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IBM Cloud migration and management Webinar

I have the pleasure of giving another webinar on Wednesday at 4pm UK / 11 am EST – with my friend and IBMer Luis Guirigay

We will be talking about migrating to the cloud and user management once you are there ….

Join this webinar to learn more. Register here.

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Are you interested in running some or all of your messaging platform in the Cloud? Interested in IBM Verse? Worried about how to manage the user-lifecycle in a hybrid or cloud environment? Not sure about how or where to start?

If you ever had any of these questions join IBM’s Luis Guirigay and BCC’s Sharon James for a quick but thorough review of how to deploy a SmartCloud Notes infrastructure, how to start your user migration project in no time and how to manage a hybrid or cloud environment with ease using BCC’s AdminTool for Connections Cloud.

AdminTool for Connections cloud offers centralized user management and administration, customizable user interface, security and logging features whether on-premises, hybrid or cloud only

[/blockquote]

 

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Want to go to IBM Connect .. be nice to a Champion for a discount

Being an IBM Champion is great and it does come with some benefits.

Today all IBM Champions are happy to announce that we can offer YOU a discount of $100 for IBM’s upcoming ICS event – IBM Connect in San Francisco

So what do you need to do – just reach out to an IBM Champion tell us why you want to go to Connect and what your expectations are and as if by magic we will give you the dscont code.

Now is a great time to register .. and I wish I was going to be there with you all (but I will be in Orlando – on a very long awaited family holiday) – so ping a champ and get the code 🙂

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6 years a Champion !!

I recieved an email yesterday – just before I joined a live stream to watch the IBM Champions for ICS be announced.

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On behalf of IBM, it is my great pleasure to recognize you as a returning IBM Champion in 2017. Congratulations!

[/blockquote]

 

 

 

 

I am so honoured to be amongst a great group of champions again. I have been an ICS IBM Champion since the program began in 2011.

Being an IBM Champion is all about being part of a great extended  community, sharing knowledge, giving feed back and constructive critism and helping IBM with what ever they will let us help them with – from documentation to ideas about Connect.

In my 6 years of being an IBM Champion .. I have made some great friends and been introduced to some great IBMers (who I now class as great friends), helped influence some products, given a lot of honest feed back, and assited with my favourite thing – Documentation 🙂 It really has been a blast .. and I would still continue to do these things If I wasn’t a Champion 🙂

Being an IBM Champion doesn’t mean you have to be a *yes man/woman* – It just means you are passionate about what you do and have the right attitude – that doesn’t mean agreeing to everything, being constructive, giving feed back and ideas is part of being a champion which is why I love it.

 

So thank you once again IBM and especially to Amanda and Libby for everything they do for us Champions .. and I hope to be worthy of this title for the next year 🙂

 

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So Docs 2 CR1 and iFix 1 is not playing ball

I knew that some of our community had seen issues with applying Docs 2 CR1 and the accompanying iFix, so I purposely held off applying it.

But low and behold on Saturday afternoon when I did attempted to install CR1 I had problems.

The Docs and Viewer applications deployed without issues, but the Conversion server had these errors:

WASX7303I: The following options are passed to the scripting environment and are available as arguments that are stored in the argv variable: "[remote_install_a_version, connections.hostname.com, [u\'connections.hostname.com\'], 8]"

WASX7017E: Exception received while running file "../execwas.py"; exception information: com.ibm.websphere.management.exception.AdminException: CWWSY0102E: Target with name connections.hostname.com was not found.

My friend and co-speaker Roberto Boccadoro had had this exact issue .. so off I went to his blog and round this post: IBM Connections Docs 2.0 CR1 fix does not install.

Excellent .. Followed the instructions but that didn’t resolve it – exactly the same issue. I checked the machine name, its host entry and FQDN and they were all correct – stumpted I asked in the Connections skype chat as I know other people had seen similar issues.

Monday morning .. I started getting some answers ….

Another quality participant Robert Farstad had seen issues with the Conversion application installing the iFix 1 for CR1 so I checked out his blog post here: Docs 2.0 CR1 iFix 001 – Conversion app will not update. Where there is an issue with the conversion-config.json in the Dmgr config not having the iFix attribute in the build section
i.e

 "ifix_version": 6,

I added this at version 1 for my test as I hadn’t applied any fixes at this point.

Tried to run the update again and you guessed it – failed again with the same issue as previously.

