Tag Archives: UKOUG

GitHub Actions on OCI

29 Monday Nov 2021

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Today was the first run of some new presentation material looking at the use of GitHub Actions using Runners deployed on OCI Free Tier. The presentation was actually physical rather than virtual which was after 2 years of virtual presenting, rather refreshing. Not to mention the UKOUG hosted the event at the Oval Cricket ground, which made for an interesting venue. The example configuration is included in our GitHub OCI Utilities repository (as we use this solution to help validate and test our development work).

The presentation itself (which includes screenshots of the setup of a simple Action and runner) is here, note I have disconnected my Runners, but you will be able to see the Action configuration but if you try to trigger activity through my repository then nothing will happen.

Implementing GitHub Action Handlers (aka Runners) on OCI
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Busy week with webinars & virtual conferences …

19 Friday Nov 2021

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It has been a busy week with the day job of delivering to customers, with a webinar with Oracle, Flexagon and a customer – Heathrow Airport. Plus two technical sessions for DOAG.

Webinar

The webinar is the latest step in the partnership between Capgemini and Flexagon. If you’d like to see it, the recording can be accessed here.

The webinar development was very much a team effort with Oracle providing the hosting and promo logistics (particularly from Jurgen Kress and input from Daryl Eicher). Presentation development effort with Flexagon (Dan Goerdt and Tanya O’Connor). Of course the great input from our Heathrow customers – Mark South and Nick Byng-Maddick.

We have another blog post related to the webinar sharing some more detail. This will be published in a week or so on blog.oracle.com.

DOAG

The Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe (DOAG) conference took place virtually this week. DOAG and the UKOUG events are probably the biggest of the European user group events. With UKOUG happening at the end of the month.

My presentations at DOAG have been an update on which GraphQL, gRPC or REST API technology to use (see the presentation material here), along with a brand new presentation, again relating to APIs. But this time we’re looking at the application and capabilities of the Oracle Cloud’s API which can allow us to manage a wide range of services (see here). While I don’t have the demo piece recorded, you can see the slide aspect here.

Coming up

As mentioned I will be presenting at UKOUG Together. I have another brand new presentation for this as well, which will look at GitHub Actions combined with Oracle Cloud. We also have our first 2022 conference confirmed, in the form of API World.

Techfest 19 & ACED

06 Friday Dec 2019

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TF_speaking_twitter-01This year’s UKOUG TechFest 19 conference is over.  The first time in a number of years where the user group conference hasn’t been a combined Tech, Apps and JD Edwards event.  I have to admit that I was a little concerned with the separation of Tech and Apps as some of the tech stack overlaps for the two groups – for example, Integration Cloud.

That said, the situation being what it was, I got involved with the committee for planning the event including inheriting the stream lead responsibilities for Dev (in the sense of modern development e.g. microservices etc) and what had been historically referred to as middleware (Integration Cloud, Digital Assistant, Helidon, WebLogic) with a lot of support and input from Mark Simpson, Grant Ronald and Susan Duncan.

From my perspective, I  don’t think there was a concern (and this isn’t an attempt at being self-congratulatory) as the hard graft is done by the UKOUG office staff.

As the number of people was smaller, we had a smaller venue rather than the ICC in Birmingham or the ACC Convention Centre in Liverpool – which actually worked out well. The problem of the ICC and particularly the ACC is that main community spaces had been very large as a result atmosphere suffered. This time the Grand Hotel in Brighton was really busy and vibrant as a result.

Reception Desk

 

We had a good blend of sessions covering traditional integration, low code, cloud, microservices, API, UI with people from customers, partners and Oracle travelling in from all over Europe and the US to participate and present.

