In this issue:

• IOUG-A University Master Classes
• RevealNet’s Revealing Tips of the Month
• AppsWorld 2001 Coming to New Orleans
• OraGeeks.com Valuable Repository
• A Year of Resources

It is with great excitement that we announce the addition of Roger Schrag, president of Database Specialists, to the IOUG-A University faculty. Each year the International Oracle Users Group - Americas (IOUG-A) selects “masters” in the Oracle arena to join their faculty.

IOUG-A University Master Classes offer attendees a more intimate learning session among their peers from some of the most highly regarded experts in the Oracle arena. These two-day seminars feature an intensive and comprehensive look at some of the more intriguing challenges faced working with Oracle.

The next IOUG-A University Master Classes will be held in New Orleans during the week of February 11, 2001. Roger Schrag will lead a class entitled “iDBA: The Issues” as part of the internet DBA track.

For more information on IOUG-A University Master Classes, check out the IOUG website at http://www.ioug.org.

RevealNet’s Revealing Tips of the Month

As mentioned in the October issue of The Specialist, some of the “Oracles of Oracle” have their favorite websites to visit in order to help answer nagging Oracle questions. One resource noted was the DBA Pipeline at RevealNet. Each month, RevealNet’s pipelines give a quick helpful hint. In addition to the Oracle DBA Pipeline there is a PL/SQL Pipeline for developers.

For December’s DBA Pipeline regarding Setting Security Roles, go to http://www.revealnet.com/Pipelines/DBA/index.htm.

AppsWorld 2001 Coming to New Orleans

Kick off the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans by attending the First Annual Oracle AppsWorld 2001. AppsWorld runs February 19 through 23, 2001. (Stick around for Mardi Gras on Tuesday, February 27.)

There will be over 200 sessions, spanning six tracks designed to give you a 360-degree view of Oracle’s application suite offerings.

For more information, visit Oracle’s AppsWorld website at http://www.oracle.com/appsworld/. You’ll also see that there is an AppsWorld in Paris the week before. Fantastique!

OraGeeks.com Valuable Repository

Ever wish you could go to one place to search for a helpful script or white paper from many sources? Well, with OraGeeks.com, this is possible. OraGeeks.com is an easy to use site that allows searching on topics such as performance tuning and backup and recovery. Check it out for yourself at http://orageeks.com.

A Year of Resources

Y2K was quite a year! We are happy to have been able to provide Oracle consulting expertise to our clients throughout the year as well as contribute to the Oracle user community with many useful resources.

Highlights include installation guides for Oracle 8i on Solaris as well as Linux, setting up a hot standby database, a real-world perspective on migrating to Oracle 8i, and using EXPLAIN PLAN and TKPROF to tune your applications. They’re all free and available at http://www.dbspecialists.com/4dbas/index.html

We encourage your input and suggestions. And we look forward to sharing more with you in 2001!