pdvfirstblog

Commodity or Simplicity ?

2010-11-02T12:29:00.005-01:00

Just had a good chat with Anjo -MiracleBV-YAPP- Kolk, and we got some good soundbytes and possibly a presentation topic:

1st: IT is now a commodity, but that doesnt necessarily mean that IT is more simple.

For business (outsource-)decision makers this means that outsourcing IT to the cheapest provider is means exactly that: Cheap (and nothing else, let alone anything would work as expected - to make anything work is an Extra $$$).

2nd: Ppl are used to app-store style solutions.

We should keep that in mind when building customer faceing systems.
If it doesnt work immediately, the user will simply try to download another app. If there is no friedlier alternative, the user will become very unhappy, and possibly do a Youp[link].

Read the Title again: if you have the choice between "Commodity" and "Simplicity".
Simplicity may work better.

UKOUG TEBS Impressive Agenda

2010-10-06T09:39:00.017-01:00

You probably got the buzz already: everyone is on about the UKOUG TEBS conference agenda.

Drum roll, ... Tadaaa....

(with apologies for the noisy image, I just linked through to the official site)

Explanations:
UKOUG: United Kingdom Oracle User Group
TEBS: Technical and E-Business Suite
Conference: the annual gathering of Nerds and Marketing-folks in Birmingham.

Indeed: an impressive line up of speakers and topics, and if all goes well, I will be there. Look forward to meeting up with old and new friends from UK and elsewhere.

Update: found this "image", much nicer, to link to the conference, and more appropriate for this sort of self-promoting bragpost:

I am not going to repeat how a UKOUG event is a better "training" then just any training, and why this particular Usergroup is worth your budget. Suffice to say the inormation is mostly unbiased and from real-world Experience, not just powerpointware. And in between sessions you get to meet some RAC (Real Appliation Customers).
You can also count on meeting a large contingent of the Oaktable there, always good for some insight and some entertainment.

And finally: this year my employer has a significant Presence as well: 7 (yes, seven!) presentations by colleagees. And that may mean I also have a minimum of 6 people in the room when I do mine [link] at 16:00 on the final day of the event. The organizers seem to count on me to hold some of the attendees in the building until the very end of the event.

See the full agenda Here.

Speaking of Agendas: I will also be presenting at HROUG and OUGF(inland) as well. Have a click to see what those events have to offer. (note to self: must update agenda to the right of the blog...)

Disclaimer: I am not getting paid to post this, and Oracle does not pay for my travel. But I do hope for an invitate to the blogger-event and a few drinks from those who are sponsored. Cheers.

UKOUG TEBS Conference Abstract Judging.

2010-08-19T15:56:00.002-01:00

Too Curious. I always optimistically volunteer to help in the judging/grading process for the UKOUG conference.

When reading abstracts, I look for User-experiences that are either Relevant to a larger group, or simply Interesting to myself. Good marks go to presentations that have practical experience behind them, to those relevant for a large group, or to those that I simply find interesting.

Low marks for those seem to have no-purpose, for the ones that sound like "summary of the manual", and especially for the ones that are product-presentations rather then User-experiences.

The process is straightforward:
You get a long list of title-links, ticklist style.
You click on one, out pops a window with the abstract.
You can then rate it from "poor" to "excellent", you need to indicate salespitch yes-no-unsure, and you can enter some comment-text (hah!).

So you click + read + grade your way through the list till all boxes are ticked. It takes me, overhead/coffee/distractions included, just under 1 min per abstract, and I had to do about 200. It is both intense and scary work.

Intense, because you have 200 words, and need to find out what is behind them. Decide how relevant, how useful this could turn out to be.

Halfway, after the first 100 or so you need a break.

It is also Scary. The majority of the content is Good Quality, relevant to a larger (sometimes smaller) audience, and most of it stems from real-world experience.
Impressive and promising. And competitive! I hope at least some merciful souls out there will rate one of my own two abstracts enough to get me into accepted (yes, this is a tout!).

And even if I can present (and thus visit) at the conference, I'll still be faced with the luxury problem of choice: there are way to many that I absolutely want to see. I know from past experience that you miss out on a number of must-see items because they will be scheduled simultaneously.

I like doing this judging job (well, once per year is OK) as it shows what people are busy with or at least what they want to talk about.

And being a hopeful submitter myself, I assume that some have put their very soul into crafting those abstracts. And for some (me included) it is vital to get at least one paper admitted otherwise the boss will not pay for the event and the trip. Hence, I try to treat all of them fairly and with much respect.

But there are some, a minority, where I copy-paste one of my pre-typed comments. Tempted to give some examples, but first: end of break and back to the tick-list.

Thanks Ron

2010-07-16T12:54:00.005-01:00

Geee.
I had no idea what he was up to.
And not used to have a (Yellow, Logica-)spotlight turned towards me unexpectedly.

