Keyboard Warriors : Unite and do something positive with your lives

I follow a few non-Oracle channels on Youtube and I sometimes check out the comments, which seem to be a constant stream of keyboard warriors posting their negative rubbish. Whatever people do, the commenters claim to be able to do it better, or claim they know someone who can. If it is sport or fitness related, it will be followed by accusations of using performance enhancing drugs, which although it may be true, does not negate the thousands of hours of training and dieting people put in to get where they are.

The technology press makes your average Youtube channel comments section seem like a playground spat. Lots of articles by people who are totally ignorant about the technology they are “reporting”. In many cases, spending 5 minutes reading Wikipedia would be enough to dispel most of the garbage that is written, but unfortunately, those with an axe to grind don’t even do that. They read a headline and run with it. The language is straight out of conspiracy theory. Phrases like, “some experts believe”, and, “an insider told us”, are used like they are going out of fashion.

Imagine a world where all the time spent writing derogatory comments and downright lies was spent on doing something productive. Maybe producing informative articles and videos to help people, or contributing to open source projects. The press and TV has long been fuelled by fear and hate. Social media is one giant hate crime. If people aren’t being directly mean, they are trying to convince you that their life is better than yours, or their children are prettier or more intelligent that yours. It is all so terribly sad and boring. I’m not claiming I am above all this. I have been guilty of the same thing on numerous occasions.

So next time you do *anything* ask yourself, “Will what I am about to do have a positive impact?” If the answer is no, you probably shouldn’t do it.

Surprisingly, this post was not initiated as a result of something that was said or done to me. I have just witnessed several things this week that have made me really angry. What really irks me is I allowed those people to have that power over me. I allowed their actions to make me angry.

Enough of this hippy bullshit. I’m going to play with 12c…

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 21 : Upgrading from Fedora 20

I just did an upgrade of my old desktop from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21. The process was similar to this old blog post, but there were some variations, so I’ll list the procedure here.

  • Update your current Fedora 20 system by issuing the “yum update -y” command and restart once it is complete.
  • Install the latest “fedup” package using “sudo yum –enablerepo=updates-testing install fedup”
  • Run the “sudo fedup-cli –network 21 –product=nonproduct” command.
  • If you are using Dropbox, disable the repository using the “yum-config-manager –disable Dropbox” command. Re-enable it once the Fedora 21 repository is available.
  • Run the following clean up commands.
    sudo rpm --rebuilddb
    sudo yum distro-sync --setopt=deltarpm=0
    
    sudo yum install rpmconf
    sudo rpmconf -a
  • If you are using Chrome, uninstall and reinstall Chrome.

It seemed to go fine!

Cheers

Tim…

Ex Machina

Nephew #2 was in a football tournament near to me and parents weren’t allowed to watch, so my brother dropped him off and paid me a visit. I don’t have furniture, so when someone comes to see me we have to go out. We decided to go to the cinema to watch Ex Machina.

If you’ve seen the trailers you will know what to expect. The plot is quite predictable and most of the themes have been covered in other films (A.I., I, Robot, Transcendence) already, but none of them really got it right in my opinion. That all sounds a little damning, but this film works! The predictable elements of the plot and slow pacing give you a lot of time to turn things round in your mind. This is definitely a thinker of a film. My brother’s not a techie and I was a little worried he would be bored, but he totally got it too.

Visually the film is amazing. Almost every scene draws you in. I’m not just talking about the CGI. The whole thing is just beautiful.

IMHO this is fantastic sci-fi. Unfortunately the Michael Bay generation will be disappointed by the lack of explosions and hate it…

Cheers

Tim…

Riga Dev Day 2015 : The Journey Home

The morning didn’t start well. I woke up several times in the night feeling pretty bad. The combination of a cold, general lack of sleep and too much beer was not great. I don’t drink very often, so it doesn’t take much to make me feel bad. 🙂

I went down for breakfast with a few of the folks, then went back to bed and spent the next few hours switching between sleep and being sick. Luckily, everything seemed to calm down just before I had to get the taxi to the airport.

Check-in and security was quick and efficient. I found my departure gate, then got some food and a drink (non-alcoholic), which made me feel a lot better. The plane was pretty full, but was able to do a little work, which makes the journey much more bearable.

It was another fairly quick connection in Frankfurt, before getting on the plane home. I arrived at Birmingham airport in time for rush hour, which was not the best, but them’s the breaks…

The Riga Dev Day event was good fun. Riga is a really nice looking city and the people were friendly. As an English speaker, I had no problem at all from a communication perspective, which makes the whole process so much simpler and less stressful. 🙂

I mentioned in a previous post, the conference is a mixed discipline event, so you get to chat with a range of people from different backgrounds. I think it’s really important to break out of the bubble from time to time, so that you can get a feel for what the rest of the world is up to. For any of the other speakers reading this, you should give this Riga event a try. I think you’ll like it.

