Direct NFS (DNFS) Clonedb…

A bit before Christmas I got an email from Kevin Closson asking me to take a look at a new undocumented Direct NFS (DNFS) feature in the 11.2.0.2 patch set. I think he wanted to see what a regular DBA would think of it. What with Christmas and some family issues, I didn’t get too much done. As soon as I hit the first hurdle I kinda caved in and left if for the new year.

Well, January came and went, then I finally got round to looking at it again. I like to think my constant questions and dumb mistakes has helped to prepare Oracle for the sort of thing that will happen when other idiots like me are let loose on it. Anyway, the result of that little journey is documented here.

As I’ve said in the article, things are still in a state of flux and I will no doubt have to do some alterations once the My Oracle Support (MOS) Note 1210656.1 is released that will properly document it.

So as a regular DBA what do I think? I think it is awesome!

Old-style cloning of databases isn’t hard, but it’s boring and can take ages depending on the size of the database and storage being used. It’s one of those tasks that always makes me sigh, before I get off my ass and start it. Clonedb turns that on its head because it is really quick and simple. There is a bit of setup, but that is really going to be a one-time thing on most servers. You are doing your backups anyway, so there is no big deal there. Now you can just run a script and bang, you have a running clone.

I think this is going to please a lot of DBAs out there!

Cheers

Tim…

The Myth of Oracle Fusion…

I read a post this morning by Grant Ronald talking about fusion apps. In Grant’s post he mentioned things that people have been saying about Fusion over the years. Middleware and Apps are not my specialist field, but I get to hear a lot about them from the conferences and ACE Director meetings, so I have been witness to the Oracle Fusion myth from the beginning.

Cast your mind back several years and the whole concept of Fusion was launched at OOW. We were told that the middleware stack was going to become a single coherent product, rather than the buggy rag-tag bunch of technologies we had in 9iAS and AS10g. Sounds good so far, but then all the existing stuff got rebranded as Fusion Middleware when the products it was made up of hadn’t significantly changed. That’s confusing.

Fast forward a bit and we were expecting something like real Fusion Middleware to appear, then the BEA buyout was announced and WebLogic became the core of Fusion Middleware. Oh. So this wonderful coherent product that Oracle had been developing and we were expecting soon was swapped for a best-of-breed app server from an acquisition. Strange and a little disconcerting, but at least we have a better app server now, except that some of the existing features still required you to install the old AS10g stuff. Still the name Fusion is plastered everywhere.

Fast forward a bit more and we have got to a point where applying the term “Fusion” to the middleware stack is less insulting, but if anyone experienced Fusion along the way they would probably have been left with a bad feeling about what Fusion actually means. It’s very hard to overcome a bad first impression. Are Oracle really surprised that the term “Fusion” is associated with myth and confusion?

OK. That’s the Middleware. What about Fusion Apps? Well, the name includes the word “Fusion”, so it takes on all the bad connotations associated with the infancy of Fusion Middleware. Added to that, since the original announcement of Fusion Apps there have been numerous acquisitions, all of which have no doubt added to the confusion about what Fusion Apps actually is. Then we are told there is no natural upgrade from eBusiness Suite to Fusion Apps. It’s a new product and we have to migrate data to it as we would any new ERP. Next we are told that the initial release will only be a subset of the modules we require, so we will have to run it alongside eBusiness Suite. Wow. This is really confusing. That sounds like a half-finished ERP built on a half-finished middleware stack. Once again, are Oracle really surprised people react like this?

Now I’m not saying the Fusion Middleware is bad. It’s come a long way. I’m also not saying Fusion Apps are bad. I’ve seen the demos and they look amazing. I’ve also talked to people in that field who are genuinely impressed and exited by it. I believe it will be a big eye opener and possibly a game-changer for a lot of people. What I’m saying is I can totally understand when people on the outside of our little goldfish bowl have a really bad and confused impression of anything containing the term “Fusion”, because it does have a very long and sordid history.

In my opinion the term Fusion needs to be scrapped and replaced, then perhaps we can forget the history and focus on the now. Kinda like they did with Beehive. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Hereafter…

I went to see Hereafter this evening. On the surface the subject matter sounded pretty grim, what with it being about death and the afterlife, but Clint Eastwood directed it, so I thought I’d give it a go.

The overriding thing I can say about the film is it was very gentle. If this were standard Hollywood crap there would have been X-Files type revelations or flash ghostly effects. As it was, there was none of that. It was just the characters and how death and the afterlife had affected their lives. Very understated and told at a gentle pace and in no way challenging. I want to say words like “nice” and “pleasant”, but they sound a bit insulting, but I don’t mean them to be.

If you like spooky psychic stuff this definitely is *n0t* the film for you.

Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard worked really well together. She had quite a small part in the film, but her character was definitely the highlight for me. The other actors were a bit out of their league in comparison, except for the cameo of Derek Jacobi playing himself. If he had got that wrong it would have been a bit sad. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Cunning way to thwart spammers…

I wrote the other day about the level of spam I was having on my forum. I did a little playing about and all seemed to calm down. In fact the forum got very quiet indeed. It was quite pleasant not having to worry about it.

Anyway, today I got a little suspicious as I had no posts at all. I tried to write a post myself and got a server error. It seems the last switch I flicked on the control panel tried to do something my hosting provider doesn’t allow and blocked all posts.