Irony is difficult to convey on a blog, but Thx Ron!
(Should I look for a Thank-You sign in clip art, nah, sun shining outside....)
I'll handle the fallout on Monday, if time permits.

(and I'll get you for this Ron!)

Actually: the next blog was supposd to elaborate on the jury-process and other topics related to UKOUG Conference in Birminham.

That is the more important thing for the coming months:
How to get a flipping manager to pay for my trips/presentations to SIOUG, to Moscow, to Croatian-Usergroup, to Birminham and if possible one or two UKOUG SIGs.
The ever lasting struggle for the (non-existing) budget garded by the beancounters...

UKOUG TEBS call for papers

2010-04-14T12:29:00.003-01:00

As a conference- and event-groupie, I have to do this: Shout to the world about upcoming events. Here is one:

I just received an email that the Call for Papers for the UKOUG Conference Series Technology and E-Business Suite 2010 has opened. The submission deadline is 2nd August, so you still have some time. The event itself is from 28th November to 1st Devember in Birmingham.

From my experience I can only say that this is the best European Oracle event around, so if you want to be part of it: Just do it! Submit your abstracts here:http://techandebs.ukoug.org/

With Thanks to colleage Roel Hartman for providing me the blog-content - I was too lazy to type it myself.

All jokes aside, next few weeks I'll be visiting a lot of events, and speaking at some, and I hope to see some of you there!

If you hesitate about submitting: Don't think too long, Submit!
As Jonathan Lewis pointed out on his blog, the event wants to cater or both the "experienced" and the not-so-blase.

My own take is: pick your best achievement or your worst nightmare of the last 12 months, and tell us about it. (End-)User experience is what counts, in any shape or form.

Later in the year, there are a few less-known events that are very much worth the trip too: SIOUG on the Adriatic, Planboard in Holland.

Schedule of events

2010-04-08T12:06:00.006-01:00

Rush jobby blog, with some shameless touts.
But since everyone else is doing it all the time: here is my schedule for April and May.

I will skip MOW2010, partly for budget-reasons, partly for lack of time and partly because there is so much else to do, but still: Recommended!

My Manager (boss) and my project managers (more bosses) keep reminding me there is actual work to do.
Dont I know it: I just spent Easter-weekend on a cutover. But all seems to go smooth. The few problems we have are of the human kind, and I now have time to write in between the babysitting of the new systems.

I _am_ going to the UKOUG Northern Server Tech Day in Leeds on 29 April and hope to catch up with a few buddies from the UK (I did spend 1 year in Leeds, many months in Sheffield and Manchester, and almost 3 years in Newcastle, so "The North" got to feel a bit like home to me).

In May, there is first the Seminar with Chris Date on 13 and 14th (see earlier blog).

Then there is EMEA-Harmony event in Talinn.

And finally the UKOUG Scotland Conference Series in Glasgow.

Hope to see a good number of you all on one or more of these events.

Chris Date in Edinburgh on 13 and 14 May 2010

2010-03-09T06:08:00.003-01:00

In the noise of of all the announcements, blogs, mails, twats (and mostly plain ads), this is one that I want to Recommend.

Chris Date is doing a Seminar in Edinburgh on 13 and 14 May.

If this seems like total nonsense for you: Google Chris Date

If you work with Information Systems and notably with Databases, chances are the work of this man has had an impact on what you do.

And to better understand what you do, and how you can do it Well, it is worth to read, discuss and understand his work.

To know where this field of expertise is really going, the work of Chris is probably just as relevant, if not more, then the latest re-naming of crs or asm processes and logfiles.

I was not kidding when I had Oracle Magazine write up my nr 1 tip for people who want to get into IT: Get your Basics Knowlege Right. You could do worse then to start with the work of Chris Date.

Tanel Poder Miracle Seminar Birmingham

2009-11-24T08:56:00.005-01:00

Yiihaaa!

I just twisted the arm of my boss and my project manager (they dont really mind - as long as I leave my phone on) and I am attending the Miracle Seminar by Tanel Poder in Birmingham on 3 and 4 December.

Anyone else going ?

OEM Oracle Enterprise manager graphs are great

2009-11-19T07:35:00.012-01:00

The title says it all.

I am really coming round to Oracle Enterprise Manager, OEM, for use in monitoring and troubleshooting performance. I'm with Doug Burns here, who once did a presentation on how he learned to love pictures.

OEM is maturing
gradually
into a
great,
good,
and indispensible
tool.

I cannot express my appreciation for OEM enough.

Am
ai
below
the blog-aggregator
horizon
already?

*PdV peeks over the edge, then looks over shoulder - twice*

This will not get me credit with Vendors...

Oracle-OEM, Quest, and Symantec all have competing commercial products,
but today, I am plugging ... :

TORA.
And to a lesser extent, Lab128 (which is effectively free as well).

