Stopover at Schiphol

I'm just holed up in the lounge at Schiphol Airport, The Netherlands, waiting for a plane back to Heathrow. Today was a very pleasurable day doing some training for Centennium, an Oracle BI & data warehousing specialist consultancy based down in The Hague, the team were really welcoming and keen to hear about what's new with Oracle BI EE, Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle SOA Suite. Thanks to everyone who came today, and especially to Eric for inviting me over. The Hague's a very nice place as well - very much like Amsterdam in terms of the architecture, canals, squares and so on, a bit less touristy though and with a very decent hotel in the Hotel Des Indes - a definite recommendation on my part.

Earlier in the week was the UKOUG Business Intelligence & Reporting Tools SIG in London. This time, we had a Hyperion/Planning and Budgeting theme, with one of the talks being on Hyperion as a company/platform, another by Pete Singleton from Analitca on Essbase. The Essbase talk was one I was particularly looking forward to, given my work over the past week or so on getting Essbase up and running, whilst the other talks, on Oracle 11g data warehousing new features, enterprise planning and budgeting and an Oracle BI update, were also pretty good.

For me now though, it's back to Heathrow, then a layover at the Jurys Inn by Hatton Cross, then up early for the flight to Washington for the BIWA event. I'm starting to miss home now, but next week in particular should be good which hopefully should make up a bit for being away from the family.