RMOUG Training Days is a jam-packed annual event organized in February every year by the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group. It features almost one hundred technical presentations by Oracle experts from around the globe and attracts nearly one thousand attendees.

For the fifth year in a row, the Database Specialists team is represented on the technical agenda. Iggy Fernandez will deliver two presentations: Oracle Annoyances for Geeks: Deadlocks and Livelocks and Optimal Query Execution Plans - an Impossible Dream?

RMOUG Training Days 2008 will be held on February 13 and February 14; more information can be found at http://www.rmoug.org.

Schrag is a returning speaker to this conference where attendees frequently recognize him as one of the top presenters at the conference. He will present two sessions, both on Oracle database technology and performance issues.

The conference, which is packed with sessions from Oracle users sharing knowledge and real-life experience, takes place at the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Convention Center from April 15-19. For more information, see http://www.ioug.org/collaborate07.

The addition of David Wolff allows the company's founder, Roger Schrag, to move to the role of Chief Technology Officer and focus his efforts on upholding the company's excellent level of service and continuing his contributions to the Oracle user community.

Mr. Wolff is an entrepreneurial business executive with extensive experience in business transformation, internet-based business strategies, strategic sales and marketing management, and channel distribution. As co-founder of El Camino Resources, he built the company into the largest privately-held technology leasing and computer reseller company in the US with revenues of $770M, employing 1300 in 40 offices worldwide. Simultaneously he was COO of Real Solutions the IBM reseller of hardware, software and services division of El Camino with revenues of $250 million, employing over 250 people.

Mr. Wolff is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and a Fellow of the Wharton School.

“I really enjoy working with the people who volunteer to make NoCOUG what it is, and I’m looking forward to contributing in the role of President,” said Loper. “I know that, as a group, we will do some great things for the user community in 2007.” Loper, who is Vice President of Operations at Database Specialists, Inc., has been a NoCOUG board member for many years, serving as Journal Editor for four years and, most recently, as Vendor Coordinator.

Database Specialists’ President Roger Schrag was re-elected to the position of Director of Conference Programming. In this role, Schrag leads the planning and development of NoCOUG’s quarterly one-day educational conferences, held throughout the Bay Area.

In addition to time spent volunteering for NoCOUG, Database Specialists, Inc. has been a member of NoCOUG’s Gold Vendor program for many years.

For more information about NoCOUG, visit http://www.nocoug.org.

“We have long supported Linux as a platform for mission critical Oracle systems. It’s been a viable option for many years, and a cost-effective solution for many of our clients as well,” said Schrag. “Linux provides the robustness and manageability of a Unix platform while allowing companies to deploy on less expensive commodity hardware. In addition, we are seeing many companies evaluating a switch to Linux in conjunction with an Oracle database upgrade.”

Database Specialists is a San Francisco-based, nationwide provider of Oracle managed services and onsite consulting. A long-time supporter of the Linux platform, the company was invited to LinuxWorld in 1999 in order to present Configuring Oracle on Linux for Peak Performance in conjunction with a 50-page installation guide.

Since that time, the company has continued to update this detailed guide as new versions of Oracle are released. The installation guides—along with valuable resources—can be found in the resources section of the company’s website at http://www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.html.

“We’ve been working with customers running Oracle on Linux for over seven years now,” said Schrag, continuing, “Today we’re seeing Oracle 10g RAC on Linux as well—which is a sophisticated high-availability solution from Oracle. Because of our extensive experience with Oracle on Linux, setting up RAC on Linux has been a logical progression.”

For more information about Database Specialists’ services, please call us at 888-648-0500 or visit the company website at http://www.dbspecialists.com.

Database Specialists' clients use a range of Oracle Applications from Financials to Manufacturing, to Human Resources, and Clinical. "For many of our clients, our DBA Pro remote services are the perfect solution," says Lisa Loper, Vice President of Operations. "Oracle technology is typically not the focus of their business, so they outsource it to us and sleep well at night."