In terms of my presentations and the ones, I managed to see, I’d particularly recommend checking out in the UKOUG library …

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Millennials in the Workforce – PTK

03 Thursday Oct 2019

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Those who know me will be aware that I try to support the UK Oracle User Group’s journal (#PTK) in a number of ways from submitting articles through to being part of the review panel.  I’ve mentioned in the past some of the changes that the journal has undergone (here for example).  But another change is that the editorial team are including more diverse content. For example in the latest issue just out. It includes an article about Millennials in the workforce and how things are changing. A theme that is confronting not only businesses as employers, but as the new generation of influencers and decision-makers and that will be making our enterprise buying decisions, and dare I say it,  members of a user group.

As part of the team who also informs the User Group’s event planning, I happened to throw in some thoughts about supporting and engaging the newer generation. That led to an invitation to participate in an interview which has contributed an interesting article on millennials in the workforce.

Putting the company man hat on for a moment, it was good to highlight the efforts that Capgemini make to support new talent into the organisation.

The article is here, and links to the Tech and App parts of #PTK journal are here.

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Everything As Code – Article for PTK

01 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in General, Oracle, Technology, UKOUG

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PTK 2019-04-30.pngPTK (Pass The Knowledge) is the new name for the Independent UK Oracle User Group‘s journal, previously known as Oracle Scene.  Yesterday saw the 1st release under its new name, and I’m proud to say that I have an article included called Everything as Code.

Not only that,  it is great to see the journal includes the appearance of one of my Oracle Team colleagues at Capgemini – Amy Simpson-Grange (here).

The magazine features the approach trialled in the last issue of Oracle Scene where the Journal was split in two – one half focusing on Oracle Applications and Applications Technology and the other on Oracle core technologies i.e PaaS, IaaS, Database, Infrastructure etc.  it also just happens that Amy appears in one half, and I in the other.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the high quality of articles that reflect the diversity of Oracle’s portfolio and community – covering things like Women In IT, Conversational AI, Sanjeevan Bala from Channel 4 discussing the use of Data Science, Database Security and Table Scans.

UKOUG Conference 2018

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in API Platform CS, APIs & microservices, General, OIC - ICS, Oracle, Technology

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With the start of December comes the UK Oracle User Group conference, or to be more precise the Independent UKOUG.  This year the conference is back in Blackpool, a slightly smaller venue than the ICC in Birmingham, but in many respects that made the event feel more vibrant and busy.

The user group also announced some of the changes it is making going forwards reflecting the changing needs of its members – SIGs being largely superseded by multi-stream single day events (Summits) with the Call for Papers for the first of these here.  A wider list of Oracle related Calls for Papers is available here.

Of course being a UKOUG Volunteer, I have been presenting and co-presenting.  The slides from my presentation sessions can be found at:

This was an abridged version of the an update on my presentation here 

My second presentation was a review of Oracle Integration Cloud, in which I presented some customer use cases of OCI  as part of a wider presentation on OIC by Sid Joshi. 

This was followed on the second day with two API based sessions, the first being a deep dive into custom API Policies on the Oracle API Platform.

The final session, was another short one looking at Apiary which was primarily a demo of what the solution can do.

On top of trying to keep up with my usual workload – a very hectic couple of days.

UK Oracle User Group Annual Conference

01 Thursday Nov 2018

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As we rapidly approach the end of the Year.  We’re still pretty busy.  The UK Oracle User Group Annual Conference covering Oracle Technology (Tech18) ranging from Database on premises to Polyglot development in Oracle and other clouds passing through Hybrid Integration, SOA and so on.  Alongside this is also Apps18 which covers Oracle Applications from EBusiness Suite and Seibel to the Fusion cloud solutions such HCM, Financials, Taleo and so on. Then finally the 3rd part covering all things JDEdwards.

tech18

Being on the committee for the conference means that I have been heavily involved in developing the conference agenda and choosing sessions.  So I can say with great confidence that there is a very diverse range of sessions from highly respected SMEs and presenters along with new blood presenting on subjects from Oracle JET to Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for example.

I hope we’ll see you there.

