Category: Oracle

More Server Builds and Presenting…

Server Builds

My room is full of servers again. I’m still rebuilding loads of kit to send to the new site. Yesterday I installed RHEL4 on two servers ready for 10gR2 installations, and RHEL3 on three servers ready for AS10g (9.0.4) installations. The versions, especially App Server, may sound strange, but this is to duplicate the current environment, so my hands are tied. 🙂

The three application servers are all going to be installed as 1 node clusters, so we can configure and test them before releasing the remaining nodes. Just trying to reduce the impact of the move.

Hopefully, by the end of today we will have at least one node for every layer in the new production and test environments.

It’s not long until I leave this company, so I’m really keen to get everything moved and bulletproof.

Presenting

OpenWorld: Booked, and I’m ready to go.

AUSOUG: I’ve just received confirmation of my conference presentations in Australia. I’m presenting two papers at both the Perth and Gold Coast events.

NZOUG: I’ve been confirmed for the New Zealand conference in Rotorua, but I don’t know how many papers I’m presenting yet.

One of my friends is trying to sort out a presentation at a local user group in New Zealand after the main conference is over. Seems a shame to go all that way and not do as much as possible.

So it looks like the world tour is back on. 🙂

By the end of the year I will have been to Austria, Denmark, Estonia, America, Australia and New Zealand. I guess this seems a little tame for some of the consultants out there, but for a regular Joe DBA / Developer from Birmingham it seems a bit crazy.

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG DE SIG Update

I mentioned in a previous post I was speaking at the UKOUG DE SIG today. The talk itself went fine, but I had a bit of a scare before hand. I drove from work to the venue and managed to get lost, which is a little surprising as it was in Birmingham and I’ve lived in Birmingham for the last 20 years. Personally I blame my total reliance on SatNav… 🙂 It takes me about 10 minutes to get setup, including starting virtual machines, and I arrived 15 minutes before my talk was scheduled. Too close for comfort!

I’d like to send a big thank you to Andrew Clarke for organising the event and letting me speak. It’s just a pity I couldn’t get a day off work to attend the whole event.

Cheers

Tim…

Quick life and presenting update…

Just a quick post to let people know what is going on in the next few weeks/months…

UKOUG DE SIG

I’m speaking at the UKOUG DE SIG on the 10th July. Andrew Clarke had a free slot so I offered to speak to help him out. I owe him a few favors and it is on my doorstep.

I had a bit of a panic last night while I was rehearsing the talk. My laptop died and I ended up having to uninstall and install VMware Server. Not what you want to happen the week before a talk. As a backup, I’m going to use PortableApps to have my talk on a USB stick just in case. I won’t be able to run the demos, but I will have expected output ready to go just in case. Hopefully, the laptop will be fine and I won’t need it. 🙂

OpenWorld 2008

I’m speaking at OpenWorld 2008 as part of a group presentation organised by Lewis Cunningham. The lineup is Lewis Cunningham, Eddie Awad, Mark Rittman, Arup Nanda, Rich Niemiec, Bradley Brown, Hans Forbrich and myself. As you would expect with so many speakers, it’s a panel format, not a formal presentation. Should be fun.

I’m not sure if I’ll do the Unconference this year. I would like to, but I think it’s a bit unfair of me to hog a slot that someone new could use. If the uptake is slow I’ll jump in there.

I’m registered for OpenWorld and I’ve reserved my hotel room. I can’t book my flights until I know what’s happening with the AUSOUG and NZOUG events.

AUSOUG & NZOUG

I’m waiting to hear if I’ve been accepted to speak at the AUSOUG and NZOUG events this year. I’ll post more about this when I know. If I do it’s going to be a pretty hectic schedule. One of the percs of quitting your job is you have lots of free time to do conferences. 🙂

Life Update

The last person from my office quit work on Friday, so I’m now alone in the dungeon for a couple of months before I leave. I’ve been taking servers out of racks and rebuilding them for deployment in a new site. I can do RHEL, DB and AS10g installations in my sleep now. Yesterday I was setting up a system consisting of a database, two middle tier app servers and two front end web servers. It’s all sitting on the desk next to me making an awful noise. It was overloading my air con, so it was kinda tropical in here. 🙂

Today is the start of my final year of being 30-something. Happy birthday to me. How am I going to celebrate you ask? I’m teaching two Yoga classes to cover for someone who’s ill. Not exactly what I had in mind. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

SQL Injection is still a big issue…

I just thought I’d pass on this story…

One of my friends has been running an Internet business for many years. It started as an ASP website against an Access database. At the time Access didn’t support bind variables, so all the SQL was written using literals concatenated into the SQL. This didn’t present much of a problem as nobody ever talked about SQL injection in those days…

Over time, the site progressed and moved over to SQL Server. Unfortunately, none of the code was revised to use bind variables, still leaving it wide open to SQL injection attacks.

I got a mail from my friend this morning telling me his hosting provider has turned off his site because it’s getting battered by hackers. I guess the only thing I can say is he’s been lucky for the last 10 years. I could have happened any time during this period…

This post isn’t a criticism of the security of any particular database engine, scripting language, application server or browser. It’s merely an observation that there are still plenty of public websites out there that have gaping SQL injection holes in them, not due to the underlying technology, but due to sloppy programming.

It’s easy to get caught up in the security ratings of our infrastructure and forget that one dodgy SQL statement can give people the key to the door.

Let the paranoia commence… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Automatic Memory Management in 11g…

I’m still trying to work my way through the 11g new features for the OCP upgrade exam. I’ve had so much going on recently that I’m still only about 2/3 of the way through the syllabus. Here’s the latest installment.

Automatic Memory Management in Oracle Database 11g Release 1

I guess I need to write about 10 more articles before I’ll have covered the syllabus. I’m hoping to complete them and sit the exam before I go to OpenWorld, but if things keep going like they are at the moment that might be a struggle.

Cheers

Tim…

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