dbforum 2006, day 1

We are in the middle of day 1 of the very very last dbforum (full set of pictures here) in Lalandia (somewhere in the middle of Denmark). I arrived in Copenhagen Wednesday night after finishing the seminars in Paris, Zurich and Vienna. Quite a few of us showed up Wednesday in time for dinner

After dinner, it was back to Mogens house for some computer time around his big oak table:

The next day, it was time to drive to Lalandia. It is a rather unique place to say the least, basically a "family vacation" spot, but is now inhabited by 150 Oracle DBAs and developers. Mogens kicked off the forum Thursday night with a nice introduction

As part of this session, there was a quiz - 42 questions about Oracle. Things technical and things trivia were asked. The audience were broken into three groups:

• Miracle Employees (Mogens runs Miracle AS in Denmark)
• Oak table members (the group I was in)
• Attendees not in either group above

Now, we all took the test at the same time - answering the 42 questions. Afterwards we exchanged papers and graded them. This was the interesting part - as it is really really hard to write un-ambiguous questions. So, there were a couple of "hey, but this answer is valid too" (yes, I raised a few of those myself :)

Then we found the high score from each group... I was nervous as I had a pretty good score - but I was pretty sure that Jonathan Lewis would as well:

The reason for being nervous is written on the slide right behind Jonathan there - it says:

"If a tie, we will have a penalty kick off. The persons vying for the place will ask each other an Oracle question. First to miss, looses"

I was hoping for "not a tie". So, they started counting down the points. 42 - no one had 42. 41 - that was me. Jonathan did not also jump up, so there was no tie there. I did find out what his score was however. 40 and 5/7ths (partial credit for one of his answers). It may only have been 2/7ths of a point, but it was 2/7ths of a point.

What did I win? I won a certificate entitling me to a bed (not the floor), priority at the shower, and breakfast served in my room (if desired) the next time I stay at Mogens house. Now, you might say "big deal", but trust me - that is a big deal. I am keeping that certificate, it will come in handy some time in the future.

I did have a question ready however, just in case. It was going to be:

"What is described in chapter 21 of the 10gR2 Data Warehousing Guide?"

I figured unless he had been reading it that morning as I had been (I referred someone to it in an answer on asktom), he probably would not know off the top of his head. I shudder to think of what he might have had for his question.

Then it was time for some relaxation:

and a drink or two, here is Doug Burns sampling the tequila:

and it was downhill from there. Anyway, back to the sessions - just heard from Mogens about "how not to manage a project" and David Kurtz just finished "worst packaged application design decisions". Just waiting for Tim Gorman to deliver "how NOT to do your data warehouse". Can you tell - I'm the track leader for the "worst practices" track :)