(If those two are old news to you, I apologize, just close the tab and go click elsewhere)

I will admit that the commercially licensed products are much better.
They are richer in functionality (feature bloat!) then any open-source, free-to-give Tool could hope to be (or are they?). I should also mention that the commercial products often will offer all the goodies, gizmos, spotlights and the key-hangers that my kids like so much. I would never pass up on the free ~~parties, eh, salesevents~~ Seminars with food and refreshments. In that area, commercially licensed product are unbeatable.

But for Sheer Simplicity, for Acutal "Value" I have used TORA for nearly 10 (ten!) years now. My trusty 1.3.8 version dates back to 2001. I always used the free version worked fine on oracle 8, 9 and 10. It still works on 11, and I'm sure that when an 11.2 "problem" pops up at one of our customers, that even the old 1.3.8 version will show my the wait-stats.

Since Quest (bless them, they are the makers of Toad), claimed to have bought TORA in eh... 2003, I had not checked for TORA updates.

But now Timo Raitalaakso (Rafu on OTN, blog can be found Here) from Finland told me TORA is still around.
Version 2.0.0 is available.

Go and check it out at sourceforge, and go find a few references on google...

Then download it and Test It (it is totally for free - Wayhey!). If TORA is right for you, you will become addicted quite easily.

My main reason for having TORA is the server-tuning screen called "wait-events". It offers a free, and quick-to-use alternative to the OEM waitevent graphic.

I can run TORA without need for permissions on OEM (acutally, without the OEM period), and it gives me roughly the same screen. All I need is "PERFSTAT" or any user with sufficient privs (the "advisor" role is fine). If I can run spreport or awrrpt, I can generally also run TORA.

It just takes a tns-entry, and Oracle-Net connection, and then TORA is up and running. Mine runs from my company-windhoze. But there are Linux and Mac builds too.

I combine TORA with some servertool sar, vmstat (unix), lparstat (AIX) or taskmgr (windhoze) and with statspack (AWR for the licensed-lucky).
With those tools, I have solved just about every performance-problem I was given.
(admittedly, my problems tend to be simple - but I'm waiting for the first SOA/SOAP system to overload).

Inside TORA, I run the "server tuning" screen at 10 sec interval (I only use the 3rd tab with the graph and the pie-chart of the wait-events). I tend to disable the other screens, not just to save on sqlnet traffic, but also to keep my windows-lappy running happy.

And Voila, that screen (which predates and resembles the OEM graph...) tells me what is happening right now, and in the last hour. In using it, I have a few dislikes and a wishlist too, but I'll keep that for another time.

Tip: I often configure 12 gridlines and 360 datapoints to have a 5 min grid on 1 hr of data.

I am still of the opinion that real DBA's use SQL*Plus, common sense, and not much more. But if you are into troubleshooting databases, you could do worse then look into these tools.

Catch the Wave

2009-11-13T14:43:00.007-01:00

Got the invite, and I jumped in. I have actively tried to surf some googlewaves with a few friends, but I do get the feeling this is a case of Emperors Clothes sometime.

How many of you have actually stood on a surf-board or even windsurfed? Both are not easy - well not to clumsy impatient geeks like me. But once you "get it", the experience is Excellent!

How many realize that the perfect wave is something very ethereal. To be catched when it happens, and to never return. We all have our "perfect wave" moments, but I'm not sure if gee-wave is one of mine

The good thing of this new wave is to link up, again, with ppl I appreciate, and some I had nearly forgotten.
And the gadgets look mint to: cool voting widgets, maps, all sort of embedded content. And we havnt even seen the "wave" of applications that can be built with the API. If Facebook is anything to go by, wave has a huge Gee-Wizz potential.

But the down-side is that it seems to take much more time then plain email, skype-chat, yahoomessenger, msn, googlechat, whatever. And that live typing is relatively slow from most connections I have used so far. Any way I can turn that off?

Does anyone remember IRC or ICQ chat ?
Anyone used the the VMS and unix "phone" utility ?

And now we have facebook (mafia wars!), hyves, skyrocks (my 13yo has about 7 hompages there, for various purposes), LinkedIn, google-talk and twatter. And with Google Lattitude, several ppl (+ all of google) keep track of my whereabouts already.

Tomorrow we will be on gwave and lattitude (and a few more that only my kids know of).

A UKOUG Conference-promotional wave anyone ?

I'm only a Simple Oracle Dba, and I'll try not to be a Luddite.

Okokok, just got a txt msg asking if I could check a certain wave that mentions an email of about an hour ago...

ukoug promo

2009-11-10T23:14:00.003-01:00

Hello There :

Have a laugh at this promo!
(with thanks to Alex for pointing it out on twitter)

See you in Birmingham.

But first, I have to play with my new wave account. And finish one migration and one installation, and reply to some questions.

Oracle Usergroup meetings - Tips

2009-11-07T20:33:00.013-01:00

Last week was Perfect: I could escape the project-managers for all but Monday and spent the rest of the week "working" remotely, while visiting two usergroup-events.

