New Developments for 2009: I am now an Oracle ACE!

Greetings fellow Oracle professionals!

In a departure from my technical tips, I decided to make a few key announcements today.

I just found out today that I have received the prestigious Oracle ACE award!
I am excited to be among the elite group of Oracle technologists and look forward to sharing new tips and tricks in the future. One thing that I am interested in is to do a presentation on the Exadata. If anyone has access to a test Exadata system and wants a top DBA to do some stress testing, I am available! Another fellow Oracle professional, Chen Shapira, whom I met last year at OpenWorld also is a new Oracle ACE. So wish us double congratulations. Chen is a wonderful person and brilliant Oracle DBA. Her blog is great as well and I found myself intrigued by the discussions on concurrency and Dining Philosophers. We had a nice discussion on the pros and cons of hidden parameters for Oracle at Open World last year :-)

The second exciting new development in my professional life is that I have been chosen to participate in the Oracle 11gR2 beta program. Beta testing is underway currently and it is a lot of fun and great challenge thus far.

Third, I passed all of my certification exams for the Oracle DBA track to become 10g OCP and OCA certified Oracle professional. Now, I have to do the upgrade exam to 11g and then study and train for the 11g OCM.
I have mixed views on the values of certification. Suffice it to say, I feel it definitely helps! I was able to learn new things and brush up on basics. I can say that I have a better understanding of 10g features and backup and recovery now.

Add to that I am in the middle of writing a book on Oracle technology and have one piece of advice to aspiring Oracle authors: you must be willing to dedicate your free time to the book and beware of tech changes before your book is published so that it is not out of date when release party is underway! The benefit of writing a book on Oracle is you do tons of research and testing and really learn the area of focus inside and out. As a new Oracle author, I have deep appreciation for folks like Robert Freeman, Tom Kyte, Jonathan Lewis, Don Burleson, Mike Ault, Arup Nanda, and Kevin Loney who are prolific writers in the Oracle technology field and yet were busy raising families, children and working at challenging Oracle positions.

With the difficult economy, every bit that you contribute to others will have a major karmic affect on the world and enrich your own life as well.