The document discusses a conference on keeping pace with changes in technology. It provides an agenda for the conference that includes determining business goals and direction, focusing on value, expanding skills through learning, mastering cloud technologies, and preparing for autonomous databases. It emphasizes aligning goals with business needs and future career direction, prioritizing skills improvement, and making a case for training to stay relevant in a changing technological landscape.
MOUS 2019 - Keeping Pace with Change: Prepare for Tomorrow & Advance Your Career
1. 1
Complete Our
Evaluation &
Win Prizes!
Complete our survey
and you will be entered
to win a pair of noise
cancelling headphones
or Datavailopoly!
2. MICHIGAN ORACLE USERS SUMMIT
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2019 / 7:30AM – 5:30PM
SCHOOLCRAFT COLLEGE – VISTATECH CENTER
18600 HAGGERTY ROAD, LIVONIA, MI 48152
KEEPING PACE WITH CHANGE:
PREPARE FOR TOMORROW AND
ADVANCE YOUR CAREER
4. 4
Steve Thompson
DBA Manager,
Oracle Practice, Datavail
Experienced
20+ years of Oracle DBA
─ Multiple Roles
─ Wide Variety of Industries
OCP
Leader
Guide team of Datavail DBAs to deliver
measurable results
5. 5
Datavail
Overview
Databases, Analytics, and
Application Data Integration
13+ years
delivering data
services
300+ customers
with average
client retention of
7 years
Managed services,
projects, and staffing
We are data specialists
All major platforms: SQL,
Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Mongo
Comprehensive development
& operational services
US & Global models
Reactive and proactive
services
Database
Operations
EBS
Hyperion/Essbase
Microsoft Dynamics
SharePoint
Custom development
─ Microsoft .NET
─ Oracle APEX
Application
Management
Microsoft SSRS, SSIS, SSAS
PowerBI
Oracle OBIEE, BICS, Golden Gate
Analytics, Visualization &
Integration
Informatica
Oracle Data Integrator
ETL development and
operational run
6. AGENDA
Determine direction and destination
Focus on value and avoid distractions
Expands skills intelligently
Master the cloud
Autonomous Databases
Make your case for training
6
8. FOCUS ON VALUE & AVOID DISTRACTIONS
8
“Begin with the
end in mind”.
Focus on what you
need and not what
you want.
Prioritize and
decide.
9. EXPAND SKILLS INTELLIGENTLY
9
Develop your skills
Prioritize your learning path
with “The Pickle Jar Theory”
Apply “Deliberate Practice”
─ Clearly defined goal that stretches
your current limitations
─ Full effort and concentration
─ Immediate, quality feedback
─ Repeat, reflect, and refine
10. MASTER THE CLOUD
10
Understand the pros and cons of
moving to the cloud
DBaaS or IaaS – Decide which is
right for you
Learn which cloud provider aligns
best with your needs
Plan your cloud migration
strategies
Try it before you commit
11. WHAT DOES AUTONOMOUS MEAN FOR DBAS IN THE FUTURE
11
What is Oracle’s Autonomous Database
How will this effect the role of DBAs
What can current DBAs do to help future proof their careers
─ Data Architect
─ Analytics, Big Data, Security
─ Other technologies
12. MAKE YOUR CASE FOR TRAINING
12
Communicate the Return on
Investment (ROI) with
management
Showcase your willingness to
help the company meet and
prepare for database demands
13. CONSIDER PARTNERING
13
Do you enjoy off-hour work
such as code deployment or
patching?
Form a strategic partnership
with a Managed Service
Provider (MSP) to help reduce
your off-hour support
Enables you and team to focus
on internal strategic projects
and initiatives
14. SUMMARY
19
Align Goals with Business
Align Goals with future of career
Identify skills that need improvement
Prioritize and focus learning
Training
15. WWW.MOUS.US
THANK YOU
SURVEYS
• Session Surveys
Please complete the session survey for
this session using Guidebook.
https://guidebook.com/g/mous2019
• Conference Survey
Please complete the hard copy
conference survey at the end of the
conference and turn it in at the MOUS
registration desk.
16. 21
Complete Our
Evaluation &
Win Prizes!
Complete our survey
and you will be entered
to win a pair of noise
cancelling headphones
or Datavailopoly!
