Two days of work in the middle here, which is a nice break from my break. If that makes sense. I left early yesterday to drive up to Westminster for the Rocky Mountain Oracle User Group Training Days. I spoke here a few years ago, bringing some SQL Server knowledge to the event. This time I’m representing Oracle as Redgate expands into that area. I’ve been excited by the work that our Oracle group did in 2019, and I submitted last year to this event, in anticipation of them releasing something.

They did, and here I am. Yesterday was plowing through a few emails and then practicing the Oracle demo for today. Today was an early talk. I gave a DevOps for Oracle talk, which went well. Other than SQL Developer being much worse in high DPI situations than SSMS, things worked well. I had a few good questions, though overall, it seems that Oracle people (devs + DBAs) are behind the SQL Server world in terms of trying to adopt better practices.

I also watched the keynote, which was on data analysis in the cloud. It was from someone working at Snowflake and was a good, pragmatic look at the cloud. Again, Oracle people want to stick with Oracle, and there were some questions asking if the Oracle cloud and sticking with Oracle products works well compared to AWS/Azure/GCP. It seems there is this preference to stick with the Big O, but the presenter did a nice job of trying to get them to think about getting things done, and using other tools where appropriate. This has been the message from MS for a few years. Use what works, even if it’s not an MS solution.

Overall, this made me realize a few things. One is I miss working for Redgate. I really enjoy talking with customers and clients and helping them work through issues to build better software. I’ve been out of that world for a couple months, and I’m ready to go back.

Two is that I enjoy the technology. Listening to people talk about this stuff is fun and exciting. I see downsides, challenges, security issues, privacy problems, overblown and hyped marketing, but I’m genuinely excited by the possibilities for the future.

I only spent a half day here before heading to the gym and then coming home. I’m still under the weather, with a dripping nose, so I bailed. Still, a nice break from the sabbatical.

Now it’s back to volleyball tonight, a little guitar practice, then more cleaning tomorrow.