Fiocci

In October, Jonathan Lewis offered a free one hour lecture on one SQL statement.  Jonathan Lewis is one of the world’s foremost Oracle experts and Oracle Magazine’s 2006 “Oracle Author of the Year.”  He is a member of the prestigious Oak Table Network, a network for Oracle Scientists, and has been an independent design and troubleshooting consultant for more than 12 years.

Here, he examines a single SQL statement several different ways and shows that the optimum execution path depends on a good understanding of the data.  In his lecture, we are going to examine variations of a single query, involving a couple of subqueries, to help us understand the what Oracle can do with a query, what it can’t do, and how we can determine what we want it to do. Continue reading

The Summer 2009 DOUG Newsletter is now up and online at http://www.fiocci.com/newsletter/summer2009/summer2009.html.

This edition, we have the results from the 2009 DOUG member survey, Tony Reed’s motivational presentation on the Achievement Equation, Emmanuel Delpierre’s Presentation on Making Yourself Marketable, and the first of Ricky Burke’s series on “Making Oracle Fun and Highly Productive with Application Express!”  We also have our interview with Christine Lambden on Expanding Your Influence, along with interview and resume tips from June’s Professional Development Forum.

It’s been six years since I overhauled the website, so it’s probably due for a little refresh. Since 2003, the site has looked like this…

Now, it’s getting a new look. We’re using PHP, mySQL, and a custom WordPress theme for a site that will (hopefully) be easier to maintain. I’ll be able to post when I’m on the road or just sitting in another set of long, boring meetings.

Special thanks to Jon Stober who steered me away from using Joomla and onto using WordPress. Also, thanks to Michael Tyson who developed this fantastic WordPress theme called Elegant Grunge. It has a built-in photoblog, standards support for WordPress, and does everything that I need it to do without a lot of modifications.

Fiocci actually started out back in 1998 as Desolation Angels.  It was initially developed in NetObjects Fusion 3.0 at a time when I was just getting my fingers wet with HTML.  Below are a few screen shots from that early endeavor.

Original travel and travel fiction website

I had taken the title from a Jack Kerouac novel and intended to develop it as fun site specializing in travel and travel fiction.  However, as the consulting business demanded more of my time, the business side crowded out the fun side of the website.

In 1999, I set up shop in Philadelphia. After weeks of back and forth, I settled a new logo and named the consulting practice, Fiocci Innovations.  That meant a significant redesign and NetObjects wasn’t going to cut it.  I wanted dynamic content and turned to a new software package by Elemental Software called Drumbeat.  It provided database functionality with an Access database backend but it provided rudimentary support for Active Server Pages.  I used it to rapidly created mini-sites for Philadelphia Insurance Company and Automotive Resources International. I also started playing around quite a bit with Flash.  Below is what some of that looked like:

The more work I did, the more involved I got with developing Active Server Pages. Although I had briefly flirted with Java Server Pages, nothing could beat ASP for quick and easy development work. My tools changed as well – Drumbeat quickly gave way to UltraDev and Access was largely replaced by SQL Server. By 2001, I updated the look of the website again. This time to refocus my consulting efforts on the database development side of the house.

After I got married, I had less and less time for consulting work so I revamped the site as a personal site for me and my wife. And that is how it had remained until this past week. I have been meaning to update and refocus the site for a few years but just recently had the motivation to do it.

New Location: Borders Bookstore; 1601 Preston Road, Suite J; Plano, TX 75093.  Since all but one of the attendees is from the Plano / Richardson / Frisco area, we decided to hold the sessions closer to home.  This is also where the OCA group meets on Sunday nights.

New Time: Tuesday evenings from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.  The time has been scooted back thirty minutes so that everyone has the chance to pick-up some food beforehand.  We will not meet next week but will resume the study group two weeks from now.  New time starts on May 12th and runs until the final exam review on June 30th.

Study Guide: Oracle Database 10g OCP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide by Oracle Press.  If you cannot get a copy of the Oracle Database 10g OCP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, then you should be able to follow along with the Sybex OCP Exam Guide or you could download the Oracle 10g Administrator Workshop II PDF files.  Each week, we will concentrate on the exam topics listed below so you can use any book or text that you would like to use.

OCP Online Group: I have also set up a Google Group for the OCP Study Group at http://groups.google.com/group/dallas-ocp.

Syllabus: Below is a tentative syllabus for the remaining study group sessions.  We have rearranged some of the chapters to take advantage of the DOUG technical meeting that will cover ASM and AWR on May 21st.  Please note that we have reviews scheduled for both the half-way mark and at the end of the study group.  These review sessions will be a good opportunity to catch up if you miss a session.

Continue reading