Coming down off my 11g high…

I guess if I was honest with myself, I didn’t really expect to be downloading 11g database software on 11th of July, but to see my doubts confirmed is a little deflating:

Get Ready for Oracle Database 11g – July 11th 2007

It takes me back to a discussion with Tom Kyte at last years UKOUG where his estimate for the release date was, “Between 1st July 2007 and 31st December 2007”. 🙂

I know Oracle need months of hype before a release, but I’ve still got my fingers and toes crossed for something earlier than Christmas.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Licensing…

We’re trying to figure out what Oracle licenses we have to buy to add another node into an application server cluster. Sounds easy doesn’t it!

Trouble is, we need to load an old version of the application server, and the whole product set has been renamed and re-jigged since this version of the application server was released. The components we’re using sound like a match for the cheaper Java Edition, but that didn’t exist when we bought the product originally, so we are really not sure if we can get away with this.

We contacted sales yesterday, and the lady we spoke to was very pleasant, but was unable to confirm what we need to do. We’re now waiting for an account manager to investigate it and make a decision.

This just confirms to me that Oracle’s licensing is a total mess, and repeatedly renaming their product ranges along with the components they include only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Cheers

Tim…

Start with the simple things and work up…

We had a problem with one of our application servers on Friday. There was a long trail of breadcrumbs, which I followed all the way back to a blindingly obvious problem. We had run out of disk space. Doh!

Why did this happen?  There were two contributing factors:

  1. Unknown to me, marketing had requested we stop cleaning up the Apache access logs about two years ago, so they had been commented out of the automated cleanup script. Over that period, they had built up to over 7.5G.
  2. The tool for monitoring disk space usage was configured to send warning messages out via the wrong mail server.

Well, you have to chalk it down to experience, but it has served to remind me once again that often it is the most simple and obvious things that cause problems. Sometimes, the more you know, the easier it is to lose sight of the obvious.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 11g…

Eddie Awads has posted that the 11g launch is on July the 11th. I have a feeling his hit rate is probably going mad at the moment.

Previous announcements said the release was planned for second half of this year, so I was expecting it to be December 31st. Coming so early in second half of the year is a rather pleasant surprise.

I like to think that in some way I am responsible for the early release. My constant moaning about being bored and wanting 11g to be released soon has obviously done its job. It’s truly wonderful to be the center of my universe. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 10gR2 on Fedora 7…

I had a quick go at this installation and it worked OK. I had to load a bunch of FC6 packages to get Oracle to install, link and run properly. It looks like lots of the “compat_*” packages have been removed from Fedora 7, which is a problem as Oracle 10g needs them. The “libaio” package is no longer present. I’m sure the functionality is there somewhere, but I couldn’t get the listener to work without loading the old package. Also, the “libXP” package is necessary to get the installer to run. It has also been removed, along with some deprecated X11 packages that were present in FC6.

I’m sure the cleanup makes sense going forward, and 10g is getting a little old in Fedora timescales, but I wonder how many other applications will be broken by this.

Of course, I’m no Linux expert, so maybe I’ve missed something and these extra packages are not really needed.

Cheers

Tim…

Schema Owners and Application Users…

I was trying to explain to a colleague the concept of using application users, rather than logging directly into the schema owner. Although it’s a very basic point, it seemed worthy of a write-up, especially because it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything about Oracle. So here is it:

Schema Owners and Application Users

Cheers

Tim…

It’s not simple, so don’t claim it is!

Rant Alert. The following is an unreasoned attack on the IT community in order to vent my frustration. I’m not claiming it makes any sense or it’s factually correct. It’s just how I feel today. Maybe I’ll feel different tomorrow…

I can’t help feeling that companies like Oracle are doing the IT world a major disservice by trying to make out that their products are easy to use. I have a quick newsflash… They are not!

This post is really a response to two things:

  1. My current work situation.
  2. Some of the questions I field on my forum.

From a work perspective, the mass exodus of people from my current company has left me having to deal with bits of technology that aren’t really my bag. It gets doubly annoying when I’m having to use bad support services to help me do really basic tasks. If software and hardware vendors were honest and made customers aware that they would need trained professionals to deal with this crap, perhaps people like me wouldn’t be left fumbling in the dark, trying to pick up the pieces.

From the Oracle forum side of things, I’ve really noticed a shift over the last few years and I’ve written about it before. The same type of questions are being asked as they always were. The difference is that in the past these questions were being asked by people trying to learn the technology. Now they seem to come from people who are employed as DBAs and developers by companies. I don’t believe the intellectual capacities of people have dropped over the years. I just think companies are employing under-skilled people to save money, or expecting people to cover roles they are not qualified to do. You wouldn’t let an electrician fix your plumbing, so why would you let this happen?

I don’t claim to know the answers, but I can see that the constant barrage of “point-and-click”, “intuitive” and “self-tuning” marketing messages are leading people to believe they don’t need qualified staff, and the result is a whole bunch of people asking how to recover their production databases from incomplete backups.

IT is getting more complicated and the range of skills needed in a company is getting bigger by the year. Companies need to be made to understand this or they will constantly be finding themselves in the shit!

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 10g for Windows Vista…

I’ve been on holiday for a few days, so this latest release passed me by.

Oracle Database 10g Downloads

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Please don’t ask me for help installing Oracle on Vista. I’ve never done it and I don’t plan on trying. Instead I would advise you use VMware Server or Virtual Box to run Oracle on Oracle Enterprise Linux. A much neater solution in my opinion.

Struggling for inspiration…

I need a new version of Oracle, and I need it now!

I’ve been using Oracle 10g since it was released, and although I wouldn’t claim to know everything about it, I feel like I’ve already investigated everything in it that interests me. I really need a new version of the database to re-ignite my interest and get me writing articles again.

I know the release date is “second half of 2007”, but I really hope this means July 1st, rather than December 31st. Like a true Oracle junky, I need my new features fix… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…