Month: July 2013

LAOTN Tour (Southern Leg) : Arrived in Santiago, Chile…

I’m now in the hotel in Santiago, Chile.

The flights were fine. I landed in Paris with just enough time to walk to the departure gate and board my next flight. The Air France boarding was a bit chaotic, and once again there was no vegetarian food. With many airlines, booking a special meal seems to be very hit or miss. It’s not like I’m going to starve though, so never mind. 🙂

For some reason, unknown to me, I got a Business Class flight out, so the 14.5 hour flight from Paris to Santiago wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. I’m cattle-class for the rest of the flights, including the 11+ hour flight home from Sao Paulo.

The weather in Santiago is more like the UK weather than the UK is at the moment. I arrived to about 10 degrees and fog. I was walking round in a t-shirt an it felt nice after the last couple of weeks at home. I’m not great with the heat. 🙂

Unfortunately, Jonathan Lewis has had to cancel his trip due to a problem with his ear, that’s prevented him from flying, so I’ve got an extra session tomorrow to fill in one of the gaps. Hopefully, he’ll be doing some web sessions later in the tour.

I think I’m going to run through my talks now, hit the gym and try to get some sleep before the tour begins in earnest tomorrow.

Cheers

Tim…

LAOTN Tour (Southern Leg) Preparation Complete…

Tomorrow is going to be a very tough day. I’ve got work as normal, including one of my fortnightly Tuesday presentations. From work I dash home, get changed, pick up my stuff and it’s off to the airport. I get a quick flight to Paris, then it’s a 14.5 hour flight to Santiago, Chile. That’s the starting point for the southern leg of the LAOTN tour this year. I can only hope I break the habit of a lifetime and actually get some sleep on the plane. If not I’m going to be like Day of the Dead when I get there.

I went out at the weekend and bought a load of cheap polo shirts, so I’m going to look pretty much identical on every day of the tour. 🙂 When I was in Bulgaria, Tom Kyte gave me some packing advice, involving rolling stuff up to reduce creases, so I’m not packing a travel iron. I’ve just finished my packing using that method, so if I look like a bag of creases on this tour I will be giving him a kicking at OOW2013. 🙂

The weather forecast looks a bit cooler than it was on last year’s northern leg, but the humidity is high, so even though I’ve packed more than enough stuff to get through the whole trip I’m sure I will get half way through and need to hit the hotel laundry service.

I’m now feeling totally wired. Five countries in 10 days, with very long flights at the start and end is quite a daunting prospect. I know I’m going to enjoy it, but I’m feeling a little nervous/scared at the moment. I’m sure when I get on to the Santiago flight I’ll chill out, but until then I’m just going to be panicking about what I’ve forgotten to pack and about my connection in Paris…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) Database 12c…

I just noticed the Database 12c OCP beta exams have started to appear (see here).

Not surprisingly, the multitenant option seems to be a big factor in the content of the both the Advanced Administration and Upgrade exam.

There are a few things that seem a little odd (to me) though:

  • Use Oracle Restart to manage components. Isn’t this a deprecated feature in 12c?
  • Configure and use Oracle Secure Backup. Do they mean Oracle Secure Backup Express?
  • Use Flash Cache.
  • Key DBA Skills (Upgrade Exam only). This whole section looks out of place to me for an upgrade exam.

Ignoring the “Key DBA Skills”, the upgrade exam contains about 49 bullet points, which means the production exam will on average have about 1.5 questions per bullet. The “Key DBA Skills” adds another 34 bullets, so now we are talking less than 1 question per bullet in the production exam…

There is enough new stuff to keep me writing articles for quite a while before I get in a position to sit this exam. I don’t think I’m going to be anywhere near ready before the end of the beta period, which is a pity. I think the only people who are likely to make the beta exam are those people who were on the database beta program, or people who are trying to wing it. Since I fit into neither of those categories, it looks like I’m waiting for the production exam…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I wrote an Oracle Certification Frequently Asked Questions article a little while back.

Fedora 19 : Upgrade from Fedora 18…

I finally got round to upgrading my desktop machine to Fedora 19. The experience was pretty similar to upgrade from Fedora 17 to Fedora 18.

This time I had to remove FireFox, as it was holding on to Fedora 18 packages. Once I removed and re-added it I could complete a “yum update”. Things seem to be OK.

The DropBox repository is lagging behind again…

I still think it’s better to do clean installations, but I don’t have time to do that now. Perhaps when I get back from South America I’ll do it properly.

Cheers

Tim…

 

 

Oracle Database File System (DBFS) Enhancements in Oracle 12c

Oracle 12c includes a really neat feature I first mentioned after Oracle OpenWorld 2012. You can now access your DBFS file systems over HTTP/HTTPS, FTP or WebDAV. I’ve been having a play with it over the last couple of days, so I thought I would write it up here.

