We are excited to announce the Free ODTUG Learn from Home Series taking place May 19 – May 22. Get ready for four days packed with over 90 sessions plus mini Oracle symposiums—all covering a range of Oracle-related topics to keep you on the cutting edge of the latest technology.

The ODTUG Learn from Home Series will be free flowing. When you register for a session room, you will be able to come and go throughout the day as you please. There will be a separate registration for each room per day, and you can register for multiple rooms if you’d like. View the event schedule below.  *Schedule subject to change

We want everyone to have the opportunity to engage, so feel free to connect with each other over Twitter by using the hashtag assigned to your room. Get your questions answered or just say hey to your fellow attendees!


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DAILY SCHEDULE

Select a Day or Track to Register.

All sessions are listed in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Please be sure to convert these to your local time.




Tuesday, May 19




  Wednesday, May 20  




     Thursday, May 21    




         Friday, May 22         

EPM Integration/Infrastructure   EPM Essbase EPM Essbase/Planning   EPM Real World
EPM Reporting/Essbase Analytics   EPM Financial Close EPM Essbase/Planning
APEX APEX APEX Database DBA
Emerging Technology Database Development Analytics

Modern App Development





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TUESDAY,
MAY 19






The Umbrella Academy: Let’s Discover Your Powers in FDMEE and Cloud Data Management

Tuesday, May 19 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
ACE
 Francisco Amores, inlumi

Data integration is one of the key processes in EPM solutions. Having a flexible, maintainable, and high-performing solution will make our life easier. Over the years, I have tried to use my powers to help the EPM community to live in a better EPM integration world.
Do you want to feel like a real EPM integration solution architect who can go further than simply making it to work? Surely you have a power you don’t know about yet. Let’s discover it!
The goal of this session is to show different best practices, tips, and tricks that can help you to design and build better solutions in both FDMEE and cloud data management. Topics covered include:

  • Mappings, the great unknown
  • Exporting data to multiple target systems
  • Tips and tricks for automation and scheduling and the new workflow modes
  • Tips and tricks for Jython scripts
  • Using the HFM Java API to leverage process management in FDMEE
  • Direct integration with cloud sources using web services and the EPM integration agent, introduction to Jython/Groovy scripting in the agent
  • And more!

Don’t miss it! Let’s make this an interactive KT session where we all learn from each other.



Deploy EPM Infra/Apps on AWS Platforms and Maintain It

Tuesday, May 19 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Christian Montillaud and Gaël Roustan, Quartz Insight

This session discusses the keys to implementing an EPM infra move from on-premises to IAAS infrastructure as AWS.



Recipes for the Oracle Cloud: Cooking with OneCloud in Your EPM Kitchen

Tuesday, May 19 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Wayne Paffhausen, Alithya

Ever get frustrated with EPM Automate? Curious about why all the good solutions to your EPM Cloud project have a bunch of shell scripts and command-line functions? Well, during the next few minutes we will cover a few case studies and solutions to those questions and more. We will cover how the product OneCloud fills in the gap and truly offers a total "cloud-based solution" for your EPM Cloud purchase.

OneCloud was built with a non-technical foundation in mind and was built around a graphic interface. It puts control of the EPM Cloud back into the hands of finance. Not only does OneCloud work with Oracle EPM products, it works with a bunch of other "sources/targets" as well.

I will also be comparing the time/cost of using EPM Automate and shell scripts versus OneCloud. Time is valuable and being able to quickly and easily perform daily functions is important. Sit back, relax, and let's dive into how this tool has helped others and start to think about how it could help you.



Accelerate Your Cloud Financial Transformation with Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Cloud

Tuesday, May 19 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Noah Yao and Kate Helmer, Huron Consulting Group

When undergoing an enterprise-wide financial transformation, Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Cloud is uniquely positioned as a flexible data governance and master data management solution.  EDM can act as the system of record when undertaking CoA mapping, modeling, and restructuring, acting as the central metadata hub to distribute reorganized dimensions and segments to ERP and EPM applications. Alternatively, EDM can fall later in the implementation cycle, using custom and packaged adapters to receive reorganized metadata and validate hierarchies across existing ERP and EPM applications.


 

Lights-Out EPM Cloud Automation at Thomas Jefferson Using REST API

Tuesday, May 19 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Vatsal Gaonkar, Alithya

The session will showcase how Thomas Jefferson automates the load of its PeopleSoft GL data eight times a day via a process across six business entities. The process is "lights-out" automation and runs based on the availability of file(s). The process automation uses EPM Automate, Data Management REST API, and custom PowerShell utilities that provide automation which starts with availability of file(s) and culminates in sending email communication to the business user with exceptions handling.



Just the Facts: Debunking Misconceptions about Enterprise Data Management

Tuesday, May 19 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Kevin Black, Alithya

In this session, we will explore and debunk misconceptions, myths, and half-truths surrounding the Enterprise Data Management Cloud (EDM) product. We will discuss how EDM handles the mastering of enterprise data assets, data governance, alignment of master data across applications, and integration capabilities with cloud and on-premises deployments. We will also touch on EDM vs. data relationship management (DRM). Is EDM really “DRM in the Cloud”? Can EDM do everything DRM can do, and is it really "ready for prime time”? What does EDM do best, and what are surprising things EDM can do I may not realize? Come to this session to find out!

 

 






Future of EPM Reporting—Powered by MR

Tuesday, May 19 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Megha Chopra and Mohit Jain, Genpact

Thinking about the new reporting tool MR? However, don’t want to spend countless hours on how your report will look like once MR is onboarded? MR is already a bouquet of red roses. Reporting is the final destination of converting raw data into information to run your business. MR is going to be the future of reporting as FR is going away. However, companies that are on FR should upgrade to MR. This is not a quick and easy decision, especially if your organization has built reports extensively in FR. But thanks to the flexibility of MR, auto migration is allowed to an extent.
Are you ready to migrate from FR to MR now but wary of making the wrong first step? This session will guide you through the best practices you need for a successful journey to EPM Reporting:

  1. Management Reporting components
  2. Differences in point of view
  3. Features not supported in MR
  4. Auto migration of object
  5. Migrating FR to MR
  6. Live demo of MR fully formatted reports

Join us in this demo to explore these topics, some possible strategies/solutions, and how they impact you!



A “Wicked” Good Solution to Satisfy Your Oracle EPM Reporting Needs! Narrative Reporting - Part 1

Tuesday, May 19 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Jay ChapmanSierra-Cedar

The only thing that goes together better than Boston and Fenway Park (Go Sox) is Planning and Narrative Reporting. Since its release in 2015, Narrative Reporting has become the strategic reporting option for narrative, management, and regulatory reporting. Come to this session to get a deeper understanding of Narrative Reporting and explore a variety of reporting design concepts. We will cover strategies on building those extensive comprehensive reports like Budget Books and CAFRs. We will explore how to leverage your Planning data to create robust management reports. If your organization still uses ad hoc, error-prone methods to create reports, then this session is for you! Join Oracle ACE Associate Jay Chapman as he will share his Narrative Reporting knowledge to help you find practical ways to improve your reporting process and make better use of your Planning data.



Oracle Analytics Data Visualization in an EPM World


Tuesday, May 19 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.

Artboard 2A.png Wayne Van Sluys and Shane Eckert, interRel Consulting

Having trouble telling your EPM Cloud data story? Join us for this informative session where we will explore the use of Oracle Analytics Data Visualization with EPM Cloud data sources. We will review connectivity considerations and the effective use of visualizations to create a crystal-clear picture.



Achievement Unlocked: Next Level with Oracle Narrative Reporting - Part 2


Tuesday, May 19 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Opal Alapat, interRel Consulting

Think about your process to put together report packages. Is it a manual, time-consuming process? Does it include multiple documents, manual spreadsheets, emails, and more? There is a solution, and it’s included in both of the new Oracle EPM licensing tiers! Oracle’s Narrative Reporting (formerly EPRCS) can streamline your internal and external reporting and bring together the collaboration process. Hear practical advice, real customer case studies, and learn just how much better your reporting world can be from the world’s one and only technical book author on Oracle Narrative Reporting!



Revealing Our Trade Secrets: Narrative Reporting 101

Tuesday, May 19 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Harsh Dave and Praveen Kumar, AST Corporation

Narrative Reporting, offered as part of EPM Cloud Standard, can quickly be deployed to provide immediate benefits to users. In this session, we will demonstrate a full report package build. We will: upload fonts, apply master styling, create doclets, assign workflow, create Excel and report reference doclets, and publish a report package. This will be a full end-to-end use case for the tool.



ASO Calculations and Calc Manager

Tuesday, May 19 |
4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Peter Nitschke, Pivot2 Solutions

ASO with lightning fast aggregations that provide the ability to deal with deep, complex, ragged multiple hierarchies, and a full featured code language has a sweet spot in providing a reporting solution for any Essbase build. However, utilizing ASO only for reporting misses half of its functionality!
Join Peter Nitschke for a deep dive into the most requested section of his ODTUG Kscope19 award-winning presentation, "ASO Development for PBCS Developers", where we delve into defining, building, and optimizing calculations within ASO.
Attend this session if you’re interested to learn what ASO can do for you, including:

  • Best practices: what works and what doesn’t
  • MDX: variances, time-based queries, KPIs, unit metrics, and solve order
  • Calc manager: allocations, multi-currency modelling, iterative calculations, and driver costs
  • Optimizations: nonemptymember vs. nonemptytuple, slices, and merges

 






Oracle APEX Symposium

Tuesday, May 19 | 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Join the Oracle Product Management Team as they discuss:

  • Faceted Search - Carsten Czarski
  • Friendly URLs -  Patrick Wolf
  • Mega Menus - Shakeeb Rahman
  • Interactive Grids - John Snyders
  • Automatic Backups / Zip Exports - David Bliss
  • Remote Deployment - Jason Straub


Best Practices of APEX Migration

Tuesday, May 19 | 2:15 - 3:00 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Oliver Lemm, MT AG

Interested in using the latest APEX version but don't want to be surprised when migrating your application? Then attend this talk. With two new versions every year, some people are struggling with the migration process and don't even know whether a migration costs significant time or is only a click inside your application.
I will talk about migration from old non-universal theme apps to the universal theme and the process of refreshing your application, including these questions:
- What about legacy components or deprecated or de-supported components/features?
- Is it hard to migrate tabular forms to interactive grid?
- What about migrating Anychat to JET charts?
- How do you decide whether a plugin should be replaced or can be used in the latest version?
Over the last 13 years I migrated a big bunch of applications from HTMLDB 2.0 to APEX 19.2.



Automated Testing APEX with Cypress


Tuesday, May 19 | 3:15 - 4:00 p.m.
Elizabeth Garcia, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Testing can sometimes take as long as developing the actual application. There are several different tools that can be used to accelerate testing results and detect potential defects early in the process. Cypress is a cross browser testing tool that can be integrated to test your APEX applications and has an easy learning curve to create interactive tests.
I will review how to install Cypress in a Windows environment utilizing the Node.js installation. Past sessions that I’ve attended related to this topic overlook the installation process and how to actually get the integration working. Once the installation is complete, a demo to create multiple test scripts on an APEX application will be generated.



APEX Interactive Grids: Standardize for Productivity and Sanity


Tuesday, May 19 | 4:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Karen Cannell, TH Technology

APEX Interactive Grids have a myriad of customization options, some declarative, and most via JavaScript APIs. How does one stay sane, organized, and consistent with so many options? Standardize! Learn techniques to deliver clean, uniform, customized interactive grids within a single application or across many developers and many applications across an organization. It is easier than you think. We will discuss the importance of standards in grid development, labeling, configuration, and customization. We will discuss and demonstrate several options to standardize grid features within and across your applications: plugins, common configuration files, and CSS classes. Decide upon your grid options, code them once, then include and use everywhere. Better yet, not everyone needs to be a JavaScript expert to implement your standard grid configurations. Attend to learn how to standardize your grids: increase productivity and save your sanity at the same time.






What Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Why Should You Care?

Tuesday, May 19 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Mia Urman, AuraPlayer

Many companies are turning to robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline operations and lower costs. With RPA, businesses can automate mundane rules-based business processes, enabling users to devote more time to other higher-value work. RPA proves most beneficial on complex data entry applications such as Oracle EBS/Forms. In this session, we will do an introduction to RPA and explain the major features and how it could bring your organization to a new more efficient, productive, and modern state. This session will include a live demo followed by Q&A.




An Introduction to Machine Learning

Tuesday, May 19 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Heli Helskyaho, Miracle Finland Oy

Machine learning is here to stay. Everybody should know what it is about and where it could be used. So, what is machine learning and where can it be used? What is unsupervised learning, supervised learning, or reinforcement learning? What is deep learning? These and so many more questions will be answered in this presentation.
In this presentation you will learn what machine learning is all about and hopefully get so excited about the whole thing you'll want to learn more! This presentation will make it easier to start learning.



Demystifying Machine Learning and Why You Should Jump on the Bandwagon Now


Tuesday, May 19 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Biju Thomas, Data Intensity

You hear everywhere that your job is going to go away, it will be taken over by machines, and you need to be doing something different to be relevant. If your job involves making a decision based on a pattern or data analysis (radiologist, financial advisor, customer service, for example) be sure that such positions will undergo a drastic transformation. In this session, we go over the basics of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) and how these technologies impact you as a human being and as a developer, data analyst, or database administrator. The future is bright; AI is a partnership, helping you to do your job better.




It's a Blockchain Revolution: Leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology to Solve Inter-Company Transaction Processing Across a Decentralized Enterprise


Tuesday, May 19 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Francisco Ponce and Artboard 2AD.png Gary Crisci, General Electric

Come learn about General Electric's two proof of concepts, developed on Oracle's blockchain as a service platform, to explore how blockchain technology can revolutionize inter-company transaction processing. Built entirely on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), leveraging multiple products including Blockchain (OBP), Integration Cloud (OIC), Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW), Identity Management (IDMCS), and Analytics (OAC), this session will dive into the functional capabilities model for GE's inter-company transaction processing and settlement and then explore how decentralized ledger technology is an ideal solution for this use case.




What Do "AI," "Big Data," "Blockchain," and "Cloud Platform" Actually Mean to the Finance Function


Tuesday, May 19 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Roger Cressey, Qubix

There are many terms being bandied about in our technology world. This presentation will serve to define what some of these mean in simple terms and their real value to corporate finance teams. You will have heard of “artificial intelligence (AI),” “big data,” “data lakes,” “blockchain,” and “cloud platform,” among others.
I will provide simple definitions of what these are and discuss example use cases which will provide insight as to when and for what this technology should be used as relevant to: finance in general, FP&A, and controller functions. We will also have an up-to-date view of what is in the technology pipeline to make the finance function easier! There are some exciting developments on their way.