Thanks to the folks from LVOUG for inviting me to the event and making me feel welcome. Thanks to the attendees and speakers who I spoke to during the event. I hope to meet you all again! Big thanks for the Oracle ACE Program for getting me across to the event and allowing me to fly the flag.

Cheers

Tim…

Riga Dev Day 2015 : The Main Event

The event was held at a cinema in a shopping mall. We even got a free popcorn ticket. Awesome! I missed the starting keynote, which was a pity because everyone said it was really cool. So my day went as follows.

Krasimir Tsonev : Using Node.js for everything or what it is to write a book about it

I went to this session because I wanted to be with the “cool kids”. 🙂 I ended up chatting to Kasimir during lunch and in the evening. He’s from Bulgaria, so I was able to use my extensive Bulgarian vocabulary on him. 🙂 I’m never going to be one of the cool kids, but it’s good to get some context about different technologies. What is it? What does it do? What is it good at? What is it bad at? Where should I avoid it? It was good to get a feel for this from someone who is really using it, not just writing about it like it’s the Emperors new clothes.

Heli “Hell-Squirrel” Helskyaho : 9 use cases for Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeller

Back in the day we used to spend a lot of time on database design. I remember spending hours in Oracle Designer. Nowadays database design seems to have fallen by the wayside, which is a pity because good design is important if you want good performance and you want your application to stand the test of time. Adding in new functionality on top of a badly designed database is a nightmare. Extending a good design is usually much simpler.

In this session my daughter gave an overview of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeller. For those familiar with Oracle Designer, there is enough similarity to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling. The session included 9 ways to use the tool, including importing from previous tools like Erwin and Oracle Developer.

Me : PL/SQL : Stop making the same performance mistakes

Next up was my PL/SQL performance session. I had some problems with the screen at the start, so I was just about to launch into a no-slides, no-demos version of the talk, then they realised my adapter was faulty and everything was working again. My bad! The talk went well and I managed to finish on time. A number of people had questions, which took me through the break and right up to the next session. Happy days. 🙂

Roel Hartman : The best of both worlds : Going hybrid with your mobile APEX Oracle Application

This session showed how to use Apache Cordova to create an APEX application that acts like a native app, allowing it to interact with information from the phone, such as contacts or compass etc. It’s a really neat solution to allow you to bridge the gap between mobile web apps and native apps, allowing you to stick with your preferred development tool, in this case APEX… I feel like a native developer now. 🙂

Robin Moffatt : No Silver Bullets – OBIEE Performance in the Real World

I’m not an OBIEE guy, but I wanted to see Robin present and I loved it. If Cary Millsap did a presentation on OBIEE performance, it would be pretty much like this session. Robin referenced Cary’s “Thinking Clearly About Performance” paper at the start of the session and that really set the scene. He’s a confident, no-nonsense presenter, which I really like. Well worth going to watch, even if OBIEE is not your thing, because the approach he speaks about it pretty much universal for identifying and fixing the actual problem, rather than relying on Voodoo.

Me : A Oracle DBA’s guide to WebLogic server

I was then up again for the last session of the track. This time it was my introductory WebLogic session. It really was the end of the day and I think everyone, including me felt like it. 🙂

The Evening

After the last session, we took a taxi back to the hotel to drop off our stuff, then headed out to the closing party at a bar in the old town. I had a couple of pints and watched the band, which I believe was made up of some of the techies from one of the local companies. I really enjoyed it! After the band came some comedians, which I didn’t really hear as I was standing at the other side of the room talking geek with Robin Moffatt. When the festivities were over we headed back to the hotel and sat in the bar chatting for a couple of hours, then it was off to bed.

It was a long day, but a really enjoyable one. The conference was great fun and all the people I interacted with were really enthusiastic! I’ll write some more about the event in my closing post.

Cheers

Tim…

Riga Dev Day 2015 : The Journey Begins

My first flight was 06:20, so I had to leave the house at 04:00, which meant getting up at about 03:00. Yuck!

The first flight was about 90 minutes from Birmingham to Frankfurt, with the smoothest landing I can ever remember in a plane the size of an A320. I was meant to have a 65 minute changeover before the flight from Frankfurt to Riga. A one hour changeover at Frankfurt is too short, but the alternative was to wait for about 6 hours. As soon as I got off the plane I did a quick march to the departure gate and arrived just as boarding was meant to start. The following plane was late getting in, so I got a 10 minute break before getting on the plane. The flight to Riga was pretty straight forward, taking a bit under 2 hours. Both planes had lots of empty seats, so I was able to get my laptop out and have a play.