17. WWW.MOUS.US
THANK YOU
SAVE THE DATE
• COLLABORATE 20
April 19-23, 2020
Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino
Las Vegas, NV
• MOUS 2020
October 28, 2020
Schoolcraft College - VisTaTech Center,
18600 Haggerty Rd, Livonia, MI
Embrace Changes
Most of us wonder what new challenges await for us in our career and how can we prepare ourselves for the unexpected? Technology seems like it's moving faster and faster and many of us wonder what we need to do to prevent from getting left behind.
For instance: Since 2013 Oracle has released 12.1, 12.2, 18c and now 19c – and will be moving forward with annual releases. 20c was announced at OOW in September with a slew of new features.
Other major database systems such as DB2 and SQL Server follow suit with major releases every 2 to 4 years. In addition to the new versions of database systems, a good number of trending and emerging technologies are making significant impacts in the IT industry—adding to the long list of responsibilities for data professionals.
Cloud, microservices, block chain
It can feel daunting trying to keep up with it all.
Prepare Ourselves for the New Challenges
How do we prepare for these new challenges?
- It’s important to start planning our future and lay the ground work for where we want to be.
Benjamin Franklin – “If you fail to plan you are planning to fail”
Change Our Mindset
The methodology of "if it's not broken, don't fix it" no longer apply. There are risks associated with lagging behind current technology trends. Technology is essential for any business to function efficiently and effectively. By staying current with technologies that impact customers experience with your business and increase the efficiency for your internal operations, you will increase your company’s success.
Take for example the Equifax data breach in 2017 – Equifax had 6 months to perform a simple fix, but failed to do so and exposed sensitive personal information of over143 million Americans to hackers.
How can we keep pace with the new data technologies and ensure we, as data professionals are equipped to tackle and conquer the challenges that come along with these dynamic changes?
DBA for 20 years –
Multiple industries: such as finance, health care, oil & gas – full time regular DBA, contractor/consultant, managed services.
Now a DBA Manager leading a team of US based Senior Oracle DBAs as well as an offshore contingent that allows us to have a full 24x7 coverage for our customers.
Blogging on the Datavail website and recently added doing presentations to my list of accomplishments
Outside of work; I enjoy spending time with my family and am always interested in travel.
- Been in Database services for over 13 years, started out primarily supporting databases only (Oracle and SQL Server) more recently added support for other dbms such as MongoDB, Postgres, etc. – in recent years through growth and acquisitions we’ve expanded into other areas of managed services. I encourage you to stop by our booth if you want any more information.
Do you enjoy off-hour work such as code deployment or patching?
I would certainly assume that most of us don’t.
But for those of us that are DBAs – we have to do maintenance activities and deployments during off hours, even for test and dev environments.
Things such as patching, upgrades and migrations can take all or night or even all weekend. Sometimes large projects get scheduled over 3 day weekends due to the amount of time required…causing the loss of enjoying the holiday weekend with family and friends.
After that’s all said and done, DBAs still need to turn around and be available during regular business hours to support any possible issues and to provide assistance for regular business activities.
As a manager are you looking for ways to decrease employee burnout and turnover?
For those of you who lead a small DBA team, do you lose sleep when your DBA goes on vacation?
Form a strategic partnership with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to help reduce your off-hour support
Forming a strategic relationship with a MSP when done correctly can help reduce the workload of the DBA team and enable them to focus on more strategic infrastructure planning processes and help guide the future of the database environment. This usually results in a win-win for both the DBAs and their employers and worthy of serious considerations for all companies large and small, throughout all industries.
Enables you and team to focus on internal strategic projects and initiatives
Imagine you and your team no longer have to stay up late patching or respond to 3:00 am emergency call for a fairly simple database alert?
How would your DBA feel, knowing they weren’t required to take their work laptop with them when the go on vacation?
This can happen.
As trusted advisors and as an extension of our customers support team, we had helped over 300 companies and their internal teams to focus on internal strategic projects, get a good nights sleep, enjoy their free time and fully enjoy their vacations!
Determine Direction and Destination – what are some things you can do to help determine the direction of your career.
Focus on Value and Avoid Distractions
Expand Skills Intelligently – what we have seen work on our teams
Master the Cloud
Making your case for training – keeping up with new technologies
Consider partnering with MSP
Use Internal motivation as a compass
External incentives have been shown to only go so far in providing lasting motivation for individuals. Sometimes we need more than a carrot, we need to figure out what intrinsically drives us.
My internal motivations
- continual improvement
- competition
- being efficient with time, so that I can spend my free time at home.
Spend some time determining what motivates you and how you can use that to drive your career.
