Oracle Developer Tools User Group Conference

ODTUG - Oracle Developer Tools User Group
June 21 to 25, 2009. Monterey, California.

This year, I went to ODTUG conference to see what was new in the Oracle tools space. It’s well over a month since I went, so I’ll just write a few highlights.

ODTUG included subjects on:
Application Express
Oracle Fusion Stack, JDeveloper
SOA
BPEL
Essbase/Hyperion
Oracle BI
PLSQL

Some of the heavy Oracle hitters there were Tom Kyte, and Steven Feuerstein, and Michael Ault.

One interesting thing to me was the HUGE international prescence. There were many people from Europe and Australia. Even from Nigeria, Africa. I asked these two about the 419 scams, and they say, that they not only get the emails, they get the 419 scam by phone call too! I wonder how many countries were represented.

Most of the conference was on the latest and greatest from these new Oracle tools.

However, I’m always interested in how do we build solid software that works first time, every time. And is instantly understood and maintained by ten new people that just walked in the door.

Put in the wrong people, with the best tools, you can still produce really awful systems. There were a few presentations that I resonated with.

A few years ago, the subtext of my tuning presentation was “avoiding the worst practices”. At ODTUG, Tom Kyte had a presentation, “Worst Practices for DBAs and Developers”. It was a collection of really bad things he has unfortunately actually seen in industry! A lot of it concerned underlying attitudes and beliefs that lead to seriously pathetic systems. Such as:

Probably you don’t need to test.
Testing would be a waste of time.
It might not break.
It probably won’t have any scalability issues.
Just do the upgrade, it’ll probably work.
If I test, and it doesn’t work, I’ll be in trouble.

and
Never question authority. Experts are always right.
Nothing need be backed up with evidence.
Things never change.

Tom ended with an hilarious example of the attitude: “let’s build in the security in later”. Imagine if a car was not built with security in mind. He showed a picture he’d found on the web that did just that. It got a huge laugh.





I too see so many bad practices and results in IT. Some are truly unbelievable. Tom Kyte articulates many of the things I’ve been saying for years. Can I say, great minds think alike?

See Tom’s presentation at:
http://www.nyoug.org/Presentations/2008/Sep/Kyte_WorstPractices.pdf

I also liked the presentation by Toon Koppelaars.

He talked about how three tier applications, as far as the user is concerned, are essentially much the same as two tier client server. It’s just a window on the data.

But since java and the web the technologies have become very complex now. There are dozens if not hundreds of technologies to learn now. Each requiring months of learning curve to become really productive. With more and more features, of which only 10 to 20% will actually be used. That have a short lifespan of sometimes only two years! He calls them YAFET: Yet Another Front End Technology.

Find his excellent presentation and solutions at:
http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com/2009/03/helsinki-declaration-observation-1.html
http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com/2009/03/helsinki-declaration-observation-2.html
http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com/2009/03/helsinki-declaration-observation-3.html

The full blown talks are at:
http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

http://www.RuleGen.com

I met tuning expert Cary Milsap. We had met in Boston area we he presented there. We had a good dinner together.

Brian Spedolini had an interesting presentation, Oracle Application Express on the iPhone. Cool.

So, a good conference. If you want to go next year, find them at:

http://www.odtug.com

Just how big and influential are the oil companies? Gas is a tax.

Just how big and influential are the oil companies? Looking the 2009 Forbes Top 2000 companies, it is considerable.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/08/worlds-largest-companies-business-global-09-global_land.html

(Scroll down. Unfortunately, Blogspot doesn't handle HTML tables very well.)

Within the Top	Sales	Profits	Assets	Market Value	As Ranked By Forbes
5	3 (60%)	5 (100%)	0	2 (40%)	3 (60%)
6	4 (67%)	6 (100%)	0	2 (33%)	3 (50%)
10	6 (60%)	8 (80%)	0	3 (30%)	4 (40%)
15	8 (53%)	9 (60%)	0	5 (33%)	7 (47%)
25	8 (32%)	10 (40%)	0	7 (28%)	9 (36%)

By profits, the Top 6 most profitable companies, are ALL (100%) oil companies!