I had the pleasure to attend the DBA-Day from Oracle Usergroup Holland (OGH), and the Autumn Seminar from Oracle Usergroup finland (OUGF). Both events were Very Well organized and had excellent content.

Being lazy, I do hope some other enthusiastic bloggers will do a writeup of the interesting items from each event. Today, I have another priority on this blog.

I hope all of the the attendees had an interesting and productive time. And I would encourage them to tell their managers how useful these meetings are.

If anyone has to justify their Usergroup-Fees or cost, I always like to make the point that these groups are the only way to get information that is not totally-tainted by pre-sales. At a usergroup, you can hear how it really works, rather then how it is supposed to work. The unbiased (ok: less biased) information combined with the staff-motivational aspect, are probably the best business-case.

Evaluation forms

I know most usergroups are trying very hard to please their audience, their members and their sponsors with ever-present "Evaluation Forms", and I do fill in my share of forms.

I would like a quiet word with that one person at UKOUG events who always fills in 100% minimal scores on my presentations. I can only presume he is linked some some vendor that lost business because of my "simple" crusade.

I know for a fact that at least some of my comments to UKOUG have been read, and considered. Thanks Aimee, Rachel and all the other members of staff.
Those forms are useful, and I forward all the good comments to my boss.

Tips

As a regular visitor and presentor at Usergroups in various countries, I have compiled my own list of preferences and what I consider best-practices.

Mind, this is not criticism, but rather praise and encouragement. I full well realize that it is much easier to criticize then to construct. And I do applaud the volunteers and staff who organize it all.

So, at the risk of ridicule, here goes...

- Handcuff speakers to the table.
Do not allow speakers to run in, rush-ppt, and run away from the event. No matter how "celebrity" they are, they should allow time to discuss and mix with the (paying) audience. Find some incentive to keep the speaker after his talk. Allow approachability and discussion.

- Clean out the speakerlounge regularly.
Discourage speakers from hiding in speakerlounges. See above. Usergroups are for users. The mixing and hobnobbing with higher celebrities can be done elsewhere.
And for speakers: the information you pick up from listening to in-the-field users is often invaluable. Get out there.

- Provide a safe cloakroom.
Especially for those who travel with luggage-trolleys, it is very convenient to have a safe spot. It is one less worry, and ppl dont lug around the additional coats and other items (also a firehazard).

- Use simple timings.
Plan the start/stop of sessions on whole-hour, half-hour or quarter-hour, please.
Simple timing is easier to keep. When a speaker is sweating in front of an audience he doesnt want to permanently do time-math. And users wandering around or smoking outside will easier remember simple timings as well.

I sometimes had to fit a 45min ppt (+/-22 slides + some demos) into a slot between 14:25 to 15:10. Running it from 14:30 to 15:15 is just easier (me - I like simplicity). I know that staggered breaks are better for services, staff, crowd-control and exhibition-sponsors. I understand that, but it doenst mean I like the funny timings.

- A visible clock.
A nice big clock on the wall, visible to both speaker and public is a great help. See above.

- Breaks between sessions.
Breaks should be 15-20 minutes, please. In between all sessions. Breaks are meant for discussing the topics, for networking, for coffee/ciggies and for phone-calls/mails. A whole morning sessions with no break (because the speakers want to run away?) is tiring, and doesnt allow to digest and discuss the material presented.

- Simple Refreshments at Every Break.
Preferably Coffee (strong), Tea(ditto), water (still) and biccies (optional) at all breaks. IT ppl like we are run on coffee (and some also run on ciggies [link to Doug?]). And a cup facilitates mixing and networking.

- Provide some (walking) space during breaks.
The venue should provide sufficient space to walk around and mix (with cup of coffee in hand). Networking and listening to peers is such a very important aspect! Additionally, some of the attendees will want to return phone-calls and will appreciate some space to hide and speak.

- Provide Free wifi - Please.
Possibly negociate vouchers with venue if the wifi is payable. A lot of us want to stay in touch, or even verify what the speakers say on tinternet.

- Practical Food.
The Quality of the lunch needs to be Acceptable, but the food should mainly be practical, and easy to consume while networking. Sandwiches are perfect, hot soup is a big risk. The sit-down lunch in "Slough" is very Good (a much appreciated classic at UKOUG). But if such quality is not on offer, then make sure the food can easily be consumed standing/walking. Balancing a hot plate plus a glass in a crowded space can be awkward.

- Facilitate shared transport after the event.
Ask publicly, around lunchtime, if anyone wants to share taxi to trainstation or airport. The RMOUG has set the golden standard for this, AFAIK.
But it is plain funny to command 5 taxis separately and form a convoy to the trainstation. And sometimes a gentle soul even offers a ride from Solihul all the way to London (Thanks Dave!).

That concludes my pedantic advice
(I'm a consultant after all - I always want to impose some unsolicited opinion).

If it helps anyone, then fine. If you think all of the above is totally obvious or ridiculous, then I apologize for wasting your time (you should have stopped reading earlier - consultants are there to be ignored, remember).