Roberto went back through his notes and found another post he had made on another Docs install he had issues applying the fix on ..IBM Connections Docs CR1 installation may fail with an error on Conversion server. This issue was exactly the same problem as I had the resolution is actually very simple

  1. Edit the applypatch.py in the Docs CR1 install directory
    Comment out the 2 lines in red from the def update_apps() section of the file

    def update_apps():

 “””update apps in present work directory”””

 for filename in os.listdir(‘./’):

 if(filename.endswith(“.ear”) or filename.endswith(“.ear.zip”)):

 appname = get_app_name(filename)

 CONFIG.call_was_task(‘update_app’,[appname, filename])

 #if os.path.exists(“docs_remote_installer.zip”):

 #update_conversion_binary()
  2. Under Docs CR1 install directory, go into the DocsApp subdirectory and rename the file concord-config.json to concord-config.json.OLD or something similar
  3. Re run the apply update script – it should work this time AND update the ifix version number in the config file to 6.
  4. Stop the Conversion cluster
  5. Under Docs CR1 install directory open the DocsConversion subdirectory. Unzip the docs_remote_installer.zip to a directory (in my case this was E:\Install\Docs\IBMConnectionsDocs_2.0_CR1\DocsConversion\docs_remote_installer)
  6. Check the [SYM_COUNT] which is the number of instances of symphony that are configured, typically this is between 4 and 8. Check the <Conversion_Install_Root>\symphony directory (in my case E:\IBM\ConnectionsDocs\Conversion\symphony)
  7. From the docs_remote_installer directory () run the command 
    upgrade_node.bat --installroot <CONVERSION_INSTALL_ROOT> --symcount <SYM_COUNT>

i.e

upgrade_node.bat --installroot E:\IBM\ConnectionsDocs\Conversion --symcount 8
  8. Check fixpack.log in directory <CONVERSION_INSTALL_ROOT>\logs\
  9. Restart the Conversion cluster

Now all is good with my Docs update .. its working perfectly with Connections.

Thanks again to Roberto and Robert for helping me find the right solution.

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Migrating Connections DB from Oracle to DB2 part 2

In part 2 of this series we will cover preparing the system and the commands and files required.

There is a fair bit of file creation to do and configuring of the Database Transfer Tool (DBT)

 

Migrating Connections DB from Oracle to DB2

Step 3 – Prepare a system to recieve the data

As I stated previously do not think you can recycle an existing Connections server if it has been installed with the DB type you are migrating away from as it causes issues with files particually.

In my case I had an existing V5 dev system using the test oracle DB. I backed it all up – Existing DB2 databases, Docs configuration files, file system (connections shared data) and docs/viewer shares – we will need this later.

Blow that system away and rebuild a clean, fresh V5 system – should only take a few hours 🙂

Once you have a clean V5 system – make sure it all works .. then back up the empty DBs and filesystem files.

Its essential that you know the system works before attempting to migrate data.

Step 4 – Prepare files and commands

4.1 Prepare the Database Transfer Tool

Create the DBT_HOME directory

On the db2 server create the DBT_HOME directory under <CONNECTIONS_ROOT>\ConfigEngine\lib

On my system this was D:\IBM\Connections\ConfigEngine\lib\DBT_HOME

Under DBT_HOME create additional directories of files to hold the xml files required for migration and logs for all logs relating to the migration

Locate the dbt.jar from the Connections machine (<CONNECTIONS_ROOT>\ConfigEngine\lib in my case  D:\IBM\Connections\ConfigEngine\lib)  and copy it to the newly created DBT_HOME directory on the DB2 server.

 

Create the XML files required

Create an XML document for each application DB that is to be copied over and place it in the the DBT_HOME\files folder

D:\IBM\Connections\ConfigEngine\lib\DBT_HOME\files

Example below of the activites.xml :

<dbTransfer xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<database role="source"
driver="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"
url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@oracledbhost:port:dbinstancename"
userId="OAUSER"
schema="ACTIVITIES"
dbType="oracle"/>
<database role="target"
driver="com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver"
url="jdbc:db2://db2host:50000/opnact"
userId="db2admin"
schema="ACTIVITIES"
dbType="DB2"/>
<table sourceName="activities.system_lastmod" exclude="true"/>
</dbTransfer>

 

The source in this example is is oracle the target is db2

Once completed you will have the follwing xml documents in the DBT_HOME\files directory

  • activities.xml
  • blogs.xml
  • dogear.xml
  • files.xml
  • forum.xml
  • homepage.xml
  • metrics.xml
  • mobile.xml
  • people.xml
  • sncom.xml
  • sncomcal.xml
  • wikis.xml

Ensure the DB drivers are accessible

It is essential that the oracle drivers are accessible by the DB2 (target) server.