Maybe your motivation is to save time, for instance don't want to babysit a database refresh...so you work to create a script that automates many parts of the refresh and sends you a notice if it fails.
Perhaps your DR test didn't go as smoothly as you would have hoped, you might want to work on what didn't go right so that is improved when you do it again.
What if you notice some wasteful spending done by your company and you work to get processes changed to reduce those unnecessary costs
These internal motivations can be your compass and guide you on what direction you want to take your career.
Plan Ahead
According to “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey,
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon…(being proactive) means recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.
1. Understand what’s important for you in your career and how can you improve yourself. Ask for feedback from peers or from your manager if you are unsure where you should improve.
2. Explore what initiatives your company is looking to undertake in the near future, understand the long term outlook.
a. if there’s no communication around this, then ask…application owners, managers, or others who would know.
b. if there is no set plan (stable environment), offer suggestions. Show leadership…not all leadership comes from management.
i. give suggestions
ii. Offer pros and cons…risks
3. For those of us that are in management, we are not only responsible for our own future career path, we are also responsible for our team members – what are their goals and how can you help them achieve it.
Define an IT Strategy
An IT Strategy isn’t just for a department or company, but can be for yourself as well. Maybe you can think of this more as a career strategy.
Understand what is important to you as well as know the future direction of your company. It’s also important to study industry trends to keep a pulse of changings coming down the road.
You can use this information to help drive what goals you want to focus on.
How can we decide what we should target for our career goals?
We want to focus on those goals that we find valuable and avoid those things that only serve as a distraction.
Prioritize and decide
Ask yourself what new skills or improvements you need in order to add value to your company and your repertoire.
- What skills needed for upcoming projects, future work that you aren’t strong in. (Migrations or Upgrades, Disaster Recovery, Tuning)
- How can you hit the ground running
- These skills can help you beyond your current position: what happens if you lose your job?
Understand your company’s goals and objectives plus your career goals and then prioritize and decide.
You might look at all of this information and not be sure where to start or what you really want to focus on.
Warren Buffet 5/25 rule – Buffett’s personal pilot
- talked with Buffett about personal goals
- Buffet advised him to write down a list of 25 goals that you want to accomplish for career
- After some serious thought, circle your 5 highest priority goals. - 2 lists 5 main goals and 20 secondary goals
- The other 20 you avoid at all costs as these will only distract you.
Focus on what you need and not what you want
How many of you had to learn a new programming language in the last couple of years?
How about a new database system in the past year?
Were these mandated by job requirement? By choice?
Over 80 new programming languages created since the 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_programming_languages
97 relational database management systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_relational_database_management_systems
There will always be new database technologies and programming languages and it’s not easy to predict which will have the biggest bang for the buck.
While it’s tempting to go all-in and focus on the hottest technologies making headlines in the tech world, it’s also important to stay practical and identify the skill sets you need to update in your current role and the technologies your company will likely migrate over in the coming months or years.
You have defined your goals, you have researched what your company initiatives are. Use that information to be efficient with your learning, in order to progress your career.
It is important to know what new technologies are out there and how companies are taking advantage of them. But understanding a new technology is different than taking a deep dive into knowing how it works.
That way you can focus your time on what works for your current role and what is likely to be needed in the near future.
Time is a finite resource, it’s important to spend it wisely.
“Begin with the end in mind”
According to “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey,
Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind - Start with a clear destination of where you want to be and what is the process that you need to follow to get there. Sometimes we are so preoccupied with being busy, that we aren’t necessarily being effective. Take time to look up and see where you want to be and if you are actually headed that way.
"If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.“ - understand what is important to you and what really matters the most.
Now you may have determined what skills you want to focus on, how can we improve these skills efficiently?
Develop your skills
Cal Newport is an author and Computer Science professor at Georgetown University. In his book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” he makes the point that “if you want to love what you do, you have to abandon the passion mindset (what can the world offer me?) and embrace the craftsman mindset (what can I offer the world?)” - what he is getting at is that you need to build up rare and valuable skills and use that “career capital” to help shape your career.
For instance: I wasn’t born with the DBA talent nor was being a DBA my passion coming out of college. I have had to learn to be a capable through DBA hours and hours of work and practice.
The good news is that we can develop our skills that we want to learn, but the bad news is that it will take many hours of practice and training to really hone those skills.
Prioritize your learning path with “The Pickle Jar Theory”
There’s a well known time management theory named the pickle jar theory.