The Future of AI & Machine Learning (ML) in Oracle Products


Tuesday, May 19 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Rich Niemiec, Viscosity North America

This presentation will cover Oracle’s ability to leverage AI and machine learning (ML) from within Oracle Advanced Analytics or using their recent acquisition, GUI. Every Oracle product will start to leverage AI/ML! Knowing when/where to leverage these advancements may be the difference between success and failure in the future. We'll look at the latest technology and algorithms that Oracle provides as part of the product but also the CX products that are used to leverage AI/ML and chatbots.




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WEDNESDAY, 
MAY 20







Essbase Road Map


Wednesday, May 20 | 10:00 - 10:45 a.m.
Ashish Jain, Oracle Corporation and Patrick Wheeler, Oracle Corporation

Join the Oracle Product Management Team as they discuss Essbase Road Map.



The EPM Bonanza at GE Power: A Digital Finance Revolution!


Wednesday, May 20 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Senthil Kumaran and
Artboard 2A.png Neviana Zhgaba, General Electric

In this presentation, you’ll hear about a revolution that is set to radically transform Finance at GE Power. If your business is spending countless hours inputting and reporting financial data in Excel, that is about to change once you see how some of the most Excel-reliant Finance teams at GE started their EPM independence journey by digitizing their Financial Planning and Analysis processes, targeting to add 30,000 hours of productivity back to the business.

General Electric is one of the biggest users of Oracle technology for Finance systems (HFM, DRM, Hyperion Planning, Essbase, PBCS, ARM, FDMEE, ODI, Exalytics, and Exadata) supporting 500+ internal applications. Join GE EPM Architect Senthil Kumaran and GE EPM Product Manager and ODTUG Director Neviana Zhgaba as they walk you through the steps of how they used Essbase and Dodeca to increase productivity, accountability, and data quality by reducing Excel complexity and thousands of hours of manual collection and aggregation efforts for their yearly and quarterly budget management processes.
By the end of this session attendees will learn:

  • Best practices in building an Essbase cube to simplify Excel processes
  • How to combine data lake relational and Essbase technologies to make ERP & Planning data available
  • Overview of how users leverage Smart View and Dodeca to input and report data
  • Challenges, lessons learned, and what remains to be accomplished


What Now, Essbase?


Wednesday, May 20 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Cameron Lackpour, MindStream Analytics and
Artboard 2AD.png Tim German, Qubix

Essbase has seen engines, features, owners, use cases, and technology fashions come and go and yet Essbase abides. But now Essbase faces an identity crisis: will it (and should it) remain a standalone platform as Essbase 19c or become subsumed within a larger product as Free-Form Enterprise Planning? Customers face the same scenario: does Essbase as Essbase still make sense? Join Planning fanatic Cameron Lackpour and Essbase zealot Tim German as they try to tease out what Essbase was, is, and what it will be to you via use cases, benchmarks, and a no-holds-barred ranking.



Long Live Essbase: The Present and the Future

Wednesday, May 20 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Edward Roske, interRel Consulting

Many of you have heard that OAC Essbase is dead and that Essbase Cloud is pondering its own mortality too…but you’ve also heard that Essbase on-prem may be coming back?!? In this session, long-time Essbase expert Edward Roske will talk about the recent changes to Essbase which have led to talks of its demise, who benefits and who loses from these changes, and what the roadmap is for Essbase in 19c and beyond. If you're responsible for some of the three million users of Essbase worldwide, make sure you attend this hour to hear about the present and the future (there is one, just not what you expect) of Essbase.



Oracle EPM Symposium

Wednesday, May 20 | 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Al Marciante, Matthew Bradley, Hari Sankar, Rich Wilkie, Marc Seewald, Rahul Kamath and Shankar Viswanathan, Oracle Corporation

Join the Oracle Product Management Team as they discuss all things EPM!






Oracle Analytics and Spatial Studio: Better Together


Wednesday, May 20 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Artboard 2A.png Mark Daynes, Beyond Systems Ltd

Oracle’s databases have sophisticated spatial ability and Oracle’s Spatial Studio has been designed to make spatial analysis more accessible to business analysts who are not required to have specific spatial knowledge. Answering questions such as “how many of my suppliers are within a distance of two miles of my store?” can be performed in a visual manner. Oracle Analytics tools provide an excellent platform to perform analysis of data from multiple sources. Together, Spatial Studio and Oracle Analytics can play to their strengths and provide a powerful solution to gain insights from your data. In this session we will show how these tools can collaborate and complement one another and give you the confidence to explore your data in ways you may not have previously considered.



The Song of Fire and Ice: Cloud Warehousing with Autonomous DW vs. Snowflake


Wednesday, May 20 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Holger Friedrich, sumIT AG

The Oracle Database is perceived by many as being expensive but also as being technically superior to the competition. This is why Oracle database products and services are trusted with critical workloads. However, data warehousing in the cloud is quite different from on-premises warehousing regarding benefits, but also challenges. Moreover, new competitors and products have been entering the market. Those promise not only almost infinite scalability but also great performance and high security with low costs attached. Managed cloud DWH services seem to be interchangeable of sorts, but looking closer reveals that they aren't. An interesting new contender is Snowflake. It is a cloud native, fully managed, multi-cloud data warehouse service with innovative architecture.
In this presentation the two products—Oracle ADW and Snowflake—will be compared. Typical challenges in cloud data warehousing will be identified and matched to the feature sets and architecture of the two services. Tooling around the services, security, and general integration and handling will be discussed. This way the advantages, but also the limitations of each service, will become clear to the audience. Live demonstrations with both products will illustrate the points being made regarding cloud data warehousing in general and strengths and weaknesses of the two managed DWH services in particular.



All I Need Is SQL and a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph)


Wednesday, May 20 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
BG-groundbreaker-ambassador-rgb ICON.png Stewart Bryson, Innive

While enterprise data and analytics software has been abstracting SQL out of our daily lives for decades, distributed data platforms and cloud-native data warehouses have been pushing their chips all in with SQL, and virtually all big data technologies now support it. We all know SQL, so why do enterprise software vendors think it’s such a sin to actually use it?
In this presentation, I’ll describe a modern approach to data integration and ETL using plain SQL and a directed acyclic graph, or DAG. Using the open-source dbt (Data Build Tool) project for demo purposes, we’ll see data and analytics delivered with a modern software discipline, including version control and code review, automated testing, and continuous integration and delivery.



OAC Networking and Infrastructure: A Walkthrough

Wednesday, May 20 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Becky Wagner, US-Analytics

Setting up the networking, infrastructure, and security for OAC are not small tasks. Hear about lessons learned and tips from setting up various OAC implementations for our clients. We will dig into the fine details and explain what worked, pitfalls to avoid, and ongoing maintenance suggestions. You will take away lessons learned from real-life implementations of OAC using various options for networking, source and target databases, and security.



Game of Fraud

Wednesday, May 20 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Abigail Giles-Haigh, Vertice and Chris Saxon, Oracle Corporation

Someone's stealing money from the Iron Bank! After a series of fraudulent transactions, a huge sum of cash is missing. But who's the culprit? This session will show you how to use SQL to implement simple rules-based analysis. It'll then show you how to use machine learning to spot advanced fraudulent activity. This will cover the pros and cons of both approaches. Finally, we’ll demonstrate how a hybrid solution can give you the best of both worlds. The demonstration will be implemented in Autonomous Data Warehouse and Oracle Analytics Cloud for the Iron Bank. This session is for developers, data scientists, and analysts searching for complex patterns in data.



Delivering Business Value through Streaming Data Analytics Automation


Wednesday, May 20 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Grace Peng, Los Angeles Unified School District and Gautham Sampath, Innive

Do you know how a large and complex organization like LA Unified School District has successfully rolled out a comprehensive business intelligence application that is business oriented and producing results with data driven decisions? LAUSD Enterprise Reporting uses Kafka, ODI, and Oracle technology components to deal with never-ending streams of events; to use real-time or near-real-time processing to detect patterns and trends; and to build a suite of interactive dashboards based on streaming data integration for district executives, principals, teachers, counselors, and families with over 300 K-12 metrics and KPIs that provide whole child, whole school, and whole district insight. The session is a planned as an interactive one, with a real-time demo presented by a senior leader of the school district who has played a key role in the planning and execution of this huge effort.

 






Can You Do That with APEX? Building Not So Straightforward Pages


Wednesday, May 20 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Dimitri Gielis, APEX R&D

My philosophy is that you want to stay as close as possible to standard APEX components. But sometimes from an end-user perspective, it would make a lot more sense and be more user-friendly if the page looked a bit different. In this session, I will demonstrate a few examples of custom pages and how you can create something yourself. We will see the use of a PL/SQL region, APEX items, AJAX callback (process), dynamic actions, and some JavaScript and CSS. Still, we try to stay as close as possible to APEX, so it's easy to upgrade, but it will be a totally different user experience and not just a report with form.



When to Use Plugins in APEX (and When Not To)

Wednesday, May 20 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Peter Raganitsch, FOEX GmbH

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about plugins in APEX is cool new features, things that can't be done in APEX without a particular plugin. But there are more good reasons such as reusability, centralization, enabling less skilled developers to reuse a solution, and so on.
This short session is all about the different aspects you should think about when developing APEX applications because there are more use cases for plugins than you might think. We'll round that up with some best practices on usage of plugins in bigger teams.



Primer on Dynamic Actions: There Is One in Everything

Wednesday, May 20 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Lino Schildenfeld

If you are new to APEX this might be a great session for you. Why? Dynamic actions are an inevitable part of every application we are building. By gaining control over your DA skills you take important step toward dynamic, responsive, and rich applications, something every APEX developer has to go through.
In this session we demystify all corners of DA and how they can be utilized in your applications. Topics we will cover include: 
- How to create DA
- Mastering passing data between screen components
- Conditional processing
- How to debug your DA
- Best and worst practices
If any of this does not sound familiar, then join me for this session.



Creating Workflows for Your APEX App in Low-Code Style

Wednesday, May 20 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Niels de Bruijn, MT AG

My last presentation about workflows was more focused on the BPMN tool Camunda and how to integrate it. Today, I believe that BPMN can be done solely by using the JS framework bpmn.io together with a few tables. Let me show you how easy it is to model your processes and create APEX screens that interact with your BPMN process.


APEX Office Print Primer

Wednesday, May 20 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Gemma Wood, Cavanti Corporation and 
Artboard 2AA.png Jackie McIlroy, APEX R&D

There are a number of questions that new Oracle APEX developers often ask with regard to reporting and document generation. These include “My users want to export an Interactive Report exactly as it looks in the browser, showing highlights, aggregates, etc.” or “How can I create an Office document (Word or Excel) or even PDF from APEX?”  While there are several options to achieve these requirements, one that has stood out in the APEX Community over the past few years is APEX Office Print.
This primer session on APEX Office Print gives a high-level overview of AOP functionality and how it addressed a lot of the reporting and document generation issues that Cavanti, a software as a service company faced and aims to answer some of those commonly asked reporting and document generation questions.



Browser DevTools: The Other Tool for APEX Development

Wednesday, May 20 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Jorge Rimblas, Insum

APEX development is not just about Oracle PL/SQL and SQL. In fact, it requires other disciplines to provide an enhanced user experience. With some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, your APEX applications can begin to shine. However, you need a helper to better work with these technologies. If you're running SQL, you may use SQL Developer, but what do you use for HTML, JavaScript, and CSS? Enter dev tools. In this session, we'll cover the built-in dev tools available in all modern browsers.
Learn the ins and outs of these tools and how they improve your everyday work with APEX. They are easy to use. No installation is required, and they’re just a keystroke away. After attending this session, you'll be able to use your browser's dev tools immediately.






RESTful Services Development for Oracle Database


Wednesday, May 20 | 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Jeff Smith, Oracle Corporation and Kris Rice, Oracle Corporation

Accessing your Oracle Database with HTTP(S) to GET/POST/PUT/DELETE your data has never been easier. In this session, Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) product manager Jeff Smith shows to quickly get started by using our Automatic REST feature, how to write your own custom RESTful Services, and how to take advantage of things like our Database Management REST APIs.



Oracle REST Data Services: Advanced Features

Wednesday, May 20 | 12:15 - 1:00 p.m.
Jeff Smith, Oracle Corporation

So you have RESTful Services for your Oracle Database, what else can ORDS bring to the table? In this session we’ll go over SQL as a Service with REST Enabled SQL, SQL Developer Web, and our Database Management REST APIs – all available out-of-the-box with ORDS.



Database Designing, the Basics

Wednesday, May 20 | 1:15 - 2:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Heli Helskyaho, Miracle Finland Oy

The better a database has been designed, the better the performance and the data quality of your application will be. In this session you will learn the basics of database designing and how to use Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler to design databases directly to the database in the cloud. Learn how to design an ER diagram and how to generate a relational model, define a physical model, and finally get the DDLs to create the objects into the database. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is a cost-free product from Oracle Corporation, and it supports all the phases needed for good quality database design work.



Using the PL/SQL Debugger

Wednesday, May 20 | 2:15 - 3:00 p.m.

Artboard 2A.png Philipp Salvisberg, Trivadis

Every developer knows the problem. An application doesn't do what it should, and the existing logging output doesn't help. Usually, the presumed defective program area is iteratively extended by further logging calls to locate the error. If this is of no use, a colleague is called in. Maybe they have an idea. In such cases I recommend using the PL/SQL debugger. The debugger not only helps to find the error faster but is also an excellent tool to display the context of a concrete use case and to better understand the program.
In this presentation I explain, among other things:

  • The prerequisites for using the PL/SQL Debugger
  • The difference between DBMS_DEBUG and DBMS_DEBUG_JDWP
  • How both debugger variants can be used in SQL Developer
  • How debugging works directly from an application without adapting the source code


Speeding Up Executions of User-Defined Functions in SQL

Wednesday, May 20 | 3:15 - 4:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Erik van Roon, EvROCS

We should be careful with mixing SQL and PL/SQL. The context switches between both engines can quickly kill performance. For quite a long time now Oracle has supported bulk operations in PL/SQL, minimizing these context switches when executing SQL from PL/SQL.
Version 12c of the database finally brought us similar enhancements for the other way around: the use of PL/SQL (function calls) from within an SQL statement. Starting with that edition, subquery factoring (the with clause) can also include definitions of PL/SQL functions and (yes, even) procedures for use inside your query.
Then there is the option to compile functions and procedures in the database/packages for use by the SQL engine, using the UDF pragma. This presentation will show both features and how and when to put them to use. It will all show the differences in performance, comparing the options to each other and to using conventional function calls. Furthermore, it will highlight the pitfalls that can be encountered.