"We handle the day-to-day production support for the database and Applications technology stack, ensure high availability, seamless performance, and deploy a solid backup and recovery plan," says Schrag. The company's custom database monitoring and alert notification tool—Database Rx—is used to monitor and report system uptime, capacity, performance, alerts, and areas for proactive maintenance. In addition, each customer receives a number of included consulting hours in their monthly plan which can be used for database maintenance, cloning test environments, or anything Oracle-related.

"When a customer decides it's time to upgrade or begin a special project, they let us know and we plan it in our schedule," says Loper. "It's amazing how smoothly this kind of support works for our customers. We offer a high level of support and foster long-term relationships. We're thrilled that the result is long-term customers, and referrals that are the mainstay of our business."

For more information about Database Specialists’ Oracle managed services offering and remote support, please see http://www.dbspecialists.com/dbapro.html.

Many Database Rx enhancements are based on requests from Database Specialists’ customers. They include additional monitoring, notification, and reporting capabilities in addition to increased detection of hardware and server failures, database hangs, and session hangs. Database Rx also features enhanced monitoring of query processing and reporting of changes in query execution plans that might impact system performance and response time for users. “One of the reasons we developed Database Rx ourselves rather than using a third party tool is so that we have the flexibility to update and customize monitoring and support metrics for our customers,” says Roger Schrag, President of Database Specialists. “In addition, as we determine new areas for proactive monitoring—such as new Oracle features—we can enhance Database Rx right away.”

“Database Rx is available to our managed services customers 24/7, so we are continually adding reports that allow us and our customers to slice and dice numbers, review execution plans, load profiles, and more,” says Schrag. “These statistics are very useful in projecting future growth, capacity planning, and figuring out how long a business can continue growing at the existing rate before the customer outgrows their current database server. Customers can also use the statistics and reports as a baseline to compare and project how their Oracle environment may change over time.”

For more information about Database Specialists’ Oracle managed services offering, please see http://www.dbspecialists.com/dbapro.html.

In addition, company founder Roger Schrag has been invited to present a technical session on Oracle performance beginning at 1:00p.m. The day-long conference is full of technical sessions with a keynote by well-known developer and trainer Steven Feuerstein.

Database Specialists is a Gold Vendor sponsor of the Northern California Oracle Users Group. For more information about Database Specialists services, please see http://www.dbspecialists.com. For more information about NoCOUG, please see http://www.nocoug.org

"We have been regularly adding new customers, and our existing customers have been giving us increased responsibility for their systems. This is the kind of growth we like to see, as it demonstrates that we have become a trusted partner," says Lisa Loper, vice president of operations. "Because of the new demands, we've recently made some great additions to our DBA team."

Database Specialists supports a wide variety of clients that use Oracle software ranging from Oracle 10g Release 2 back to version 7.3 and platforms ranging from Sun Solaris to Linux, HP-UX, AIX, and Windows. The company provides planning, installation and support for customers using RAC, as well as other high-availability solutions.

"This year has been one of our best years, and we look forward to continued growth as we wrap up our eleventh year serving our customers," says Loper.

About Database Specialists, Inc.

Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Database Specialists, Inc. serves clients on-site in Northern California and remotely nationwide. Database Specialists, Inc. was founded in 1995 with the vision of providing clients the highest level of expertise, a commitment to excellence, and the added value of a team approach.

“Our focus has always been on maintaining a group of very experienced DBAs that provide excellent service to our customers, and we continue to do that,” says Roger Schrag. “We are also fortunate in that most of our employees have been with the company for six or more years. That adds to a positive customer experience, and our customers stay with us for many years as well.”

The company’s client base ranges from privately-owned internet companies to publicly traded Fortune 500 companies. For more information about its services, visit http://www.dbspecialists.com.

The conference will be packed with technical sessions, including a keynote by popular speaker and author Jonathan Lewis. Database Specialists is a Gold Vendor sponsor of the Northern California Oracle Users Group and has been for many years. For more information about Database Specialists services, please see http://www.dbspecialists.com. For more information about NoCOUG, please see http://www.nocoug.org.