Think about a large pickle jar filled with sand, pebbles and rocks.
- Rocks are important tasks that need to be accomplished
- pebbles are of less importance
- sand is just the minutiae that fills our day with unimportant or inconsequential tasks.
If you fill up your jar with sand and pebbles there isn’t any room for the important items that need to be accomplished.
Apply that theory to how you spend your time learning. Prioritize learning tasks.
Apply “Deliberate Practice”
Deliberate practice is a phrase coined by the psychologist Dr. Anders Ericsson who is a professor at Florida State University. It refers to a purposeful and systematic process with the specific goal of improving performance. Set aside some focused time to work on what skills you need to improve or what subject that you want to learn.
It’s about quality not quantity, so it’s not about just going through the motions, spending the time isn’t the goal, you need to focus and improve every session. What you are really doing is working very hard for a set amount of time. You never go on auto-pilot. It should be constantly challenging and near-maximal effort in order to push your boundaries and really improve.
Goals should be specific and well defined, not a vague “I want to be a better DBA”.
- I want to understand all the different aspects of the SGA and how it can effect database performance.
- What happens to my test database when I modify the buffer cache by 10% and perform a test load?
Being specific and actionable here will help you to spend your time wisely and accomplish your task effectively.
Reflect on what you worked on and learned after every session.
Deep Work – Cal Newport
How to isolate yourself to take some time to focus on what you need …he provides some extreme examples which most of us cannot do. But I do schedule time in my calendar for doing “Deep Work” maybe an hour or two once or twice a week. I close email and IM and focus on what I need to get done. I find it is a really efficient way to work.
Reviewing the list of database presentations from OOW this year, I counted over 60 presentations that were related to migrating to the cloud or managing workloads in the cloud.
Amazon’s AWS was launched with little fanfare in 2002 and has developed into a behemoth generating over $25 billion in revenue by 2018.
So obviously the cloud is not going away any time soon and for or our customer base at Datavail, we have seen a steadily increasing adoption rate.
Understand the pros and cons of moving to the cloud
Pros: Scalability and provisioning, pay for what you need, better resource utilization, leases, power usage – assuming you can power up/down
Cons: compliance, latency, less control, limited on performance tuning, noisy neighbors (co-tenant monopolizing resources)
DBAAS vs IAAS:
IAAS – vendor is responsible for the hardware, customer has more control over software (database) stack.
DBAAS – vendor assumes control over the database software as well – AWS RDS no sysdba
Learn which provider aligns best with your needs
Who here support database workloads in the cloud?
For Oracle workloads the top 3 are AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud
Plan migration strategy
- Many different option of moving data to the cloud… export / import, TTS, RMAN backup/restore… there is a reason for each one, figure out what will work best for you. Test, test , test
- Understand what options you have if you need to migrate back to on-prem
- Understand license and edition implications, eg. what versions of Oracle does RDS support (no 19c at the moment)…license included are for SE only.
- 3rd party tools, will they work with your cloud vendor?
Try before you commit
Many providers offer cheap/free testing. Make sure it works for you before you commit. Proper testing up front can reduce headaches later.
- Oracle announced an always free tier that can be used to test the functionality of their cloud. – Autonomous DB. 30 day free trial for regular databases.
- AWS 12 months free for RDS
- Azure always free and 12 month free tiers
What is Oracle’s Autonomous Database?
Autonomous db is meant to simplify administration, for Oracle there are 2 versions Autonomous Transaction Processing and Autonomous Warehouse.
It is designed to automate all infrastructure management, monitoring and tuning. This includes backup and recovery, patching and security updates.
How will this effect the role of DBAs?
The future is never certain, but Oracle has been pushing to automate more and more processes with every release. The world of the DBA is likely changing and it doesn’t make sense to ignore it, the message of this entire presentation is how to embrace and prepare for change.
What can current DBAs do to Future Proof their Career?
Automation is meant to handle many of the more mundane tasks of database administration, many of these things are time consuming for DBAs.
What autonomous databases can’t do:
Data modeling
Develop a deep understanding of your data through Analytics
Database development
New technologies: Chatbots/AI, microservices, Big Data
This is not the time to panic.
The move to automation will likely take time. Until it can be proven and show that it’s cost effective.
I doubt automation will be perfect. Think of the development of Oracle’s Optimizer and it’s growth.