Test Your SQL & PL/SQL, Not Your Patience

Wednesday, May 20 | 4:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Jacek Gebal, Fidelity Investments Ireland

In this session Jacek will walk you through all aspects of testing for Oracle SQL and PL/SQL code:

  • Why testing is important
  • When is the best time to test
  • What should be tested
  • How to test (includes live demo)
  • What is code coverage and how you can report it using utPLSQL

In this session you will learn about utPLSQL and some of its capabilities. The session will cover some high-level aspects of test automation as well as continuous integration & DevOps for Oracle Database code.

Database Development Register button and back to top




Mesa de trabajo 119.jpg
THURSDAY, 
MAY 21







Automating Security Management in PBCS!


Thursday, May 21 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Artboard 2A.png Dayalan Punniyamoorthy, Vertical Edge Consulting Group

As implementation times for PBCS projects shrink, every solution needs to be faster, smarter, and more robust. In this session, we will learn how to leverage multiple tools to mass update the security in PBCS for standard dimensions, custom dimensions, and forms & business rules—greatly increasing the efficiency of creating and implementing a standard security model while also providing tools to help maintain it going forward.
The session will cover the following:

  • Introduction to security in EPM Cloud Planning
  • What are the artifacts/granular level that can have security in PBCS?
  • What are the best practices for addressing security?
  • How can you mass update security using EPM Automate, REST API, Groovy, LCM, etc.?


Free Form Planning 101: How to Build Essbase Cubes in Free Form Planning


Thursday, May 21 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Joe Aultman and Tracy McMullen, interRel Consulting

Ever wanted to build an Essbase cube in the EPM Cloud? Introducing one of EPM Cloud's newest features—Free Form Planning, which allows you to build cubes similar to native Essbase cubes with no planning restrictions. You read that right: no planning restrictions. We'll show you how you can take an on-premises Essbase .otl file and create a cube in the cloud. In this ever-changing world of Oracle EPM and Analytics, Essbase cubes in Free Form Planning provide a SaaS alternative for Essbase solutions. Don't miss learning how you can take advantage of this cool new feature.



Take Groovy to Places You Never Thought Were Possible—Mind-Blowing Functionality

Thursday, May 21 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Kyle GoodfriendThe Hackett Group

I have talked about what Groovy can do and what it takes to implement. This year, I have been pushed to the limit replicating functionality in other systems within EPM Cloud Planning. It has pushed the possibilities of the product even further with things we never thought possible—things often requested but never delivered.
This session will demonstrate mind-blowing functionality and speed which until now has only been dreamt about. Kyle Goodfriend, one of the leaders in adopting Groovy, will demonstrate true what-if scenario modeling. This will allow you to enter data at any level and see results at aggregated levels with the ability to cancel your changes at any time, or commit them at a later date, without impacting any of the data. He will show you how to eliminate the black box by showing users the formulas of every member, including the values of every part of the equation. He will show you how to multi-thread calculations to maximize performance. Kyle will also discuss improving communications with emailing statuses to the user who submitted the process and notifying the users when a user-initiated calculation fails.
Attendees will have the chance to see this functionality work in real-world type applications modeled after one of the largest electronics stores in the world. They will also be introduced to the process flow and will walk away with example calculations with which to implement this.



Essbase Currency Conversion – Show Me the Money!


Thursday, May 21 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
George Cooper, Gap and Bill Reddy, Promethean Analytics

Currency conversion in Essbase applications can be a challenge, and seemingly with no good solution.  It’s the classic battle between reporting and calculation performance – dynamic calculations can be slow, but storing the converted amounts can drag down the calc scripts and dramatically increase database size.  In this presentation will demonstrate the many ways a large retailer tackled the problem, including the advantages of a separate Currency dimension and no less than five different ways of doing the calculations, ranging from storing everything, completely dynamic and everything in-between - even in v11.1.2.4 Hybrid.  We’ll also touch on leveraging new features in Essbase 19c, such as Federated Partitions.  But beware – some of the techniques are really outside-of-the-box!



Essbase Calculations: Elements of Style


Thursday, May 21 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Ron Moore, Alithya

So, you can write basic calculations or maybe even intermediate. Nearly every Essbase and Planning applications requires calculations. The better you are at calculations, the more business value your applications deliver. But what makes the difference between good enough and great? What makes your code more reliable, faster, and easier to understand and debug? What techniques can you use to think through challenges and come up with solutions? This session offers some time-tested approaches to writing better calc scripts. Topics include:

  • Getting the requirements straight, thoroughly but without wasting time
  • Taking advantage of dimensionality and block structure
  • Variables and parameterization
  • One script or two?
  • What needs to be commented?
  • Alternative approaches to some common challenges

This session is intended for Essbase BSO developers who want to think about what “better code” means and how to write it. It requires at least some knowledge of Essbase BSO calculations.



Introduction to Essbase MDX for Reporting


Thursday, May 21 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Tim Tow, Applied OLAP

Have you ever had to add multiple Essbase members together in a report just to get the total you need?  Or have you ever had a request for a report that needs very specific, even 'cherry-picked' members?  How much time and effort have you spent on these types of tasks and what if there were a way to make these tasks easier?  There is an easier way using Essbase MDX.  Attend this session to learn the basics of Essbase MDX including MDX syntax, basic functions, and how you create and run MDX reports in various Essbase tools.  The session, which was an award-winning presentation at Kscope19, will also expose you to the wide array of functions available in MDX and some real world examples of significant time savings companies have experienced using MDX including how one company reduced on repetitive, daily close task from 40 minutes to 10 seconds using MDX.






Taking Off to Flying Solo: Tracing Wright Medical’s Flight Plan into the Cloud


Thursday, May 21 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Kim Province, Wright Medical and
Artboard 2AA.png Nick Boronski, Alithya

After the first successful cloud project, many clients are tempted to sit back and relax. But for Wright Medical, “go-live” was just the beginning. In 2018, Wright took the first step with their Account Reconciliation implementation for the US business units. The following year they elevated their Planning and Master Data Management business processes to the cloud. Their journey culminated in a partnerless global rollout of Account Reconciliation—now that’s “flying solo”! Join us as we trace the plan that led to Wright’s successful takeoff into the cloud. We will discuss how they capitalized on the initial implementation investment with Alithya, launched best practices on an international scale, and continued their cloud evolution.



Think Outside the Close: Profitability & Costing Reconciliations in EPM Cloud Account Reconciliation

Thursday, May 21 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Nick Boronski, Alithya and Andrew Laferla, Alithya

Let me tell you a story. The characters? Spreadsheets, shared drives, emails, and auditors. The conflict? A process in shambles—siloed data in disagreement. The conclusion? The implementation of EPM Cloud Account Reconciliation to save the day!
But here’s the secret:  this isn’t just a Financial Close narrative. It’s a common tale across all domains—but can we give them the same fairytale ending? Using Profitability & Costing as a launching pad, explore what it looks like to move other financial processes towards being trustworthy and compliant, not just actuals data. Join us as we look at how EPM Cloud Account Reconciliation can move “outside the close.”


 

Equity Pickups in HFM and FCC

Thursday, May 21 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Julien Coudrette, Grant Thornton, LLP

Equity pickup is a consolidation technique that reevaluates the investments owned by a holding company. Oracle recently released an equity pickup module in EPM Cloud Financial Consolidation and Close. This session will explore this special consolidation rule, and explain how it can be configured in HFM and FCC. In both cases, the entity hierarchy needs to be configured in a specific way and the system controls the order in which consolidations occur. We will also discuss the special case of two clients who had to structure their entity hierarchy differently but were able to use workarounds to make their equity pickups work.



Replacing HFM Functions and Calcs in FCC


Thursday, May 21 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Eric Erikson, PQR Company

For those migrating from HFM to FCC, rewriting all of the calculations can seem daunting. Some functions, like HS.Period.Number have no equivalent. The FCC equivalent of P#CUR-1 does not wrap to the prior year in the same way as HFM. This presentation will show common HFM calculations and functions while walking you through how to replace them with FCC member formulas. Syntax and functions, both of which can also be used in insertion rules, are reviewed. This presentation is suitable for attendees either migrating from HFM to FCC or implementing FCC without an HFM migration.



You Don't Have to be a "Task Master" with Task Manager for the Close Process


Thursday, May 21 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Kelliann Hoelscher, Peloton Consulting Group

Those who work in a financial department of an organization know the long, arduous, and very time sensitive nature of the close process.  The process can leave participants frustrated and the coordinator of the close feeling like a "task master".  Task Manager, included as part of the Oracle EPM Suite, can make the close process smoother, faster, and provide improved visibility and ease communication.  This presentation will provide an overview of what Task Manager can do, how easy it is to set up and maintain, how it can be used with or without implementing the Financial Close and Consolidation, and explain options for direct integration with Oracle Consolidation and Close and Oracle Financials Cloud functions.



Google Translate: An FCC Admin's Guide to Fluent Essbase


Thursday, May 21 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Tracy McMullen and Terrance Walker, interRel Consulting

Are you new to FCC Cloud or an HFM admin? How knowledgeable or "fluent" are you in Essbase? EPM Cloud Financial Consolidation and Close is built on Essbase, so in order to design, implement, and support the Financial Close process, you will need a firm grasp on Essbase. Join us for this important session to become fully versed in things like "hybrid", "dense/sparse", "dynamic calc", "fix/endfix", attributes vs. alternate hierarchies, and more. This session is led by an Essbase expert and Oracle ACE Alumni who speaks fluent Essbase. They’re paired with a Consolidation subject matter expert who speaks your Consolidation and Close language. Together these gurus will transform you into an Essbase expert.

 






How to Configure the OCI Web Application Firewall for APEX


Thursday, May 21 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Simon HuntAPEX Test Automation

The Oracle Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) can help protect your APEX applications from cyberattack. The session will demonstrate how to configure the OCI WAF for an APEX application on Autonomous Database and explain which rulesets can be used to detect common attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and denial of service. We will also look at the costs of the service and potential impact of not properly protecting your data.



The Ultimate Guide to APEX Plugins


Thursday, May 21 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Stefan Dobre, FOEX GmbH

If you wish to go beyond the built-in capabilities of APEX but still want to work in a modular and maintainable manner, plugins are the way to go. This talk will discuss the basic concepts of a plugin's inner workings, the different types, the necessary boilerplate code needed to get you up and running when creating a new plugin, security best practices, and general tips and tricks. We will also take a look at other aspects of plugin development, such as making use of third-party tools, dealing with source control, finding the best resources, and how to benefit from and contribute to the vibrant open-source plugin community.



Bring the Light in Your Always FREE Autonomous Cloud


Thursday, May 21 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Dimitri Gielis, APEX R&D

At Oracle Open World 2019, the always FREE Autonomous Cloud was announced. Shortly after that, I did a popular series of blog posts (https://dgielis.blogspot.com/2019/09/best-and-cheapest-oracle-apex-hosting.html). This presentation will build further on the series, where the blog posts show more how to set up. In this presentation I want to give tips and tricks while using the cloud.

I’ll cover how to set up redirects to your applications, how to do database and APEX backups in the cloud, how to measure performance and up-time, and how to move your apps from and to the cloud. I hope that after this presentation attendees have all the info they need to be successful in running their applications in the always FREE Autonomous Cloud.



Where It All Comes Together: Secured Payments with APEX


Thursday, May 21 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Artboard 2A.pngAlan Arentsen, Arentsen Database Consultancy

Every Oracle release means new features are introduced, but how do you know when to use them? In this presentation we are not diving deep into one specific feature, but make we’ll use of a few to implement a payment interface with Oracle APEX. You will see everything you need to know to build an interface, and I will also share the difficulties you’ll encounter during the process. So, if you want to know more about a real-life use case for authentication, REST communication, JSON in the database, and Webhooks, this presentation will certainly please you. I will use Mollie as a payment provider.



Dynamic Actions, the Hard Parts


Thursday, May 21 |
 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Dan McGhan, Oracle Corporation

The dynamic action framework can make it easy to add dynamic behavior to your APEX applications without writing any JavaScript. But there are parts of the framework that aren’t so straightforward. JavaScript hooks, complex event bindings, debugging AJAX, and more—some might call these the hard parts of dynamic actions.

In this session, attendees will skip the introduction to dynamic actions and dive right into the hard parts. By the end, folks will leave with some new tools in their toolbelts which will help them take the dynamic action framework further than they thought was possible.



APEX Security Checklist


Thursday, May 21 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Scott Spendolini, Viscosity

Security is more important than ever before. Whether you like it or not, as an APEX developer, the security of your APEX applications falls squarely on your shoulders. From access control to encryption, it has never been more critical to be educated on to how to build secure applications starting on day one. This session takes a deep dive and relates the OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities list to Oracle APEX. It will not only cover what to be aware of but will also provide demonstrations of potential exploits and how to mitigate the most common threats. Participants will be able to take away actionable items to apply in their own environments by the conclusion of this session.






Oracle Analytics Symposium


Thursday, May 21 | 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Mike Durran, Gabby Rubin, Philippe Lions and Pravin Janardanam, Oracle Corporation

Join the Oracle Product Management Team as they discuss all things Analytics



Solutions for Bi-Directional Integration Between Oracle RDBMS and Apache Kafka


Thursday, May 21 | 2:15 - 3:00 p.m.
Markus Bente, Trivadis AG

A Kafka cluster stores streams of records (messages) in categories called topics. It is the architectural backbone for integrating streaming data with a data lake, microservices, and stream processing. Today’s enterprises have their core systems often implemented on top of relational databases such as the Oracle RDBMS. Implementing a new solution supporting the digital strategy using Kafka and the ecosystem cannot always be done completely separately from the traditional legacy solutions. Often streaming data has to be enriched with state data which is held in an RDBMS of a legacy application. It’s important to cache this data in the stream processing solution so that it can be efficiently joined to the data stream. But how do we make sure that the cache is kept up to date if the source data changes? We can either poll for changes from Kafka using Kafka Connect or let the RDBMS push the data changes to Kafka. But what about writing data back to the legacy application (i.e., an anomaly is detected inside the stream processing solution which should trigger an action inside the legacy application). Using Kafka Connect we can write to a database table or view, which could trigger the action. But this not always the best option. If you have an Oracle RDBMS, there are many other ways to integrate the database with Kafka, such as Advanced Queueing (message broker in the database), CDC through Golden Gate or Debezium, Oracle REST Database Service (ORDS), and more. In this session, we present various blueprints for integrating an Oracle RDBMS with Apache Kafka in both directions and discuss how these blueprints can be implemented using the products mentioned before.



