Extreme Querying Presentation

I gave a presentation to the Sydney Oracle meetup last week. It was primarily focussed on Oracle's Analytic functions, but also mentioned the MAX () KEEP DENSE_RANK functionality (which I was reminded about a few months back by a performance comparison here) and the ROLLUP part of GROUP BY. Morgan's Library has a good demonstration.

That's the tricky bit about presenting SQL stuff. You don't want slides full of queries that end up being too small to read, and no-one would remember them anyway. So you talk more about what they can and can't do (and a few gotchas). I'm not sure I got the ideal compromise, but I stick more details in the Notes part of the powerpoint presentations.

The presentation is available in the Files area of the Sydney Oracle Meetup website as both Powerpoint 2007 and a PDF of the Notes pages.  And on my slideshare account as a Powerpoint 2003 (the upload of the pptx failed for some obsure reason). And through the Presentations link on my homepage. Feel free to post critiques too.

In the end I rushed a bit and finished a bit earlier than I thought. I need to get some more presentation practice in. The company I work for used to do a couple of presentations a week internally, partly to spread knowledge but also a good way of gaining presentation experience. Unfortunately those stopped about a year back, and I'm waiting to see if the new boss (who came in a couple of months ago) shows any interest in putting them back on.

I'm on the committee for the Meetup and am on the lookout for meeting / presentation ideas. Feel free to add suggestions. I know most of you aren't in the Sydney area, but remember that I'll post any presentations I give publically, and I'm happy for anyone else to take the material (and build on it) for their own presentations (unless in a blatant commercially exploitative way). So let rip into any topics which you think could do with some presentation material.