Oracle driver & DB2 driver paths – we need these later.

D:\IBM\Oracle\ojdbc6.jar
D:\IBM\SQLLIB\java\db2jcc.jar

 

V5 & V5.5 Wizards are required

When building the commands to migrate the DB some scripts are missing from the V5 Wizards directory. After speaking with IBM its safe to use the V5.5 wizard files for the missing scripts.

 

Replace the connections.sql scripts

Replace the SQL scripts given to you by IBM into the relevant directories .. in my case they were for files, wikis and blogs

 

4.2 Prepare the commands required

Prepare the commands for each DB  they will comprise of the following:

drop database, create database, app grants (for homepage also initdata, and re org and run stats)

CR update scripts

Pre DB fixer script

the DBT command string which has the following syntax

java -cp <path to DBT home>\DBT_HOME\dbt.jar;<Oracle driver>\ojdbc6.jar;<db2 driver>\db2jcc.jar com.ibm.wps.config.db.transfer.CmdLineTransfer -logDir <path to DBT home\logs>\DBT_HOME\logs -xmlfile <path to DBT home\files>\DBT_HOME\files\<application xml>.xml -sourcepassword sourcepassword -targetpassword targetpassword

Application specific scripts (IBM provided addional fixup scripts for Blogs, Files and Wikis for me)

Post DB fixer script

Re org script

Run stats script

 

== Activities Example==

cd C:\InstallTemp\Connections\V5\Wizards\connections.sql\activities\db2

db2 -td@ -vf dropDb.sql

db2 -td@ -vf createDb.sql

db2 -td@ -vf appGrants.sql

cd C:\InstallTemp\Connections\V5\CR3\50cr3-database-updates\50cr3-database-updates\From-50\db2\

db2 -td@ -vf 50-CR1-activities-db2.sql

cd C:\InstallTemp\Connections\V55\connections.sql\activities\db2

db2 -tvf predbxfer50.sql

cd C:\InstallTemp\Connections\V5\Wizards\jvm\win\jre\bin

java -cp D:\IBM\Connections\ConfigEngine\lib\DBT_HOME\dbt.jar;D:\IBM\Oracle\ojdbc6.jar;D:\IBM\SQLLIB\java\db2jcc.jar com.ibm.wps.config.db.transfer.CmdLineTransfer -logDir D:\IBM\Connections\ConfigEngine\lib\DBT_HOME\logs -xmlfile D:\IBM\Connections\ConfigEngine\lib\DBT_HOME\files\activities.xml -sourcepassword sourcepassword -targetpassword targetpassword


cd C:\InstallTemp\Connections\V55\connections.sql\activities\db2

db2 -tvf postdbxfer50.sql

cd C:\InstallTemp\Connections\V5\Wizards\connections.sql\activities\db2

db2 -td@ -vf reorg.sql
db2 -td@ -vf runstats.sql

note: The RED section of the example script above should be run in a standard command window. The other scripts should be run from a db2cmd window.

 

I have a long list of commands in a text file that contains one of these blocks for each application a example of this can be downloaded here to use as a template for the syntax – note: that you should use this at your own risk, take advice from IBM and ensure that all the paths and passwords are set correctly before running.

One of the main reasons for dropping and creating manually is that the gui db wizards seem to have real issues – unsure why, but when we ran the db scripts manually they worked no issue – also there is an advantage that if we do see problems the script logs can be piped to a specific file. This was very helpful with all of the troubleshooting we had to do. If you do see issues with any of the commands they can be piped to a log to send to IBM – for example:

db2 -td@ -vf createDb.sql > C:\Install\temp\activities_createDb.txt

This was a lifesaver / timesaver for troubleshooting any db commands – as each command can be output to easily isolate what the issue is.

 

Step 5 – BACKUP

Before we start to do anything  we are going to make some backups. Stop the existing V5 DEV server now we know its working and back it up. Take a copy of the clean DBs (including additional DBs such as FEB for surveys, CONCORD for Docs and any 3rd party tool DBs such as PROJEXEC etc.)  and the file system (Connections data\shared, docs share, viewer share etc.). In my case I had to prove that it was working prior to the DB migration so this back up was essential.