UKOUG Tech 18 Conference

08 Tuesday May 2018

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The call for papers for the U.K. Oracle User Group’s 2018 Conference in December is out. The committee are looking for papers across not just core Oracle technologies like the database and SOA Suite but newer technologies such as Event Hub. With Oracle’s engagement with developers and the commitment to open source the UKOUG has moved to engage with these users as well. So the committee will welcome submissions about open source tech that maybe run on an Oracle platform. You can submit your proposals here.

If you’re considering making a submission but want some advise or suggestions then reachout to the UKOUG and its committee members – contact details are here.

Terch18

We look forward to seeing you in Liverpool in December.

2017 into 2018 as a Geek

30 Saturday Dec 2017

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It seems that it becoming common for people to write a personal review of the year. If you’re old school Christmas Card sort then it gets printed and put in the card. If you’re a bit more hip then it’s a Facebook post. For those trendier than that, who knows?

Anyway, I thought I’d use my blog to reflect on what has happened and what we hope to be upto in 2018.

So the big headlines for us …

  • 1st book published as a co-author about ICS, started another book project which should be finished in 2018.Artwork-front
  • Packt have been talking to me about another book project (even though my contribution to book 2 not yet finished!) Have to admit what is being suggested is intriguing and a bit different
  • Then there was the UKOUG Journey to the Cloud event. Having been postponed because of venue flooding it was good to see this happen. Not to mention it being one of s number of events I have presented at this year.39178284831_45be4e943c_m
  • We attended and presented at the Oracle EMEA Partner Conference for the 1st time and presented with my co-author on ICS.
  • Contributions to supporting the UKOUG as part of a SIG committee member, reviewed for Oracle Scene. Being involved in a SIG committee also meant helping plan the conference.
  • Writing hasn’t just been about the books, we continue to write our own blog posts, content for Oracle-integration.cloud plus several journals including Oracle Technology Network,
  • Presenting at Oracle Open World for the 1st time, and signing copies of our book on ICS
  • Promoted from an Oracle Ace Associate to a full Oracle Ace.

So where will 2018 take us, well somethings we’re confident of …

What do we hope to pull off …

  • Another year presenting at Open World,
  • UKOUG Tech 18 presentations
  • Articles for Oracle Scene
  • Submissions accepted at Oracle Code London
  • Presenting at Oracle EMEA Partner Conference

A busy 25 hours at UKOUG Conference

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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I’ve just come to the end of a very busy 25 hours at the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Conference in Birmingham. Four presentations – interestingly the same subject area, that of Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) / Integration Cloud Service (ICS) started and ended the day.  Between this we also covered some approaches to start working towards Microservices in a Monolith World and Oracle Messaging Cloud.

Below are the presentations on the Microservices and ICS/OIC. The piece on Oracle Messaging Cloud was largely demo based, so rather than sharing the presentation slides, which won’t tell you too much. The best way to find out about this is to read the 2 articles about the capability in the OraWorld magazine (issues 6 & 7). With issue 7 perfectly timed by becoming available in the last couple of days.

With the Oracle Messaging Cloud article, there is one word of caution. When the article was written and submitted I used a free cloud service (which using contemporary terminology we’d describe as Serverless) called WebScript.io.  The WebScript piece served to make it easy to consume the webservice calls illustrating the PushListener feature.  This service however is being closed down – a shame as it was an elegantly simple solution.  Given this I am currently working on a blog post which will show how another services can take the place of WebScript.io; whilst not finalised, this maybe Google Cloud Functions.

If this wasn’t enough we also squeezed in the keynote presentations, a meeting with several other contributors to OMESA (Open Modern Enterprise Software Architecture) , a lunch conversation with our Publisher (Packt) and several other Oracle book authors, Oracle Ace dinner (great food with a lot of brilliant & friendly people), some very valuable incidental conversations and some work for a customer.

Microservices in a Monolith World

Look at Oracle Integration Cloud – its relationship to ICS. Customer use Cases an Insight into why ICS