This should be quite a welcome addition for those people on platforms other than Linux, who don’t get to use FUSE.

As mentioned in the article, WebDAV support under Windows 7 broken. Even the Oracle manual has a screen shot from Windows XP. I can’t believe Windows 7 has been out all this time and Microsoft have not bothered to fix it…

Cheers

Tim…

 

Upgrading to Oracle Database 12c : First Steps…

I’ve taken my first tentative steps into upgrading to Oracle 12c.

This article is targeted at the type of information you are likely to need for the 12c OCP DBA exam. In reality, upgrades are too important to rely on a generic article like this. Every time I do a real upgrade I go back to the upgrade docs and work my way through them. That’s the only way to make sure you’ve not missed out an important step, specific to the features you are using.

My first impressions are:

  • The DBUA looks a little different, but not enough to scare you.
  • The manual upgrades are very different and will take a bit of getting used to.
  • I think the transport database option is quite interesting, restrictions permitting.

I don’t know how long it will be before I have to do a “real” upgrade to 12c. It probably won’t happen until 12cR2…

I’ve recently installed a clean 12c instance at work to hold a FMW repository, but that is for a throwaway test VM. If it were a real installation we would no doubt be using 11gR2.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 12cR1 RAC Installation on Windows 2012 Using VirtualBox…

After having a play with Oracle 12c on Windows 8, I decided to give Windows Server 2012 a go. Here is the resulting virtual RAC installation.

As you would expect, much of the process is pretty similar to the 11gR2 RAC installation on Windows 2008.

Windows Server 2012 is a strange beast. The interface is quite similar to Windows 8, which seems strange for a server OS. I’m gradually coming to terms with the Windows 8, so I am not so repulsed any more. That’s not to say I think it is the correct thing for Microsoft to do, but the thought of supporting my family on it is not filling me with quite so much dread now.

I really should get round to upgrading my desktop to Fedora 19, but time has been short. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Pacific Rim…

I just got back from watching  The Power Rangers Pacific Rim. What a complete pile of crap! How on earth did that get a 7.9 rating on IMDB? How did it get 71% on Rotten Tomatoes? Am I really that disconnected from the rest of humanity?

I know I’m not target audience, having not had a lobotomy recently, but here are a few quotes I overheard from other people leaving as I did:

  • “Don’t ever invite me to a film like that again”
  • “How cheesy was that?”
  • “That’s two hours of my life I can never get back!”

I went in with such low expectations. I knew it was going to be crap, but I didn’t realise how crap. Here are some random thoughts:

  • Acting : Reviews are saying the acting was magnificent. Really? I though it was pretty lame. Just a non-event.
  • Plot : You know the last scene in every episode of The Power Rangers, where the monster grows massive and the Power Rangers shout, “It’s morphin’ time!” and group together to make Super Hemorrhoid Zoid? They kind-of made that one scene into a 2 hour film. At least the reviews agree it is devoid of plot. What story it did have felt like a total Independent Day rip-off, and boy did I hate that film!
  • Disaster Porn : Yes, there is lots of it, but I don’t really feel it worked well. It was all a bit soulless. It’s not like Cloverfield, where I actually cared about what was happening. This was just dirge. Just standard Michael Bay style crap.

Thank heavens I only paid £3.00 to see it!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Losing my cinema mojo fast…

Oracle WebLogic 12cR2 : ADF, Domains, Clusters and Stuff

Following on from yesterday’s post about these WebLogic 12cR2 articles,

I’ve spent today creating ADF enabled domains and clustered domains on WebLogic 12cR2. That has spawned some new articles that are effectively updates of the old WebLogic  11g and 12cR1 articles.

With a bit of luck I will now be able to get through next week without looking like a complete idiot…

WebLogic 12cR2 is similar enough to 11g and 12cR1 to feel familiar, but there are tweeks here and there that make life interesting. The GUI screens have been prettied a little too.

As I keep warning, I’m a complete WebLogic newbie, so the content of these articles will evolve as I learn more and realise all the mistakes I’m making… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle WebLogic 12cR2 and ADF Runtime Installations…

The new versions of the WebLogic 12cR2 and ADF could not have come at a worse time for me. My top priority is learning about the 12cR1 version of the database. Second, is getting to grips with Cloud Control 12cR3. Third on the list is getting up to speed with the changes in WebLogic 12cR2 and ADF. Unfortunately, my personal priorities don’t quite match my work priorities, so WebLogic 12cR2 has moved up the list for a while. As a result, I did some installations last night.

I’ll have to play with this for a few days to get my head round it as I may be doing a test installation at work early next week.

A word of warning. I am a self-confessed WebLogic newbie. If you ask me questions about it I will be redirecting you to people who actually know what they are talking about…

Cheers

Tim…