Don't miss out on these in-depth sessions held before and after COLLABORATE 07 -- IOUG Forum. Packed with intensive training, University Seminars are offered in both full- and half-day formats. Choose from a variety of seminar topics taught by seasoned Oracle professionals.

Sunday, April 15
9:00 a.m. -- 5:00 p.m.

U1: High Availability Using RMAN and Data Guard
Tim Quinlan, TLQ Consulting Inc.
This course will address the topic of achieving high availability using Oracle's Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Data Guard products in Oracle 10g Release 2. The main topics to be covered will include the architecture, configuration options and management of these tools. Tips, techniques, advantages and disadvantages of different configurations as well as examples will be reviewed in this fast-paced seminar. This is intended for any DBA who is starting to work RMAN and Data Guard.

U2: Mastering ASM
Arup Nanda, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
Automatic Storage Management (ASM), introduced in Oracle 10g, redefined the way storage is used in the Oracle database. It has been designed keeping in mind the Oracle database access, so the performance is considerably better compared to other storage techniques. It's a myth that ASM is only for the RAC database - it's good for any Oracle database. In this session, you will learn everything about ASM – from setting it up to use in backup and recovery. Everything will be demonstrated live.

U3: Encrypting Data in Oracle Database 10gR2
Djordje Jankovic, Allstream
This seminar will give a full overview of an Oracle encryption implementation. It will start with encryption fundamentals: types of attacks, encryption algorithms versus keys, symmetric vs. asymmetric algorithms, basic block encryption algorithms. It will than analyze the place of encryption in a context of the overall Oracle security model. The presentation will dive deeper in an analysis of an oracle API encryption implementation by describing the structure and elements of the DBMS_OBFUSCATION TOOLKIT and DBM_CRYPTO packages, and look into the implementation details, from basics, such as how to use the packages, to a case study of a full programmatic encryption implementation. The session will end with the analysis of the Transparent Data Encryption. It will present a demo of how TDE works and will than discuss TDE limitations, and how it interacts with other Oracle tools and options like Logminer, Oracle Optimizer, RMAN, Data Pump, etc.

U4: Oracle Application Server: End-to-End
Chris Ostrowski, TUSC
The Oracle Application Server is an extremely complex piece of software. Getting a grip on all of the technologies, how they fit together and how they can benefit your organization can be a daunting task. This presentation will de-mystify the Appplication Server by thoroughly explaining all of its major components and showing you how it can be used effectively in your organization.

U6: Testing to Destruction - Benchmarking Oracle
Michael Ault, Quest Software
In this hands-on seminar, the attendee will be shown the basics of TPC-C, TPC-D and TPC-H benchmarking as well as using user-generated SQL and PL/SQL to benchmark Oracle databases. The attendee will be provided a copy of Quest Benchmark Factory and a copy of Quest's Benchmarking book for use in the seminar.

U7: Forecasting Oracle Performance 101
Craig Shallahamer, Orapub, Inc.
Forecasting Oracle performance allows IT to better manage and deliver services. When this occurs, the return on IT investment is maximized and unplanned downtime is minimized. At most companies, DBAs are supposed to not only fix existing performance problems, but also prevent future performance problems. So at a fundamental level, forecasting Oracle performance, identifying risk, and developing risk mitigating strategies are essential DBA skills. This university seminar will provide you with these new skills. First, you will learn forecasting lingo, basic forecasting math, and how to model CPU and IO subsystems. Then, you will learn how to improve forecast precision by using more advanced math, characterizing your system's workload, and calibrating your forecast models. Finally, we will combine all you have learned into developing forecast scenarios and risk mitigating strategies. As you'll discover, you don't have to be a math whiz to forecast Oracle performance.

U8: Fusion Web Development with JDeveloper 10g for Forms and PL/SQL Developers
Peter Koletzke, Quovera and Duncan Mills, Oracle Corp.
Recently development shops have been mandated more and more to develop new applications using Java platform (J2EE) web technologies. However, the main J2EE languages and the style of development are very different from development using Oracle Forms and PL/SQL. Oracle has set the technology direction for its next wave of business applications - Oracle Fusion applications. JDeveloper is the development tool, which it is using to develop these applications, and which it recommends to its customers for creating custom applications as well as future extensions to Oracle Fusion. JDeveloper offers a highly declarative and visual development environment that rivals that of Oracle Forms.

This University session is taught by the authors of the Oracle Press book "Oracle JDeveloper 10g for Forms & PL/SQL Developers" (supplied as part of the course materials). It focuses on J2EE technologies that are part of the "Fusion Technology Stack" and that are most easily assimilated by traditional Oracle developers--ADF Business Components (ADF BC), JavaServer Faces (JSF), and ADF Faces. Students are given introductions to and demonstrations of creating database access code with ADF BC as well as with JSF and ADF Faces for the web user interface. The seminar also discusses the next steps in learning about web development with JDeveloper.