See you at some Usergroup maybe!

Oracle 11gR2 buzz and my "Thank You" to Oracle

2009-09-04T16:31:00.012-01:00

re-Hi all, and nice to see everyone busy downloading/tweaking the 11gR2.

Must say I havnt really kept up with all the buzz, but when I looked at the new features I tried to be a-typical: I'll not go and sing praise to all the new complexities yet. I'm sure they are fine and wont cause serious trouble. They will come my way in due course.

My 11gR2 buzz ?
I'm on the lookout for the simple stuff that may just be of benefit to a large number of DBA grunts like me. For the moment, I will have to let someone else study the new intricacies of the upgraded root.sh script (Hi Martin, Jason!)

I have to fuss-up that the most high-tech "fixes" I did in the last year was around conventional locking (TX Enqueue, just app-logic, talk to the vendor), Dynamic-SQL (politely lean on the vendor of the app) tweaking CBO (and not even subtle, just applied some Tapio[link]) and the (system-)statistics. Most of my work didnt come close to proper rocket science, any of you could have done it. The bulk of my assignments seem to involve pushing people, rather then data-blocks. And my email-cc skills have greatly improved in the last months. Sigh.

Reading the "wotsnew", I still found several gems of simple (I hope) and possibly very usefull features.

There is at least one client that will be interested in "Instance Caging". The site that can benefit from this as the Developers have 100 small, but sometimes nasty databases running on a single machine with 24 CPUs. And sometimes they have an "oops" moment and one instance affects the whole (development) system. Reading up on "instance caging", it is dependent on Resource-manager. That sort of locks me in, I now Have to use this Resource manager malarky... (Guess I'm a Lazy Luddite at heart)

The IGNORE_ROW_ON_DUPKEY_INDEX may well be an instant hit. I will not be able to resist abuse of that one! The benefits are Obvious.
But... (there are at least two buts)
This new hint will lead to a lot of lazy-programmer-style stuff. Potentially as dangerous as the "whenever others" that Tom Kyte is sometimes on about.
And, on a more Friday-philosophical level [link to MWidlake], I dont like the fact that a Hint has an impact anywere but on the optimizer.
I can not stop Oracle from developing (useful!) stuff like this, but it puts "Hints" in a whole different part of the game. Food for thought there.

So let me politely say "Thank You" to Oracle for the new, simple, and easy-to-use(?) features. There are a few more ones, I will explore them further when time permits.

First got to do some prio stuff, such as booking trips and updating the Agenda [link]. Hope to see some of you in Real Life on a conference, a SIG, or a Gig somewhere.

From Google to oracle

2009-06-29T11:44:00.010-01:00

A recent article in the Register throws some light on the different approaches by Google and M$. The article and its links are worth a careful read, no matter what hat you wear.

Reading break....

(go on, read it...! that stuff is much more important then my ramblings)

Me, of course I only read and retain what I want to agree to ...
Not hampered by too much knowledge of my own, here is my colored and limited interpretation:

The Micro$oftee boasts in management-speak about the "tremendous set of applications" and the problem to come up with "one set of KPIs that works" (sic).

The Geekle is very much focussed on performance and smooth global deployment. He speaks of "forcing developers into a confined space", and of "GFS as a baseline service".

Two items struck me in particular.

Firstly, one of the key-items put forward by the Google engineer is to "limit" the developers. The Google platform offers a very limited set of "services" to the developer and the challenge is to keep the developers inside that box.
Hearding Toads comes to mind.

The Confinement, the Limitation shows the Master

The other keyword that ticked my fancy was "GFS". The Google File System.
There is nothing that isolates infrastructure more elegantly then a file system.
The "everything is a file" adage that came with Unix is unbeatable.
A database consists of files.
A VM is a set of files.

And a "Global File System" is a very useful, and a conceptually clean "layer" to deal with.

Those of us in the process of building "farms", "estates", "grids" and "clouds" would do well to study some of the Google approach. Oracle and its practitioners (that is us) may well be able to learn a trick of two from the Google Approach.

Limitation : reduce the number of different components. But scale horizontally by having many of them.

Simplicity and Confinement : do a few things, but do them simple and do them really really well (and Often, and Fast).

Layering : Isolate everything in a "File System"

In my opinion, the "limitation" and the relative simplicity of the google platform is one of its key success factors.

That Simplicity, and the hiring of all the brightest brains on the planet.
I have seen some very good minds leave to join Google, but I never heard of a manager going there...

Oracle CBO version 12 - secret preview

2009-06-27T08:37:00.004-01:00

Tanel Poder has the scope on this.

He got his hands (and eyes, and brain) on something that seems to have escaped from an Oracle Lab.

Have a look.

Nice one Tanel!

Simplicity is Crucial in Database Deployment

2009-06-22T12:11:00.001-01:00

While visiting the homepage of our beloved vendor, I came across this link to "Gartner".