Follow Me with Data from Marvel and DC


Thursday, May 21 | 3:15 - 4:00 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Gary Adashek, General Electric

Going beyond the installation, learn the basics and see for yourself how easy it is to use!



From Data to Story in 30 Minutes or Less


Thursday, May 21 | 4:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Wayne Van Sluys, interRel Consulting

Data Visualization is more than fancy charts and graphs. The end result should provide insight, tell a story, and drive the viewer to take action. This session will be a live demo showcasing the three components of OAC DV—prepare, explore, and narrate. The audience will also see how story can be used to help create message retention and inspire action.






Mesa de trabajo 119.jpg
FRIDAY, 
MAY 22







Sherwin-Williams On-Prem Journey to the Cloud Continued


Friday, May 22 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Beth Archacki and Ramprakash Sundararajan, Sherwin-Williams

Sherwin-Williams will take you through their on-prem transformation while giving you the details about what is actually working in the cloud and what is not. They will also walk you through their journey of choosing between HFM and FCCS. Find out what they decided and why, and learn about what roadblocks they have run into and what work arounds they have created.



Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun: EPM Cloud and OAC Together at PEMCO


Friday, May 22 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Jessica Marie Delgado, PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company and Josephine Manzano-Stettler, interRel Consulting

Join us for this case study on how PEMCO implemented Planning Cloud and OAC together for a best practice solution. Learn how we use the powerful planning and forecasting solutions with Planning Cloud along with reporting cubes in Essbase and easy-to-use Oracle Analytics Cloud data visualizations and dashboarding. Join us for this session where we will share with you the “why” of why we use both Planning Cloud and OAC, the “when” of when and at what stage of the implementation process it makes sense to combine, and the “how” of how to actually integrate data between the two solutions.  We’ll also share how we migrated from on-premises to this solution over multiple phases. This session has all of the flavor of Doublemint Gum, and you don’t want to miss it!



Leading the people who manage EPM


Friday, May 22 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Roger Cressey, Qubix, David Dickerson, Diversey, Jessica Delgado, Pemco, John Ceynar, Halliburton and Lisa Ponché, Trane Technologies

Roger Cressey will be hosting a discussion with real life practitioners, who are responsible for Company Financial Systems areas. The systems encompass EPM, with all of the associated technologies for integration and reporting. However, we will not be discussing technology so much as how to attract, retain and grow EPM teams. We will also explore how we can effectively achieve daily operations as well as development in a way which provides quality and efficiency. This will be discussed by folk with "real life" experience and not just theories.



Moment of Truth: Should You Stay (On-Premises) or Should You Go (to Oracle’s EPM Cloud)?


Friday, May 22 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Opal Alapat, interRel Consulting

On-premises Oracle Hyperion customers are facing an important critical decision: should you migrate to Oracle’s EPM and BI Cloud or continue on-premises by upgrading to Release 11.2? What is the impact and what are the pros and cons of each? What key questions should be asked to prepare for either journey? How will this decision impact product integration, performance, and long-term application viability? Why are so many customers moving to the cloud? Come to this session to learn more about which questions are the most critical to ask; how to quantify the ROI for your business; how this decision will impact key stakeholders, end users, and application administrators; and how to take the right next step for you. Customer case studies are provided.



EPM Wars: The Final Migration


Friday, May 22 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Tom Hood, SC&H and Prasad Kulkarni, Oracle Corporation

In this session, we will focus on how a fortune 500 hospitality company transformed its financial close process, supporting more than 3,000 users around the world; increased its forecast and budget accuracy; and decreased its financial close time. Specifically, this presentation will dive deep into the business processes and methodologies that have made the hybrid deployment a success, as well as the advantages of embracing a hybrid EPM solution landscape. This presentation includes a clear look at the change management strategy and day-to-day processes involved with managing everything hybrid—from application enhancements to synchronizing metadata across applications. Additionally, this session will focus heavily on this enterprise’s cloud migration roadmap. This will include key design decisions and a detailed discussion around using Groovy, multiple cloud pods, the Oracle EPM Integration Agent, and other new technologies to make this future ground to cloud migration successful. Join us to gain an in-depth perspective on how large-scale hybrid deployments can be successfully managed and what the prospect of going full cloud looks like.



The Changing Landscape of EPM

Friday, May 22 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Moderator: Natalie Delemar, PWC
Panelists: John Booth, Spaulding Ridge, Cameron Lackpour, Mindstream Analytics and Patrick Cronan, American Partners

In this panel discussion, industry and consulting experts explore product and employment trends in the wonderful world of EPM. Impacts of cloud, automation, acquisitions and new entrants into the market will be discussed and its effect on you as an EPM technologist.






Lightning Fast Essbase MDX Queries with XMLA (XML for Analysis)


Friday, May 22 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Yves Perrot and Anne Vicente, cubus

XMLA relies on industry standards and provides a very effective way to query programmatically both dimensions and data of an Essbase cube using MDX, without the need to install any client layer and regardless of the Essbase version. XMLA can be also amazingly fast while running incredibly complex MDX queries on large Essbase cubes with large dimensions.
It is the technology of choice for seamless Essbase integration into the outside Essbase world. Some documentation does exist, but the “how to” is very undocumented. This is the reason you should attend this session. Our presentation will guide you through all the steps to get it to work, including important tricks.
You will discover how it is used by LVMH Fragrance Brands to build mission critical and highly customized applications with very complex data entry screens built in real time according to the context. The first application has now been live for 24 months and was followed shortly by two additional applications. XMLA revealed itself to be very reliable, and absolutely no issues have been reported since the go live.
The target audience is more Essbase developers, Essbase architects, and consultants, but half of the session time will be dedicated to a demo of running examples, allowing end users to understand the business value of the underlying technology.
Data entry screens with a layout such as “all the leaf members of the P&L having actuals at the exception of salaries added to a couple of budget dedicated account, added to the first three generations out of a nine levels unbalanced account hierarchy, presented as a hierarchy, with the subtotals below” are made easy to build and fast.
XMLA combines the agility of MDX with the power of the Essbase engine.



Interstellar - The Thomas Jefferson Enterprise EPM Cloud Journey

Friday, May 22 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AA.png Vatsal Gaonkar, Alithya Ranzal and Michael Cain, Thomas Jefferson

It’s a story of an interstellar journey where Thomas Jefferson (TJ) unravels the capabilities of Oracle EPM Cloud to benefit their cloud digital transformation across its academic and clinical pillars. TJ has six entities which were on separate platforms ranging from on-premises Oracle EPM systems to elaborate MS Excel models. This made it difficult to execute enterprise-wide planning and performance reporting standards. Planning scenarios for what-ifs, enterprise initiatives, and allocations were not swift nor robust across all businesses. Oracle EPM Cloud has provided a uniform platform with entity, business unit, and department level scalable capabilities, resulting in a robust and repeatable Enterprise Planning and Reporting process.



Seeing Is Believing: Oracle Profitability and Cost Management in Action

Friday, May 22 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.

Kylie Moyer, Peloton Group

Join us for a hands-on learning opportunity. Is your number one customer truly your best customer? Are your top products really your most profitable? Do you feel like your allocations are as predictable as rolling dice? Oracle’s EPM Cloud Profitability and Cost Management (PCM) provides the ability to perform expense and profit analysis through an easy-to-use technical solution that bridges these specific functional gaps. Explore the benefits and understand the obstacles to using PCM by seeing the tool in action!



Migrating from Hyperion Planning to Planning Cloud at PEMCO: All the Steps A-Z

Friday, May 22 | 2:00 -2:45 p.m.
Jessica Marie Delgado, PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company and Josephine Manzano-Stettler, interRel Consulting

In this session, PEMCO will share their implementation story of migrating from on-premises Hyperion Planning to Planning Cloud. We’ll discuss key design decisions, including how we decided to use the prebuilt modules for Financials and Workforce while layering in our own requirements. We’ll share lessons learned (you do NOT want to make this mistake!). But most importantly, in a detailed implementation list from A-Z, we’ll review the steps to take your existing applications to the Planning Cloud; we promise you’ll leave with an actionable list of to dos to apply in your environment.



IT Project Planning Transformation at Homesite Insurance

Friday, May 22 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.
Kelley O'Brion, Homesite Insurance and Suzy Gallivan, Peloton Group

Are you interested in learning how one of the insurance industry’s fastest growing companies is leveraging Oracle Planning Cloud to drive organizational change? Homesite Insurance has transformed its internal IT planning process by establishing project-based budgeting, which enhances visibility into project costs, resource utilization, and hiring needs. In this session, attendees will learn how Homesite is using the Planning Project, Workforce, and Capital framework’s out-of-the-box functionality to establish a project-based planning process. This solution marries resourcing needs for both core portfolio projects and existing “lights-on” support tasks. Using the efficiencies of Hybrid BSO functionality, this approach provides a scalable design within a tool that has served as a catalyst for the project-based planning transformation.



Advanced Calculations for PBCS, Planning, and Essbase


Friday, May 22 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Jake Turrell, Turrell Consulting

Whether you're writing calc scripts or business rules, the process, syntax, and techniques are largely the same. This session will cover advanced calculation techniques, including block mode vs. cell mode, bottom-up vs. top-down, string functions, and functions that leverage regular expressions. If you've ever wondered what you can and can't do on the left side of an equation, this is the session for you!





 

Oracle SQL Developer is for DBAs, Too!

Friday, May 22 |
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Jeff Smith, Oracle Corporation

SQL Developer isn’t just for debugging PL/SQL, creating tables, and tuning your problematic SQL. It also has a robust database management feature suite. SQL Developer’s product manager will take you through how to manage your pluggable databases, security, performance, storage, and more – all with just a few clicks in your favorite query tool for Oracle Database.



Automate Database Deployments with SQLcl


Friday, May 22 | 12:15 - 1:00 p.m.
Artboard 2A.png Robert Marz, Databee - The IT-Architects and Artboard 2A.png Sabine Heimsath, Databee - The IT-Architects

SQLcl offers many ways to simplify your DevOps life. Imagine writing automation scripts for your database in languages like JavaScript, Python, or Perl—to name just a few—without the hassle of driver libraries. Although SQLcl is almost 100% compatible with SQL*Plus, it adds a lot of new commands and features: native support for Liquibase and HashiCorp Vault, for example.
The most potent new keyword is "script." Script embeds the execution of SQL statements or SQL*Plus-commands from your favorite scripting language. Extend SQLcl by writing functions, use your favorite language’s objects, and control structures and parallelize multiple tasks.
But SQLcl has even more to offer. Powerful DevOps tools like Liquibase and HashiCorp Vault are seamlessly integrated. Within this entertaining session, the presenting expert demonstrates lots of real-life solutions. The agenda includes:
* Introduction to SQLcl
* DevOps tool integration: HashiCorp Vault
* DevOps tool integration: Liquibase
* Introducing the scripting API of SQLcl
* Speeding things up with GraalVM
The presentation includes impressive live demos. All scripts and examples are available for download so that you can start developing your automation process immediately.



JSON Support in Oracle Database—How Are Customers Using It and What's New?


Friday, May 22 | 1:15 - 2:00 p.m.
Beda Christoph Hammerschmidt, Oracle Corporation

Storing and processing JSON data in the Oracle Database is possible since release 12.1.0.2, and since then a lot of extensions and improvements have been made. Now, in version 20 there is a new dedicated type for JSON that uses a query and update-friendly binary representation. Learn from one of the core engineers from the Oracle JSON team about common customer use cases, best practices, and what's generally possible with JSON data in the Oracle Database.



One Less Thing for DBAs to Worry About: Automatic Indexing

Friday, May 22 | 2:15 - 3:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png James Czuprynski, Zero Defect Computing

You’re a busy Oracle DBA. Your phone rings. It’s your most troublesome user, once again complaining that her query is running slow. You take a quick look at the execution plan, find a possible choice for a new index to improve its performance, and drop it in place: problem solved. Or is it? Even an experienced DBA may not immediately realize the impact that new index will have on the performance of dozens of other queries and DML statements. Finally, there’s a better way; let the database decide.
This session will show how Automatic Index Creation (AIC)—one of the newest features of Oracle Database 19c—provides an intriguing alternative to reactive performance tuning methodologies for index creation. We’ll look at how AIC reacts to a heavy hybrid application workload and then holistically builds, tests, and implements the most appropriate secondary indexes needed to improve database performance.



What Every DBA Needs to Know About Oracle Application Express

Friday, May 22 | 3:15 - 4:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Francis Mignault, Insum

Once an enterprise starts using Oracle APEX, many applications are rapidly created to help manage the business. DBAs start asking questions about managing APEX and installing it in Oracle Databases: How can I properly back up and recover our APEX applications? How do I integrate an APEX installation with EBS? What are the different components required and supported for the middle tier? Those questions and many more will be answered in this session.



Creating Order in the Database Patching Chaos


Friday, May 22 | 4:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Liron Amitzi, GotoDBA

Have you ever found yourself staring at a list of patches and wondering what to do? What patch should you install? What are the risks? Is there anything you should do after the patch? This becomes even more stressful in a complex environment: How do you install patches on RAC? What about standby databases?
This session will try to put things in order and help create a roadmap for patching databases. We will discuss the different types of patches (RU, RUR, DBBP, PSU, OJVM, One-Off), installation types (RAC rolling patches, standby first patches), known issues and where to find them, and how to plan the patch installation in order to have as few surprises as possible.






Extensions in Oracle Applications Cloud (ERP & HCM)—What Can You Do?


Friday, May 22 | 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Debra Lilley, Accenture

This is SaaS so you can't change it? Or can you? Let's understand how it is put together and what that means you can and can’t do. If you can't do what you need inside SaaS, what are the outside options? And then how do you integrate these external extensions? There are lots of questions, but it’s easy to understand when someone explains it.



VB Crash Course—Building Blocks Explained

Friday, May 22 | 12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
Venkatesh Rangarajan Puliur, Oracle Corporation

Join us in this session to understand the nuts and bolts of Oracle’s cloud native, mobile, and web development experience using Visual Builder. With Visual Builder you can build scalable, distributed, web, and mobile applications by using just your browser. In this session we will take a quick look at various key features of Visual Builder such as the browser-based IDE, business objects, service connections to third-party rest end points, action chains, component catalog, and more. We will be using some of these building blocks to build a live app in the session and help connect the dots of how developers can use these features.



