UKOUG Conference 2005 : Day -1

Mark Rittman

Oct 30, 2005 • 2 min read

Just a brief update after I've arrived up in Birmingham for the UKOUG Conference. I came up by train this time rather than drive, as the drive up from Brighton is on the one hand either really tedious - around the M25 then an hour up the M40 - or a nightmare - a hair-raising final couple of miles as you come off the motorway in Birmingham and then try to negotiate the one-way systems. I've come up a day early and therefore actually got to eat in the hotel - the Hyatt, next door to the ICC, very nice if I say so myself - which I've never done before, as we always go out during the conference nights to the local restaurants.

Anyway, you'll be glad to know that I actually slept last night - sort of, after a fashion - and I've just come back from Breakfast (spotted Gary Goodman and some people from Miracle coming in, although you can't say anything as that's getting into "stalker" territory) and in half an hour it's the Oaktable day which starts around 9.30.

Aside from the conference itself, I couldn't help noticing all the references to "Oracle Express" cropping up on Orablogs, which made me sit up a bit as of course Express is the OLAP server that Oracle bought from IRI and which then became the basis of the OLAP Option. Headlines such as "Oracle Express - EDB Killer" and comments such as this got me thinking for a minute that the world has finally caught on to the benefits of multidimensional analysis, but what it is of course that everyone's referring to is the new "Express Edition" of Oracle Database 10g that's been launched as an answer to Microsoft's SQL Server Express Edition.

Whilst I won't go into the why's and wherefores of the logic behind the release - except to point out now that all our little home-grown web application projects - like Orablogs, I guess - will now be able to use Oracle as the backend database rather than having to base them on mySQL - it's pretty obvious that "Oracle Express" is going to be the shorthand way of referring to this new version. I've already had several confusing conversations with people that think that Analytic Workspace Manager is actually Oracle Workspace Manager - the tool that you use to version tables, rather than the OLAP admin tool - so in all I guess this is going to get pretty confusing. Now when people look at my CV, they'll think I've had five years experience with the freeware version of Oracle rather than their standalone OLAP server, so here goes my campaign - It's called Oracle Database 10g Express Edition, not Oracle Express, as that name's already taken! Take your cut down starter database and don't darken our multidimensional doorstep again...

Right, that's it for now, off to register and then for the first round of presentations.

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