As Published In September/October 2007

Three peers celebrate getting online and occasional escapes.

Lutz Hartmann

Peer Specs Company: sysdba database consulting GmbH, a network of Oracle experts Job title/description: Founder and owner, offering Oracle training and premium consulting and support services for Oracle databases Location: Near Zurich, Switzerland Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified Professional (Oracle9i Database, Oracle Database 10g), with eight years of experience using Oracle products Oracle ACE

How did you get started in IT? During university, I worked in Hamburg University's statistics department, dealing with large amounts of data. I was especially interested in indexing multilingual data for library catalogs. When I started studying, there were two machines available in our entire department. When I left the university, we had installed a network, linked three scientific libraries to the international library network, and installed computing pools.

How did you help bring the university up to speed in terms of its systems and connectivity? I organized a get-together with the department director, the library staff, and technical staff from the university's data center. We discussed possible options for linking the department with the Web, and while there was money available for the hardware, there were no funds for the necessary work. I suggested we coordinate the installation with volunteers, and it was all done in two weeks during summer break.

If you were going to the Space Station for six months and could only take one Oracle reference book, what would it be? K. Gopalakrishnan's Oracle Database 10g Real Application Clusters Handbook [Oracle Press, 2006]—it gives comprehensive insight.

Eric Marcoux

Peer Specs Company: Fujitsu Consulting, a client-focused IT services provider Job title/description: Consultant, specializing as either an Oracle technical architect or a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, technical architect Location: Quebec City, Canada Length of time using Oracle products: Six years Oracle ACE

What's your favorite tool or technique on the job? Since last year, my favorite tools have been Oracle JDeveloper and its Oracle Application Development Framework [Oracle ADF], especially Oracle ADF Faces. I can now build and deliver simple Web applications more quickly.

What advice do you have about how to get into Web and database development? My first advice would be to think differently, because Web development is not the same as client/server development. Then, you must think in tiers, because Web development involves the separation of layers—presentation, business, persistence. By using a component model approach, it is much easier to reuse, thus simplifying development and delivering Web applications quickly.

Do you have a favorite vacation spot? Every summer weekend I go to my favorite campsite with my family. I have no internet access, no phone, and plenty of time to spend with my wife and three children.

Daniel Uehara

Peer Specs Company: Electronic Data Systems (EDS), a provider of business and technology solutions to help clients worldwide improve business performance Job title/description: Manager of the EDS Java Center of Expertise, overseeing a team of 140 Java developers Location: São Paulo, Brazil Length of time using Oracle products: Seven years Oracle ACE

What big changes in technology have you witnessed in the course of your career? It's amazing how the Java IDEs have evolved over time. I remember when I started programming Java and we had a few IDEs, most of them just nice look-and-feel text editors. Now we have tools like Oracle JDeveloper, which basically does everything we need, and for the things we can't do we just need to create an extension. At EDS, we've been able to integrate Oracle JDeveloper with some of our standard tools from the project lifecycle to get a full software engineering environment.

What would you like to see Oracle, as a company, do more of? Oracle's portfolio of products is getting bigger. It would be helpful if we had a clearer mapping between the products and types of services we can develop with them, and a path of training, tutorials, and documents that would help us get ready to apply a product to a certain service domain. What's your favorite thing to do that doesn't involve work? Running is my hobby. It's when I have the opportunity to unplug from the network and relax from the stress of globalization and being available on demand.