Category: Technology

Forum Spam…

My Forum is being hit really hard by the spammers again. It seems to happen for a few days every month, then they get bored and move on. To give myself a break from constantly deleting spam I’ve turned off new member sign up for a while. Existing member can carry on posting, but at the moment no new members will be allowed. I’m guessing very soon they’ll get the message and jog on.

I’m feeling very uncharitable at the moment. Thinking that the death penalty for spammers seems kinda reasonable…

Cheers

Tim…

Power Loss and Database Recovery…

About a week ago we had a big power outage at work. What with UPS and generators, most systems coped fine, but one system didn’t fair so well…

One of the mount points, and some of the data files within it, got corrupted and the Solaris container holding the database decided to repeatedly bounce between nodes. After a few days work on the part of the sysadmins, including a file system restore to repair the Oracle software installation, the server was given back to me.

A DBVerify showed there were loads of block corruptions in the data files, so I did a full restore and recovery of the database. The app was released for testing to the users this morning. A little before midday we had another power outage, even more severe than the previous one. Some of the UPS had not fully recharged since the last outage…

We will not get power restored until this evening. Everyone has an early start planned tomorrow. We have no idea what we are walking in to though!

The moral of this story is always have a good DR strategy!

Fun, fun, fun…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. The other DBA is on holiday this week. LOL.

Update: The DB was mangled again so we had to restore it again. 🙁

New Articles on Old Themes Inspired by Work…

I’ve put a couple of new posts live recently that are on quite old themes.

The instance caging article was my feedback to some people at work about one method for managing resources in a consolidated environment.

The last couple of days I’ve been helping one of my colleagues improve the performance of a Business Object report that contained calls to PL/SQL functions in the select list. The report took ages to run. So long in fact I don’t think anyone had actually waited long enough to see it complete. 🙂 After a bit of messing around we got it down to less than a minute. The function calls article is a summary to help prevent other people making the same mistakes. I think this is probably going to be the subject of a future Tuesday meeting at work…

In a recent Tuesday meeting I presented my forthcoming UKOUG session entitled “PL/SQL: Stop making the same performance mistakes”. That references some existing articles on my website, but there are a number of things I’ve been teaching in my Oracle University class for ages that have never made it on to the website. To correct that, I put another 6 PL/SQL articles on the site (with some more to come), but the subject matter is so old I’m not going to promote them to the front page. I will write a new article to support the UKOUG session, which will mostly be links to all the relevant content covered by the talk. That article will go to the front page, so all this content I’ve added to the site in “stealth mode” will become evident in the near future.

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit 3.3 for Mac/Linux…

I’m now rockin’ UltraEdit 3.3 on my MacBook Pro and Linux boxes at home. A previous announcement suggested by this version the Mac and Linux versions would have caught up with the Windows version from a functionality perspective. I’m not sure if that’s true, but they are close enough for me.

The latest Windows versions is 18.20, which I use at work, but home is where the real magic happens. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) : Context is everything…

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is definitely an important issue for companies and IT departments, but what the vast majority of reporters and CEOs seem to forget is that context is extremely important.

Looking at this from a company perspective, when we are talking about phones and tablets, then BYOD is a pretty important issue. It seems to be creeping into the laptop side of business a little, but as far as desktops are concerned, BYOD it is virtually non-existent. So when Marc Benioff talks about the affect of BYOD on Windows 8 uptake I think he is living in some sort of dream land. I’m not suggesting Windows 8 will be a success in business, but it’s failure will not be down to BYOD.

Ignoring the board rooms and the sales teams, who are essentially consumers, the real IT work in companies is still being done on PCs. Yes, you can use a cloud service on your phone, but look around the office and you will see those cloud services are actually being used by people on PCs. Applications such as Oracle Fusion Apps have mobile device interfaces, but typically people will be sitting at a PC doing all the real work, not using some crappy little software keyboard. This idea that the office is full of people doing their job on an iPhone is just stupid.

Since we are going to have PCs on our desks for quite some time, then Microsoft are going to do OK. The PC on your desk at work will be replaced and Microsoft will get their pound of flesh, because there is no real alternative. Apple is a tiny fraction of this market and Linux desktops have never taken off. Whether the company install Windows 7 or Windows 8 is another issue, but Microsoft get paid all the same.

So please stop insulting our intelligence by telling us BYOD is a game changer on the office desktop. It’s not!

Note. I’m looking at this from a company IT perspective, so don’t start telling me how your granny got rid of her PC and happily replaced it with an iPad! Your Granny is not running SalesForce.com!

Cheers

Tim…

 

Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 on my Nexus 7…

I turned on my Nexus 7 last night and it asked if I wanted to upgrade to Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean). The install was pretty quick and went through with no dramas.

I’m not all that interested in the whole Android thing. To be honest, I can’t even be bothered to check the change log. It’s just an enabling technology for me, not something I’m passionate about. What I can say it that it has finally fixed the home page swivel issue. In case you hadn’t heard, the Nexus 7 automatically orientates the screen to whichever way you are holding it, except for the home page which always stays in portrait mode. Not any more. Finally it too can swivel.

I was never sure why this screen didn’t act like all the others, but it seems Google has responded to the criticism and sorted it.

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit 3.2 on Mac and Linux…

I’m now rockin’ UltraEdit 3.2 on Mac and Linux…

This is the version that is meant to bring the Mac/Linux version in line with the Windows version as far as functionality is concerned. I’m not sure that is the case, but it’s getting ever closer. It certainly does everything I need it to do now. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

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