Look here for a better compilation.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18643748/Worlds-Largest-Companies-April-2009

In almost every category, a significant percentage of the largest companies in the world are oil companies. As for assets, the companies with the largest assets are banks, insurance and financial companies. Which makes sense. If all business, and consumers, put their cash into the bank, you would expect that the banks would have a larger cash balance than other non financial companies.

However, if we ignore these kinds of financial companies from the assets list, only General Electric (conglomerate), Deutsche Post (transportation), and Toyota (consumer durables), are larger than the largest oil companies by assets; Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands, and Gazprom in Russia. Again that makes sense. The big and complex assets required to build a car at Toyota, should be more significant than what is required to build oil wells and pipelines.
 
Which brings up the question, why are gasoline companies so big, no matter which way you look at it?
 
The current infrastructure is designed so that most everyone uses gas. How many vehicles can you buy that don’t use gasoline? There are starting to be substitutes, such as electric cars, or plug in hybrids, but they are still in really small numbers.
 
Applying economic theory to the question, gas is an inelastic good. If it goes up in price, we still buy it. Unlike elastic goods, which, if they goes up in price, we slow down our purchases of it. Or, buy more when they go on sale.


With sales, profits, and market value as large as this, do you think that the oil companies have some influence in politics? Or have made some contributions to politicians? Or have government lobbyists on the payroll?


Just how much do we pay for gasoline each week, month, year? See this quote from:

http://www.himacresearch.com/books/crisis3.html

"In 1952, the average citizen paid the same amount in various gas and automobile taxes as he did in INCOME TAXES ! 'The American Motorist: No.1 Tax Sucker', Cornet, August 1952, pages 40 - 41."

While there is so much discussion about taxes, there is little about how much the consumer, and the USA spends on energy. In economic and political discussions, much is made about reducing taxes, and how raising taxes will stagnate the economy. But until gas prices began to rise in the seventies, and in 2008, there has been little discussion is made on how the cost of energy stagnates the economy. Clearly the higher cost of energy does stagnate the economy.

Gas is a Tax. And I'm NOT talking about government taxes on gas. I'm talking about the fact that we have to buy so much gas each day, week, month, year, because we don't have energy alternatives.

Imagine the economic benefits if we doubled, tripled, or quadrupled the efficiency of the use of energy; if the real cost of energy was only one half, or one third, or one quarter of what it currently is. Prices of goods would be cheaper, and consumers would have more of their wealth to spend on other things. Imagine how much wealthier all individuals, and the whole economy would be!

Never mind a tax cut. Just cut the real cost of energy by making machines multiples more efficient than they are now. The government stays out. People have more money to spend because they are spending less on energy, and spend their money.

How would that be for an economic multiplier?

My Model Stirling Engine

Check out the model stirling engine I bought from Kontax.

On a single cup of hot water, the flywheel turned for almost 3 hours! And on a single cup of ICE water, it turned in the opposite direction, for over 2 hours! Cool!





Stirling engines were invented in 1816, by the Scottish minister, Robert Stirling. They are technically, an external combustion engine, because the heat source is outside the piston chamber. It creates power from the differences between hot and cold, and will actually create more power on a cold day, than on a hot day.

Stirling engines are known to be very efficient, but I'm having a hard time finding reliable numbers on what the relevant efficiency range is. If you know, or find, good numbers on their efficiency, please let me know what they are.

The stirling engine must literally warm up. So, it cannot do fast starts and stops like an internal combustion engine (ICE). It is suited for long steady state operations. Another characteristic is that unlike an ICE, there have no: valves, intake, or exhaust. And so, they are very quiet. They also have fewer moving parts than an ICE, and so are more reliable. Because the heat source is outside the engine, any type of fuel can be used, such as: wood, natural gas, garbage. Even hot water, as in the case of the Kontax, if it was designed for that.