Three weeks prior, Sutton was joined by company founder and president Roger Schrag at the Annual Training Days of the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group in Denver. Sutton and Schrag presentated a number of technical sessions at the RMOUG conference attended by over 1,000 Oracle professionals.

"All these volunteer efforts take us away from our regular work," says Schrag, "But I wouldn't have it any other way." Since 1993, prior to founding Database Specialists, Schrag could be found writing technical white papers and speaking at conferences such as International Oracle User Week and Oracle OpenWorld. "I have always thought that it is important to give something back," says Schrag, who says that throughout his career he has appreciated colleagues who took the time to write and speak in order to educate others and help them grow professionally.

Schrag has also been a long-time member of the board of directors for the 450+ member Northern California Oracle Users Group. Currently in the role of Director of Conference Programming, Schrag previously served two terms as president of the organization.

"When I started Database Specialists, I wanted to continue both learning from others and support our company team in their efforts to contribute to the Oracle user community," says Schrag. The company publishes a free monthly e-newsletter full of Oracle news and resources called, The Specialist. "We support our team members making individual contributions as well. In the last five months, a number of them have taken the time to do presentations, white papers, and volunteer in user groups."

Visitors to the company's website will find a variety of free white papers, presentations, The Specialist newsletter, and scripts. Database Specialists has compiled these resources over the years based on the team's contributions to the Oracle user community. They can be found at www.dbspecialists.com/resources.html.

Sutton, a senior staff consultant at Database Specialists, returns to speak at the conference for a second time. After completing extensive research and authoring a lengthy white paper on the topic, he will be discussing optimizer statistics, various options for gathering them, and their effects on Oracle performance.

Former Oracle Corp. president Ray Lane will be the keynote speaker at the event. In addition, many well-known authors and speakers will present material on topics such as performance analysis, RAC, capacity planning, and using Statspack.

For more information about the event, see https://portal.hotsos.com/events/SYM06.

Senior Staff Consultant Terry Sutton returns for his third year as a speaker at the conference. This year he will present a session based on his white paper: What's Up with dbms_stats? He’ll provide detailed examples of options available with dbms_stats and explain how the various options can dramatically affect results, both the accuracy of statistics and performance of the statistics gathering operation itself. Gathering adequate statistics for Oracle's query optimizer is a must for maximum system performance.

President Roger Schrag will give two presentations, based on two white papers he has recently authored. In the first one, How Much Do Concurrent Updates Impact Query Performance in Oracle?, Roger will provide attendees with information on how to detect and measure performance degradation caused by concurrent activities in Oracle. Roger will share additional real-life experience in his second presentation, entitled: An Oracle 10g Upgrade Case Study: Looking at System Performance Before and After the Upgrade.

RMOUG Training Days http://www.rmoug.org/training.htm include over 70 technical sessions with educational tracks such as database administration, data warehousing, technology management, and application design.

Authored by Staff Consultant Hamid Minoui, this detailed white paper addresses best practices for efficient use of available space, performance, and manageability in very large databases and data warehouse environments. Not only are there many data files and tablespaces to manage in data warehouse databases, but the data load volumes and the size of individual segments tend to be very large. Applying these practices will help save space, reduce or eliminate space-related issues, and enhance query performance.

To view the white paper and presentation of Practical Space Management in Data Warehouse Environments, see www.dbspecialists.com/presentations. To learn how Database Specialists can help you with your data warehouse, please call us at (888) 648-0500 ext. 42.

Lisa Loper, Vice President of Operations at Database Specialists says, "It's always great to get such positive feedback from customers and to feel appreciated for our hard work and dedication. That's really what makes it all worthwhile."

Michael Chung, Director, Information Technology at a San Francisco Bay Area firm wrote a reference letter recently stating: "I have been very pleased with Database Specialists' level of expertise, responsiveness, thoroughness in managing our Oracle environment, and their ability to work effectively to resolve problems. They quickly became a valuable extension of our IT team and are our trusted resource for Oracle-related responsibilities. I recommend Database Specialists for remote Oracle database administration support without reservation."