Gartner Research is among the most used and cited in the IT industry, so I was curious to see what was there. The title was promising:

Oracle RAC Moved to Mainstream Use

I had a good read and the one thing that struck me was the number of mentions (warnings) of "complexity" and "need for training". There is also the "confusion between ASM and CFS" to notice.

Of course, I only read what I want to read, and conclude what I want to conclude, but I will stay firmly on my view "Simplicity is King" (but complexity sells better).

compliments to metalink support

2009-06-15T12:13:00.004-01:00

Metalink is a very positive experience.

My compliments to Oracle for their state-of-the-art 3rd generation pro-active Support system.

The good old metalink interface was Snappy and Fast and the new flash(?) interface is so clever it is just a doddle (albeit a bit obese, I do alway request for a mega-size hi-res screen, and a 3Ghz Dual-core machine, just in case).

You will notice that I cram in as much positive words as I possibly can, just to make it look like I really am a fantastic supporter of this excellent metalink support system. The search engine will love this. And may the gods of google and Redmond reward me with oodles of Good Karma, and lunches, and plane-tickets, for all this forward-facing and link-enhancing Feedback. if only I wasnt so lazy with links...

Anyway, the Rant...

Last week I had one of those refreshingly positive Metalink experiences.

An issue with "system statistics". The details are rather client/app specific, hence no further details (yet).

System_statistics?
You know, the stats that replace Multi-block-read-count and ind_cost_adjust_perc. The stats that tell the Cost-Based-Optimizer about the underlying hardware.

System stats are the stats that get stored in SYS.AUX_STATS$ with items like CPUSPEED, MBRC, SREADTIM and MXTHR (another great feat of engineering-in-progress, the CBO). For those of you who think I'm talking about stats on the SYS schema, or just the auto-gather job: Get the Book By Christian Antognini. He has what I think is a good explanation, and the Best Strategy (best practice, if you want management speak) for gathering system-stats.

OK, so we have an Issue with this gather_system_stats. And nor metalink nor google came up with a satisfactory answer. Even a phone-call to an ACE director didnt give me a resolve (but at least we agreed on possible approaches, Thx Anjo!)

So what is a consultant to do ? I reluctantly opened an SR...

After two polite and cheerful acknowledgements (Hi I'm Joe and I will help you.... Hi I'm Tom and I will help you....) but no answer whatsoever, the third "Support Analyst" had actually searched metalink and typed (pasted) some reply. Thank you.

His first reply was to read 10 or so notes on Metalink, all related to "object stats", e.g. gather_schema and gather_table stats. My colleages had already read all of those, and I had read most. I sacrificed my time on a double-check but our answer wasnt in there.

So I had to update the SR and politely point out that my question was about SYSTEM statistcs. The ones stored in SYS.AUX_STATS$, and gathered by dbms_stats.gather_SYSTEM_stats. The stats that represent the underlying hardware configuration.

Next reply from the analyst (more metalink searching on his part) was that the gathering of stats on the SYS schema was explained in ML notes Eeeeeeh.1, Grrrrr.1 and Zzzz.1... with some obviously sensible and MC (Metalink-Correct) caveats and version-dependency remarks.

I then Icey-Politely stated I did not want to offend him, but that I would really appreciate it if he read the question and my replies again, carefully. Please-pretty-please.

Maybe the question was not that trivial, after all. I had spent a full evening in an Ice-cold shopping centre with wifi trying to find the answer myself on both metalink and google.

One Weekend further, a support analyst called my mobile number. Relief. This person at least knew approximately what system-statistics were. And he called mainly to confirm and assure that he actually understood the question (Yay - Progress!). He Did understand the Issue. And the question. And he is now looking for an answer inside Oracle.

The secret of using the CBO is to not let it eat up your time and effort. And in writing this, the CBO just cost me another 30min of my life. My mistake.

Am I Positive about Metalink ?
You Bet !

That fact alone that someone now read and understood the question, and the actual effort he displayed to now find an answer is Refreshing. It restores my faith in online-support.

And metalink-alone justifies the flat-screen TV I've requested on my desk.

Irony anyone ?
(I never was good at jokes)

Serious Work

2009-05-21T09:54:00.012-01:00

Two remarks about Work.

Working in IT can suck you in big time.

I just spent one of those weeks of late-nights hammering on a problem for one specific client, working from the Rotterdam Office of my employer.
And in the same three day-week, every third manager and every third Secretary in the dutch subsidiary got fired. A bit like shooting ducks at the fair, I guess. Hence two remarks.

Firstly, the people-cleanup.

The culling is a tragedy for those involved, but Especially for the Secretaries.
Personally, I welcome a good management cleanup. We had a lot of duh-livery managers, and a reduction in overhead was long overdue.
But firing Secretaries in this climate is "not done". It may be that I have not worked enough billable hours, it may be the boss did not keep our "utilization" on par, but it is definitely not the fault of the Secretaries, and firing them isnt going to help.

