Video: Database as a Service (DBaaS) on Oracle Cloud

The latest video on my YouTube Channel is a run through of using the Database as a Service (DBaaS) offering on Oracle Cloud.

There have been a few minor changes in the interface since I last ran through capturing images, so the related article has been brought up to date.

I used my dad for the cameo in this video. Hopefully this will help him get a little more recognition, as he’s pretty much a nobody on the Oracle scene at the moment. With your help this could change!

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Almost as soon as I released this blog post the footage was out of date as Oracle released some minor changes to the interface. I rerecorded the video and re-uploaded it, so it is up to date as of now. All links from my website and this blog post point to the new video. If you have read this post via an RSS reader, you may still be seeing the old version of the post, and as a result see the link to the video as broken. But in that case, you won’t be able to read this either. 🙂

(Not So) Internal Dialogue

internal-dialogueWhen I wrote about rehearsals in my public speaking tips series, I mentioned talking through small sections of the presentations as a means for rehearsals. I do this a lot! I live on my own, so this is not an internal dialogue. I say this stuff out loud.

This morning I was talking through some ideas as I left the house and cleared the ice off the car. I continued during the journey to work, including when I got out of the car to get a coffee from the Costa Express at the garage. Even as I was unlocking the office door.

If you happen see me doing this in the street, I’m not talking to an imaginary friend. It’s an imaginary audience. If you’re gonna do crazy, you might as well do it at scale… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Why ask how, when why is so much more fun?

OK. So the original quote from Spawn is exactly the opposite, but let’s go with it… 🙂

A few times in the past I’ve been asked questions and started to give a direct answer, then someone smarter has jumped in and asked the killer question. Why? Quite often it’s easy to answer the initial question, so rather than understand the reason for the question, you just respond and pat yourself on the back. That’s great, but without knowing the context of the question, the “right answer” could actually be the “wrong answer”. As Tom always says, “The answer to every question is *it depends*!”

I had another situation like that recently. The questions was, “How can I install VNC on a Linux box?” Pretty simple answer and I know a guy who wrote an article on that, so I pointed them to the article. Job done!

Then I got a pang of guilt and the conversation went like this…

  • Q: Why do you want to install VNC?
  • A: Because my boss told me too.
  • Q: By why does your boss want you to install VNC?
  • A: Because the network connection breaks sometimes, making a “ssh -X user@host” a dodgy solution.

Now I have nothing against VNC itself, but installing it on a server is one more attack vector to worry about, especially if it’s not necessary. Knowing the context allowed me to talk about silent installs, command line DBCA, running things in the background, even the screen command.

If the person goes away and installs VNC, that’s no skin off my nose, but just answering how, without knowing the context could well have opened them, or me, up to criticism down the line.

So next time you answer a question and are about to enable smug mode, ask yourself if you have actually helped, or just taken the easy route.

Cheers

Tim…

[Cloud | On-Premise | Outsourcing | In-Sourcing] and why you will fail!

error-24842_640I was reading this article about UK government in-sourcing all the work they previously outsourced.

This could be a story about any one of a number of failed outsourcing or cloud migration projects I’ve read about over the years. They all follow the same pattern.

  • The company is having an internal problem, that they don’t know how to solve. It could be related to costs, productivity, a paradigm shift in business practices or just an existing internal project that is failing.
  • They decide launch down a path of outsourcing or cloud migration with unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve and no real ideas about what benefits they will get, other than what Gartner told them.
  • When it doesn’t go to plan, they blame the outsourcing company, the cloud provider, the business analysts, Gartner, terrorists etc. Notably, the only thing that doesn’t get linked to the failure is themselves.

You might have heard this saying,

“You can’t outsource a problem!”

Just hoping to push your problems on to someone else is a guaranteed fail. If you can’t clearly articulate what you want and understand the consequences of your choices, how will you ever get a result you are happy with?

Over the years we’ve seen a number of high profile consultancies get kicked off government projects. The replacement consultancy comes in, hires all the same staff that failed last time, then continue on the failure train. I’m not going to mention names, but if you have paid any attention to UK government IT projects over the last decade you will know who and what I mean.

Every time you hear someone complaining about failing projects or problems with a specific model (cloud, on-premise, outsourcing, in-sourcing), it’s worth taking a step back and asking yourself where the problem really is. It’s much easier to blame other people than admit you’re part of the problem! These sayings spring to mind.

“Garbage in, garbage out!”

“A bad workman blames his tools!”

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’ve never done anything wrong. It’s the rest of the world that is to blame… 🙂

Update: I wasn’t suggesting this is only an issue in public sector projects. It just so happens this rant was sparked by a story about public sector stuff. 🙂

Video: Oracle Linux Virtual Machine (VM) on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Continuing the cloud theme, here is a quick run through of the process of creating an Oracle Linux virtual machine on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

A few months ago I wrote an article about installing an Oracle database on AWS.

I updated the images in that article last night to bring them in line with this video.

The cameo today is by Joel PĂ©rez, who was a bit of a perfectionist when recording “.com”. I’ve included about half of his out-takes at the end of the video. Don’t ever hire him for a film or you will run over budget! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

MobaXterm 8.6

MobaXterm 8.6 has just been released. The downloads and changelog can be found here.

For SSH and X emulation, this is the best! I keep saying it, but give it a go. You won’t regret it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video: SQL Server Databases on Microsoft Azure

I mentioned in a previous post, the whole look and feel of Microsoft Azure has been rejigged. As a result, I had to do a run through of the SQL Server DBaaS stuff to update the screen shots in and old article on the subject.

Azure : SQL Server Databases on Azure

Since I was doing that, I figured I might as well do a video for my YouTube channel.

Cheers

Tim…