Yet another Database Specialists client in the publishing industry recently wrote a letter of recommendation that included the following: "It is with great pleasure that I recommend Database Specialists, Inc. I have worked with several other companies over the past four years that support Oracle databases and did not have the confidence that I have since we engaged Database Specialists as our outside support company. Database Specialists would be an asset to any company who need outside support for their Oracle databases, and I am happy to give Database Specialists my wholehearted endorsement."

Roger Schrag, company founder and leader of the Database Specialists' technical team says, "I am thrilled to have this kind of endorsement from our customers. We have built a great team, and I'm glad that our customers are pleased with our level of expertise and support. That's why word-of-mouth and referrals have been a cornerstone of our business for so many years."

In addition to its work with Oracle and the Oracle Partner Program, Database Specialists remains involved with the Northern California Oracle Users Group (NoCOUG), which is active near the company’s headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area. NoCOUG is an independent user group with over 450 members, dedicated to the education and representation of Oracle users—specifically Oracle database administrators and developers. Database Specialists team members serve on the board of directors of NoCOUG and give presentations at quarterly conferences. The company has also been a preferred “Gold Vendor” of NoCOUG for many years.

“Sharing with the Oracle user community has always been a priority for us,” says company founder and president Roger Schrag. Roger, who authors many papers himself, encourages employees of the group to look for opportunities to share their knowledge with others. Other recent papers include Wait Event Enhancements in Oracle 10g and Graceful Failover and Failback Procedures in Non-Data Guard Environments.

“It’s a great way for our team to learn by documenting and to give something back to the community at the same time,” says Roger. The company receives calls and emails of thanks for the numerous free white papers available in its online library. “It’s a good feeling to know that we are helping our colleagues and helping companies do things right the first time and avoid pitfalls by reading our white papers,” says Roger. “This is something we’ve done since our inception over ten years ago, and sharing knowledge remains a core value of our company.”

To view the company’s many white papers, see www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.

"One of my areas of specialization within Oracle is peformance management," says Roger, who often shares his knowledge to help others. "This is one way I enjoy giving back to the Oracle community," he continues. A past president of the Northern California Oracle Users Group, Roger spends a good portion of his time doing volunteer work.

The conference includes tracks on technology, applications, and solutions. Roger's talk will be session S058 in the Oracle Database 10g technology track. For additional details on Oracle OpenWorld, see http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html.

In this new installation guide, readers will learn the steps of installing Oracle Database 10g release 1 in a Sun Solaris SPARC environment. Everything included in the guide is hands on, detailed information for Oracle users who want to get an Oracle database up and running quickly. Special attention is paid to best practices in order to set up a scalable, robust database environment that offers high performance.

"Readers are welcome to install Oracle on their own or call on us to handle it for them," says Schrag, continuing, "Either way, we hope our white papers prove that we've done our homework." You'll find the white paper at www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.html#oracle10gsolaris

Frequently voted in the top 10% of speakers at this annual event, Roger Schrag will also discuss SQL tuning with his topic: Speed Up Queries with Semi-Joins and Anti-Joins: How Oracle Evaluates EXISTS, NOT EXISTS, IN, NOT IN.

IOUG Live! 2005 will be held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel in Orlando, Florida, May 1-5, 2005. This educational symposium is developed by Oracle users for Oracle users. It is geared toward DBAs, developers, technical managers and other Oracle users. For more information about the event, see http://www.ioug.org/live2005/index.cfm.

“I wanted to create a company whose employees would be part of a team, rather than merely a contractor placed on site,” says Roger Schrag, CEO of San Francisco-based consulting firm Database Specialists, Inc. “I created the type of consulting firm that I would like to work for.”

People are the heart of every organization, and—much of the time—databases are the backbone. Databases are used for key business functions such as tracking products, customer information and orders, financial information, marketing information, and much more that makes each business unique. “Think of airlines with thousands of flights and reservations, or online auction houses that have thousands of listing, bids, and transactions. There’s a database (or many databases) behind the scenes managing all of the information,” says Schrag.

“When a database fails or performs poorly, literally thousands of users can be affected,” says Roger Schrag. “And companies can lose face with their customers—and lose untold amounts of business along with customer confidence.”

