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 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's latest improvements in security and explore what steps need to be taken to keep hackers out of the database. This presentation will include updated live demonstrations of how an attack occurs.

Attendees will learn:

• How a hacker exploits a database
• How the hacker thinks and operates
• The tactics required to keep your database from getting hacked

Attendees will be presented with various systematic views for high availability, including “active” databases that are subject to performance issues, unplanned outages, and planned outages for the purposes of migrations and maintenance. Attendees will learn how to better understand and categorize database failures. There will be discussion about differentiating and evaluating existing HA/DR technologies, including conventional backup, RAID, block-level replication, mirroring, and transactional data management, among others. Finally, examples from customers leading in High Availability solutions will be highlighted

Tuesday 8:30

Focus Session - Hot Skills Panel Discussion
Ari Waller; Thompson Technologies
Harold Miller; Matrix
David Howlett; Staffing Technoligies
Sharon Brown; Flex HR


These Questions will be addressed by the panelists:
1. What trends do you see in the job market for Oracle technology professionals?
2. Would you recommend that you son or daughter enter the IT profession? Why or why not?
3. What qualities do you look for in a potential candidate? Which qualities do you avoid?
4. What have you observed are the current contractor rates and salaries for people with the following skill?
- Oracle DBA - 1 year, 5 year, 10 years
- Oracle Database Developer - 1 year, 5 year, 10 years
- Oracle Portal/Web Developer - 1 year, 5 year, 10 years
- Oracle Applications Technical or Functional (Peoplesoft, Lawson) - 1 year, 5 year, 10 years
- Oracle IT managers.
5. Which skill sets are the hardest to find for employers?
6. How does the Atlanta job market compare to other markets?

The discussion will be moderated with questions from the floor toward the end.

More about the Panelists:

Ari Waller
For nearly 10 years, Ari Waller has been a Technical Recruiter with Thompson Technologies and has recently moved into a Recruiting Manager role. He has personally placed 500 professionals, many of which have an Oracle skill set connected to their background. Ari and his team specailizes is placing Technical Consultants and Full Time Employees in the Metro Atlanta area, as well as with the Big 4 Consulting space on a National Basis. These placement have been made primairly in Telecommunications, Healthcare, Retail, Public Sector and Consulting Services industry. Ari is a proud husband and the father two young boys: Isaac,5, and Nathan, 2.

Harold Miller
Harold Miller is a graduate of The University of Georgia. He started in Recruiting in 1987 with a company called MSI International. He has experience in Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Banking recruiting. His technical recruiting began in 1997. He joined Matrix Resources in April of 1999. Since then he has achieved 100% Performers Club every year. In 2004, Harold was named Recruiting Performer of the Year for Matrix Atlanta Office.

David Howlett
David Howlett is the Director of Recruiting and Talent Acquisition at Staffing Technologies. Staffing Technologies Provides Creative and Customized Staffing Solutions... to meet the challenges of your ever changing information systems and telecommunications environment.

Sharon Brown
Sharon Brown has served as an HR leadership coach and professional HR executive for 25 years for a number of Fortune 500 companies.  For the last four years, she has served as Sr. Vice President of Human Resources for Flex HR, Inc., an Atlanta based HR consulting firm that offers HR leadership and oversight services to small to medium size companies on a part time basis. Her clients have included a number of businesses in the high tech, Manufacturing, health care and utility services industries as well as non-profit organizations such as BellSouth, Ryder, Exxon, Tarkenton & Company, Wells Real Estate Funds, ABB Power Generation, JM Huber, BMW, Becton Dickinson and Baptist Hospitals.  Sharon has coached over 200 leaders on personal career options and leadership improvement.  Managers find her targeted selection techniques and processes effective in recruiting and retaining top talent for maximum productivity and loyalty.  She has started up ten HR functions for small to medium size high growth firms and estimatesthat she has hired over 1,000 professionals and para-professionals in her career.  She is asked frequently to serve on panel discussions and particularly enjoys today's topic of how managers can enhance their own value and utilize selection and retention of top talent as a strategic market advantage.

Oracle 10g offers a wide variety of new features and enhancements, ranging from superior performance and availability to security. In 10g, Real Application Clusters (RAC) increases reliability for your mission-critical applications and offers better manageability using Automatic Storage Management (ASM). But as with any upgrade and migration project, moving to Oracle 10g requires a well-planned approach that mitigates risk, minimizes downtime, and poses the least amount of complexity.

Traditionally, database upgrades and migrations have always required planning a lengthy outage – particular if new platforms are involved. With stringent service level commitments, many companies may delay moving to Oracle 10g to avoid the impact of service outages.

This presentation serves to accomplish two goals: (1) technically compare and contrast different approaches and solutions that may be considered for moving to 10g, and (2) review a step-by-step process that can provide near-zero or zero downtime for such projects, through the combined use of GoldenGate's software for transactional data management and Oracle's transportable tablespaces features. Different migration scenarios will be considered, including 8i to 10g, 9i to 10g, cross platform, RAC, ASM, and non-Oracle to 10g.

Tuesday 11:00

An Introduction to Oracle Workflow
Amanda Keehner; Oracle

Oracle Workflow is a hidden gem, coming for free with the Oracle Database.  We will examine what functionality Oracle Workflow can provide, and in the process stimulate ideas as to how you can take  advantage of its capabilities in your environment.