If you are going to run a test against your live systems data ensure that you also get a good back up of the file system when the system is down, if possible run the test when the live system is down (out of hours / on a weekend etc.) as the DB peice of the migration is very time consuming and you may need to troubleshoot issues.

The basic rule of thumb is treat this test like any normal Connections DB migration or update Stop it all and back it up.

 

What’s next?

Now we are all prepared .. we can attempt a test at the data migration .. check back in a few days for part 3 of Migrating Connections DB from Oracle to DB2 – where the fun really begins

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Migrating Connections DB from Oracle to DB2 part 1

For those of you that follow me on twitter, you will have noticed that I have posted a number of tweets relating to a fun project I am working on.

I have been working with a customer to move them from Connections 5 to Connections 5.5 – Not a massive issue – EXCEPT they are currently using Oracle for the Connections DB and they can not upgrade it to the version required by 5.5 for quite some time, as most of their business systems require the version of Oracle currently running.

This has been a pain .. like you wouldn’t believe .. what should be a simple process has turned into the project from hell!! BUT I am not one to throw the towel in so we have persevered. I must say I was not overly enthused by some of the issues and mistakes that have been made on our side and IBMs but we do have light at the end of the tunnel.

I am going to work through a series of Blog posts to help anyone else who needs to do this ..

Migrating Connections DB from Oracle to DB2

Overview

  1. Open a PMR – you will need specific help from IBM as this is an unsupported action – they will help you though. Be VERY specific and clear in exactly what you are trying to achieve as it can lead to confussion.
    • State the version of the DB you are moving from – in this case Oracle 11.2 on AIX
    • State the version of the DB are moving too – DB2 10.1 on Windows
    • State why you are doing this – as this is important for justifying the support time to help. In our case the customer is a current Connections 5 and Docs user, we have a requirement to upgrade Connections to  V5.5 to take advantage of the new features. As Connections 5.5 requires Oracle 12 and the customer can not update the underlying oracle system a move to DB2 is the best course of action. DB2 for Connections will be managed independantly from the rest of the applications.
    • Test the migrated Oracle data with DB2 and Connections 5 to ensure the system is working as expected.
    • Migrate the tested data to Connections 5.5
    • Then do it for real in live
  2. Make sure you have data to test – in our case there is a Connections 5 dev environment pointing to an oracle DB.
  3. Prepare a system to recieve the data – The Connections 5 dev system already had the correct version of DB2 installed as we were using IBM Docs and FEB (for Connections Surveys). We simply created the additional Connections 5 DBs on the dev machine ready to accept the data.
  4. Become familiar with the DBT – The Database Transfer Tool is the only way to get the data out of one system and into another. There are files to prepare and commands to comprise. Have a good text editor, with tabs, you will need it – notepad isn’t going to cut it.
  5. Get good BACKUPS – Backup the clean Connections 5 DBs before attempting to migrate you may need to roll it back, also ensure you back up any existing DBs you have (such as CONCORD for Docs or FEB for Surveys).
  6. Be preapred for multiple attempts – There is a lot of trail and error and fixing issues and trying again. This is not a one time deal.
  7. Logs and SQL queries – There will be a lot of looking at logs and running SQL queries, editing the create db scripts and running again. If you aren’t comfortable with that find someone to help you as you will be by the time we are done.

Things to note

I assumed that becuase I already have a DEV version 5 Connections system I could use that. Create new DBs, migrate the data, switch the datasources to the new database and we should be good – NO – THAT DOESN’T WORK!!

When Connections is installed and you select the type of DB that you are installing against, that is hardcoded somewhere in a config that we couldn’t find .. we WASTED SO MUCH TIME trying to get that sorted and eventually had to give up and reinstall.

If you have an existing system – BACK IT UP, blow it away and reinstall. Don’t waste time and effort trying to fix it .. files will not work.

 

Step 1 – Open a PMR

You MUST do this. IBM will help you even though they do not officially support moving DB types and OS’s. It is much easier if you are staying on the same OS or same DB type, but moving both isn’t fun. This should theoretically be a once only deal – once moved from Oracle AIX to Windows DB2 there will be no going back.

