Training tip: Nothing works every time

When you use checklists for service delivery, as I do, it's easy to slip into a routine. In fact, that's what checklists are designed to do: take best practices and make them a habit.

But nothing works every time. Doing the same training game at the same point in a given course may seem like a "best practice," but ignores the most important thing, which is the needs of the students in the class. People are different, and that means you can teach the same course dozens of times and no two deliveries will be exactly the same.

For example, there is one training game I usually play on the last day of a certain class.  It nicely sums up the material in the class, and it's a lot of fun.  Usually.  But I know from experience that if the class is smaller than 6 or 7 people, that game isn't going to work. So I have to substitute something else.

Or, if the people in the class find games distracting and prefer a more straightforward presentation, I have to adapt my style to what will make them comfortable enough to be open to learning.

Checklists can be a wonderful tool to ensure a base level of service delivery, a "good" class. But it's going beyond the checklist to personalize the experience that makes a class not just good, but great.

A Training Lesson from Bruce Springsteen

Tom Peters had an epiphany the other day: his first Bruce Springsteen concert.  Initially miffed by the pouring rain (and at being dragged there by his wife), he nevertheless described himself as "Earth's newest Bruce Groupie":

Well, the storm abated, The Boss showed up—and I, one of Earth's newest Bruce Groupies by midnight, was mesmerized by the most amazing piece of performance art of any sort I've ever seen (65.8 years) or ever expect to see. Three+ hours, non-flagging energy, no intermission at all—he ran to a little table and threw ice water on himself a couple of times without breaking stride. If ever there was a time when the word "excellence" was not hyperbole, this was it. The repertoire was great, but so what. The passion & energy & performance [P.E.P., "pep"—God help me] per se was the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point.

I'm inspired by energetic performance, because I see training as performance. The students expend a lot of energy, and they get empty. Where do they get more? By and large, from us, the trainers. By directing their attention and planning their energy output, we can help them budget it. And we can break up the material with energizers and other fun things that fill them up again.

I know it's been a good class when I feel just drained from all the energy I gave away, but happy that those I gave it to had a good experience. Makes me feel a little like a rock star.

Oracle on VMWare

One of my current projects is building VMWare virtual machines that I can use to practice installing Oracle 11g and third-party products.  I found some great "cheat sheets" at the Oracle Base website:

• Oracle DB 11gR1 RAC Installation on OEL5 Using VMWare.  This one covers setting up Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 on VMWare virtual machines in a configuration designed to be used as a RAC node (e.g., dual network interface cards). It's the whole meal, from soup to nuts. The level of detail is great.
  
• Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 Installation.  This is a step-by-step, generic setup of OEL5 suitable for adding other software (like Oracle) later. It's not Oracle-specific, but a good overview.

Both of these have lots of screenshots and the little tips that head off disaster.

I do have a couple of qualms, though.

Now that Oracle has released their own virtualization solution, OracleVM, they are not likely to ever support VMWare-based solutions. Part of me says I should be building these VMs on OracleVM. However, Oracle VM requires a separate machine to run, and VMWare doesn't. Plus, VMWare is a clear market leader at this point. Because these machines will be used as learning aids, not production, I don't think it's a big risk.

The other thing is using Oracle Enterprise Linux as the O.S. instead of something more generic. The only reasons I'm going this way are that the cheat sheets use it, and it is a free download.

But clearly, things have come a long way since people were first struggling with Oracle in virtual environments years ago.

Training tip: Warm up your voice before class

Classroom training is a performance -- a vocal performance, like singing or acting. As a trainer, my voice is an important asset to my job, so protecting that voice is important.

One thing I've learned to do before class each day is to warm up, just like a singer warms up. Here's my routine.

Before warming up, I drink some water to make sure my throat is moist. Then I start by singing the musical scales (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do) up and down very softly. This acts as a diagnostic: I can usually tell pretty quickly how strong my voice is that day, if it's scratchy or clear, wavering or rock solid.

Then I add a bit more power, a bit more volume. I do some more scales, then go directly from low C on the scale (do) to an octave higher (DO) and back down again (do) a few times.  I notice how quickly my voice was able to make the change, and how closely I "nailed" the note.

Next, I'll sing a familiar song, especially if the radio is on. This means singing notes in different order than just the scales.  Again, I watch the transitions, looking for places where my voice may be a bit weak today. Then I know in the classroom I'll have to moderate my volume or I won't have a voice left by the end of the day.

Finally, I'll talk.  I put a smile on my face and say, "Good Morning!  Welcome to the Training Center.  My name is Bob Watkins, and today, we'll be talking about..."  I may ramble a bit about what we're going to cover that day: this helps me focus as well as lets me hear how I'm sounding.

I often do this warmup in the car while driving from the hotel to the training location. It looks funny, but when I hit the classroom, I'm ready to go. And, I don't run out of voice about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, as I used to before I adopted this warmup routine.

