Guest Blogger: Jeff Smith
Virtual Box is a free virtualization technology that allows one to run a virtualized computer right on your computer. Oracle Corporation has put together several pre-built Virtual Box images to allow for developers to try out and learn the latest and greatest technology available today.
Periodically we go on the road and put several dozen folks in a room, all running the image. On the image are a series of hands-on labs that allow the user to step through a series of tasks and learn a specific technique or procedure. The class is moderated by one or more Oracle Database Product Managers and they are available to answer any questions the students may have.
The images will run on a PC or Mac, but we recommend you have at least 2GB of physical RAM available (4+GB is ideal), and that you have the Virtual Box software and Oracle image downloaded and installed in advance. They are quite large and do not download well over conference room WiFi services. There will be an opportunity to get assistance with the installation and setup during the lab.
Labs installed on this image include a ‘Soup to Nuts’ application development track, SQL Tuning with SQL Developer, and several APEX how-to’s.
The OTN labs run on a A Virtual Box image which contains:
- 11gR2 Enterprise Edition copy of Oracle
- a database and listener running for you to connect to
- lots of demo data for you to play with
- SQL Developer installed and ready to connect
- Some browser based labs you can step through to learn Oracle
You download the image, you download and install Virtual Box (also FREE!), then you IMPORT the image you previously downloaded.
You then ‘Start’ the image. It will boot a copy of Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL), start your database, and all that jazz. You can then start up and run SQL Developer inside the image OR you can connect to the database running on the image using the copy of SQL Developer you installed on your host machine.
**Additional Steps required - please see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/db-dev-labs-1961253.html
