Jonathan Lewis.first impressions

Got the opportunity to attend Jonathan Lewis webcast (Live) yesterday. He was talking about what he talks best (CBO in Oracle). Around 55 People attended the training mostly from India considering it was an AIOUG sponsored event.

Well I would say JL has been very good in his demo session spanning just 30 minutes.

His webcasts made things crystal clear. and tests are fairly reproducible (unlike I earlier thought). espesially after those magic settings that make most databases fairly standard. (DO NOT TRY THEM ON PRODUCTION).

Very Matter of fact presentation. easy example which hit deep and hit hard on brain. Simply Loved it. His pronunciation is very easy to understand, and he was very web-cautious the way i expect people of his calibre to be. AIOUG. Link is here (May or may not work as this was supposed to be NON -Free)

I asked him about his Practical Oracle 8i book as to when can i expect it to be a free download. No Clear answer (unless people stop buying it I can not ask for Copyright back from Addison Wesley- well fair enough but if I go ahead and order it on Amazon it will hurt chances for many others getting it free so very unclear guideline to what i should DO!!! ) . Surprise Surprise, like all wonderful People (read SUPER) he did hint me to James Morles website containg free pdf Scaling oracle 8i Which itself seems enlightening read and lot of FUN. The link is here (you will have to register for this free download ) I can assure you its worth registering for downloading this BOOK.

Something about First Appearences of JL

Sincerely feel that perhaps because JL does not actually worked for Oracle as an inside guy (Like Tom Kyte does) There is a lot of Maybe/Possibly in his CBO book that actually turned me off.

I feel like an idiot not reading CBO while it lay in my library shelf unattended since past 6 months. (Somehow ended up with 2 copies) The first impression I had after flipping through CBO book was "It seems important but unless I have read it cover to cover and try every example which may or may not reproduce on my env it will never be useful (I was wrong)" That would sounds SCARRRRRY to normal DBA. How many dbas would read an article thats first claims that may be only one of the million combinations of DBs env where it works like this and that after reading the BOOK. you will have an understanding of how to generally look for a solution. Most of us are all looking for Quick solutions. Wham... Baaam Thankyou maam. May be someday i will read the book on CBO but not today was my opinion

I have aleady finished first few chapters, and expect to take this book along to my Training in Mumbai for Oracle Solution Architect. Its a 5 day training, and a welcome breather from the normal office days. So some interesting learning times ahead.