2005 Georgia Oracle Users' Conference

Session Abstracts

Monday 10:15

Anatomy of a Database Attack
Aaron Newman, Application Security, Inc.


Hacking Oracle is becoming more and more popular. Security Alerts from Oracle continue to appear on a regular basis. As database professionals we depend on the Oracle database to keep our information safe from hackers. What we fail to realize is that the database is not secure unless we as DBAs make it secure.

This presentation will present a view of Oracle from the hacker's perspective. We will cover motivations of the hacker as well as talk about some of the popular Hacker conferences such as Defcon.

We will address how Oracle 10g has improved security and explore what steps need to be taken to keep hackers out of the database. This presentation will include live demonstrations of how an attack occurs.


Business Intelligence: Real-World Case Study using 10g BI Platform
Tom Wood, Baytree Associates

Oracle's Business Intelligence offerings include a hodgepodge of tools for querying, reporting and analysis, metadata management, data quality, data management, and BI application development. Apart from specialized third party utilities what options do we have in Oracle BI tools? Fortunately Oracle 10g offers some real value additions to enhance any BI project. In this presentation we will explore these alternatives and how they were applicable to various situations for a real life financial intelligence system effort that had the goal of offering a single version of the truth and providing meaningful reports.


SDLC from a data-oriented perspective
Tanya Cannon and Derek Otieno, DeVry University

Our presentation will cover a full system development scenario from planning, analysis, design, through Implementation using Oracle DBMS. We will provide a logical database design as well as the physical database design, demonstrating both theory and best practice. We will investigate and integrate the most appropriate, and the most-effective tools for designing and implementing an application based on the Oracle DBMS. We intend to demonstrate the use of MVC (Model-View-Controller) paradigm for the selected programming languages (Java and/or C#) within various environments: JBuilder X, IBM Websphere, and Microsoft .NET Framework.

Monday 11:30

Taking an "ROI-Centric" Approach to Business Intelligence
Mike Wade, Platinum Circle Technologies

Today's BI projects face the complications of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA and other Legislative Mandates, and the seemingly never ending parade of new or changing requirements to support M&A activities and Business Partner integration. Top that off with exploding end-user expectations and increasingly hyperbolistic vendor claims. So, what's a DBA to do? One answer is to approach the project from the perspective of designing for ROI, time to value, and end-user self-service. Emerging technologies such as EII (enterprise information integration), template-driven dashboard and scorecard portals, and a re-factoring of the traditional BI project methodology can lead to surprising gains in speed to delivery, flexibility and ultimately end-user satisfaction. This talk will focus on a number of technical and non-technical best practices that may change the way you think about your approach to, and roll on, the Business Intelligence project team.


Toad Tip and Tricks
Brian Goudeau, Quest Software

Quest knows everyone has different database, editing, and administration needs - that's why we provide you with different Toad configurations tailored to your environment. In the session we will review the features available within each of the Toad packages to help you determine which one is right for you.
In this session, learn how to:
  • Quickly create and execute queries
  • Easily build and manage database objects
  • Automate PL/SQL Debugging making it simple to fix code errors and inefficiencies
  • Tune SQL though our expert knowledge-based tuning lab
  • Analyze and automatically rewrite inefficient SQL queries

JDBC Programming
Warren Moore, DeVry University

In this session you will learn basic JDBC database programming including connectivity configuration and DML statements.

Monday 2:45


A CISP Compliant Database
Kenny Smith, Cnetics

In 2000, Visa instituted the Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP) that specifies security requirements for handling credit card electronic transactions. Several requirements of the program place security demands on an Oracle database. This presentation covers the CISP requirements and explains database features and techniques that can deployed to meet CISP requirements.


PL/SQL Accelerator
David Scott, Intec Telecom

Are you unfamiliar with PL/SQL? This presentation will help familiarize you with its' basic concepts and provide resources for using PL/SQL in your projects. Common issues and performance hints will be explained, along with some favorite tricks and tips.

Object Relational Mapping
Parsu Nurani, Softech Consulting
Gopal Koratana, ASIA Systems

Object technology is widely used to model business domain and build applications while relational databases are used to store persistent data. There exists certain impedance mismatch between object technology and relational technology. Object relational mapping technology bridges the gap between the two technologies and makes it easier to design, develop and maintain applications.
This presentation will show how Object Relational mapping technology allows an object model having association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition etc. to be mapped to data model. Using object relational mapping we can reduce development time and improve performance and provide consistent data access layer for the application.
We will present different techniques and scenarios along with trade offs. We will mention different tools available and show examples of mapping strategies.


