I am a Windows guy so when it comes to Linux, I am a complete newbie although I’ve been exposed to a few RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 5 x86_64 tasks related to Oracle database administration. I’ve played around with Ubuntu and Fedora but I find it hard to adapt since I’m so used to Windows environment. Earlier this month, I was invited to attend a free half a day RedHat Workshop conducted by ECS Pericomp. I’ve dealt a few software purchase with them and so far I’ve been satisfied with their level of service.

ECS Pericomp is located in Kota Damansara. I had to hustle the peak traffic jam, I am puzzled of why is it that during the fasting month of Ramadan, the road traffic are more congested than usual. Maybe I was driving on the wrong route. Anyway, I arrived there slightly late and the presentation started:

I must say that ECS ICT Berhad is quite big. They have a list of smaller companies within their own premises. My company is way smaller than them.

Mike Lai is the Technology Specialist at ECS Pericomp. I really admire his presentation style because I think he loves to share stuff instead of selling.

Some brief explanation about what Open Source is all about.

Some of the software development milestone related to RedHat.

Some of the tools and features of RHEL. Mike continued to share that a lot other organization clone the RedHat to become their own, one is example is the Oracle Linux where the OS are fine tune with Oracle products.

Now this is what the entire workshop is all about, “Virtualization”. I’ve been exposed to virtualization ever since the creation of Virtual PC. From there, I moved on to VirtualBox and read a little bit about VMWare. It is really an interesting topic to learn and implement. I have a couple of ideas I wanted to experiment since my company has its own small data center and the aging servers are really hard to manage. Now comes the best part, demo:

In the demo, Mike showed how he actually makes a live migration. The Virtual Machine (VM) used is Windows XP. He opened a text file and without saving it, created an exact copy of the VM and launches it. The exact opened text file appears sort of like a clone. Of course this is no surprise for people who have been familiar with Virtual PC such as myself. However, the web-based virtualization tool used reminded me of Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute EC2 I’ve been playing around 2 months ago.

As much as I marvel all this new cool technology, conveying the virtualization idea and practical issues is something to work on. Overall, this workshop benefited me well enough thanks to ECS.

Last year I went to Oracle HQ at The Garden Mid Valley City for a presentation of Oracle Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO). This year or specifically 18th of May last month, I attended an Oracle DBA Round Table – Database Firewall.

Same as last time, the presentation was done at Langkawi Room located at level 23, The Garden North Tower, Mid Valley City.

The Training Room

The Presenter was Niel Pandya which I believe is from the UK.

The Oracle presenter/trainer of the day

How is Data Compromised?

Why is understanding SQL critical?

Attendees present

Oracle Database Firewall Basic Components

Diagram of Basic Data Center Environment

Now comes the best part, FOOD! The food was prepared by Restoran Rebung (Chef Ismail). Chef Ismail is one of the prominent chef in Malaysia so of course his food is superb.

Lunch! One of the best tasting training lunch I've ever tasted

After lunch was over, it’s time for some action.

The Hands-on training server's IP addresses strip sheet

Each participant was given this strip sheet with 3 IP addresses. The IP addresses was unique for each participants so no participant was connecting to the same server.

Trying to set up server connection on my laptop

At first, I was astounded by how the training was setup. Upon further investigation, I found out that the organizer used Amazon Web Services and setup more than (30 x 3) Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance for each participants. Now this is new to me.

Instruction on The Hands-on training server's using the IP addresses strip sheet

After setting up the “virtual lab”, its time to test the oracle Database Firewall setup.

Applying the Swingbench Application

If you are accustomed to dashboard style web-based console, you’ll definitely have no problem exploring all its features.

A view of the Oracle Database Firewall Administration Console

The class ended at 3.30pm, the instructor told us that the server can still be accessed up until 6pm before it’ll be shut down. Unfortunately when I got home, the server were inaccessible anymore.

Class ended

This class has been an eye opener for me since I like trying out stuff instead of just listening or reading it. I believe this type of presentation and hands-on training is more meaningful rather than just a talk. In my opinion, the Oracle Database Firewall product is useful in an environment where things has been out of control where developers and system administrator experienced some sort of a battle cracking down each other. Basically it depends on which industry the product is applied in. If it involves financial, this product will become top of the line security add-on. However, with the alarming numbers of breaches, malware, spyware, SQL injections and network security ignorance by the IT people themselves, prevention is better than cure right?