So my cunning plan turned out to be not so cunning afterall… 🙁

Let’s see if the deluge starts again…

Cheers

Tim…

Pr0n Attack…

It seems my forum has become subject to an onslaught of pr0n spam. Sorry if anyone has got an eyeful. I’m trying to delete it as soon as it arrives, but I can’t be on the forum every minute of the day.

If anyone has any tips regarding anti-spam on phpBB I would be happy to hear them. I’m currently using reCAPTCHA, but am looking at other mods to see what else I can do to prevent it.

Cheers

Tim…

The Mechanic…

The Mechanic was an OK film. It didn’t have the style of The Transporter franchise, or the grittiness of the Bourne franchise, but it was obviously meant to appeal to that fan base.

I like Jason Statham in action films. He moves well and works angles really nicely. There wasn’t really any of that in this film. Kinda wasting his best feature in my opinion.

Ben Foster has carved himself a really good niche as an intense nutter. He does it really well and was one of the best things in the film. I was just watching the screen waiting for him to go pop. 🙂

All in all, not the worst visit to the cinema, but not really as good as I was hoping.

Cheers

Tim…

Do virtual keyboards promote weak passwords?

I’m quite big on password complexity. I like to use mixed case, numbers and special characters in my passwords.

Since having the iPad (and now the Android phone) I find it a real bind typing in strong passwords. The mixed case isn’t so bad, but I do have more login mistakes with the virtual keyboard. What really bugs me is having to switch keyboards two or three times to get all the special characters and numbers in. Every time I have to type a password on a mobile device I feel a certain tension…

My recent experience has left me thinking how nice it would be to have a weak password, preferably lower case letters only. So my next thought was, do virtual keyboards promote weak passwords?

Of course, I don’t expect anyone to comment and admit they have switched back to weak passwords, but it would be nice to know if anyone else feels my pain… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

REWORK…

A recent thread on the OakTable mailing list about company policies got me a little fired up. In reply to my extended rant Cary Millsap suggested I read REWORK.

Let me start by saying I’m not a fan of self-help books and I don’t consider myself a business person, so a book that looks like self-help for businesses just didn’t seem like a good fit. I have little-to-no ambition in terms of the business world or money. Having said that, I play in a world where ambition and money are central, so I figured I’d give it a go.

REWORK distills and debunks many of the myths associated with modern business. For anyone who has worked in the IT industry for a few years, the central messages are not new. You will have thought about a lot of these issues many times, probably while you were in a 3 hour meeting to discuss why you missed a deadline…

I guess I’m in agreement with about 95% of the suggestions in the book and even those I disagree with, I can see the point. If you are running a business, want to run a business, or just trying to understand why the company you work for is so messed up, you should read this book. It’s a bit like group therapy. It’s good to know you are not alone… 🙂

Big thanks to Cary for the suggestion. I have a couple of mates (who still have some ambition left) who will benefit from it more than me. I’ll be sure to pass it on.

Cheers

Tim…

Do you really care about your social network friends?

I read a post on Slashdot called Who Unfriended You, and Why. You’ve got to be one insecure puppy if you are concerned about this junk.

I went on to LinkedIn yesterday and approved loads of connection requests. Of those people, the only person I think I know is the guy who massages my back before I see the Osteopath. The rest are a complete mystery to me. I’m kinda similar on Mix, the Oracle Community and the Oracle Wiki. I link to anyone who requests. I think it was yesterday that I read something (can’t find link) about Facebook having the edge over Google in the future of searches because they know so much more about you. Really? If linking is a factor I think more is definitely less!

Facebook is the only social network where I actively control my linking. With a couple of exceptions, all my friends on Facebook are people I know in real life and would consider proper friends (current or past). I even exclude “proper friends” within the Oracle community because I’m linked to them in so many other ways it seems pointless to clutter my Facebook with them. If you send a friend request to me on Facebook you are likely to get ignored, so don’t be offended, it’s just the way I use that site.

So back to the point, my use of Facebook means that the links there have value right? Surely if these people are my “proper friends” I will share a lot in common with them and you will be able to target me based on them and vice versa. Recently my Facebook has contained the following topics:

  • Babies: Food and sleeping patterns of babies have been by far the biggest subject for a few months. I have no kids. FAIL.
  • Gay poetry with a radical political edge: One of my friends from University is now a gay poet who is apparently pretty good. Never read his work. Not my scene. My interest in politics goes about as far as pointing out how retarded most political decisions are. FAIL.
  • Hill running: Look at me. Do I look like I could walk up a hill, let alone run up one? FAIL.
  • Local football teams: Football is not really my thing. If my nephews didn’t play it I could happily forget it exists. FAIL.
  • DJ and clubbing stuff: A couple of my friends are DJs so there are often posts about and invites to local club nights. I don’t do clubs. FAIL.

What is not included in that list is anything computer or database related. Oh dear. The thing you could really target me on is the only thing missing from my Facebook because the majority of my proper friends are not IT people.

Given the complete random way some people build their networks and the random guff they talk about, I don’t really think Google should be quaking in their boots quite yet. A bigger problem for them is the number of people that never leave Facebook and therefore never see Google ads on the rest of the web, not the [lack of] quality of information Facebook holds about us.

Cheers

Tim…

Caveats: I realize there is more to online marketing than this, but it was just an illustration of how random social networks can be.