Also you can fire 1 extra manager and keep 3 good, useful secretaries.

Secretaries are the fabric of the company, they Really know how things work, and they are immensely valuable in emergencies. Whether you are stuck on an airport or need a replacement for a broker laptop power-supply: Call the Secretary.
The indians may mean well, and have nice callcentre-scripts, but all they are allowed to say, sir, after 30 min, sir, of phone-confusion, sir, is "you must contact business secretary and order replacement, sir..."
The secretary knows that the power-supply-thingies break down, and has a few spareparts laying around!

Hence my deep Respect to all Secretaries, past present and future.

Secondly, the we-feeling.

Our new NL-top-dog is much impressed by the "we feeling" in our company.
Right, well, the secretarial staff will agree....

I know it sounds funny in (northern)english, due to the various meanings of "wee". But he wants to compliment the remaining staff on the "team spirit". It just sounds funny if you litteraly translate from dutch...

The thing that gave me a real boost in the last week was the Dedication of a small team that laboured on, regardless of the organisation falling apart. Regardless of tears at the coffee machine, regardless of losing a few good bosses, regardless of uncertainty about who would sign off our expenses, regardless of the vendor documentation providing the wrong scripts, regardless of the client trying to prevent them from work by calling every 5 min.

We had a customer that had got himself in a real twisted problem, mainly due to ignoring good advice for years. And now we had to bail him out of it.
Never ever had they listened to good advice. But of course we would take the blame, that is what the IT supplier is for.
An "I told you so" attitude never got you anywhere.
But Helping a customer in need Might get you somewhere.

So when things really broke down, some of our brilliant brains actually managed to puzzle him out of a bad spot. They figured out which tables and un-documented relations (and bolted-on triggers!) had caused the poblems. And they retrieved exactly the right records to resume normal operations.
That is the sort of team you can win a war with.

And for those in the know: Brains always are better then Iron.

Iron, Big, Brute-Force, Expensive Iron, may look good and make you friends at hardware-vendors.

But Brains will win the day.

Planboard

2009-05-02T18:58:00.004-01:00

Today's image is a plan board. This is of course to promote the Planboard DBA symposium. A relatively small-scale, Dutch event by "planboard". The small scale of the event makes for excellent knowledge transfer (I expect many questions that I cannot answer...) and good networking.

Kuddos to Planboard for this initiative, and my gratitude to those who have convinced their budget-holders that these events are Valuable. Believe me, they are! And they are cheaper then training too.

It is something the UKOUG has noted as well. Small and targeted events, Special Interest Groups if you like, often are the most valuable meeting.
I'd be tempted to report on a discussion I had with two DBA's over lunch at the Scottisch DBMS SIG. They might just have solved a nagging listener-connection problem from a good discussion with Joel Goodman and a few others.

And that is the kind of value you get from SIGs and Symposia.

That is Ace indeed. Oracle Ace even.

2009-04-23T18:27:00.007-01:00

The Brits, normally fairly cool folks, have a way of saying "That is ACE!" when they are enthusiastic or excited about something.

And I feel sufficiently proud of my new status to say that myself. (I'll do some screaming therapy form a hilltop in the Ardennes this weekend, and then I'll try to refrain from looking too smug next week...)

But at the same time, I realize I owe this to many friends, customers and co-workers.

I owe this to all the sparring partners I debated with over the years (Even Nigel!).

And I owe this to all the managers that benevolently signed off the expenses for trips and presentations (Thanks JP!).

I owe it to those who let me attend their events at a reduced rate (if I name them, they will get spammed?).

And I owe this to all the Project Managers and Architects that took responsability for my Mistakes and Blunders (FredP, MikeC, Geert, ChrisC, DavidH, IanS, PeterP, PeterG, ...). I have helped a few Nasty bugs to surface as well, notably in FBIs and IOTs... Not always to the joy of my customers. Customers expect the systems to work, rather then to score bugs that feature in powerpoints by Phil Davies.

Right.
And now I need to live up to the expectation.
I am doing 3 ppts in the coming week, one in York and two in Edinburgh. And my regular customer wants an in-house presentation on top of that.
Then there is Planboard Symposium on 26 May...

But First A good night sleep, and then Back to Work.

Thank You, that was ACE

2009-04-14T18:06:00.009-01:00

Thank You, Anjo.

(Rush job blog, as I have a few other things on, writing from the BK in Metrocentre, with funny blockage of blogger-items ...)

Anjo-YAPP-Kolk doesnt really need introducing, and I am not going to link to
him again, for fear of over-doing the link-stuff (dont want jealous webmasters, do we?) and my boss is also looking...

But Anjo basically, on a rainy evening over one of those idea-bouncing
nerdy dinners, dropped the concept, wrote the introduction, and magically made me enter the ACE-arena...

And now he twitted the news prematurely and I got a few "Gratz" mails.