As I stated in the overview be VERY specific and explain exactly what you are trying to achieve. Give IBM the exact DB versions with fixes so they can give you new versions of any DB create scripts they need. In my case Files, Wikis and Blogs needed significant changes to the database create scripts. IBM also sent additional scripts for the fixup post migration so ensure you have those. Back up the original connections.sql folder under the V5 wizards directory (connections.sql.backup in my case) and add any changes to connections.sql.

 

Step 2 – Test data

Make sure you have data to test with. Initially I used the Connections 5 DEV system to test but have since moved on to live data, but the test data has to be from a working system so you can compare.

You must have access to read and write to the DBs as this is required to actually migrate the data. Back up the file system to copy the shared data over.

There may also be differences in data between your live and dev systems so be prepared to edit scripts again and keep copies of all the scripts and workings out you have done.. it will help you document it (yes I said the D word .. Write it all down, you will thank me for it later).

 

Check out Part 2 where we will actually prepare the system and write everything we need to actually get on and do the data migration.

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Is Verse on prem the end of Connections Mail?

A technote has come to light – marking the end of life for Connections Mail

https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21993196

The content states

November 2016 is the end of support for the following versions of ICM V 1.0 (for Connections 4.0), and version 1.3 (for Connections 4.5).
End of support for ICM 1.6 (for connections 5.0) will be one year from the publication of this TechNote, November 17, 2017.

We intend continue to support the latest version of the plug in, 1.7 with Connections 5.5. At this time there are no plans to release IBM Connections mail plug in with Connections 6.0.

So what will this mean for Connections Mail users? For Domino mail customers, the likely hood is that you will update to Verse On Premises (VOP) and consume mail / Connections content in the new Verse on prem UI .. for Exchange users I am not sure .. if any one has the answers please let us know.

I do use Connections mail and I actually enjoy having an overview of my inbox and calander inside connections. As we move to a VOP I can see me using the integration between my mail and Connections a lot, I use the notes sidebar plugins and the Connections desktop and office connectors – so its a natural progression for me and others I work with.

If it wasn’t for another community member posting the technote in the Connections skype chat I wouldn’t have known about this. So I am sharing it as I am sure there are others who do not know about this either. I do still have customers running Connections 4.5 who are now not supported for Connections mail.

As Connections Mail 1.7 for Connections 5.5 is continuing to be supported, it looks like any existing users are ok for now, but there will be no support going forward. Not sure how this will affect users or how many people are using Connections Mail out there in the wild, but I do have a few customers using it. Would love to know your thoughts.

 

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Sutol, Pokemon and an awesome time

As blogged over on the BCC page .. a round up of Sutol with some extra Shaz related bits  🙂

Last week we were in the beautiful city of Prague for the 8th annual SUTOL Czech user group. It was a small affair with approx. 100 attendees – making it more like an extended family gathering, which actually worked really well. The sessions were well attended and there seems to be a chunk of Czech business that already have hybrid and cloud environments and are uses of IBM Connections.
The Keynote:
Lots of news which was nice .. some of it revisited some of the information that was made public at ICONUK, but there were updated and NEW news!
So Drew Birnbaum kicked off the keynote with a look at ICS strategy through the ages – admitting that IBM had lost its way a little and how they are redeeming themselves going forward. It was very refreshing to know that the beast that is IBM have taken on board what Customers, Business Partners and IBM Champions have been saying – so positive news on that front.
Drew also covered the #newwaytowork message that IBM have been delivering to us over the past few months, and it seems to be becoming more and more relevant to how normal businesses work. One of the statistics that was shown was the average worker consumes approx.. 15.5 hours of media a day – 15.5 hours!! That is a lot of data, it’s no wonder we can get distracted.
One of the things that the Watson and cognitive engines can do is help us make sense of all that *stuff* and we are seeing it more and more as the API’s become available to hook in to. This message was reinforced on the integration into application and services that are cloud ready. Unfortunately there is no news on when on premises customers will be able to take advantage of this – here is hoping that one day we will be able to consume Watson or some of those features as a web service.
Barry Rosen had a lot to say. He is the new hero of our ICS community, and has become the go to man to pass on concerns, queries and praise to IBM. Always ready to listen and very honest, and had already made some changes since he announced the Road map at ICONUK back in September 2016.
The features and fixes to be released in the Notes/Domino feature packs are to be released via priority. Each cycle the highest priority fixes and features will be worked on for release, rather than promising something and not delivering, announcements will be made on what is coming over the next few weeks we hope and that will continue going forward. Again another improvement.
Sametime will also follow the continuous delivery method, which is fantastic news. There were a lot of speculation that IBM would be killing off Sametime now they had Watson Work (Project Toscana) and the alliance with Cisco, but Barry told us Sametime is not dead and it will have continued investment and fixes. Sametime IS the on-premises chat and meeting solution and will continue to be.
The same can be said of application development and x-pages. There will be an announcement in early 2017 on the future of application modernisation, development and the plans IBM have – Connect 2017 will be the place to hear this. Barry assured us that Martin Donnelly’s x-pages team have plenty to do and to release to us – looking forward to more new on that early next year.