Honoring a commitment to specialize solely in Oracle technology, Database Specialists has evolved from mainly offering full-time onsite consulting services to diversifying its service portfolio to include short-term performance tuning services and a remote database administration service called DBA Pro, which provides a valuable, flexible alternative for clients that want full Oracle outsourcing or a complement to their own staff.

“With this suite of available services, Database Specialists can absolutely answer to the technical needs of the CTO, while keeping the CFO happy,” says Schrag. “We can clearly make it a win-win situation.” Schrag’s company has been successful in this regard, and has continued to bring in profits, year after year. “Word of mouth is our best form of advertising,” says Schrag. “As long as we work to keep our clients happy, I can easily see another ten+ successful years on the horizon.”

About Database Specialists, Inc. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Database Specialists, Inc. serves clients on-site in Northern California and remotely nationwide. Database Specialists, Inc. was founded in 1995 with the vision of providing clients the highest level of expertise, a commitment to excellence, and the added value of a team approach.

Many well-known authors and speakers in the Oracle arena have been selected to present material on topics such as performance analysis, techniques for designing high performance applications, strategies for capacity planning and performance testing, Oracle troubleshooting, and real-life experiences.

Roger Schrag will lead attendees through a case study of one company’s migration from Oracle 8i to Oracle Database 10g. Attendees will learn about migration strategy and issues encountered such as SGA sizing, query optimization changes, and overall performance results after the migration was completed.

This is the second year Roger has been invited to participate as a presenter at the Hotsos Symposium. For more information about the event, see http://www.hotsos.com/events/SYM05.php?event_id=36. Advance registration discounts apply until February 18, 2005.

“We monitor and manage many of our customers’ Oracle databases on a 24/7 basis, so we are always looking for ways to be more proactive and add features to our services,” Loper continued. “We have some of the most experienced Oracle consultants around. We pair our technical knowledge and consulting experience with our custom-built tools to create an outstanding combination that has resulted in a solid customer base.”

Outsourcing of Oracle database administration and production support is becoming more common among small- and mid-sized businesses, and Database Specialists has seen continual growth of their outsourcing service since it launched seven years ago. For more information on these services, please click here.

Founded in 1995, Database Specialists, Inc. has always focused on providing senior-level Oracle expertise. Originally, services were provided primarily on-site. However, due to an increased demand from clients that needed ongoing production support of the highest quality without breaking the bank, the company launched the DBA Pro family of services, offering options such as 24/7 comprehensive coverage for mission-critical databases, bundled consulting hours, and proactive daily and monthly reviews for Oracle systems.

To give customers a window into how their databases are being monitored, the Database Specialists technical team developed Database Rx, a web-enabled custom set of tools for Oracle database monitoring and alert notification. Database Rx provides secure, real-time notification of performance, stability, and scalability issues before they compromise database performance or result in expensive downtime.

“The success of the DBA Pro service lies in the pairing of superior tools with experienced Oracle DBAs devoted to keeping Oracle systems running smoothly,” said Roger Schrag. The company’s client base ranges from privately-owned internet companies to publicly traded Fortune 500 companies. For more information about its services, visit www.dbspecialists.com.

Database Specialists is also very actively involved with the Northern California Oracle Users Group (NoCOUG), a not-for-profit organization that promotes education and networking for Oracle Users. Roger Schrag has been the president of NoCOUG for the past two years. Lisa Loper, vice president of operations at Database Specialists, has been the NoCOUG Journal editor for three years.

"As a company that specializes in Oracle technology, we feel it's important to keep our finger on the pulse of what's happening with Oracle technology. We do this via our partnership with Oracle and with our activity in the local users group," said Lisa adding, "We also get a lot out of giving back to the user group community through the volunteer work we do with NoCOUG and our involvement as an Oracle Partner. We hope to continue these endeavors well into the future."

"Linux is a viable platform and many companies, including Oracle Corporation, are invested heavily in Linux," says Schrag. "We're proud to offer this information to our clients and the Oracle user community to make their Oracle installation process on Linux much easier." Database Specialists, Inc. has published white papers on installing Oracle on the Solaris and Linux platforms for years. They remain among the most popular free resources on the company's website.