At 16:00 we had a tour of the old town. It started with a quick bus tour and then we walked through some of the old town, with a tour guide telling us about a few of the key places. I really like the look of Riga. I took a few photos, which will be available here when I get to upload them.

From the tour, we went out to dinner, where we met up with some of the people who arrived too late to make the tour. This is a multi-discipline conference, so it was really cool speaking to people from different backgrounds, which helps you see how your pieces fit into the bigger picture…

From dinner it was back to the hotel and bed. It was a really long day, so I was desperate to get to bed. The conference starts tomorrow…

Cheers

Tim…

Riga Dev Day and Oracle Midlands Event #7

There are a couple of things on the radar for the coming week and unfortunately for me they are both on the same day.

In Birmingham, UK it is Oracle Midlands Event #7 (OM7) on Thursday 22nd of January. This will be the first Oracle Midlands event I’ve missed since it started. I’m a big fan of what Mike is doing with Oracle Midlands and I appreciate the sponsorship from Redgate that means it is a free event. Please remember to get off your post-Christmas asses and attend the event. It will only keep happening if you make the effort to turn up! So far the attendance and been good, but it only takes a couple of events with small numbers to let it fizzle out an die. Please keep showing your support!

On the same day it is Riga Dev Day 2015 in Latvia. It will be my first time in Latvia, so that will be fun. I think the daughter (Hell-Squirrel) has been before, so she’ll be able to look after me. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Cloud Control : 12.1.0.7 Plugin Patch

I applied some of the 12.1.0.7 plugin patches to our Cloud Control installation today. We already have Cloud Control 12.1.0.4 installed, so this was just a case of updating the plugins.

Here’s a quick overview of what I did.

  • Backup up everything! Database and file system.
  • Setup > Extensibility > Self Update
  • Download the latest versions of the plugins. The minimum you can really get away with is “Oracle Database 12.1.0.7”,  “Oracle Cloud Framework 12.1.0.2” and “Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.1.0.7”. The Cloud Framework plugin is a dependency for the FWM plugin. Obviously, grab the extra plugins if you need them…
  • Setup > Extensibility > Plugins
  • Do a “Deploy On > Management Server” for the plugins you’ve downloaded. These require OMS downtime, so you will be monitoring progress using “./emctl status oms -details” from the “$OMS_HOME/bin” directory.
  • Wait until it is all running again.
  • Do a “Deploy On > Management Agent” for the DB and FMW plugins on just the cloud control server. I wanted to know it was all fine on this server before pushing out the updates to the agents on the monitored hosts.
  • Convince yourself nothing weird is happening.
  • Do a “Deploy On > Management Agent” for the DB plugin on any monitored database severs. Where possible I did Dev environments in one pass. Test environments in a second pass, then Prod environments.
  • Do a “Deploy On > Management Agent” for the FMW plugin on any monitored WebLogic severs. Once again, Dev, Test, Prod.

The plugin deploys to the OMS are a bit slow, but the deploys to the agents are pretty quick. Numbers will vary depending on your kit.

I much prefer the plugin patches to the main Cloud Control OMS and Agent patches as we (the DBAs) don’t have root or sudo access on the servers, so when we do the full-on patches we end up swamping the sysadmins with requests to run “root.sh” scripts. We don’t have to do that for the plugin patches.

Cheers

Tim…

Flashback Data Archive Enhancements in Oracle Database 12c

Having played around with Flashback Data Archive in 11g, I figured I would get through the 12c enhancements pretty quickly. I didn’t account for the fact I’m a donkey and can’t see the wood for the trees. Luckily, I know some people who aren’t stupid and they gave me a nudge in the right direction, allowing me to spot my silly mistake. Thanks Bjoern and Connor! 🙂

So after lots of wasted time, here is the article.

For the most part, it’s an evolution, but the new bits are pretty darn cool. I guess a lot of people will focus on two main things:

  • It is now a free feature, provided you don’t use compression, available in all versions. The change to use no compression by default has been back-ported to 11.2.0.4, so it’s free there too, which is nice!
  • The contents of contexts can now be stored in the flashback archive, so you can have access to the USERENV and custom context values that were set in the session when the DML was processed. This makes it possible to replace all those crappy old audit triggers with FDA!

There’s some other stuff in there that’s kind-of nice too. I think it’s worth checking it out, especially at its new price. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…