Low-Code Lowdown: APEX vs. Visual Builder—Which Is Best for You?


Friday, May 22 | 1:00 - 1:45 p.m.
Artboard 2AD.png Karen Cannell, TH Technology

Oracle now boasts two low-code development tools for building new applications or extending your cloud services: Application Express (APEX) and Visual Builder Cloud Service (Visual Builder). How do they measure up? Which is right for your organization? Do they work together? Which is best for which use cases? This session presents APEX and Visual Builder side by side, using a common application to illustrate the talking points. Learn essential information for making an informed decision on which to use—whether it’s one or both. Learn about key features for development, deployment, costs, learning curve, usability, and time to master. We will also discuss going beyond the low-code features—how each stands up to implementing complex requirements. For those who have not seen APEX or Visual Builder or who want to see the side-by-side comparison, here you go. Come learn which is the right cloud development tool for your business needs.



Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit(JET) for Complete Beginners


Friday, May 22 | 2:00 - 2:45 p.m.
JB Brock, Oracle Corporation

Oracle is moving to the cloud with a new application toolkit for modern user interfaces. Come learn why the JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET), and it's declarative development environment, Visual Builder, was developed and used by Oracle for their most recent application development projects as well as the foundation for the new Redwood Design System introduced at Oracle OpenWorld 2019.



Engaging Modern Applications on Top of ORDS Using Oracle Visual Builder


Venkatesh Rangarajan Puliur, Oracle Corporation
Friday, May 22 | 3:00 - 3:45 p.m.

With the move towards microservices and REST-based architecture, organizations are looking for cost-effective ways to expose data stored in Oracle Database as REST services. Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) makes it easy to develop modern REST interfaces for relational data in the Oracle Database.In this session, we will dive deeper into how we can use Oracle Visual Builder to rapidly build modern JavaScript-based user interfaces on top of these REST services. Oracle Visual Builder makes it really easy to consume REST services. Point to a swagger definition and Visual Builder will do the rest. We will be creating a few REST services and will rapidly build a web app which will consume this data to create a compelling modern application.



A Guide to Agile Development and DevOps in the Oracle Cloud


Friday, May 22 | 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
Shay Shmeltzer, Oracle Corporation

In this session, learn how to implement DevOps automation and leverage an Agile development methodology when creating software running on the Oracle Cloud. Learn how to manage and track development sprints and a backlog of issues, how to manage code versioning across multiple developers, and how to automate continuous integration/continuous delivery pipelines.




speaker icon-01.png

SPEAKER BIOS

Listed Alphabetically




Alberto Rodriguez, General Electric

Alberto Rodriguez was born in 1969 in the small town of Hidalgo in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. He has a bachelor's degree in computer science engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. 

Alberto started working as comercial applications developer for a cigarrettes manufacturing company back in 1991. Then, in 1998, he became project leader for the financial consolidations and budgeting applications development. This is when his EPM endeavor started. Alberto led the implementation of Hyperion Enterprise and Hyperion Pillar, the predecessors of HFM and Planning. 

Now as part of the General Electric EPM Shared Services team, Alberto is the product manager of Dodeca and Smart View. In this role, Alberto has been working on the GE EPM Governance Framework to be implemented across all business units. Alberto has been participating as the architect of several EPM/Dodeca projects within GE. 

 

Astha Patni,

Astha Patni is a consultant in the consulting practice at Performance Architects. She has over seven years of experience in consulting and Oracle BI metadata and report development against different datasources for organizations in the health care, financials, and manufacturing domains. She has also worked in Oracle Analytics Cloud. Astha holds a bachelor's in information technology(IT) from Rajasthan Technical University in India.

 

 Becky Wagner, US-Analytics

Beck Wagner has spent more than 15 years in IT. She is Microsoft and Oracle Certified and specializes in full project lifecycle development, implementation, and integration. Becky is a proactive problem solver. She manages and motivates teams to increase productivity, and she is an advocate for knowledge sharing and giving back to the community. Becky is the Analytics Community lead for ODTUG, an Oracle user group, as well as an ODTUG Board director, blogger, presenter, and an Oracle ACE.

 

Beda Christoph Hammerschmidt, Oracle  Corporation

Beda Christoph Hammerschmidt joined the Oracle Database division as a software engineer in 2006 after doing a PhD on autonomous indexing of XML data. In 2013/2014 he initiated the project to support JSON in the Oracle Database and joined the standardization process of SQL/JSON with a small group from Oracle and IBM. This work later became part of the SQL 2016 standard. Since then Beda has implemented many JSON features himself.

He is still doing a lot of coding work on new JSON features but but also does a bit of outreach work, speaks at user group meetings and conferences, and works with DBAs and developers to get the most out of the Oracle Database.

 

Beth Archacki, Sherwin-Williams

Beth Archacki worked in accounting for 10 years before joining the EPM team as an IT manager. While working as an accountant she helped implement a worldwide ERP solution. Since Beth joined the EPM team, they have re-implemented their complete reporting system from legacy Hyperion Enterprise to EPM. She has implemented budget webforms for both sales budgets and admin budgets. She continues to grow the solution to expand beyond finance reporting projects by leveraging EPM solutions for projects such as project reporting and raw material forecasting.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Biju Thomas, Data Intensity

Biju Thomas is an Oracle ACE Director, an Oracle Certified Professional, and a certified Oracle Database SQL Expert. Biju has been developing and administering Oracle databases since 1993 and Oracle EBS since 2006. He is a frequent presenter at Oracle conferences and writes articles for Oracle technical journals. He has authored Oracle certification books published by Sybex since Oracle8i, including Oracle Database 12c OCA. Biju blogs at www.bijoos.com/oraclenotes and you can follow him on Twitter or Facebook for daily Oracle tidbits (#oratidbit).


Cameron Lackpour, MindStream Analytics

Cameron Lackpour first worked with OLAP technology in the dinosaur days of Comshare’s System W and saw the Essbase light in 1993. Since that life-altering event, Cameron has:

-Introduced what was then Arbor Software’s Essbase to Johnson & Johnson
-Independently consulted since 1996, with a brief foray into working for consulting companies
-Created solutions for customers using Oracle’s Essbase, Planning, and anything else that ties to those two products
-Actively posted on OTN’s and Network54’s Essbase board; sharing knowledge makes his day interesting
-Presented at multiple conferences, including Hyperion Solutions and, of course, ODTUG Kscope
-Been an Oracle ACE since November 2010 and an ACE Director as of August 2012
-Taught multiple formal classes and webinars
-Served on the ODTUG Hyperion SIG
-Authored and acted as editor-in-chief of the Developing Essbase Applications book series


Carsten Czarski, ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co KG

Carsten Czarski has worked for Oracle in Germany since 2001. Until March 2016, his role in the presales organization included consulting customers and partners in the adoption of Oracle database technology such as APEX, SQL, PLSQL, Oracle Text, and Spatial within applications. Since March 2016, Carsten has been a member of the Oracle Application Express Development Team focused on support for external data sources (Web Source Modules, REST Enabled SQL), data loading, and other topics. He is a frequent speaker at German and international conferences as well as a maintainer of the Oracle Application Express blog (blogs.oracle.com/apex).


Christian Montillaud, M, QUARTZ INSIGHT

As an engineer in computer science and in development, Christian Montillaud was very quickly captivated by the problems of performances and optimization of the technical architectures. He worked for Nat Systems as a developer and then as a software architect where he developed expertise on HP-UX and SUN Solaris. Subsequently, he joined the consulting teams of Business Objects (SAP now) as technical architect. He designed many WEBI BO architectures to accommodate several hundred concurrent users and sometimes thousands (Telecom) on servers type SUN E10K or AIX PowerP5.

Christian joined Hyperion France as a technical architect, infrastructure expert, and team leader. Just like at BO, he designed complex EPM architectures (all modules) for the biggest accounts of the French and European market (telecom, energy, banks, transport etc.) and for an international user coverage. He did a lot of auditing around the technical and application performance. Christian focused on the account of Hyperion and HP, the benchmarks of qualification, and validation of pre-S9 versions Essbase 64 bits HP-UX Itanium and worked on this in the laboratories of HP France.

Then, after the acquisition by Oracle, Christian joined a young company, Nell'Armonia (13 people) to create the Business Unit Architectures and Systems which included up to 20 consultants on EPM infrastructures when he left (and 120 consultants in the business). He then created Quartz Insight whose values are more than ever focused on expertise, human adventure, passion, and customer focus. They develop new solutions related to the performances of EPM solutions in the cloud or on-premises.

 

Artboard 2A.png Dayalan Punniyamoorthy, Vertical Edge Consulting Group

Dayalan Punniyamoorthy is an Oracle ACE and an experienced and skilled professional with excellent knowledge of Oracle Hyperion EPM suite of products. With 13 years of experience in Oracle/Hyperion EPM Suite (on-premises and cloud products) which includes Planning, Essbase, Hyperion Financial Management, EPM Cloud Planning, Oracle Analytics Business Process, and Smart View & Reporting modules. Dayalan has done multiple end-to-end implementations on Essbase and Planning on both on-premises and cloud services. He has completed multiple upgrades and migrations on on-premises as well as cloud services involving all components of the Oracle EPM suite of products. Dayalan has sound knowledge of the REST API integration with Groovy invoking Oracle EPM Cloud Planning & Oracle EPM Cloud Planning Modules. He also has sound knowledge on integrating Groovy with the Calculation Manager rules in Oracle EPM Cloud Planning. Dayalan is a speaker and active blogger, sharing ideas, knowledge, and thoughts on fixing/overcoming an issue in various Oracle community forums, conferences, and webinars.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Debra Lilley, Accenture

Debra Lilley is an associate director with Accenture. She is an Oracle ACE Director and Fusion Applications UX advocate. She is a volunteer and past president of UKOUG as well as the Apps18 lead. She also led the Product Development Committee of the IOUC, the user group team working with Oracle during the development of Fusion Applications. She has worked with Oracle Applications and technology since 1996.

As well as her own blog , she has also written articles for publication in Oracle Scene, Oracle, Oracle Profit, and Oracle One magazines, and shares her insight through presentations at user events worldwide.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Dimitri Gielis, APEX R&D

Dimitri Gielis is a director of APEX R&D, a company specializing in Oracle Application Express, and founder of APEX Office Print (AOP). Dimitri is a frequent presenter at all of the major Oracle conferences, an Oracle ACE Director, and has received several awards including Oracle APEX Developer of the Year.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Edward Roske, interRel Consulting

Oracle ACE Director, Edward Roske, is the co-founder/CEO of interRel Consulting and co-author of the bestselling series Look Smarter Than You Are with Hyperion. As he’s known for his dry wit and Oracle EPM/BI mastery, Oracle has sent Roske around the globe to evangelize Oracle EPM/BI in over 40 countries across six continents. Though he was the first person ever to get a perfect score on the Essbase certification exam, he is most proud of winning Speaker of the Year at the largest Oracle BI/EPM conference in the world. Follow him on Twitter at @ERoske or check out his free videos at http://epm.bi/videos">epm.bi/videos.

 

Elizabeth Garcia, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Elizabeth Garcia started using the Oracle Development Tool Suite at the University of New Mexico in 2003 as a student employee during the Banner by Ellucian Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation for the student module. Her role was to gather reporting requirements and convert all reports using Oracle SQL, PL/SQL, and Hyperion. After the student module was completed, the HR module was next. Elizabeth was hired as a staff member in 2006 for HR IT. Throughout the years, she worked with Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) for the ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) process of HR transaction data to the Operational Data Store (ODS) for reporting. She utilized Hyperion as a reporting tool, Oracle Reports, SQL Loader scripts for COTs applications, created PL/SQL packages for nightly scheduled jobs and reporting. She also created a full reporting tool for HR report data utilizing Oracle Application Express (APEX), which enables thousands of users to access reports based on their individual user permissions. In September 2017, Elizabeth left the university to pursue a career at Los Alamos National Laboratory, focusing on application development using APEX, PL/SQL, and data modeling.

Elizabeth is the current New Mexico Oracle User Group (NMOUG) president. She facilitates meetings and uses networking to schedule Oracle speakers. She attends the monthly Oracle leadership calls and works with other Oracle user groups to help enhance the member experience. Elizabeth also developed and maintains the website (http://nmoug.org) using APEX. She communicates frequently with members to keep them updated on the latest Oracle news.



Artboard 2A.png Eric Erikson, PQR Company

Eric Erikson, a CPA and Oracle ACE, is an independent consultant with the Oracle EPM consolidation products FCC and HFM. Eric worked at Hyperion for several years and as a practice lead for a large consulting firm for three years. Currently, he is an independent consultant assisting both customers and Oracle partners with consolidation implementations. Eric is also a course writer and instructor for 123EPM, an Oracle partner focused on training for the Oracle EPM products.

 

Artboard 2AA.png Erik van Roon, EvROCS

Erik van Roon is an Oracle developer and Ace Associate who has worked with Oracle technology since 1995, specializing in (but not limited to) SQL and PLSQL. Since 2009 he has been self-employed. His company is called EvROCS. Prior to starting his own company, he worked for several consulting companies in the Netherlands. He has worked on major projects for several clients in industries such as entertainment, banking, and energy, working with the “classic” Oracle tools Designer, Forms, Reports, and of course SQL and PLSQL. Erik has been the technical lead of multiple successful high-impact data migration projects, moving and transforming large amounts of data. Erik has had the pleasure of speaking at conferences like ODTUG Kscope, NLOUG Tech Experience in the Netherlands, the Polish conference by POUG, the Bulgarian one by BGOUG, and the ILOUG Tech Days in Israel. In 2015 Erik was nominated and selected to be a finalist in the SQL category of OTN Developers Choice Awards.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Francis Mignault, Insum

Francis Mignault has over 30 years of experience in IT and using Oracle databases. In 2002, he co-founded Insum Solutions, where he currently holds the role of chief technology officer. In 2004, he started using Oracle Application Express and hasn’t looked back since. He has presented at several conferences in the United States, Canada, and Europe, including Oracle OpenWorld, IOUG Collaborate, ODTUG APEXposed!, ODTUG Kscope, and APEX World. Francis is an Oracle ACE Director and the co-author of two books, Expert Oracle Application Express and Oracle Application Express Administration.

