The next meeting of the Upstate New York Systems Administrators Guild is scheduled for Thursday, December 16th from 3:00 to 5:00 PM in room 4050 in the Center for Industrial Innovation (CII) located on the RPI campus in Troy. (Note the room change.) Light refreshment will be provided. (If you think you will be attending, please let me know: jfinke@rpi.edu.)
Many installations (including RPI) use Oracle or other relational database management systems to help manage their user account space, as well as other aspects of their operation. Over the years, we have developed a number of tools and techniques exploiting different features of of Oracle to assist in this process.
Since many of the people who are implementing these systems are systems administrators rather than database application developers, this course will provide a brief introduction to relational database use, described in systems administration terms, and continue through simple and complex joins, database views, database triggers, stored procedures, packages and other features of Oracle. Examples will be taken from actual systems administration problems we have solved using Oracle. We will explore access control issues and alternatives, delegation of authority (including data driven approaches), built in enforcement of business rules and auditing/logging.
The presentation will include examples using SQL, PL/SQL, C, the Oracle Call Interface, the PRO*C Oracle Pre-Compiler, Oracle Forms as well as several web options. Techniques for propagating changes through the system, as well as tracking external changes will be shown.
The CII is located on the RPI campus directly across the pedestrian bridge from the Visitors Information Center and Visitors Parking Lot. Room 4050 is located in the lower part of the CII (North). After you cross the pedestrian bridge, the CII will be directly ahead of you (large white building, with a smaller section attached via a walkway) to the right. Go into the smaller section under the walkway, and go to the right and up one level (choice of stairs or elevator). Room 4050 will be at the end of the hall. Note: from the pedestrian bridge, you enter the CII on the third floor.)
You can find directions to RPI at http://www.rpi.edu/CampusInfo/travel.html. Parking is available on 15th street, or in the Visitors parking lot. There are hourly charges for the visitors parking lot. You may want to avoid parking on campus - most campus spots require a parking permit. There are a few metered spots, but they are generally pretty short term. Parking enforcement is rather aggressive, with a majority of the parking office revenue coming from fines rather than permits. More information about the wonderful and wacky world of parking at RPI can be found at http://www.rpi.edu/dept/parking.