Database Change Notification…

I’ve recently been playing around with Database Change Notification, which is basically an asynchronous triggering mechanism. I’m not really sure why I would use it in an application, but it’s always nice to know about this stuff, just in case. I suppose it’s not drastically dissimilar to the the use of a handler module in Fine Grained Auditing…

I really need 11g to be released, then I can look at some cool new features… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Justin Currie (Del Amitri)…

I went to see Justin Currie do a gig at a local comedy club last night. He used to be, or still is depending on your view point, the lead singer of a band called Del Amitri. I’m not a fan of him or the band, but I went with a couple of friends, one of which is.

The support act was a guy and a guitar. I can can’t remember his name, but I remember that he was a complete freak. By the end of the performance we decided that he had probably been signed out of a local institution for the night!

Anyway, the main band came on and they were pretty cool. Kind of middle of the road rock/pop. Nothing too heavy and challenging, but not wishy-washy either. It turned out I know three songs by Del Amitri, those being “Nothing Ever Happens”, “Last To Know” and “Don’t Come Home Too Soon”. The latter was used as the Scottish World Cup song a few years ago. When somebody requested it, the fans murmured anxiously and Justin gave a dirty look to the guy and said, “C*nt!”. Now I don’t think that song is so bad, but I get the feeling it is not well regarded by the band or the fans. Needless to say he didn’t sing it. I can only assume that Scotland did exceptionally badly in the competition the year that was their official tune. Pity.

In all it was a pretty good gig. I’m still not a fan, but it was worth going to see. I do have a few observations about the gig-going public though:

  • Don’t sit next to me and smoke a pipe! You don’t look cool! You look like an idiot 30 something trying to look cool and failing. Roll on the smoking ban in public places that starts in July. That’s one civil liberties violation I don’t mind.
  • If you are the girlfriend/wife of said pipe smoker, do your other half a favor and explain to them that the guy sitting next to him, the one giving him dirty looks all night, is getting close to shoving that repugnant device down his throat and kicking the sh*t out of him!
  • When your a 40 something woman, it really doesn’t look cool when you act like a teenage girl experiencing Beetle Mania!
  • Male fans, it’s really not cool to try and out-sing the band. If I wanted to hear a bunch of beer-swilling idiots sing out of tune, I would have gone to a football match.

I drove home to the sound of Amy Winehouse (Back to Black). Imagine someone raiding the back catalog of Phil Spectre and Nina Simone, then jumbling the whole lot up. That’s what Amy Winehouse reminds be of. I grew up listening to Mowtown, and I’m quite partial to a bit of Nina Simone, so the combination works quite well for me.

Just a quick name and shame…

Lee Burrows – Give me back my Evanescence CD! You’ve had it since I went to Oracle Open World in October, and I still haven’t got it back!

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Lee has now returned my CD. 🙂

General Life Update…

Last week was my first full week back to my normal routine since the knee operation. Everything held up pretty well, all things considered. I don’t have any knee problems when swimming or Yoga, but I’ll have to go carefully for a few weeks at Karate and keep up my rehab exercises. I found the rehab exercises and gym stuff a little boring at first, but I’m starting to get into it. Fingers crossed, I’m through the worst of it now. Here’s a picture of me messing about before Yoga on Saturday, which shows I’m not exactly struggling with the knee anymore… 🙂

On Saturday night I went so see my friends Jodie and Mel singing backing vocals in a Meat Loaf tribute band called Maet Loaf. There were a couple of technical difficulties with the venue, but the whole band still managed to put on a great performance. I guess a sign of true professionalism is being able to pull it out of the bag when everything around you is not all it should be. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I got a speeding ticket. The first one in 20 years of driving. Gutted!

I love it when a plan comes together…

Yesterday I was trying to optimize a data transfer that took the best part of two hours to complete…

After a quick inspection I noticed a couple of things:

  • After the data was transfered from a remote database, it was updated 5 times to alter some of the values. A couple of quick DECODEs in the transfer query and these five updates were removed.
  • The transformation of some of the data was done by a really inefficient function. It was doing date arithmetic by selecting from dual, rather than just using a procedural assignment like, “variable := SYSDATE + 1”.

After rectifying both these issues the transfer time was reduced from nearly 2 hours to just 3 minutes.

I love it when a plan comes together… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. If only all optimizations were so easy…

Lasher…

Last night I finished “Lasher”, the second book in “The Lives of the Mayfair Witches” series by Anne Rice. As expected, this follows on from the first book, “The Witching Hour”. Same characters and similar “goings on”. Maybe I was distracted by the events of the last few weeks, but I really didn’t get caught up in this one.

Most of Anne Rice’s books have several story lines, each told in chunks, constantly messing with the time, and finally bringing it all together. I seemed to struggle with that in this book. I guess part of that was because I was really into some of the story lines, but quite bored by others. I would reach the end of one chapter, desperate to know what happens next, only to find I had to read 80 pages of dull crap before I could continue.

If the book had been half the size and contained only those story lines I liked I would be saying it was a classic, but it’s not.

Cheers

Tim…

Getting back into the routine…

These last few weeks have been rather odd and I’m really struggling to get back into some sort of routine. I’ve spent a lot of time doing Yoga and general stretching in addition to my knee rehab work. Tonight is my first Karate session since the operation. The physio is pretty happy with everything, so I’ve just got to go carefully on it and see how it goes. I’m not totally convinced I’m ready to go back, but there is only one way to be sure!

Cheers

Tim…

I’m back…

With the operation and Christmas over, I’m back at work. Kind of an anti-climax…

Christmas was a bit weird. After an extended break with the knee thing, having time off for Christmas seemed a bit odd. In total, I’ve been out of the office for a little over 3 weeks.

Anyway, back to the real world…

Andrew Clarke spotted a gaff in one of the examples in my PL/SQL Tuning book. Click here to check it out. Sorry to anyone who has experienced an issue with this, and thanks to Andrew for pointing it out.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I’ve notified the publisher of the corrections.