 

Artboard 2A.png Francisco Amores, inlumi

Francisco Amores is the EPM integration lead for inlumi, bringing to his role over eight years of experience as an EPM integration specialist, with a total of nine years in consulting services. Prior to inlumi, Francisco's responsibilities included EPM integration architect consulting, leading and implementing integration projects, facilitating project quality assurance, and delivering training for EPM integration tools (ODI, FDM, FDMEE). Client companies included Oracle, ING Insurance, Pirelli, and Sanofi Aventis. Francisco holds a degree in computer engineering from the University of Malaga and the University of Bedfordshire, with a degree in project management from the University of Malaga. Since October 2017, Francisco has been the domain lead for Master Data Management and EPM integration at inlumi group. He joined the ACE community in October 2015.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Francisco J Ponce, General Electric

Francisco Ponce works for the General Electric Company (GE) as a technical program manager. In his current role with corporate finance IT, Francisco leads the technology modernization of GE's intercompany systems. As part of this program, Francisco managed the development of a blockchain-based proof of concept to manage GE's intercompany transactions. Prior to this role, Francisco graduated from GE's Digital Technology Leadership Program where he held positions as product manager, data & analytics developer, and RPA developer in finance and supply chain. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franponce/ | Twitter: @franponce_n

 

Artboard 2A.png Gary Adashek, General Electric

Gary Adashek, an Oracle ACE ♠, works for the General Electric Company (GE). In his current role with GE Corporate, Gary is a senior financial systems leader. Prior to his roles at GE Corporate, Gary was with GE Healthcare as a member of the initial global Hyperion implementation team with a concentration focus in Essbase & Hyperion Planning. Gary has a breadth and depth of work experience throughout his more than 15-year career, occupying various IT/finance roles within financial institutions, consumer packaged good industries, and global conglomerates. Twitter: @gadashek Blog: https://wordpress.com/home/communicatewith.data.blog


Gemma A Wood, Cavanti Corporation

Gemma Wood has over 20 years of experience developing and leading Oracle software projects from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Gemma initially worked with Oracle E-Business Suite, although for the past nine years she’s focused exclusively on Oracle Application Express. Gemma is a former employee of Oracle and Enkitec/Accenture, and she is the co-founder of Cavanti.com, a software as a service company for animal practitioners.

 

George Cooper, Gap

George Cooper has had an extensive career in developing and managing management information systems. He is currently working for Gap as the primary Essbase architect. Prior to joining Gap, George worked for The Hackett Group as a business intelligence consultant and project manager. He has been working with Essbase since 1998 and managing MIS systems since the mid-80s.

 

Grace Peng, Los Angeles Unified School District

Grace Peng is an IT executive with specialized skills in enterprise information management and analytics. She is a dynamic information technology leader and certified project management professional with success in program/project management, problem solving, strategic planning, and operations support within and across matrix organizations. Adept at forming strong partnerships with all levels of staff and driving solutions on a broad range of business and technical issues, Grace is an effective communicator with experience in formulating strategic plans, roadmaps, procedures, and policies. Successful businesses are leveraging data to anticipate the future through predictive analysis, behavioral analysis, and actionable business intelligence. Grace assists organizations in developing a data and analytics strategy that aligns the solutions directly to business priorities, adhering to the following principles:

- Data drives value when it is transformed into business information that is used to make decisions.
- Data is more valuable when it's integrated.
- Business priorities drive the enabling and supporting technology capabilities.
- An underlying, planned architecture provides a foundation that can adapt to the immediate analytic requirements also enabling repeatable capabilities required to drive the business into the future.

Specialties:
-- Project management (PMP)
-- (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework (ITIL)
-- Database architect/database design
-- Integration analysis/architect
-- Systems engineering/requirements analyst
-- Software design/architect
-- Strategic planning & forecasting
-- Agile development & scrum master
-- Stakeholder & account management
-- BI predictive Analytics
-- Ability to bring great technical solutions to complex business problems
-- Proven cross-functional team building skills

 

Harsh Dave, AST Corporation

Harsh Dave is a principal consultant at AST Corporation. He started his EPM journey working with Planning and Essbase at the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts—he loved every minute of it! Since then, Harsh has been gobbling up as much information as he possibly can. He frequents EPM blogs, webinars, and events, as well as participates in online forums. Harsh always loves to chat about all things EPM!



Artboard 2AD.png Heli Helskyaho, Miracle Finland Oy

Heli Helskyaho is the CEO for Miracle Finland Oy. Heli has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Helsinki, and she specializes in databases. At the moment, she is working on her doctoral studies. She has been working in IT since 1990 and using Oracle products since 1993. She has been in several positions, but every role has always included database design.

Heli is an Oracle ACE Director, an Oracle Groundbreaker Ambassador, and a frequent speaker at many conferences. She is the author of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler for Database Design Mastery (Oracle Press 2015), co-author of Real World SQL and PL/SQL: Advice from the Experts (Oracle Press 2016), and one of the winners of Oracle Database Developer Choice Award, Devvy, in the database design category in 2015. In 2015, 2016, 2017, and again in 2018, Heli was listed as one of the top 100 influencers in the IT sector in Finland.

 

Artboard 2A.png Holger Friedrich, sumIT AG

Holger Friedrich serves as CEO and technical director of sumIT AG. sumIT is a Swiss-based consulting company that employs Oracle technology on-premises as well as Oracle and Snowflake in the cloud. It focuses on data warehousing and business intelligence. After obtaining a computer science degree and a doctoral degree in robotics, machine learning, and data mining, Holger worked for several years in industrial research before co-founding sumIT AG. He has more than a decade of experience on Oracle DWH and BI projects and has used the database and Oracle's BI and DI products in numerous projects since 1997. Holger is a regular speaker at Oracle conferences such as OpenWorld and ODTUG Kscope. He has long-term working relationships with Oracle development and product management in data integration and data warehousing. Furthermore, he is an Oracle ACE for BI and DWH, and he received Oracle's award for DBA of the year 2016 EMEA.

 

Artboard 2AA.png Jacek Gebal, Fidelity Investments Ireland

Jacek is the owner, maintainer, and co-author of utPLSQL v3. He has been a software developer since 1998 with primary expertise in the development of Oracle PL/SQL and SQL code. He is passionate about and obsessed with automation, software testing, and responsible software engineering. For over two years, Jacek was an active user and contributor to ruby-plsql and ruby-plsql-spec unit testing framework for PL/SQL. Jacek has been advocating for testing as part of database development lifecycle since 2011. He has experiences with several testing frameworks including ruby-plsql-spec, Cucumber, Fitness, utPLSQL v2 & v3, and others.

oraclethoughts.com
linkedin
github.com
utplsql.org
github.com/utPLQL

 

Jake Turrell, Turrell Consulting

Jake Turrell is an EPM solution architect and Oracle ACE Alumni with over 24 years of experience implementing enterprise performance management solutions. Jake’s technology career began in the early ‘90s as a financial systems intern at Dell in Austin, Texas, administering IMRS Micro Control (the DOS-based predecessor to Hyperion Enterprise). After working at Dell, Jake joined Ernst & Young’s Management Consulting practice, where he worked with a variety of technologies. He later returned to the Hyperion world and joined a boutique Hyperion consulting firm in Dallas, Texas.

Jake has spent the past 18 years implementing Oracle Planning/PBCS, Hyperion Planning, and Essbase solutions for a variety of clients across multiple industries. Certified in both Hyperion Planning and Essbase, Jake is currently a director with ODTUG and holds a BBA in management information systems from the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Artboard 2AD.png James S Czuprynski, Zero Defect Computing, Inc.

Jim Czuprynski has nearly four decades of professional experience in his career in information technology, serving diverse roles at several Fortune 1000 companies before becoming an Oracle DBA in 2001. He was awarded the status of Oracle ACE Director in March 2014 and is a sought-after public speaker on Oracle Database technology features, presenting often at Oracle OpenWorld, IOUG COLLABORATE, ODTUG Kscope, Oracle Development Community tours, and Oracle User Group conferences around the world.

Jim has authored over 150 articles focused on the facets of Oracle Database administration since 2003. He has also co-authored four books on Oracle database technology. Jim’s blog, Generally… It Depends at http://jimczuprynski.wordpress.com, contains his regular observations on all things Oracle and the state of the IT industry.

 

Jason Straub, Oracle Corporation

Jason Straub has been developing Oracle database-driven web applications for over 15 years. In 2000, he joined the Oracle development team that was working on the product which would eventually become Oracle Application Express. Jason continues to work as a developer on the Oracle Application Express development team, most recently focusing on the next version of the Oracle Database Cloud offering.

 

Artboard 2AA.png Jay Chapman, Sierra-Cedar, Inc.

Jay Chapman is a consultant with Sierra-Cedar and holds a bachelor's degree in Economics, a master's degree in organizational management, and is working on his doctorate in business. Jay has more than 15 years of client-side and consultant experience working with Hyperion, PeopleSoft, and Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management Cloud, which includes Planning, Narrative Reporting, and Oracle Analytics Cloud. He has presented on Planning, reporting and Oracle’s Narrative Reporting at several national conferences such as ODTUG Kscope and Collaborate as well as regional conferences. Jay is an Oracle Ace Associate and certified in both Hyperion Planning and EPM Cloud Narrative Reporting. Jay lives in Southern California with his wife, three children, three cats, two dogs, and a bearded dragon. In his spare time, Jay likes to blog on his page (www.functionallytechnical.blog), cook, and watch his USC Trojans dominate in college sports.

 

JB Brock, Oracle Corporation

John 'JB' Brock is an experienced speaker who has presented at JavaOne and many other developer events over the last two decades. With over 20 years of experience with internet technologies, scripting languages, and frameworks, JB brings a unique knowledge of developing web applications. He is the co-author of Java EE and HTML5 Enterprise Application Development and is a two-time JavaOne RockStar Award recipient. As the founding product manager for the Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit(JET), JB brings his energy and entertaining presentation skills to new areas of client-side HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript application development.

 

Jeff Smith, Oracle Corporation

Jeff Smith is a senior principal product manager in the database tools group at Oracle Corporation. He works on the team that brings you SQL Developer, SQL Developer Data Modeler, Oracle REST Data Services, Database Public Cloud offerings, and 11gR2 XE. Over the past decade, Jeff has presented online and in person at many of the top user group events around the world, including ODTUG.

 

Jessica Marie Delgado, PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company

Jessica Delgado is the director of financial planning & reporting at PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company. Jessica’s range of experience includes strategic financial planning & budgeting, financial analysis & modeling, corporate accounting & financial reporting, foundation accounting & reporting, investment reporting, and treasury management. Jessica is experienced in the management of finance transformation and technology implementation programs. Jessica has been at PEMCO for the last nine years. Prior to that, she worked at AT&T Wireless and Alaska Airlines. Jessica has an BBA in accounting from Seattle University in Seattle, Washington as well as a CPA certification.

 

Joe Aultman, interRel Consulting

Joe Aultman first went to Essbase Bootcamp in the year 2000(!) and discovered that Essbase is the coolest technology there is. After that, he grew as an Essbase developer, Planning administrator, Hyperion installer/upgrader/patcher, and designer, spending time at a major retailer, a major government services provider, and a major online advertising company. Lured by the siren song of consultancy in 2013, Joe now travels the country assessing EPM & BI implementations and advising large companies about what they ought to do.

Since 2009, Joe has spoken at multiple ODTUG Kscopes, MOUS, Connection Point, Rittman Mead BI Forum, many Hyperion/BI Road Shows, and smaller user group meetings on subjects such as cloud migration strategies, the role of Essbase in the enterprise, automation with Groovy & the Essbase Java API, new features in EPM, best practices, and optimization.

Winner: ODTUG Kscope16 Top Speaker: Essbase — "Torn Between Two Worlds: Is Essbase a Business or an IT Tool?"

Author: Chapter 9: "System Automation the Groovy Way" — Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professionals

 

John Snyders, Oracle Corporation

John Snyders is a consulting member of technical Staff on the Oracle Application Express development team. He joined the APEX team in 2012. Prior to that, John worked on the WebLogic Console. His focus area is JavaScript. He has developed many of the UI widgets, including menu, treeView, grid, iconList, splitter, and recordView, which are used throughout the APEX builder and various components. Key projects he has worked on include: Page Designer, Interactive Grid, new Popup LOV, and the developer toolbar. John also works on client-side APIs and infrastructure such as actions, model, clipboard, and various utilities.

 

Artboard 2A.png Jorge Rimblas, Insum

Jorge Rimblas has been implementing solutions with Oracle products since 1995. He started using APEX as version 1.6, when it was known as HTML DB. Since 2008, APEX is all he does. His areas of expertise include Oracle Application Express (APEX), web technologies, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Oracle Databases and products. He has deep industry knowledge of the automotive, pharmaceutical, food, logistics providers, financial services, and retail sectors, among others. As an instructor, he has taught APEX to dozens of people. In addition to his UI and theme work experience, Jorge is an Oracle ACE and an avid problem-solver who thrives on finding elegant and efficient solutions. He's a regular speaker at conferences such as OOW, RMOUG Training Days, and ODTUG Kscope. You can follow Jorge on Twitter @rimblas and via his blog rimblas.com/blog.


Artboard 2A.png Julien Coudrette, Grant Thornton, LLP

Julien Coudrette is a director with Grant Thornton's Business Application practice in San Francisco. He leads EPM projects, including consolidation and tax reporting. Prior to joining Grant Thornton, Julien worked with Nell'Armonia in France and MarketSphere in the US, both award-winning consulting firms.

Julien is an HFM, Planning, Essbase, and DRM certified expert; he has successfully implemented some of the most complex HTP projects. He has over 13 years of consulting experience with Oracle/Hyperion solutions, specializing in large projects with multiple applications that need to share a common model and communicate between each other and/or with the outside information system. He is currently leading Grant Thornton's transition to the cloud for the FCCS and TRCS products, and he served as the architect for some of the very first FCCS projects.

Product Experience: HFM, HTP, FCCS, TRCS, Essbase, Planning, FDMEE (and Classic), DRM, and ODI.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Karen Cannell, TH Technology

Karen Cannell is president of TH Technology, a consulting firm providing Oracle technology services. A mechanical engineer, she has analyzed, designed, developed, converted, upgraded, enhanced, and otherwise implemented database applications for over 30 years, concentrating on Oracle technologies. She has worked with Application Express since its beginnings and continues to leverage Oracle tools to build quality solutions in government, health care, and engineering industries. Karen is the ODTUG vice president; an Oracle ACE Director; editor emeritus of the ODTUG Technical Journal; an Oracle Developer's Choice finalist; an ODTUG Volunteer of the Year; and co-author of Expert Oracle Application Express, Agile Oracle Application Express, and Beginning Oracle Application Express 4.2. Karen is an active member of ODTUG and other local and regional user groups. She may be contacted at kcannell@thtechnology.com and @thtechnology.