My current car generates a lot of waste heat, that you can really feel coming out from under the hood. I wondered if there was something wrong with it, but I was assured that was normal for that car.

On a long drive, I suddenly had the idea of a stirling engine that could capture the waste heat from the exhaust pipe. This could be used in hybrids. The waste heat could power a stirling engine, which would then be used to generate electricity.

Then I thought, why bother with an internal combustion engine (ICE) at all? In a hybrid, Instead of an ICE, why not just use a stirling engine to generate the electricity?

After I got back, I discovered that Dean Kamen, most well known for his invention of the Segway, is currently working on Stirling engine for use in hybrid automobiles.
http://www.dekaresearch.com/stirling.shtml
Do great minds think alike? Can I compare myself to Dean Kamen?

And I’ve since found out that another company is also working on another heat exchanger that would work on the waste heat from the ICE.
http://www.heat2power.net/en__introduction.php
They have a lot of calculations on their website, but I can’t seem to find a clear diagram of exactly how it all works. Even though they have patents:
http://www.heat2power.net/en__intellectual_property.php
the same website also talks about confidentiality agreements.
http://www.heat2power.net/en__evaluation.php

Considering how many ICE and electric motors manufacturers that exist, there are relatively few manufacturers of stirling engines around the world, and few places where the stirling is being used.

One place that the stirling engine is being used is in generating electricity at a solar energy plant in the Mojave desert. Mirrors reflect the sun’s heat onto one side of the stirling engine. The engine turns and generates electricity. All pollution free, and totally renewable. Very cool!
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/

Another place stirling engines are being used is in Swedish submarines.
http://www.kockums.se/products/products.html
http://www.kockums.se/submarines/aipstirling.html
“The Stirling AIP system is practically vibration-free, silent and wakeless. Its infrared signature is very low.”

Stirling DK, from Denmark, manufactures a combined heat and power (CHP) unit for the home. The home is heated with biofuel such as wood chips, and the stirling engine generates electricity for the home at the same time.
http://www.sd.econtent.dk/

The American company, Stirling Technology, manufactures a stirling engine for use in areas away from the power grid. It will supply 5 horsepower of shaft power at 650 RPM, and can be used to generate electricity, or pump water.
http://www.stirling-tech.com/st_engines.shtml
http://www.stirling-tech.com/literature.shtml

Ronald Steele has built a homemade stirling engine, and sells the plans for it here:
http://www.stirlingsteele.com/StirlingEnginePlans.html

For more information on this very cool motor, check out these links:

Stirling Engine Society and cool Links:
http://www.sesusa.org/index.html
http://www.sesusa.org/links.htm


PESWIKI:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Stirling_Engines

My experience passing the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute Level I exam

In 2006, I met some technlogy people who had business designations. One, an architect, had a treasury designation from the Federal Reserve. And another, had a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. I'd been looking to get closer to the business side, and take a larger leadership role in the systems I'd been developing. Their designations seemed to help them, so I decided to do the same. But what a LOT of work!

The CFA program is a graduate level self study program. One of the prerequisites to enter the program is that you already have a bachelor's degree. There are three levels (exams) to pass, Level 1, 2, and 3. Abbreviated as L1, L2, L3. And, before attaining the charter, you also have to work in the finance business for a number of years.

For L1, there are 10 major sections (study sessions), and 78 readings altogether. The official books had about 3000 pages to study, read, and retain! By the time I started, I was estimating that I would need to read and retain, about 30 pages a day! And then review, and write practice tests, to prepare for the big exam. The official website says, "Each level demands a minimum of 250 hours of study, with substantially more, depending on individual circumstances". That is an equivalent of over 6 weeks of full time, 40 hours of work! But I know I studied more than 250 hours.

The CFA exams are pretty hard. On a single day, there are two 3 hour exams, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. Each exam has 120 questions. In 2007, the percentage of people who passed L1, was somewhere around 40%. And only 40% passed L2 and 50% passed L3. Clearly, this is not the same passing rate as found in most university programs!

