Archive for September, 2005
KUDOS to TUSC
TUSC are offering free help and support to businesses directly affected by Katrina. This is an excellent initiative. Well done to Rich Niemic and the rest of TUSC.
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Education t-sql style
There is a nice little example on the Daily WTF of how not to do things. Its a T-SQL example but neatly illustrates some common pitfals. Check out the responses here.
Lessons to pick up.
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Moore’s Law, Quotations and Research
In an article dated June, but published today Don Burleson is at it again – enlisting big names in the aid of advertising books. This time the name is Charles Phillips, president of Oracle Corp. The quote from a search Oracle article “Moore’s Law is coming to an end … we are not seeing the same price performance improvement we have seen in the past,” Phillips said.
The 18-month rule where chip performance would double and prices would drop no longer applies as strictly as it once did, Phillips continued.
This seemed a little odd to me. First I didn’t recall that Moore’s Law had anything to do with price/performance – just number of transistors on a chip. Second, I just wanted to know what Charles Phillips had said in the quote that was missed out. Was it like those movie posters that read ‘Brad Pitt’s performance is amazing…’ when the review stated ‘Brad Pitt’s performance is amazing, but can’t save this turkey’.
So what does Moore’s Law actually say? It turns out I was incorrect. You can read it here, here or here. In summary Moore suggested that over the period 1965-1975 the complexity of integrated circuits as measured by the number of components they contained would double every year. So it was a, remarkably prescient, piece of Crystal Ball gazing. Just nothing to do with pricing. (though costs get a mention).
as to my second concern, well who knows – Phillips keynote isn’t available on-line, why open-source keynotes aren’t openly available is anyones guess – it is, I suppose, just possible that he was joining the long line of people who have pronounced exponential growth in computing power dead for a while, more likely it seems to me he was promoting Oracle products to a fairly important audience, using a common misconception of a ‘Law’ is a handy rhetorical device here.
But back to this new article.
Perhaps one is intended to draw the conclusion that the book being promoted is equally well researched and illustrated.
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Oldie Hints and Tips
Just read Lisa’s Oracle Newbie blog and saw she has some helpful tips for newbies. Tom Kyte had a similar set of suggestions on his blog a while ago. It got me thinking though. There ought to be a comparable set for experienced folk who take it upon themselves to offer help. I thought these might help. Newbie tips in Italics. Oldie Tips in bold.
State your problem clearly. On a forum I frequent you may get hit with a “Crystal ball broken today, please explain” if you don’t state your problem clearly.
Ask for pertinent information – not a stack dump – you aren’t employed by support
Explain what you want to do. Please include sample data and any errors you encounter.
explain why you are asking for more information. You know how it is when support just ask you to provide more traces when you’ve clearly explained the issue. Now you know how it feels.
Do not be offended when someone asks you what the business justification is. You may be trying to do something stupid, and we’re just trying to figure out why.
Don’t be offended when someone asks something apparently daft. They may be trying to apply their skills and knowledege to a situation they shouldn’t. There are far fewer daft people, and far more rally odd situations than you have experienced.
Tell me what you’ve done already. Do you want me to assume you did a full backup before I tell you to drop a tablespace?
Read all of the posters questions and replies carefully. Maybe he already told you.
Please understand we do this for free. Sure, we learn how to solve problems in the process, but you get more out of this than we do.Getting upset with me just puts you on my ignore list.
Remember you do this for free and out of a sense of community. Acting like the grumpy old man from number 42 isn’t what you got into this for. In any case, when you think you know more than the next guy – that’s the day you stop learning
I don’t care if your problem is URGENT!! to you. In fact, if you mark your message URGENT!!! I will probably ignore it. You DO have support, right?
When you decide to ignore something. Ignore it – don’t reply only to say I’m not going to help you. How rude is that?
I guess a lot of what is being said to newbies boils down to, can you explain fully what you are trying to do, why you are trying to do it and why you think its a good idea? A lot of my advice consists of treat newbies with respect and care, think of the reputation someone well-known dbas have for frostiness and unhelpfulness, you don’t want to add to their number right?
The only thing I’d add for the newbies is If you have an error message or error number, no matter how unintelligible it is – for goodness sake tell us.
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Great new blog – and a counter example
Thanks to Rob Vollman I came across oracle-wtf tonight. Inspired by the Daily-WTF its an Oracle specific what on earth were they thinking site. It should probably be read side by side with AngryDBA.
Anyhow, this little example caught my attention. Why. Well a little while ago I came across this gem in a live system.
CREATE TABLE (table name removed)
(...
"MONTH" VARCHAR2(255),
"AGE" VARCHAR2(50),
"WEIGHT" VARCHAR2(50),
"SEX" VARCHAR2(255)
...
) ;
It doesn’t suffer from the problem referred to in Oracle-wtf though and that last column has humourous possibilities.