Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.

OpenWorld arrival and Day 1…

Let me start by saying Vikki Lira and Emily Yip are superstars! They are the people that organized just about everything for me this year. This has been the most painless and effort free trip I’ve ever been on, and it’s entirely down to their organizational skills. You deserver a very big thanks and a pay raise.

I got in to San Francisco about 21:10 local time on Saturday, which was 1 hour late, but the limo was waiting and I got to the hotel about 22:00 I guess. Unfortunately, I was so tired I couldn’t sleep, so I lay awake until about 01:00 the next day. Never mind.

Yesterday was the first day of work for me. I had the Oracle ACE Directors meetings all day. It was good getting to see everyone face to face. A time to meet some new people, and touch base for the first time since last year with others. After all the meetings, it was off to the Larry Ellison keynote speach, then off to the Oracle ACE dinner. It was a very long day for someone so tired, but fun too.

I won’t bore you with the details of the day, just list a few funny things:

I was with Lewis Cunningham waiting for a few of the guys to show up when I was sure the ground was shaking. He assured me it wasn’t, which was when I learnt that jeg lag can sometimes make you feel like there’s a minor earthquake going on. I guess it’s like getting your land legs again. Never happened to me before.

Doug Burns turned to me later in the evening and said, “martial arts films and jet lag…” I was expecting this to be the precursor to a good slagging off over the lack of Oracle content on my blog, but his biggest concern was I didn’t seem to be suffering as much as him in the jet lag stakes. Some of us hide it better than others. 🙂 I was a little disturbed by the lack of soft toys with Doug, but I noticed on his blog some have made the journey with him. I hope they coped with the jet lag better than he did.

Eddie Awad did a live podcast from the pub. I have no clue what I said, but I was tired and I’d had a drink, which I don’t usually do. That’s my excuse if I was talking gibberish. Of course, if it was truely insightful, then it’s all down to me. 🙂

I think I’ve got a full schedule of talks today, but I might have to ditch some of them. I went to bed as 00:00 and I woke up at 04:00. It’s now 07:00 and I’m starting to feel really tired again…

Cheers

Tim…

Car Trouble…

I had a bit of car trouble yesterday. By the time I got back from visiting the family the car sounded like a tractor. I’m getting on a plane in a couple of hours, so I guess getting the car fixed will be the first thing I do on my return…

Cheers

Tim…

Frantic Assembly – Stockholm…

Brace yourself. This is even more random than most of my blog entries…

Last night I went to see a physical theatre production called Stockholm by a company called Frantic Assembly. It’s a two person performance about a rather dysfunctional relationship. It’s a very gritty, for want of a better word, performance and certainly not easy watching. Some of the dance sequences freaked me out because there were knees and shins getting far too close to the corners of kitchen work surfaces for my liking. I was expecting some accidents, the thought of which make my shins ache, but fortunately the two performers survived the show, although a couple of bruses were evident from previous performances.

I’m no expert in this stuff, but I do know what I like and I thought this was really cool. I think I might go and see some more of this stuff.

Cheers

Tim…

Flashback, LogMiner and The Light Fantastic…

I put an article about Flashback and LogMiner new stuff live the other day, but forgot to put a post here. Better late than never. I feel a bit cheap and dirty admitting this, but I’m starting to like the web based Enterprise Manager. 🙂

The new LogMiner interface is really easy to use, and the integration with Flashback Transaction is right on the money. I guess LogMiner isn’t the sexiest of features, and I’ve had very little cause to use it since I first tried it out in 8i, but at least now it’s a no-brainer in terms of ease of use.

On a separate note, I finished The Light Fantastic last night. It seemed marginally more serious than the first book, but was still very funny. The introduction of character Cohen was very cool. Had me in stitches. I adopted a Sean Connery accent (in my head) for most of his dialog. Off to the book shop on the way home to buy the next couple…

Cheers

Tim…

30 Days of Night…

All I can say is what a shame! 30 Days of Night had such promise, but it washed it all down the toilet.