In 2007, 71,172 candidates wrote the L1 exam, and 28,125 passed, about a 39.5% pass rate. But only 6,399 candidates passed the L3 exam. So, of those who start the program, significantly less pass L3. See the complete stats here:
http://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprog/pdf/candidate_results.pdf

So I say, there is no grade inflation, or designation devaluation, in the CFA program. If you see someone with CFA after their name, you know that they have accomplished something serious. I've since met one Japanese lady, who wrote the exams in English, not her native language. And English and Japanese are not like Latin languages that all have the same root. Pretty smart if you ask me!

The lessons are definitely at the master's level. L1 had a big section on quantitative methods. In finance, it could be used to find correlations between economic indicators, company financial numbers, and values a stock might take in the future. In my bachelor's degree, I'd already aced a number of statistics classes. But these quant readings were at a whole new level. I really had to work at them.

I felt that I was at a serious disadvantage. I'd been working on the tech, not the business side. So, a lot of the business terms and practices, while second nature to those on the business side, were unfamiliar to me. Options were a really new paradigm that I had to work on. I'd always bought mutual funds, or stocks "long". The idea of buying an option that was "short", with the expectation that the instrument would go down in price, was new to me.

I compared my disadvantage to a business person attempting to attain the professional designations for Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Java, and Linux. All at the same time.

Eventually I wondered what an MBA equivalent would be. I estimated that it was -at least- as much work, as taking five full time (September to December, three hour) classes. And then you wrote one big exam for all of them combined. Perhaps it is closer to the equivilent of a whole year's worth of MBA classes.

I did a lot of studying. On Saturdays, I would go to the university, and study from the afternoon, until about 10 PM. When the exam approached, I started at 10 am, and studied just as late.

One of the big aids that helped me was the video CDs from Schweser, which I bought used on Ebay. These are lectures, and powerpoint presentations that you watch on computer. With all the documentaries I watch, you can probably guess that I really like to learn through audio visual media. Like a regular lecture, the prof writes a few lines on the board, but they speak hundreds or thousands of words about the subject. This I find always helps me learn faster than just reading the text and diagrams in books.

The other thing that helped me was to do as many questions that I could find. It's not enough to just remember the concept. To answer a lot of the exam questions, you have to use multiple equations to find multiple inputs for a final equation. You also have to really know the concepts. Systematically doing the questions, and discovering what the right answer is, works for me.

Like all university courses, some subjects are not always explained as clearly as they should be, and were really confusing. Such subjects I usually looked up on the internet, my big library. So after I figured these subjects out, and explained them simpler, and better than the textbooks did, I wrote them down. One confusing subject that I figured out, the Percentage of Completion vs Completed Contract method, was actually found on the exam. So I was really happy that I made that confusing subject, simple enough to recall.

Writing things down always helps me with reinforcement, and to remember. Part of this is to make my own notes. I made a whole bunch of electronic notes on my laptop. Those were great because they could be searched really fast. And, I made paper notes that fit into a binder. These I took to the exam, and reviewed before the two exams. I wrote them to be, "instantly digestible", for this fast food generation.

I also started the Boston CFA study group on meetup.com. http://cfa.meetup.com/58/ You should still be able to see my picture there. The idea was "For studying, career, networking and socializing." Unlike MBA students, CFA candidates working in isolation don't make contacts. So, this way, we could help each other out when studying, and make friends in the industry at the same time.

In June 2007, I wrote the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level I exam. Some L2, L3 candidates were sitting beside me. One guy finished with over 25 minutes to spare. After the exam, I found out that he worked for Bear Stearns. Later, it went under! Beside him, was a woman who got up and left with over 1/2 an hour to spare. I looked up and wondered, "did she ace it, or just give up?". She looked really confident, so I figured that she aced it. And I finished with a few minutes to spare to review some answers I wanted to double check. Just in time.

