Focus Areas

The IOUG Live! 2005 program offers approximately 200 educational sessions divided into seven focus areas. Each focus area contains a variety of topics in several session formats. Detailed sub-categories have been added to the program this year, to help you customize your IOUG Live! education and training experience.

DBA

Being a DBA today is more complicated than ever. You are responsible for your company's most valuable resource - its data. On top of all of the daily challenges of maintaining a high performance database and all that goes with it, now you have to be sure that data is available 24x7 and is compatible and deployable with and over anything starting with an "i". This focus area is designed to present content necessary for DBAs of every level of experience and industry with the tools to productively and creatively administer your data.

Sub-Categories:
Administration, Backup/Recovery, Connectivity (e.g. SQL*Net/Net, JDBC, ODBC), Design/Configuration, Features/New Features (9i/10g), Hardware Configuration, Installation/Migration/Upgrade, Internals, Performance/Tuning, Programming (e.g. SQL, PL/SQL), Security, Tools (e.g. OEM, TOAD)

Architecture & Infrastructure

There's a lot more to being a DBA than backup and recovery! There's the operating system, client server, and networking issues. And, if your company is involved with B2B or B2C, then you need to deal with EDI and have a handle on security of your data. Then there's storage management, clustering and RAID! This focus area highlights the importance of the system infrastructure and architecture as the core of your database and all of the items that need to be considered.

Sub-Categories:
Administration, Connectivity (e.g. TCP/IP, Wireless), Design/Configuration, Features/New Features (9i/10g, Oracle on ...), Hardware Configuration (e.g. Clustering, RAC, Storage), Installation/Migration/Upgrade, Performance/Tuning, Programming (e.g. Perl, Unix shell, TCL), Security (e.g. Firewall, LDAP), Tools

Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence, knowledge management, data mining....what does it all mean? And what does it have to do with my data warehouse? Today you have to do more than tune your data warehouse. You have to start at the beginning with the design and work through to the deployment and then keep it tuned for peak performance. Then you need to make the most of that stored data by analyzing it and using it to give your business a competitive advantage. This focus area examines the data warehousing and business intelligence partnership to make the most of your key data resources.

Sub-Categories:
Administration, Backup/Recovery, Business Intelligence, Design/Configuration (e.g. OLAP, Metadata), Features/New Features (9i/10g), Hardware Configuration, Installation/Migration/Upgrade, Performance/Tuning, Programming (e.g. ETL), Security, Tools (e.g. OWB, Discoverer)

Application Server and Web Services

In this day and age we need to deliver content to Web browsers. To get the information from the database we need to exploit application servers. The art of managing a Web browser is a skill that we must all have in today's expanding information architecture. This focus area will help you deliver your information, it will help you secure it, configure it and utilize and tune the power of the application server. Oracle Application Server is an expanding technology that you will need to control with in your organization and system architecture.

Sub-Categories:
Administration, Backup/Recovery, Connectivity, Design/Configuration, Features/New Features (e.g. AS 9i/10g, 3rd Party), Hardware Configuration (e.g. Load balancing), Installation/Migration/Upgrade, Internals, Performance/Tuning, Programming (e.g. Java/J2EE, PL/SQL, JSP, XML, HTML, WRML), Security, Tools (e.g. Portal)

eBusiness & Application Development

Working in application development means learning an alphabet soup of languages and performing a balancing act between Web-based, wireless and client/server applications. What will give you the edge to create successful applications? Do you use the Oracle suite of tools or do you need to look for something that you can integrate? And how will your applications be used? With wireless technology? Through a portal? Will your forms and reports be used on an intranet or on the Internet? This focus area covers the topics that surround the development and deployment of your applications.

Sub-Categories:
Connectivity (e.g. JDBC, ODBC, Wireless), Design/Configuration (Extranet, Intranet, Modeling), Features/New Features (9i/10g), Installation/Migration/Upgrade, Performance/Tuning, Programming (e.g. Java/J2EE, JSP, Beans, XML, SQL, PL/SQL, Perl, CGI, OCI), Security, Tools (e.g. JDeveloper, iDS, Portal, HTML DB)

ERP, CRM, SFA and SCM

No one runs a homogeneous environment anymore. You look for best of breed applications to deal with Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relations Management, Sales Force Automation and Supply Chain Management. But that search for the perfect plug in to run on your Oracle database comes with its challenges. Managing a stable of different tools has its pitfalls - from interoperability to high availability to managing your third party vendor - what should you do? This focus area deals with the issues faced by an ERP DBA in integrating all of these new areas into their system.

Sub-Categories:
Administration, Business Intelligence, Connectivity, Design/Configuration, Features/New Features (Oracle Applications, SAP, PeopleSoft), Hardware Configuration, Installation/Migration/Upgrade, Performance/Tuning, Security, Tools

Career Development

It's not enough these days to just know how to tune a database or build a Web page. You need to have ALL the skills to stand out in the sea of IT professionals and to move ahead. Skills like risk analysis, project management, determining return on investment, resolving conflicts and team building are just as valuable in the work place. This focus area highlights the "other" professional and personal skills you need to get ahead and to advance your IT career.

Sub-Categories:
Certification, Mentoring, Personal Skills, Project Management, Team Building, Training