Installing and Configuring Oracle9i on the Linux Platform is available for download at www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.html#oracle920linux

Roger and Terry gave popular presentations on topics ranging from an introduction to the wait event interface to advanced sessions that included real life examples presenting performance problems and solutions. "We received some great feedback from our audiences about the information we shared," said Roger Schrag. "When attendees see how we use the performance tuning principles to help our many clients, they walk away with knowledge they can use within their own companies. It's great to share something like that."

RMOUG's website includes a recap of the Training Day presentations, including those from Database Specialists.

Don't miss this outstanding educational opportunity. You'll find a speaker listing, session abstracts and more on the Hotsos website at http://www.hotsos.com/appearances/sym2004.php.

As president of the Northern California Oracle Users Group (NoCOUG) for 2004, Roger says, "I am looking forward to another exciting year. We have a great board of directors, and there is a lot in store for the members of NoCOUG." The organization is dedicated to offering education, information sharing, and networking opportunities. Roger is entering his fourth year on the NoCOUG board of directors. "As a professional in the Oracle arena, I have always felt it's important to share knowledge and make positive contributions to help others. Spending my time with NoCOUG is one of the ways I accomplish that. Plus, I continue to meet outstanding people along the way," says Roger. For more information about NoCOUG, visit: http://www.nocoug.org.

Since the column was launched in May, many excellent questions have been submitted from our subscription base of over 3,000 Oracle professionals. Every month, a member of the Database Specialists team will answer a difficult and challenging question. Our Senior Staff Consultants have covered topics such as wait events, system change numbers, third party grants, and null events.

"Sharing knowledge is something that's always been important to our company and our team," says company founder and president Roger Schrag. "The 'Ask DB Specialists' column is another extension of that."

The Specialist readers are invited to submit their questions on how to diagnose an Oracle problem, optimize queries, tune the database, and so on. Readers may also learn something new each month by reading our answers to the more challenging questions submitted. To review back issues of The Specialist or to subscribe, go to: http://www.dbspecialists.com/specialist.html.

"We are finding that our flexibility, along with our high level of expertise in Oracle, suits many company's needs in these tough economic times," says company president Roger Schrag. "When we launched this service almost two years ago, we spoke with many of our clients about what they would want in a remote DBA service. We've been very pleased that we seem to have hit the nail on the head. Once people learn our value proposition and what we can offload from them, it's an easy decision for them to make."

A remote DBA service gives companies without a full-time DBA cost-effective access to Oracle experts, and companies with few DBAs a support structure for when DBAs are unavailable or overloaded. To learn more about Database Specialists' remote DBA services, visit http://www.dbspecialists.com/dbapro.html.

Billed as "The education conference for Oracle users by Oracle users," the International Oracle Users Group Live! 2003 conference will take place in Orlando, Florida from April 27 to May 1. For more information about this great educational opportunity, please visit http://www.ioug.org.

Database Specialists will also exhibit at the Northern California Oracle Applications User Group on Thursday, February 27, 2003. This dedicated training day is for attendees who use and manage Oracle applications. For more information, see http://www.norcaloaug.org.

Roger also prepared an accompanying white paper compiled from real-life situations. Learn how to get to the root of performance problems and gain improved response time and better throughput. Download your copy of the presentation and white paper today at http://www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.html.

Roger's technical session on performance tuning is titled "Interpreting Wait Events to Boost System Performance." His white paper of the same name explains that the "wait event interface allows Oracle professionals to gain insights into how their databases and applications are behaving and is extremely helpful in diagnosing performance problems." Download a copy of it at http://www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.html.

A second white paper titled "Don't Shut Down that Database! Use Oracle9i Online Object Redefinition Instead" was co-authored by Chris Lawson of Performance Solutions. The technical session at IOUG Live! will be led by both Roger and Chris. A copy of this presentation will be available for download soon at http://www.dbspecialists.com/presentations.html.

For information about the IOUG Live! Conference, visit http://www.ioug.org/live2002.