Posing in front of Oracle HQ Malaysia

If you need more information regarding Oracle Database Firewall, here’s two links you can download the product information:

• Orace Database Firewall Architecture Overview
• Preventing Database Attacks and Data Breaches with Oracle Database Firewall

I’ve been writing a lot about Oracle lately. I’m not really an advocate for Oracle but I am a fan of Oracle’s technology and I am supporting applications that is using Oracle’s database. Oracle is very well known for it’s database market share and also known as the most expensive product in the enterprise database market according to clients that I’ve dealt with. Expensive is of course a rather subjective matter depending on the perspective you are looking at. For me, as long as it can do the job well enough, that is all that is matter. Of course if you want the best, you’ll definitely go for the best available choices. Let say if you want to drive a Mercedes, you’ll never go for Proton even though both car can take you from point A to point B safely. It’s a matter of preference or distinguish appeal.

Enough of the comparison crap. Last week, I represented my company to attend a brief presentation by Oracle Malaysia about Oracle’s Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO). I was a bit surprised to find that Oracle Malaysia has moved from Citibank building near KLCC to The Garden Midvalley City since my last visit there.

There were a handful of people already arrived when I got there. Had a cup of coffee before the presentation started. The presenter for Oracle Single Sign-On was Peter Rajnak, Solutions Specialist Director, Identity Management Fusion Middleware APAC from Oracle Corporation. What a long title for a job title.

Which Single Sign On (SSO) is right for me? I’ve heard about single sign on before, simply saying you only need to remember 1 username and password. The presenter did a very good job at explaining how the mechanism work, he somehow manage to balance between the technical aspect and the business aspect.

The next presenter was Swapnil Mehta, Director of Global Access Management Practice of SENA Systems of AurionPro. A winner of the Oracle Titan Award, the firm has taken a lot of identity management jobs for enterprise level of Fortune 500 companies.

Let’s look at some brief “About Enterprise Single Sign On”:

1. Too many users IDs and Passwords
2. Security Risk
3. Enterprise Single Sign On Must Be Easy to Use

In order to solve the issue above, Oracle has come out with Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On Suite Plus. As usual, enterprise level product would require an enterprise level of implementation and that would involve some initial investment.

If your organization would like to lighten the IT department hassle in managing IDs and password, this would be a solution to look forward to.

What a great way to start the month of November with a fresh week of training. I can’t really remember when was the last time I went for a week long training. The closest I went to was attending the Oracle Demand Generation Training at Sunway Hotel last September. As you’ve guessed it, lately I’ve been exposing myself a lot to Oracle. The way I see Oracle is that if MySQL open source database is a normal compact car where everybody can buy, Oracle database is a luxury car where only people with a lot of resources can afford to buy. The function is generally the same, it gets you to point A to point B but the features, performance and the experience are entirely different.

It doesn’t really matter which product is the best or not, it is a matter of preferences. If I can afford to buy a BMW, I would definitely owned one. Unfortunately, I can only afford a basic car at the moment but I can still dream of a BMW nevertheless. Back to my Oracle training of course. The training was held at Oracle’s HQ up in Level 38, Menara Citibank Kuala Lumpur. Check out their front desk:

I can only wish I am working with a huge corporation such as Oracle. It must be really tough trying to score a job there, don’t you think?

Anyway, my trainer is a guy name Sachin, I am guessing he’s from India from his thick Indian accent. Prior to this training, I have no idea what SOA or the longer version Service Oriented Architecture means. Even after reading Wikipedia, I still couldn’t picture what SOA is all about. My trainer tried to give some clue on what SOA is all about but all I see is a bunch application pool represented by jargon linking with each other. I must give credit to Sachin although his presentation was a bit bored, he’s quite a tech nerd when it comes to hands-on training which came in late in the afternoon since the Oracle JDeveloper installation file was almost 1GB and had to be copied manually from person to person. The requirement was 3GB of RAM for the training laptop just for the VMWare containing the SOA suite to run while I only have 1GB of RAM. Lucky there was an alternative.

The training class became more livelier when the hands-on approach began. With Nescafe coffee served, it was very enjoyable to crunch the tutorials given. Right up until my developed SOA scripts got corrupted and could not be deployed apart from the wireless networking changed setting. The journey continues tomorrow morning.