 

Kelley O'Brion, Homesite Insurance

Kelley O'Brion is the head of strategic financial systems at Homesite Insurance in Boston, MA and is responsible for implementing and maintaining financial systems and process improvements across the organization. With experience in Hyperion Planning, PBCS, and EPM Cloud Planning, Kelley has well-developed skills and knowledge across financial system platforms which enable her to propose strategic roadmaps to design and develop innovative solutions for her customers. She has led and managed cross-functional, cross-operational, and global strategic initiatives through collaboration and effective communication with her partners. Through her collaborative nature, Kelley continues to drive towards bringing her customers the best solutions to meet their needs.

 

Kelliann Hoelscher, Peloton Consulting Group

Kelliann Hoelscher has over 20 years of experience with the Oracle EPM product set and has participated in more than 35 projects including retail, manufacturing, high tech, defense, financing, higher education, and hospitality. Prior to the last 16 years in consulting, she worked in various industries in international planning and budgeting, accounting, and as a systems administrator for Oracle EPM products.

 

Kevin Black, Alithya

Kevin is currently a product manager at Alithya. He is an experienced Oracle EPM professional, having been involved in this space since 2005—first as a client and then as a consultant, when he joined Edgewater Ranzal in 2014 (which later became Alithya). His current focus is Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM), master data, and data governance. He also has expertise in data relationship management (DRM) and data relationship governance (DRG), and is a certified DRM implementation specialist.

Prior to his EPM career, Kevin held various IT positions at technology companies including Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, and First Data Corporation. He regularly writes blog posts and contributes to Oracle EPM community forums. Having spent the majority of his career as a customer, Kevin strives to always bring the client perspective to his consulting engagements.

Professional web site: MDMArtisan.com

 

Artboard 2A.png Kyle Goodfriend, The Hackett Group Inc

Kyle Goodfriend has been working with Essbase since the late ‘90s, with a focus on supporting financial reporting, planning, and forecasting. Kyle earned a finance degree and has served as a financial manager, accountant, and college professor. Using technology to automate his repetitive functions and improve communications, Kyle has a unique perspective on technology.

As an accountant, Kyle taught himself a development language, engineered his first software solutions, and saved the company over 10 million dollars in credit card chargebacks within six months. That was the beginning of his interest in technology, which drives him today. Since he learned Essbase, Kyle has worked with many Hyperion products. He has designed or managed hundreds of forecasting, planning, and reporting environments. He has worked directly with or supported just about every conceivable industry in and outside of the US. Kyle also has a background with SQL Server, Visual Basic, .NET, Java, and many other tools, which enables him to be extremely efficient in designing and building solutions.

With more than two decades in the technology field and a strong background in accounting and financial management, Kyle has the unique ability to communicate effectively with both CEOs and junior technologists. He is skilled in designing and implementing systems, evaluating existing models, and improving existing environments. Kyle is often a speaker at local, regional, and national conferences. Along with supporting users on the Oracle forums, he is also responsible for www.In2Hyperion.com and its content. Kyle has also started online training for EPM Cloud Planning at discounted prices for ODTUG members.

 

Kylie Moyer, Peloton Group

Kylie plays an instrumental role at Peloton, working with clients on streamlining financial processes through the implementation of Oracle technology. She brings a structured problem-solving ability to her work to improve client performance through her timeliness, attention to detail, and strong technical aptitude. Kylie has developed a breadth of technical skills in on-premises and cloud service Oracle Products including Essbase, Planning, Profitability & Cost Management, and Smart View. Her most recent experience led a client through the implementation of a complex allocation process into Oracle’s EPM Cloud Profitability and Cost Management (PCM).

Prior to Peloton, Kylie led optimization projects in a variety of settings, including biochemistry research and corporate human resources. In these experiences, she managed, trained, and mentored teams from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of experience by partnering with specialized departments. Kylie leveraged her consulting aptitude and analytical skillset to identify, recommend, and assist in the implementation of best practices to optimize project execution.

Kylie has a bachelor of arts in mathematics, with an emphasis in logic, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is an Oracle EPM Cloud Profitability and Cost Management (PCM) implementation specialist, an Oracle EPM Cloud Planning (PBCS) specialist, and an Oracle EPM Cloud Planning Module implementation specialist.

 

Artboard 2A.png Lino Schildenfeld, Skillbuilders

Lino Schildenfeld in an APEX consultant with more than 14 years of experience. He’s consulted for APEX R&D, FAB.earth, and the Skillbuilders team, working with clients in Europe, the US, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand across all sectors. Lino is a blogger and an Oracle ACE. He is an ODTUG Leadership Program 2018 graduate, an ORCLAPEX-NZ meetup organizer, an AUSOUG APEX lead, and a webinar organizer. He’s spoken at ODTUG Kscope, APEX Alpe Adria, MakeIT, HrOUG, AUSOUG, and NZOUG, as well as on the Oracle Groundbreaker and OTN APAC Tour webinar (ODTUG, Skillbuilders, AUSOUG, and APAC tour).

 

Artboard 2A.png Liron Amitzi, GotoDBA

Liron Amitzi is an Oracle ACE and a senior Oracle DBA consultant with more than 20 years of experience. Over the years Liron has worked as a senior consultant with a large number of companies in various fields and has managed an Oracle Professional Services Team. He mainly specializes in high availability solutions, performance, backup and recovery, and other infrastructure and application database areas. Liron is the president of BCOUG (British Columbia Oracle User Group), and he is also a well-known instructor who lectures in Oracle courses, events, and forums.

 

Artboard 2A.png Mark Daynes, Beyond Systems Ltd

Mark Daynes's first experience of Oracle was back in the ‘80s building applications using very early versions of Oracle Forms at Staffordshire University. Upon graduating in 1990 with a First-Class BSc (Hons) in information systems, he joined Oracle UK's consultancy team, working on some of the first Oracle Applications implementations across the UK, eventually working for Oracle Local Government.

Up until 2006 Mark worked in a mainly technical/functional capacity across sectors such as corporate banking, utilities, and public sector, solely on projects underpinned by Oracle technology. In 2006 he became a founding director of Beyond Systems (www.wegobeyond.co.uk), where he has honed the company focus on enabling customers to achieve excellence with Oracle Analytics, especially Oracle Analytics Cloud, Oracle BI Applications, and Data Visualization sourced from Oracle Cloud ERP and Oracle E-Business. In 2014 Beyond was awarded Oracle UK and Ireland Business Analytics Partner of the Year.

Mark has presented in Seattle at ODTUG Kscope19, hosted the Beyond stand at OpenWorld in San Francisco and also presented at many UKOUG and joint Oracle/Beyond events, as well as contributing his perspectives on the technical/strategic business usages of Oracle to various magazines, the first on using Oracle Case Designer appearing in OCSIG magazine way back in 1995.

Mark is an Oracle Certified Professional, an Oracle ACE and also an Oracle Cloud Specialist and Cloud Customer Connect Gold Medal holder. Read Mark's tweets at @DataVizMark and his blog at DataVizMark.com. Outside of business, Mark is a keen musician and plays lead guitar in a cover band.

 

Markus Bente, Trivadis AG

Markus Bente is working as a senior consultant for Trivadis AG at the workspace Bern, with projects across the DACH region. He started in 2010 in the technology of Oracle database infrastructure, but over the years his focus shifted to data analytics platforms and open-source infrastructure. His expertise in this technology area ranges across architecture, security, and the setup of data analytics platforms—whether it be big data or fast data.

 

Megha Chopra, Genpact

Megha Chopra has a proven mixture of business intelligence and technical knowledge on consolidation, reporting tools, and Oracle EBS to successfully capture requirements from the business perspective and translate those into designs that are efficient, effective, and logical. Having rich industry/domain and techno functional experience helps her deliver solutions with aggressive timelines.

Megha has had exposure to the complete project lifecycle, including various areas such as development, administration, and support, which allows her to identify issues and resolve them quickly. Megha was a presenter at ODTUG Kscope19 and has presented webinars and an article for ODTUG on couple of topics. In her free time, she loves to play with her three-year-old daughter and go for walks.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Mia Urman, AuraPlayer

Mia Urman is an Oracle ACE and a world-class expert in Oracle Forms and ADF with over 18 years of experience presenting, supporting, training, and consulting Oracle products. In her seven years at Oracle Israel, Mia was both a senior support analyst and a product manager of Oracle Developer Suite, JDeveloper, and IAS technologies, as well as the lead trainer and pre-sale consultant for Oracle on the topics of Oracle Forms and ADF. She is the founder of Qesem Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that boasts an elite list of enterprise clients in the telecom, government, defense, and finance industries. Her high-profile client list includes MasterCard, Bank of Israel, Ministry of Agriculture, IBM, Israeli Ports Authority, Discount Bank, Nice, and Motorola. While providing support, architecture design, and project development services to Qesem Consulting customers, Mia became intimately familiar with some of the leading challenges facing Oracle Forms/ERP clients and co-founded AuraPlayer, a development house providing solutions in the mobile, SOA, integration, auditing, and monitoring fields. AuraPlayer creates web services from Oracle Forms business logic that can be exposed and run from mobile, cloud computing, or SOA systems.

Mia currently serves as AuraPlayer's CEO. She is a seasoned presenter on Oracle technologies and has presented at various conferences including Oracle OpenWorld, ODTUG Kscope, UKOUG, and IOUG Collaborate. She has been a keynote speaker at many local Oracle Technology Network Developer Day events as well as full-day training sessions for IOUG and Oracle Week. She is also the chair of the Israeli OUG for Oracle Forms and Reports.

 

Natalie Delemar, PWC

Natalie Delemar is a management consultant with PWC, serving the office of CFO through finance transformation specializing in EPM solutions. She has been working with Essbase since 1999 and Planning since 2007. Prior to becoming a consultant in 2010, she was an Essbase developer for AT&T (formerly BellSouth) and has held roles as Hyperion administrator and Hyperion systems manager at various companies. Natalie has been a volunteer with ODTUG since 2008, holding various roles such as Hyperion SIG secretary, EPM/BI content chair, and ODTUG Kscope Conference Chair. She recently completed a four-year tenure as president of ODTUG.

 

Artboard 2AA.png Nick Boronski, Alithya

Nicholas (Nick) Boronski is a self-proclaimed "home grown" consultant, as his entire career since completing his undergraduate in interpersonal communication & business/economics has been exploring, engaging, and delivering within the Oracle EPM suite. He is a pioneer regularly trusted with managing the implementation standards of newer products. Additionally, Nick regularly partners with Oracle's Product Management team to successfully support clients through all project phases, from sales to go-live, as well as actively provide feedback on product direction.

Nick brings a vibrant energy and enthusiasm to his work, balancing New England candidness with approachability. While he is a trusted adviser to multiple companies, Nick also regularly shares his expertise with the masses, producing both blog series and webinars on Oracle’s EPM Cloud Account Reconciliation (AR) and other solutions. He actively engages with the community through Oracle's Cloud Customer Connect forums, as well as through his social media outlets on LinkedIn and Twitter (@PocketAce_NB).

As someone who has gone through the process of moving from college graduate with no prior work experience to a recognized leader in his industry, Nick has developed a communication style that allows him to bridge the gap between diverse personalities and levels of expertise. His capability to navigate this terrain was recognized by his acceptance into the ODTUG Leadership Class—a program designed to guide and realize the potential in promising “movers-and-shakers”.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Niels de Bruijn, MT AG

Niels de Bruijn has been working for MT AG, a midsize vendor-independent IT-consultancy company based in Germany since 2003. Before that, he worked as a consultant for Oracle in the Netherlands for two years. Since its initial release in 2004, Niels has been using and actively promoting Oracle Application Express (APEX). Together with his team of APEX experts, he is responsible for all APEX projects done by the company. Niels shares his knowledge through the website apex.mt-ag.com and by speaking at conferences like DOAG Conference (Germany), DOAG APEX Connect (Germany), and ODTUG Kscope (US), amongst others.

As an active member of DOAG, he started the conference APEX Connect (apex.doag.org) which grew to a three-day conference covering APEX, PL/SQL, SQL, and JavaScript. His collaboration with the APEX team as well as his contributions for the APEX community led him to his designation as Oracle ACE Director in 2016 and the award “DOAG Ambassador Technology 2018”.

 

Noah Yao, Huron Consulting Group

Noah Yao is an associate in Huron Consulting Group’s Enterprise Solutions & Analytics practice, focusing on data governance strategy and implementation. He has experience with a variety of Oracle EPM tools, including Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud, data relationship management, data relationship governance, and cloud data management.

 

Artboard 2A.png Oliver Lemm, MT AG

Oliver Lemm has studied in Germany/Duisburg, earning his master’s degree in applied computer science. He has worked at MT AG in Germany with Oracle products since 2007, specializing in Oracle Application Express. Since 2012, he has been the competence leader of the Oracle Application Express team at MT AG. In 2018 he was promoted to the business unit leader of APEX inside MT AG.

Working at MT AG means being part of a team of 33 APEX consultants. Oliver is working as a team and project leader. Over the last ten years, he has made presentations at the DOAG conference, APEX World, ODTUG Kscope, and IT-Tage.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Opal Alapat, interRel Consulting

Opal Alapat is the Vision Team Practice director at interRel Consulting. She is also an Oracle ACE Director with 20 years of EPM and Analytics experience. She's proud to be an author/co-author of the first three books on Oracle EPM & Analytics Cloud: Look Smarter Than You Are with Oracle Planning & Budgeting CloudLook Smarter Than You Are with Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud , and Look Smarter Than You Are with Oracle Analytics Cloud Standard. As an Oracle ACE Director, she partners with the EPM and Analytics Oracle Product Management teams on a regular basis to give feedback and direction on cloud technologies. Opal is also very passionate about Oracle user groups. She has had multiple pivotal roles with ODTUG in the past, is on the organizing committee for her local Oracle user group the NTxHUG , and has been teaching both technical skills and soft skills at conferences for over 12 years. She currently blogs at: womaninepm.com.

 

Patrick Wolf, Oracle Austria GmbH

Patrick Wolf is working on the Application Express development team at Oracle Corporation. As an Oracle ACE employee, he is a frequent contributor to the Oracle APEX forum and is also running the blog http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com/. Patrick is Oracle Magazine’s 2007 winner of the Oracle APEX Developer of the Year award.