If you are wanting to go down the Verse on Prem route for your email client there is also good news. The Connections entitlement to Files and Profiles has now been updated for Domino 9.0.1 customers to allow Connections 5.5, allowing the additional features for Verse on Prem at no extra cost – Shameless plug for the BCC Connect your Domino offering to help you get to that point to be Verse ready.
The ICS portfolio is becoming like a buffet, allowing us to pick and choose what applications and solutions suit our business and needs as users. Improved integration points should make this a lot easier and with the new framework and set of APIs for that framework will ensure that it’s easier to integrate applications and systems.
So exciting times and generally good and positive news all around. I sincerely hope that this is not too little too late and that IBM really have taken note of what Customers and BPs have been telling them. It’s a good message that Customers that can’t or won’t go to the cloud are still going to get support and updates for on-premises software and that if they do want to go hybrid that there will support for that too – Another shameless plug fpr the BCC Admin Tool for Connections Cloud at this point, as this helps with just that very scenario, manage your Hybrid and Cloud users just like your on-prem ones.

All in all ….
A very positive message was sent out by IBM and the attendees and those following the twitter stream seemed also to be enthused by the message, let’s just hope that message and the enthusiasm stays with us to Connect and Engage and well into 2017.

Personally

This was the first time I had been to SUTOL .. It really was like an extended small family gathering .. which was GREAT .. so good to catch up with friends and colleges in our space and with those IBMers that I only get to see at events like this. I finally got to chat to people that I have only spoken to in skype and on twitter. User groups are so important for networking and keeping in touch with what everyone is doing and sometimes you can’t beat a chat over a beer.

The speaker / sponsor dinner was so much fun – i haven’t laughed so hard and so long for a while .. Prague is also excellent for Pokemon hunting and I caught my first 2 Pikachu on the way, and about 15 other little blighters and many stops (so lots of balls).

The food was amazing, filling and tasty .. and there were many sausage jokes occuring on our two tables (we may have got a little rowdy, luckily we were in a private dining area). I haven’t been to many bars with such a crazy drinks menu .. we had GROG (unfortunately it wasn’t served by a pirate or a busty wench .. or in a wooden jug.. but it was GROG) .. so well worth the night out 🙂

I also won a prize in the closing session – thank you Panagenda for the kit .. I shall have hours of fun playing with that 🙂 The speaker gift was a lovely bottle of Czech wine – made for St Martin’s day (I know it was lovely as I have already finished it).

Thank you Prague .. thank you to the SUTOL team for making me feel so welcome and to Wannes and Roberto for being brave enough to speak with me for a second time. Shout out to Stephanie as well as it was girls on tour for BCC and we had a great giggle too ..  bring on the next one 🙂

 

Cloudbit starter kitWineczech pub20161110_19132820161110_191334

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So much going on

I know its been quiet here but that is because I have been a little busy with the new job at BCC .. which is great .. I love to be busy

so what I have I been doing ..

Starting at BCC which is awesome, I have been to MWLUG and spoke their again which was also great, We had ICONUK which was much fun (if a little stressful for the organisation team), Run a 5k and raised over £1,000 for charity, and I have been to SUTOL in Prague – all this and the day job at BCC 🙂

BUT I do have lots to blog over the next few weeks ..

Main topics

  • SUTOL16 in prague – I will have a run down of what we learnt at the 8th annual Czech user group
  • DB migration from Oracle on AIX to DB2 on Windows for a Connections customer – on going still on how and why we are moving the Connections DB from Oracle to DB2 (its been fun)
  • Admin Tool for Connections Cloud – some of the exciting things I am working on at BCC

and more ..

first up will be the SUTOL recap which I will post this week ..