Not about the coffee

With all due respect to my colleague Jon Emmons, whose blog "Life After Coffee" can be found on my Blogroll, there are times when it's not about the coffee.

While working on my blog redesign this morning, I listened to a two-part podcast, by Curt Rosengren of The M.A.P. Maker blog. This is one of my favorite blogs for getting and keeping motivated.

The podcast series was an interview with the former president of Starbucks Coffee Company, Howard Behar.  (I learned a lot about Starbucks in the 12 years I lived in Seattle before moving to Dallas. They were even one of my customers: I taught customized Oracle classes there.)

In his new book, Howard says that in a successful company like Starbucks, "It's Not About The Coffee," it's about the people. Some great takeaways from the podcast:

• We spend most of our time growing up being told "No" to things. Subconsciously, we feel we've arrived as an adult when we have the power to say "No" to others. But it's much more fun to be able to say "Yes" instead, especially to customers.
  
• We sometimes wear many hats, being different people in different situations. Howard's philosophy is to "Wear One Hat," that is, be yourself. Align your values and outlook with a job that fits you.
  
• If you're having what Howard calls a "gray day," accept that. He talks to himself (sometimes out loud!) and asks, "What's up with this gray feeling?" and then, "It's okay not to be UP today." The simple act of giving himself permission to be how he is, often dissipates much of the gray feeling.

First Look at Oracle Database 11g

Here are some notes I took at this month's Dallas Oracle Users Group meeting, at which Linda Smith of Oracle previewed the new features coming in Oracle Database 11g.

The first question she answered is:  When?  The official word is "2nd Half of Calendar Year 2007." Originally, it was closer to July, but now she suspects it will be around September, or timed for Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, in November.

The focus of the release is clear: Availability. Many of the new features are aimed at keeping the database available 7 x 24 x 365, despite the many database administration tasks that must be performed regularly. Here are some highlights:

• Change Management. "Change is the most common cause of instability," Smith said. So Oracle 11g will include features that permit more realistic testing of new releases and patches before committing them to production. You'll be able to snapshot a physical standby, use it to perform testing, then rollback the snapshot.



• Database Replay. This lets you capture the actual workload from a production system, and use it to stress-test your test environment to be sure the changes work. Furthermore, your test environment does not need to have live application servers and client stations to do this: the replay looks the same.  (Of course, you'll want those pieces in your test infrastructure anyway, to test them. But you won't need them to test the database.)



• Online patching.  This boggles my mind, but supposedly the new release will let you apply patches "hot," without a service outage. This includes the quarterly Critical Patch Updates we've all grown to know and love.



• SQL Performance Analyzer. This captures before and after measurements of your SQL, and after you apply an upgrade, can show you which SQL got better -- and which got worse (regressed). So, during testing of an upgrade, you can tune what needs to be tuned before taking the release to production. There's also an automatic SQL tuning feature that will transparently rewrite any statement that it can get a 3X improvement on.



• Flashback Data Archive. In the past, the Flashback Query feature could only go back as far as the size of your Undo Tablespace permits. In 11g, you can configure a more permanent archive that will enable you to flashback years, if required. This is aimed at auditors and compliance reporting, but I can see some interesting DBA possibilities too.

Obviously there's a bunch more, including new partitioning options, a replacement for the way LOBs are done that looks pretty slick (SecureFiles), improvements to ASM, and developer stuff.

Time to book my trip to San Francisco for September!

UPDATE, 4/25/07:  I forgot to mention that a new version of the free Express Edition is also planned, but will lag the Enterprise Edition ship date by some number of months.

Oracle Tips - March 2007

Here are my Oracle Tips columns published at TechRepublic.com during March, 2007:

Gather Query Tuning Data via Oracle's Dynamic Performance Views - March 6, 2007
The dynamic performance views supplied with the Oracle database include several that make the process of gathering tuning information easier. This tip describes four of them: V$SQL, V$SQLAREA, V$SQLTEXT, and a new one, V$SQLSTATS.

Test XML Queries Interactively in Oracle 10gR2 SQL*Plus - March 13, 2007
The SQL*Plus program can now process XML (and SQL) queries using the XQUERY command added in Oracle 10gR2. This tip shows you some of the possibilities.

Capture an Oracle 10g Audit Trail in XML Format - March 19, 2007
Oracle 10g can be configured to write its audit logs to XML files in operating system directories. This tip shows the configuration changes that need to be made, as well as how to access the resulting XML files.

Use Logon Triggers to Initialize User Sessions in Oracle - March 27, 2007
Application contexts enable you to store data in memory for applications to use. The After Logon database trigger is a convenient way to initialize a user session by setting application context values for it. This Oracle tip shows you why�and how�it's done.