The activities of the Polish Oracle Users Group (PLOUG) concentrate in the five following areas: annual conferences, schools, seminars, publishing a magazine, reviewing books.
The Polish Oracle Users Group's annual conferences are held in autumn in Zakopane - a picturesque town in the Polish Tatra Mountains. The conferences have been staged regularly since 1995. Their aim is twofold. Firstly, they seek to provide a forum for discussion between people willing to share their experiences in using and developing information systems based on Oracle (but not only). Secondly, they aim at presenting new trends, technologies, and solutions not only concerning the Oracle software but also the techniques of developing information systems and project management.
The PLOUG's conferences hosted the number of personalities from the Oracle Corporation (e.g., Sue Harper), science (e.g., Fabian Pascal), and industry (e.g., Dave Ensor). The turnout of the conferences ranges from over 300 to over 400.
Since 1997 each conference has been accompanied by half-day workshops in the form of lectures, seminars, and hands-on exercises.
Since 2001 PLOUG organises subject-oriented one-day seminars and three-day schools. The former, held four times a year, give an overview of current technologies and trends in information systems (e.g., data warehousing, data modeling, Internet applications, database administration and tuning, database backup and recovery). Each seminar is composed of lectures followed by workshops. The aim of schools is to spread out an in depth knowledge on leading information technologies (e.g., building Internet applications in Java, XML technology). During the first two days participants attend lectures, and the third day they practice their knowledge at workshops.
Another important form of PLOUG's activity is publishing a magazine, called "Oracle'owe PLOUG'tki", issued in Polish. There are four main sections in this magazine devoted to: application developing, database administrating, technical issues from various domains, comments and polemics. The magazine is issued 3-4 times a year.
PLOUG co-operates in reviewing books with leading international publishers i.e., McGraw-Hill, O'Reilly, and Wrox Press. The reviews are published at the PLOUG's homepage.