In August, I found out that I had passed. The exam was tough, and I hadn't expected to pass, but I did. I was so happy! I couldn't remember the last time I was so happy. Cool!

A whole section of the CFA program is on debt instruments. Soon after I passed L1, I interviewed with, and had a job offer at a financial company that specializes in bonds. The company sponsors their employees to take the CFA program, and I think they liked the fact that I had passed L1. So, there was some reward for all the work.

In retrospect, one of the things that impressed me about the CFA program, was the big emphasis on ethics. I've read, and heard, that if one candidate aces every section, but doesn't do well in ethics, that (s)he will not pass. After all the scandals in finance the past few years, it's refreshing to see. I've thought, those guys don't have a CFA designation. In fact, one of the key people who was sounding warning signals to the SEC about Bernie Madoff, Henry Markopoulos, actually has a CFA designation.

For more information on the program, see the CFA Institute homepage.
http://www.cfainstitute.org

Wind Power 2009 conference

Wind Power has arrived!

I arrived at the Wind Power 2009 conference May 4th, 2009. The first day was a preliminary day, and I attended the all day presentations on Wind Basics.

The second day started to be impressive! I went to see a number of speakers giving keynote addresses from a number of government officials. They included: Richard Daly, mayor of Chicago. Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Department of the Interior. FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff. Spain’s Minister of the Interior Miguel Sebastian. After that, there was a round table discussion with Iowa Governor Chet Culver, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.

After I left the keynote addresses, I noticed some very, very long lines of people. Many of these were people who had already registered online, and were in the express check in line. The long lines wound back and forth. I thought, wow, wind has arrived! It is now mainstream. The people who just registered that day, had to wait a long longer to get all the paperwork completed. I found out later that around 20,000 people attended. And I believe that did not include the people who also manned the booths at the trade show.


One of the things that impressed me about this conference is that it is not just another trade show, in business to make a profit. It is put on by an association that is truly committed to promoting wind power in the USA, and around the world. The seminars were very educational, and the presenters were top notch. Many came from overseas. They really wanted industry, government, and individuals to promote wind.

There were 53 seminars and many tracks. Each seminar usually had four people presenting, and one moderator. Tracks of seminars included: Project development, International track, Wind Integration, Transmission/ Markets, Technology, Policy, Business, Value Chain, Utility, Asset Management, Siting, Community/Small Wind.

All of these were very specialized areas. So, there is a lot to consider in wind. One of the recurring issues I saw discussed included variability in the wind, and the grid. The electric company would like consistent power, but because the wind varies, so does the power. There are a number of companies that are specializing in studying the wind before erecting any wind turbines. And other software companies that are specializing in predicting wind flows for the wind farms so that the utilities can plan their capacity.

There was much to see at the seminars and so I didn’t see as much of the trade show that I would have liked. But what I did see was impressive. The organizers even provided buffet lunches in the trade show halls for everyone. This was a very nice touch. You didn’t waste time wandering a long distance to get lunch, wait in line, and then walk back. Still, with all those people, you could still spend 10 minutes or more in line for the buffet.

One thing that struck me was how much was required to put up a large wind farm that could supply cities with megawatt hours of energy. It takes a number of years for the project from start to finish. Some parties involved include: wind study specialists, landowners to lease the land from, electric utilities, government, financiers, contractors to do the construction, local people who may oppose a wind farm, environmentalists, even the military who may object to wind turbines effects on their radar. The costs to put up big wind turbine projects are now measured in millions of dollars per megawatt. From one powerpoint, the average price in 2008 for large systems was about $2000 per kilowatt, so the installed price would be about $2,000,000 per megawatt. So, a 100 megawatt windfarm could have capital costs of 200 million dollars.

Small wind projects cost less. But they can have their complexities also. There is lots online about small wind already, that you can find at the American Wing Energy Association website, and the Danish Wind Industry Association.

I like to listen to successful people who speak from experience, and there were lots of such people at the conference. Overall, very impressive. If you are going to go to a wind conference in the USA, this is definitely the one to go to.