Data isn’t getting smaller, we will likely be responsible for more, larger and more complex databases. With all of this growth there will lead to some exciting opportunities.
My Advice:
Keep learning, keep a pulse on the way the technology is evolving and prepare to embrace change.
Make your case for Training:
We’ve been talking about the cloud, autonomous databases, and change in general….how do you keep up with all of that?
Just because you don’t see a need for learning a new system/program/module now, doesn’t mean you won’t need it in the future. With new versions coming out every few years, and more importantly, older version becoming OBSOLETE every few years, it is inevitable that you will need to learn a new version eventually. Each version comes with new features, and it is important to understand what features are available, and which are applicable to your environment. and which could be used to enhance your current system.
Communicate the ROI:
What are the advantages to training your employees?
- employee engagement, better work culture
- increased productivity
- better knowledge around products and systems being supported
How it benefits your customers
- better uptime, availability, performance, utilization
Risks for not taking action
- turnover
- customer dissatisfaction
- stagnation
Align training with company initiatives or KPI
Anectdote:
CFO asks CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?”
CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”
Showcase your Willingness to help the company meet and prepare for database demands:
Eagerness to educate yourself is very seldom considered a detriment to management. Many things can keep a manager from agreeing to pay for training
Strategic growth plans that of which you are not aware
Financial planning
Those who show a willingness to take training courses, and keep doing so, will likely be the ones chosen once an opportunity arises. When I have a DBA who keeps hounding me for classes, I’m much more likely to reach back out to that person when a class comes up that aligns with customer demand or growth strategies.
The more information you can get prior to asking for training, the better,.
Check on costs up front
Look for online courses
Gain an understanding for WHY the training is beneficial to the company, not just to you.
Cost effective alternatives: Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera
Do you enjoy off-hour work such as code deployment or patching?
I would certainly assume that most of us don’t.
But for those of us that are DBAs – we have to do maintenance activities and deployments during off hours, even for test and dev environments.
Things such as patching, upgrades and migrations can take all or night or even all weekend. Sometimes large projects get scheduled over 3 day weekends due to the amount of time required…causing the loss of enjoying the holiday weekend with family and friends.
After that’s all said and done, DBAs still need to turn around and be available during regular business hours to support any possible issues and to provide assistance for regular business activities.
As a manager are you looking for ways to decrease employee burnout and turnover?
For those of you who lead a small DBA team, do you lose sleep when your DBA goes on vacation?
Form a strategic partnership with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to help reduce your off-hour support
Forming a strategic relationship with a MSP when done correctly can help reduce the workload of the DBA team and enable them to focus on more strategic infrastructure planning processes and help guide the future of the database environment. This usually results in a win-win for both the DBAs and their employers and worthy of serious considerations for all companies large and small, throughout all industries.
Enables you and team to focus on internal strategic projects and initiatives
Imagine you and your team no longer have to stay up late patching or respond to 3:00 am emergency call for a fairly simple database alert?
How would your DBA feel, knowing they weren’t required to take their work laptop with them when the go on vacation?
This can happen.
As trusted advisors and as an extension of our customers support team, we had helped over 300 companies and their internal teams to focus on internal strategic projects, get a good nights sleep, enjoy their free time and fully enjoy their vacations!
In her book, “Great on the Job: What to Say, How to Say It. The Secrets of Getting Ahead”, Jodi Glickman had pointed out that being strategically proactive is to LEARN.
Learn: Learn the new skills necessary to succeed
In our case, we need to identify the skills we need to learn and develop our discipline to learn them.
Excel: Know what you’re good at and enjoy doing and making those opportunities happen
If you enjoy cloud computing or query tuning, you need to find every opportunity possible to get involved. Create and initiate those opportunities if you must.
Assist: Identify what needs to get done that no one wants to do
If your company has not planned it’s cloud migration strategy or upgrade to new versions of Oracle, you need to assist in exploring the options and benefits and helping your team equipped for the new changes and challenges.
Redirect: Avoid distractions and things you don’t need to do to succeed
Limit and avoid off-hour and routine work. Delegate it to a junior team member or MSP whenever possible. You don’t need to keep on doing routine work to learn new skills. Time is limited. Get out of your comfort zone to work on new skills and technologies.
Network: Know whom you should work with to learn from and get ahead
Sometimes it not what you know, it is who you know that matters more. Network with your industry and community. Learn from the people you really admire or industry Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to get ahead.
As Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Data technologies are constantly evolving, can you keep pace with change and ensure you adapt?