Monday 4:00

Virtual Private Databases
Dan Looby, Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech allows departments to create and maintain schedule data in Sungard SCT Banner. But in the baseline system a user in the Biology Department could bump a Math class out of a classroom. Using VPD Georgia Tech was able to ensure that this would not occur. The presentation will inform the user on the basics of VPD and present how VPD was implemented to prevent departments from stepping on one another in Sungard SCT Banner schedule data. Actual VPD policies and procedures are included in the presentation.


10g New Features for Developers
Julie Fowler, Maverick Solutions

The latest version of the Oracle database has some major additions and improvements. This presentation will give users an understanding of some of the most important new features in Oracle 10g. Everyone will find different features exciting but some stand out as favorites. For example, the ability to use Regular Expressions in SQL really enhances data searchers; Flashback technology allows user to undo a drop table statement; and PL/SQL offers a new clause in the FOR loop to allow looping through a sparse collection. This presentation will allow users to learn the top new features in Oracle 10g SQL and PL/SQL.

Tuesday 9:45

Flashback Options in Oracle 10g: Version Queries, Flashback Table, and Flashback Database
Rusty Barnett, TUSC

Oracle introduced Flashback Queries in Oracle 9i Release 1, enhanced it signigicantly in Oracle 9i Release 2, and has made it even more robust in Oracle 10g. Flashback queries allow data to be viewed as it existed prior to commits.

Using Flashback Version Queries, one can see data as it existed at different points in time in a single query. Flashback query benefits include: eliminating unnecessary data recoveries particularly in development/test environments), allowing data sets to be quickly reset, and makes it easy to debug code that changes data values.

Flashback Table can restore a dropped table, either to a specified point-in-time or to a specified SCN. Flashback Database can restore an entire database, either to a specified point-in-time or to a specified SCN. Benefits of using either of these features include: the ability to restore dropped objects in seconds, and the ability to perform point-in-time recovery in seconds.

How to implement this Oracle Feature is described, as well as its benefits, costs, and risks. Detailed examples and syntax are included.

User Requirements to an ERD - The First Step to a Good Design
Julie Fowler, Maverick Solutions

One area most companies overlook when planning a project is time for mapping out a design for their data. Creating this design can be the difference between a database running efficiently or encountering numerous problems later on. This presentation will focus on tracking Entities, Attributes and Relationships from user requirements and using this information to create a model. We will discuss how to create a diagram called Entity Relationship Diagram or ERD to represent the model. There are basic mapping techniques to transform the ERD into an initial database design that will also be discussed. This presentation will present an overview of the data modeling process and its benefits

Tuesday 11:00

Practical Database Security - Fundamentals Every DBA Should Know
Kris Cook, Mirant

Seasoned DBAs are familiar with the common ways to crack a database; however, new DBAs often create wide-open databases without even knowing it. This session is aimed at DBAs with less than 2 years experience. In this presentation attendees will learn the methods used by intruders to gain unauthorized access to both your Unix server and oracle database, steps to take and useful scripts to audit yoru environment for vulnerabilities, and most importantly, how to close holes and better secure your database environment.

Get on the Grid: Oracle 10g RAC on Itanium & Linux
Kenny Smith, Cnetics

Application Cluster option provides a highly available and easily scaled database engine. In this presentation, you'll get to see the entire Linux based solution: servers, switches, storage and software. We'll demonstrate the clustered database features on three HP Itanium servers running RedHat Linux. To see the system to be demonstrated, go to www.cnetics.com. Bring your laptop with a wireless connection and you can login to explore the system yourself.

XML Database Programming
Jalal Raissi, DeVry University

In this session you will learn basic XML database programming including connectivity configuration and DML statements.

Tuesday 2:45

The Frugal DBA
David Scott, Intec Telecom

If you have a limited or non-existent budget for expanding your Oracle tools, knowledge, and skills, then this presentation is for you. Open source software, freeware, and other economical strategies for obtaining useful software are reviewed. 'Scripts and Tips' sites and other educational internet resources are also presented. And what's available from Oracle? Lots.

RAC Roundtable Discussion
Moderator: Tom Ziek, Oracle Corporation

Oracle 10g offers Grid technology in database clusters. The Oracle Real Application Cluster option provides a highly available, scalable database platform for high performance computing. During this session, Tom will moderate an open discussion where participants can share best practices and lessons learned about implementing and managing Oracle 9i or 10g RAC systems. This session is ideal for anyone who would like to share ideas and information with colleagues or just listen in on the topic of Oracle Real Application Clusters.

10g Portal
Erik Bowe, Kennesaw State University

This presentation will focus on how Kennesaw State University has evolved it’s usage of Oracle Portal starting with 9i Release 1 up to 10g Release 1 in a Windows Server System environment. New features introduced in 10g Release 1 will be discussed as well as a demonstration of how to develop advanced portlets using PL/SQL as well as OmniPortlet.


Return to conference page