U10: Getting Started with Oracle Application Express (APEX - Formerly HTMLDB)
Robert Freeman, TUSC
Oracle APEX (formally known as HTMLDB) provides a web based development environment that makes the creation of web sites easy to do. APEX comes free with Oracle Database 10g, so if you own an Oracle database license, you are ready to go with web development. While APEX provides a web-able development environment capable of supporting even the most complex applications, it is also the perfect platform for replacing Enterprise level Access applications that seem to pop up out of nowhere.

Thursday, April 19
8:30 a.m. -- Noon

U15: Oracle Database 10g: Streams, Implementing Data Replication
Kirti Deshpande, Idearc Media
Oracle9i R2 introduced Oracle Streams as a simplified solution for Information Sharing. It is an integrated part of the core Oracle software and does not need any additional license. Oracle10g included several enhancements to Streams. Using Streams you can propagate data, transactions, user defined events and messages in a stream of information within a database, or from one database to another. Streams offers more flexibility than other replication solutions in capturing, propagating and applying the information to other databases or applications. In this University Seminar, you will learn about Streams architecture, configuration, administration and monitoring. I will share with you some of the tricks and tips from my experience with Oracle10g, and Oracle9i Streams that would help you implement data replication with ease. The session will also include a detailed demonstration of a working example of data replication. We will also review all the setup and monitoring scripts used.

U17: Oracle Database 10g: New Features for the DBA
Daniel Liu, First American Real Estate Solutions
Oracle Database 10g, the next-generation database, is the industry's first designed for grid computing. Grid computing reduces the cost of IT by clustering servers together to act as a single large computer, dynamically shifting server resources between applications on demand. Daniel Liu, the co-author of Oracle 10g New Features for the DBA by Rampant TechPress, will introduce the new features in Oracle Database 10g. Those topics include: new initialization parameters, Automatic Storage Management (SAM), Cross Platform Transportable tablespaces, new SYSAUX tablespace, high-speed Data Pump utility, extended Flashback functions, RMAN enhancements, Column-level Virtual Private Database (VPD), database tuning and performance improvement, new SQL enhancements, high availability improvements in Log Miner, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Data Guard, Oracle Streams, and more. The topics covered in this seminar are primary for the database administrators.

U18: Learn Automatic Storage Management
Vinod Haval, Bank of America
Oracle introduced ASM (Automatic Storage Management) in database 10g as a storage solution, which can be used as a storage grid to streamline storage management in today's complex database environment. ASM provides integration of volume management and file system for Oracle database. ASM distributes the data and I/O load equally across all available disks which helps in optimizing the performance and reduces the need for manual I/O tuning. ASM provides number of key benefits to administrators and hence provides comprehensive storage solution. ASM provides RAID solution as a fault tolerance and it has capabilities of automatic storage addition /deletion from the database when the system is online. ASM has its own database instance on each node in the cluster. ASM virtualizes the underline storage and acts as an interface between the storage and oracle database instance.

U19: Implementing RAC
Ashok Singh, FASTENAL
This four hour session will be an excellent course for all those who are new to Real Application Cluster or have a desire to support a RAC implementation in future.It will go through all the details of RAC and discuss some best practices while implementing RAC.

U20: Core DBA to Apps DBA: What You Need to Know to Transition
John Kanagaraj, DB Soft, Inc.
Oracle DBAs are constantly tasked to manage new applications and environments, and none is more challenging than the Oracle E-Business Suite or "Apps 11i" as it better known. In many organizations, "core" Oracle DBAs are suddenly thrust into the "Apps" DBA role, without much training and even lesser experience. In other cases, DBAs want to add on this highly-marketable skill-set. In this seminar, we will help you transition from a core DBA to an Apps DBA. Beginning with a solid understanding of the architecture of the OracleApps environment, we will cover details of both Forms/Web OLTP and Concurrent (batch) processing as well as installation, configuring, patching, tuning and troubleshooting this complex application suite. Security, SOX and Best Practices will also be covered. We will end this with a look at the upcoming "Oracle Fusion" architecture.

U22: Avoid Tuning - Use the Best SQL First
John King, King Training Resources
Over the years the Oracle Cost-Based Optimizer has become a reliable ally in the effort to improve SQL performance. Still, many opportunities arise where performance leaves something to be desired. Today, we should focus efforts on places where problems exist rather than making assumptions of possible performance problems based upon our past experiences. When problem areas are discovered we should do what we can to make our SQL perform better. The last few releases of the Oracle database have provided SQL statement options that can dramatically improve performance by speeding calls or even eliminating calls. This session will demonstrate the use of SQL features to improve performance by letting the database “work smart” rather than “working hard” to meet our needs. Specific topics include: Returning clause, WITH subquery reuse, Temporary Tables, Merge, Multi-Row Inserts, Index-Oriented Tables, Function-Based Indexes, Materialized Views, Query Rewrite, Cube, Rollup, Grouping Sets, and Bulk.

Please note that there is an additional fee to attend a University Seminar, which can be found on the registration form. Click here for pricing information and to register.