I am just back from Bangalore after attending Sangam 14..India’s biggest independent Oracle Event. This was my second time that I attended this event. It was a 3 day event this time covering various tracks of Oracle Technology ranging from Databases to Middleware to VMs to Enterprise Manager and much more.
It was different in many ways this time..To begin with it was a 3 days event instead of 2. Then, unlike last year when I travelled alone from Chandigarh to Hyderabad, we were 7 this time travelling together from Chandigarh. It just added the fun part to this whole meet. As the theme of Sangam is “Meeting of Minds”, this actually started with us from the point we gathered at Chandigarh Airport. Everyone was just excited to attent this event and there was a curiosity among all to meet experts and interact with them.
Event was schduled from 7th Nov 2014 to 9th Nov 2014. Event started with Keynote from Mitesh Agarwal (Country head – Sales Consulting, Oracle India) followed by Murali Valleth annoucing the agenda for the day. It was the day when main hall was suppose to be jam packed with none other than Tom Kyte had to present on Optimizer. Without wasting much time Murali invited Tom on the stage and after that it was a Tom show till the end of the day.
It was like people were glued to there seats and listening ever so patiently to the boss of Oracle Database Technology. Like me , there were many for whome it was first instance when we were listening to Tom in such an event.
Time just went by with Tom started with Optimizer basics and then went on with explaining statistics. Before anyone breath easy, he entered the waters of Execution plan explaing the various details with some really helpful examples. Day was concluded with much waited topic of the day and it was SQL Tuning Tips and Tricks where Tom explained about using right tools at right time and other things like Cardinality and SPM.Overall it was a good day to begin a 3 day technical event and Yes it was truely a Master Class from Tom.
Second Day, another day which everyone was waiting for. It was Maria Colgan (Product Manager – In Memory), The Optimizer lady who had to present on In-memory database feature. Before the start of her session, I had doubts regarding this session to be more on just the marketing side and that because of various sessions/presentations that I saw before on this topic. But let me tell you Maria had a good surprise for everyone with her presentation having greater technical details than the marketing. It included much more detail about how this new exciting although costly* feature work and how it can help in various environments. At the end of the session,I wished Maria could have presented on Optimizer as well. But nevertheless, her presentation was a good one and definitly provided much needed insight into this much talked new technology.
Later in day, I attended various sessions like VLDB session from Syed Jaffer Hussain where he briefed about various real time issues about performance. Highlight of the day before lunch was session from Vijay Sehgal. He presented on some real time examples of transforming bad written Queries into Good queries. Session was centered around the various Access paths in Execution plan and how they play an important role in making any execution plan good or bad.
Highlight of day was yet to come. It was a session from Aman Sharma on Oracle 12c High Availability New features. It was yet another Master class although presented in 1 hours( that is again an Art) from Aman. From the content to its delivery, it was carrying the tag Brillient. Presentation was just full of technical stuff.
To summarize the day, I would say, It started on excellent note with Presentation of Maria and it got better with Magical stuff from Vijay and it ended on a high note with Pure Technical stuff from Aman.
Last day, I did not plan this day. I just went on to attend various presentations started with Oracle VM and a bit of OEM from Jim and then Data guard from Syed Jaffer and concluded with some details on PGA.
Everyone was relaxed, a bit tired by the lunch time. Mind can get into that mode after listening to that much technical stuff for two and a half days. Last few hours were feeling much longer with flight back was scheduled for later in the evening.
There was one more session pending and that was not technical. Rather it was a motivational Session. By that time I was thinking if this session would have been scheduled at the beginning of the event rather that at the end. What we could get out of that. And believe me all these thoughts were put to extreme corner in the mind once the session started.
It was Dr. Rajdeep Manwani who just in a span of 1 hour with his powerful voice, with his ever so encouraging words, just changed the mood of the audience. People including me who were feeling tired both mentally and physically, were seen energetic,motivated and it seemed as if everyone has regained the lost energy. Man truelly deserved a standing ovaition and that is what he got. Words are less to describe his achievements and his courage.
This is all about the event.
There were couple of other important things that happened during the course…
1. AIOUG – NOrth India Chapter getting recognized.
2. Murali Vallath, the Man behind this Event, surprised one and all by annoucing that this is his last Sangam Event with him joining Oracle Corp in USA.
I truely thank my friends Nikhil Kumar, Pramod Yadav, Deepak Sharma,Saumya Prakash, Sanchit Midha, Vivek , Chetan, Aman Sharma, Rohan Walia and Vijay Sehgal for making this event a wonderful one. It was fun being with you all.
Hope to attend more such events and meet more people. After all, this is “Meeting of Minds”.
Nice summary Navneet