decided to offer examples
that are decidedly different from the usual. I’ll be talking about topics
ranging from the state of health care in the United States to the strength
of the gun lobby, from wage structures to environmental issues. I believe
that even if you don’t agree with the positions I have on a particular
issue, you will find that this "breath of fresh air" approach will help you
engage with the technical material."

Now you’d be surprised to know, given the pillar of society that I am today, that in my youth I was a bit of an "angry young man" – the only person in
University halls to not pay my poll tax bill, voting Labour when it wasn’t
fashionable (no not now, back in the 80′s), and my dad was one of the printers
locked out by Murdoch back when he moved all the print works over to Wapping, so
I’m always pleased to see someone – especially when in a position to influence -
sticking his neck out and standing up for what he believes in. Anyway, Steven’s blog
is here and you can read more
about the famous book over
here.

On a similar (controversial) subject – definitely into "opinions are not
necessarily those of my employers" territory – I’ve been watching the

Richard Dawkins series that’s currently running on Channel 4 called

"The Root of All Evil". Richard Dawkins is of course the author who wrote
"The Blind Watchmaker", "The Selfish Gene" and "Climbing Mount Improbable" and
is probably the most famous and vocal advocate of Darwinism and, in this series,
Atheism. Like probably a lot of people outside of the States I’ve been surprised
by the popularity of all that "Intelligent Design" nonsense that’s become
popular over the last few years and if you’re starting to think that maybe
there’s some sense to it – that something like the eye couldn’t possibly be down
to evolution, or "chance" as they put it, I’d thoroughly recommend Dawkins’
"Blind Watchmaker" book or if you’re in the UK, to catch the last few episodes
of the series. In the first episode,

"The God Delusion" Dawkins "describes his astonishment that,
at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face
of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and
evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by
definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in
direct contradiction with science. In addition, though religions preach
morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance,
violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many
religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in
conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to
progress – to become more enlightened and more tolerant." whilst the second
episode, "The Virus of Faith" asks why "despite science having exposed old
religious myths, militant faith is on back on the march". All excellent stuff
and worth catching if you’re in on Monday nights. Dawkins is of course an excellent
narrator and a wonderful advocate of the
scientific method; I only wish I could be half as articulate or logical as he is
and put my arguments together with such clarity and sense of purpose.

Finally, my cousin Lee has recently started on his Oracle career and is
currently studying for his Oracle 10g DBA OCP. As a way of getting involved with
the subject and participating in the community, I’ve encouraged him to
blog about the process of taking his
OCP and to write up his study notes as he goes along. I’ve also suggested
that if he comes up with something he’s not sure about, to try and put an
article together explaining what he’s trying to understand, and then get some
feedback from the community. If you get a moment pop over to his blog, encourage
him to get involved, and hopefully he’ll start to understand it all and take his
exams later on this year.

Until then, bye for now.

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