Richard Foote

Personal information

Full name

Richard Foote

My blog

http://richardfoote.wordpress.com/

My bio

I’ve been working in the IT Industry for over 23 years, a thought that fills me with a combination of both pride and growing dread. I started out as a humble Cobol Programmer in the Australian Public Service and over the next 10 years worked in various IT roles. In 1997, I joined Oracle Corporation as a DBA specialist and technical trainer. In my first year with Oracle, I both learned and taught many of the common “myths” surrounding Oracle that were popular at the time. However, I eventually became suspicious that much of what I learned was actually not quite correct and spent the following years relearning many aspects of the Oracle database, reading more specifically and researching for myself how Oracle actually behaved. Thus began my search for the technical truth and my quest to expose and dispel the myths surrounding the Oracle database. During my time at Oracle, I became regarded as one of the leading DBA specialists and instructors in Australia, winning many internal awards. In 1999 I co-won (along with Marcel Kratochvil) the second best paper award at Australia's OpenWorld for our ground breaking "Good DBA Bad DBA" presentation, which uniquely combined a technical presentation with “theatre”. In 2002 I left Oracle Corporation to become an independent database consultant and in 2006 my career went full circle when I joined the Australian Public Service as a DBA specialist. I’ve been a member of the Oracle OakTable Network since 2002 and an Oracle ACE Director since 2008. I currently maintain a very popular Blog focusing on Oracle Indexes. I also find time to present a 2 day in-depth seminar on Oracle Index Internals and listen to the music of David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Radiohead as much as I can.

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