 

Peter John Nitschke, Pivot2 Solutions

Pete John Nitschke is a global leader in Oracle EPM and one of the core group of partners globally trusted by Oracle to be involved in their product development. He has led and delivered over 40 planning, reporting, and analytics projects globally utilizing the Oracle suite of applications. He has been a trusted EPM adviser to some of the largest companies in Australia who recognize the value of his expertise in strategy and transformation. Pete writes at essbasedownunder.com, contributing brevity and wit (and hopefully useful technical content!) to the wider EPM community.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Peter Raganitsch, FOEX GmbH

Peter Raganitsch is the co-CEO & co-founder of FOEX GmbH, an Austrian IT company focused on developing the FOEX plugin framework—a rapid application development tool meant to extend the current capabilities of the Oracle Application Express and simplify the way enterprise-grade web applications are being built.

With more than 20 year of experience using Oracle technologies, Peter is an Oracle ACE Director who shares his knowledge through articles, trainings, and webinars. He’s an active member on the Oracle APEX community, speaking at various conferences, such as ODTUG Kscope, DOAG, UKOUG, APEX Connect, APEX World, SIOUG, and HrOUG. He frequently writes about Oracle APEX on Twitter or on his blog at www.oracle-and-apex.com. Peter’s technical knowledge and expertise extend to areas including: Oracle APEX, PL/SQL, jQuery, ExtJS, AJAX, Oracle Forms, legacy systems migration, and mobile applications.

 

Artboard 2A.png Philipp Salvisberg, Trivadis

Philipp Salvisberg is a senior principal consultant, a partner at Trivadis, and an Oracle ACE. He has been focusing on Oracle database-based solutions since 1988—at that time with Oracle Database version 5. Since then, he has been helping customers design, build, and optimize their database-centric solutions, teaching application development topics or speaking at conferences.

Philipp has a soft spot for doing as much as possible in a single SQL statement and is interested in pretty much everything to use the database as efficiently as possible. He likes to design model-driven software solutions using domain-specific languages, while getting the most out of the underlying technologies.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Rich Niemiec, Viscosity North America

Rich Niemiec is the chief innovation officer at Viscosity North America (www.viscosityna.com). He is a world-renowned Oracle tuning expert. Rich is an Oracle ACE Director and was the CEO and a co-founder of TUSC, a Chicago-based systems integrator of Oracle-based business solutions started in 1988. Rich has served as an executive advisor to Rolta International Board of Directors, as president of Rolta TUSC, and president of Rolta EICT. TUSC was the Oracle Partner of the Year in 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010 (Rolta TUSC), & 2011 (Rolta).

Rich is a past president of the International Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and the current president of the Midwest Oracle Users Group (MOUG). He is one of six originally honored worldwide Oracle certified masters. In 2017, he authored Oracle12c Release 2 Performance Tuning Tips & Techniques, an update of his previous four Oracle best sellers on Oracle8i, Oracle9i, Oracle10g, and Oracle11g performance tuning. Oracle 12c R2 Performance Tuning Tips & Techniques came out in March 2017. In 2015, he authored Quick Start Guide to Oracle Query Tuning for DBAs & Developers. Rich was inducted into the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 1998. He is a graduate of Purdue University, with a degree in electrical engineering.

 

Artboard 2A.png Robert Marz, Databee - The IT-Architects

Robert Marz is an Oracle ACE and independent consultant. At customer sites, he works as a senior technical architect with a database-centric view of the world. Robert is co-founder and co-owner of Databee - The IT-Architects, a German-based professional services company. At DOAG (the German Oracle user group), he is in charge of the cloud topics inside the database community.

Robert is a member of ODTUG, IOUG, DOAG, and RMOUG. More than twenty-five years of experience in custom development and data warehouse projects has made him a specialist in Oracle database development and administration. Additionally, he is skilled in the fields of scripting languages, operating systems, virtualization, and cloud technologies. Robert Marz publishes articles and papers in various publications, maintains the its-people portfolio blog, and frequently speaks at mostly German conferences. Robert.Marz@databee.org @RobbieDatabee https://robbie.databee.org

 

Roger P.R. Cressey, Qubix

Roger P.R. Cressey is a global director for companies under the Qubix umbrella, which includes offices based in the United States, Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and Slovenia. He has been instrumental in the establishment and growth of the Qubix International companies. Roger continues to focus on developing Qubix’s relationships with customers globally and managing the growth of the Qubix brand as a whole. His current emphasis is establishing the Qubix brand in the US.

Roger has secured, planned, and overseen numerous projects, including the implementation of business analytic (EPM and BI) solutions at multiple companies in multiple business sectors, which range from banking and investment banks to consumer products, from construction to industrial products, and from film to airline companies. His skill sweet spot includes OAC (Essbase Cloud and BI Cloud), Planning, and associated modules. These applications have spanned management accounting, performance scorecards, funds under management, logistics, sales revenue, profitability, risk, and impairment, among other things. Roger maintains a strong relationship with Oracle and regularly delivers training at events across the globe. He frequently presents at conferences, giving presentations and participating in Q&A panels.

 

Ron Moore, Alithya

Ron Moore, a principal architect with Alithya, has more than 25 years of experience with Essbase, versions 3x through 11x, and an extensive background in finance and economics. Ron is certified in Essbase, Planning, and PBCS. He was one of the first Essbase certified consultants in the world. He founded Marketing Technologies Group, which specialized in Essbase and Planning training, consulting, and collaborative development. He has led many full-cycle projects, from gathering requirements and designing through implementation, training, and roll-out. He’s also received 19 Oracle University Quality Awards.

 

Artboard 2AD.png Scott Spendolini, Viscosity

Scott Spendolini is vice president of the APEX+ Practice of Viscosity, NA, where he manages a team of highly skilled Oracle APEX developers. He is also responsible for developing and delivering Oracle APEX-related curriculum, as well as managing the development of several APEX-based products.

Throughout his professional career, Spendolini has assisted various clients with their Oracle APEX development and training needs. He is a long-time and regular presenter at many Oracle-related conferences, including Oracle OpenWorld, ODTUG Kscope, and RMOUG. His presentation at ODTUG Kscope14—"APEX Security Primer”—was selected as one of the top presentations at the conference. He is a recipient of the Oracle ACE Director designation, author of Expert Oracle Application Express Security, and co-author of Pro Oracle Application Express. Spendolini is also an Oracle Certified Oracle Application Express developer.

Prior to reigniting and running Sumner Technologies from 2015 to 2018, Spendolini was an APEX Practice director at Accenture and Enkitec from June 2012 through April 2015. Before joining Enkitec as part of an acquisition, he co-founded and ran Sumneva and Sumner Technologies from 2005 through 2012, which focused on Oracle APEX services, education, and solutions. Spendolini started his professional career at Oracle Corporation, where he worked with Oracle eBusiness Suite for almost seven years and was a senior product manager for Oracle APEX for just over three years. He holds a dual bachelor's degree from Syracuse University in management information systems and telecommunications management and currently resides in Ashburn, Virginia with his wife and two children.

 

Senthil Kumaran, GE Corporate

Senthil Kumaran works for General Electric Company (GE) as a senior EPM solutions architect, implementing EPM solutions across GE Aviation, GE Renewables, GE Capital, and GE Power using technologies like Essbase, Dodeca, PBCS, and DRM. Senthil is an established technical leader with strong expertise in developing in-house products for forecasting, budgeting and planning. Prior to joining GE, Senthil worked at Chrysler Capital Finance for 10 years, where he developed Essbase and Planning applications.

 

Shakeeb Rahman, Oracle Corporation

Shakeeb Rahman is a software development manager at Oracle Corporation and leads design for Oracle Application Express. Shakeeb strives to empower APEX developers with the tools they need to build clean, beautiful, responsive applications. He regularly presents at industry conferences including Oracle OpenWorld and ODTUG Kscope. You can see what Shakeeb is up to by following @shakeeb on Twitter.

 

Shay Shmeltzer, Oracle Corporation

Shay Shmeltzer is a director of product management for Oracle Cloud Development Tools and Frameworks. His focus is on helping developers leverage Oracle's tools to simplify application development. Shay is a frequent presenter at industry events, publishes multiple articles, blogs at http://blogs.oracle.com/shay and is @JDevShay on twitter.

 

Artboard 2AA.png Simon Hunt, APEX Test Automation

In 2002, Simon Hunt spotted APEX as an emerging technology that could have great utility in the public sector. He then worked with senior consultants from Oracle to establish it as a development stream. Simon has now been developing Oracle APEX applications in UK Defence for over 15 years on various projects, holding two roles as a lead developer. During that time, Simon has been responsible for the development and support of over 30 production APEX applications ranging from small work group user bases to full enterprise systems with user communities in excess of 10,000 registered users. Defence has generally been slow to adopt Agile, and Simon has been at the forefront of implementing working practices that succeed both in a public sector organization and with a 4GL framework such as APEX.

Perhaps Simon’s greatest achievement was in submitting an idea to the Defence Chief Information Officer (DCIO) Symposium 15 Hackathon. The entry was a working prototype of a data visualization system that paid tribute to fallen soldiers from WWI to present day. Because of Simon's efforts, his team was deemed the overall winner, with Simon receiving an Army commendation for his outstanding achievement.

Simon is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and has successfully completed an MSc in information capability management at Cranfield University. For his final-year dissertation, Simon produced a thesis which examined the role of citizen development in Defence and how organizations can support citizen development through the use of innovation environments based on web technologies such as APEX.

Simon has been a member of the UK Reserve Forces for over 23 years and currently holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in a Specialist IT Unit, where he’s developed several APEX applications and trained other members of the unit in APEX.

 

Stefan Dobre, FOEX GmbH

Stefan Dobre is an enthusiastic APEX developer at FOEX and proud contributor to the APEX Open Source community. His main areas of interest are extending the functionality of APEX through plugins and custom JavaScript components. He has spoken about APEX at numerous international conferences such as AAAPEKS, APEX Connect, DOAG, UKOUG Techfest, and ODTUG Kscope, as well as other local meetups in Bucharest and Vienna.

 

BG-groundbreaker-ambassador-rgb ICON.png Stewart Bryson, Innive Inc.

Stewart Bryson is the chief technology officer of Innive, the CEO of Red Pill Analytics, an Innive Company, and has been a builder of data-driven applications since 1996. He is an Oracle Groundbreaker Ambassador, an Oracle ACE Director, an internationally recognized writer and speaker in the Oracle Community, and a past winner of the ODTUG Innovation award and Best Speaker award for Big Data & Data Warehousing.

 

Tim Tow, Applied OLAP, Inc.

Tim Tow is the founder and president of Applied OLAP and the visionary for the innovative Dodeca product. He has been working exclusively with Oracle Essbase since 1995, specializing in the Essbase Java API. An Oracle ACE Alumni, Tim blogs on Essbase topics and leads the development team for the Dodeca Spreadsheet Management System and the Dodeca Excel Add-In for Essbase. Tim was one of the first five Microsoft Excel MVPs in the world, he served on the ODTUG Board of Directors for seven years, is a patent holder, a published author on Excel and Essbase topics, and flies his own airplane on many business trips.

 

Tom Hood, SC&H

Tom Hood is a senior manager at SC&H Group with over eight years of experience implementing Oracle-Hyperion Solutions. Tom has played a key role in some of the largest Oracle PBCS deployments to date across a wide range of industries. His accounting background and deep technical expertise has enabled him to play unique roles on various projects over the years, ranging from EPM architect to designing and implementing complex integration strategies with Oracle’s EPM products. Tom has expertise with Oracle’s Planning/PBCS, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, FDMEE/Oracle Data Integrator, and Data Relationship Management.

 

Tracy McMullen, interRel Consulting

Tracy McMullen, co-author of the bestselling book series Look Smarter Than You Are, is an architect for interRel Consulting. She is a project management professional (PMP) and is certified in Planning, PCM, OAC Analytics Associate, Oracle Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Essbase, and Data Relationship Management. Tracy served as an Oracle ACE Director and has participated in many different Hyperion/Oracle-related user groups and conferences throughout her career. She has been leading implementations of EPM/BI and data warehousing systems for 20+ years.


Vatsal P Gaonkar, Alithya

Vatsal Gaonkar's capabilities and strengths are in the Oracle EPM space. He has delivered multiple on-premises and cloud environment projects across various industries, including management consulting, health care, manufacturing, hospitality, and consumer packaged goods. Vatsal's background is a mixture of management, finance, and technology skills. From a project's perspective, he has managed multi-product Hyperion projects for clients, fulfilling their business needs. Vatsal is well equipped with the finance, marketing, and technology skills required to design, build, and deliver EPM projects.

Vatsal’s work experience has spanned across continents. He has worked in India, Europe, and the United States. As part of his management training (MBA), he delivered a marketing project in Western Europe in 2004. As a trained electronics and communication engineer, Vatsal is well equipped to address the technical challenges of Hyperion projects.

 

Venkatesh Rangarajan Puliur, Oracle Corporation

Venkatesh (Venky) is a product manager in Oracle Developer Tools Group, focusing on the Visual Builder ecosystem. Prior to joining Oracle, Venky had been in the Oracle ecosystem for the previous 18 years, helping Oracle customers succeed with their Oracle investments.

 

Artboard 2AA.png Wayne Paffhausen, Alithya

Wayne Paffhausen is one of the world’s original team members from the Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM/FDMEE) product line before it was owned by Oracle, starting in 2005. His name is well known among the Oracle development/product management group, support community and customers, OTN/MOSC forums, and recently the Cloud Customer Connect portal. Complimenting his FDM/FDMEE expertise, Wayne is one of the valuable resources in the Oracle EPM community who is versed in a wide range of products, including certifications in HFM Fusion 11 and Oracle Database OCP 9i/10g. Once a native of Michigan, Wayne now resides outside of Atlanta, Georgia and holds a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications from Michigan State University.

 

Artboard 2A.png Wayne Van Sluys, interRel Consulting

Wayne D. Van Sluys is a lead consultant and Oracle ACE with over 20 years of professional experience developing and deploying business analytic solutions. Wayne has extensive consulting and industry experience using Oracle Analytics Cloud and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition in various projects across North America. Wayne has spoken as a primary presenter at numerous Oracle OpenWorlds and ODTUG Kscope Conferences on topics related to Analytics and Data Visualization. He has a master's degree in education and brings a training and development approach to his work with clients.

 

Yves PERROT, cubus

Yves Perrot is the founder and CEO at CORE Business Consulting, a partner of cubus in France for more than 15 years. CORE specializes in budgeting, planning, and reporting applications, with a strong focus on OLAP technologies. Yves is a specialist of business analytics with over 25 years of experience in designing, developing, and implementing made-to-measure enterprise-level applications around the globe and across various industries on top of Oracle Essbase, TM1 (IBM Planning Analytics), and Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS). Yves was an early adopter of Essbase and a pioneer in France with the first live project delivered in 1995. Since that time, Yves has continually improved his Essbase skills.