The presentations from the NoCOUG fall conference are available for download at http://www.nocoug.org/presentations.html. I enjoyed Maria Colgan's presentation, not because it offers a whole lot of new information on hints, but because it is an acknowledgement that hints have their place in the developer's toolbox. I also enjoyed Kyle Hailey's presentation which the landscape of database cloning techniques and technologies. 5 SQL and PL/SQL things in the Latest Generation of Database Technology - Tom KytePartitioning Data Warehouses on Oracle - Tim GormanFine Tune Oracle Execution Plans for Performance Gains - Janis GriffinHarnessing The Power Of Optimizer Hints - Maria ColganMySQL 5.6, the Next Generation Database - Lynn FerranteInternals of Active DataGuard - Saibabu DevabhaktuniMaking Star Transformations Sing - Tim GormanThe Hitchikers Guide to the Cloud for the DBA - Ben PrusinskiSherlock Holmes for the DBA - Kellyn Pot'VinDatabase Virtualization and Flexible Cloning - Kyle HaileyData Protection Best Practices for Oracle Database - Gurmeet Goindi If you missed the NoCOUG Journal, it's at http://www.nocoug.org/Journal/NoCOUG_Journal_201211.pdf. Our winter conference will be held at the Oracle conference center the week after RMOUG Training Days. -- Iggy FernandezEmail: iggy_fernandez@hotmail.comBlog: So Many Manuals So Little TimeAuthor of Beginning Oracle Database 11g AdministrationPresident of the Northern California Oracle Users GroupEditor of the NoCOUG Journa -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l