Oracle ACE Office Hours in the OTN Lounge…

There are going to be even more ways to meet Oracle ACEs at this years OpenWorld. The OTN Lounge is going to have some time slots where you can meet and chat with Oracle ACEs about any subject you want. See here:

Some Oracle heavyweights have already signed up for the sessions. If you’re and ACE, sign up. It’ll be fun.

Of course the most important thing is that people turn up with questions. Don’t be shy… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor…

I read some pretty damning reviews of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), so my expectations were very low. This was a good thing because I came out thinking it was OK. I really do mean OK, not great or even good. Just OK.

The film takes itself far too seriously. There is some humour, but it falls a bit flat and it is few and far between. There is far to much sentimental stuff. I don’t see the point in this type of film. I’m not looking for insight into family issues. I just want mindless action/fun from a Mummy film.

The camera work was shocking. Either the camera man was drunk, or he had been to the “Shakey camera makes things look exciting” school of cinematography. That combined with the really quick cuts made me feel like I was going to have a seizure at times. 🙂

There were some good points. For one, I think I may be in love with Michelle Yeoh. She just keeps getting better with age. 🙂 Also, I want my own Yeti… 🙂

I came out of the film reminded of Indiana Jones 4. Another good franchise that’s lost its way…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle AS… WebLogic… What?

I knew Oracle had bought BEA, so I knew they had acquired the WebLogic stuff, but I can’t remember reading that they had practically scrapped their own Application Servers in favor of it. The last I read about it was this:

Yet a quick visit to the Oracle websites makes it look pretty clear that WebLogic is the platform of choice:

I’m sure quite a few people with a vested interest in the original Oracle middle tier will feel a bit annoyed by this…

So all these years I’ve been listening to Oracle tell me their App Servers are the best, then they scrap it overnight…

Have I been snoozing and missed something? Am I mistaken? Am I confused?

Probably all three…

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I’ve just done some more Googling and it looks like the writing has been on the cards for a while, so it looks like I’ve been snoozing and missed it… 🙂

I guess next I’ll find out Oracle have bought Teradata and the database is now called Oracle Teradata 12g… 🙂

Friendfeed is down…

I can’t get on to Friendfeed this morning.

I’m hoping this is going to start a rash of “Is the Friendfeed architecture flawed?” style posts like we always see about Twitter.

As everyone knows, the main reason to use social networks is to talk about how the architecture of the social networks are flawed. If all the social networks worked properly there would be nothing to say… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: It’s back now. 🙂

Keeping it in the database…

I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently that I’m in the process of installing and moving a whole bunch of servers from our current site to a new location. Well the first phase of this process was completed over the weekend. The move involved a change in platform from Alpha to Linux for a few projects, including some Oracle database servers.

I do pretty well all my Extraction Transformation Load (ETL) processes from within the database using SQL and PL/SQL, which by its nature is portable between Oracle supported platforms. As a result, everything just worked.

Some of the other non-Oracle projects use shell scripts and Perl (containing calls to OS commands), which can prove a little more problematic. I’ve just finished helping debug a Perl script that was failing due to the difference in output of the “ps -p <pid>” command on Alpha and RHEL. Imagine how big the impact would have been if the move had been between Windows and Linux!

This just reminds my how “keeping it in the database” has paid off for me again and again. When I treat Oracle as my platform life is easy. When I treat Oracle as a “bit bucket” and focus on external technologies I run into problems.

Just an observation by a biased PL/SQL junkie… Not flame bait… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Do you smell burning?

Just before I left work yesterday I noticed a burning smell, kinda like the smell you get when you use a dusty old Scalextric. I couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from so I went up stairs to ask a couple of the guys to help me sniff out the offending kit. By the time I came back downstairs the office stunk of burning and the lights had tripped out.  Some sniffing and prodding later and we found a burned out transformer on one set of lights.

Not what you need on a Friday night when you’re late for Karate…

Well, I’m back in the office this morning, helping to move kit to the new site, and most of the lights are working. The offending transformer has been removed (not replaced). 🙂

Fun, fun, fun…

Cheers

Tim…