You can see lots of ideas from other films thrown into the mix. It’s in Alaska, so the darkness and snow is reminicent of The Thing. A place locked in darkness for a month allowing the baddies to be set free for that time is very much like Pitch Black I guess. The sreaming of the vampires was totally Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There are some more comparisons, but it would give the story away so I won’t do a spoiler.

The vampires themselves were cool. Proper ugly villians, not the usual hollywood vampires. The trouble was, there were just so many flaws. The vampires were incredibly fast and strong, but if one of the lead character wanted to run away from them, they just kind of walked and screamed a bit. Give me a break.

The ending was so infuriatingly trash it… Oh forget it!

I should have gone to see Saw 4 instead. At least you know you’re going to get a crappy gore-fest, rather than thinking you might get something reasonable and being disappointed.

Cheers

Tim…

SQL Performance Analyzer…

In addition to my reading exploits, I also had a trot through the SQL Performance Analyzer last night. It all looks pretty neat.

When I was using Database Replay I didn’t feel like the Enterprise Manager screens were easier to use than the PL/SQL APIs. They didn’t exactly feel like they added any value I guess. Part of that may have been because you still had to jump out to the command line to start the replay clients. Perhaps I was just being a bit fussy…

In contrast, I felt the SQL Performance Analyzer was a little bit easier to use through Enterprise Manager. That’s not to say the APIs are difficult, just that the Enterprise Manager screens add a little value. The basic running is the same, but the Enterprise Manager screen includes a couple of quick tests for optimizer version and parameter changes which are quite handy.

To be fare, the biggest difference in terms of ease of use is the creation and manipulation of the SQL tuning sets, which feels much simpler in Enterprise Manager, although some of functionality was present in 10g also, so I guess it’s a bit unfair to throw it into the mix. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

The Colour of Magic…

Last night I finished reading The Colour of Magic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but reading isn’t really my bag. If the writing style is too complicated I quickly become lost or bored, or both.

When I started this book it was a bit unnerving because there is a barrage of weird names and the story seems to skip around all over the place. A couple of times I assumed I had missed some pages out, only to find that the huge change in tack was intentional. Quite confusing, but fortunately there were some very funny bits that helped keep my attention.

About half-way through the book I seemed to get used to the writing style and, for want of a better word, relaxed into it. There is some really funny stuff here. I literally put down the first book and started on the second (The Light Fantastic). I have a horrible feeling I’m going to end up reading all 38 of the DiscWorld series…

Cheers

Tim…

Is there anybody out there?

Well, it seems the answer is yes.

I’ve spent a few minutes over lunch checking out my website stats, something I try to avoid most of the time for fear of becoming obsessive. Some things that stood out were:

  • The country with the biggest hit-rate is the USA, with about twice as many hits as India in second place. This was quite a surprise because when I’ve checked in the past I’ve typically had more hits from Asia than the US.
  • As far as the US is concerned, I’ve got hits from all the states, but most come from California. At equal second come Texas and New York.
  • I don’t have any visits at all this month from Turkmenistan, Somalia, French Guiana, North Korea, Central African Republic, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leon, Western Sahara or Chad. If you can hear me, I only want one click. 🙂
  • IE has 63% of the browser market, with Firefox (go on boys!) on 33%. The rest are fighting over scraps.
  • Google is the only search engine. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that there were others, but I for one can’t remember what their names are, and it seems like you guys can’t either!

I’ve got to stop looking at them now or I’ll get all weird about trying to spread the word in Africa… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update:

Based on John Scott’s comment, I checked the screen resolutions. Approximately 2.5% of visits were done with a resolution of 800×600. Who’d a thunk it! 🙂

Most are between 1024×768 and 1280×1024, with a few, including me, on 1920×1200…

Database Replay…

I logged in this morning and noticed I’d released my Database Replay article by accident last night. It wasn’t far off being finished, but it was in need of some “refinement”. Sorry to anyone who had the misfortune of reading the “beta” version. 🙂

At OpenWorld last year there was much talk of both Database Replay and SQL Replay, the latter being the capture and replay of just a specific SQL workload. I was quite surprised when I couldn’t see SQL Replay on the list of new features in 11g. It turns out is is there, but it has the new whiz-bang name of “SQL Performance Analyzer”. I guess this will be my next port of call.

Cheers

Tim…