All I still need to do now is to sign over my life to Larry, sit still, behave respectably (Havnt bought a suit in ages...), and then I might be allowed to put various logos on my blogs and presentations. Maybe someone will someday finally READ all this... This writing stuff isnt really my thing, I prefer to stand up in front of customers or a usergroup-audience. More Fun, less spelling-errors).

Anyway. Awaiting the last results from the jury...

And my next blog ( at SimpleOracleDba.blogspot.com) will be semi-serious, about a select count(:x) stmnt, whereby x is...

Oracle Usergroup Scotland and Northern Server Day

2009-04-06T14:25:00.008-01:00

Or, as now two different UKOUG representatives have stated: we dont mind if you mention our events on your blog.

Well, since a lot of the internet is indeed just "Search Engine Content", and since it is mainly about link-harvesting, here is some plug-text for the Events where I myself present.
speaking of links... I refuse to point out the site that most bugs me when I do googlies on "oracle" content. you all know there is a lot of obnoxious trivial stuff around, and I am quite ashamed to go into the game of search-enginge-link-farming myself. The name "dom" comes to mind [link to Ora600.be]. Kurt did a good job of making fun of it.

I am also green with envy those who can go and see Tanel in Europe, and even Jeremiah Wilton comes to holland this summer. But I will make the effort to first promote the following (nearly free) events:

First, there is the Northern Server Day of UKOUG on 28 April 2009.
To be held in the beautiful city of York.

After you have done the touristy-check (York is Beautiful!), please also check out the content of the Meeting (just follow the UKOUG logo...). There are two streams (you may have to choose) and topics are about ~~disasters~~ Recovery, flashback, exadata, and (hometown of Pete Finnigan... you guessed it... ) Security.

The Northern Server day is an excellent opportunity to mix with fellow-practicioners and exchange some relevant real-world (non-sales) experience. And York is easy to reach by train from just about anywhere in the North (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Secondly, The Scots, proud as ever, of course have their own OUG, and some blue color in the logo.

The Oracle User Group Scotland DBA SIG, will be held the next day, 29 April 2009, in "Embro". And again, you can meet peers with Real World Experience who use the same products and tools you do. Come and learn from eachother. Personally, I did have a problem convincing my management that I really should visit both, but I gave them a few strong-worded arguments, backed up with links to both events (hey, links and search-engines can be your friends indeed)

Hope to see you on one, or both, of the events!

PS: Tjees, do I sound like a commercial or what ?
Even dom himself couldnt do more link-shopping, could he ?
You two (you know who you are) now Happy with this ?

Anyone interested in starting a Toon-chapter of UKOUG. Logo: black and white stripes...?

Oracle Cost Base Optimizer - getting sucked in

2009-03-25T16:57:00.010-01:00

The CBO is Truly Brilliant.
Oh Yes, it is.

Rant ?
me Rant ?
Never. I dont waste engergy that way.
Mind you, CBO is a worthy adversery when it comes to wasting energy. Especially after upgrades to 10g [link?].

Very Clever, the CBO.
The CBO will get it "mostly right in most of the cases" (famous quotation needed, but it is true). However those few cases where the CBO gets it wrong can really ruin your reputation.

I would always maintain that we paid Oracle to do the hard work for us, and I would not get sucked into doing arcane bespoke stuff with stats and hints and outlines and whatever to make a query do the bleeding obvious. Meanwhile, I spent hours tweaking all of the above, and reading near-scientific stuff trying to understand CBO just a bit better still. And now I finally got sucked in: I will join the ranks of those who have ~~ranted~~ presented on the CBO...

I must be careful here: Nobody ever got praised for pokeing fun at large vendors. The Real Application CBO is like those other Real Application Thingies: Oracle is Soooo Proud of it. No other database-vendor even comes close in ingenuity, in sheer intelligence, and in cunning engineering where query optimization is concerned.
So yes, I admit it, the CBO is Brilliant.
If it gets it right.

I did it again today:
A customer-meeting got sidetracked into "performance" and I spent 20 min explaining that when CBO made some seemingly inefficient decisions, it was not the CBO at fault. CBO tries as best it can. CBO will be using spfile-parameters, system-stats, object-stats, histograms, session-parameters, where-clauses, hints, outlines, and sql-plans and whatever other information it can glean from looking at the stars or tealeaves or whatever. So, if it is not the CBO at fault, it must be us, right ? We should have read the manual, the whitepapers, metalink, and followed the instructions available.

OK, real reason for this post: a plug for OUG Scotland.

I still need to write the abstract and the ppt, and wanted to aim it more towards efficient indexing, refer to Tapio and Richard Foote. Show CBO the obvious route (you can lead a clever horse to water) and it might just get it right... But my ppt will probably involve "how I fought the CBO".
Thomas already put up the title as a CBO related item...

These guys and many other good writers have basically said all there is to say already. And I am not qualified to tell you much on gathering stats or how to tweak parameters. Nor can I teach you about high-tech-hinting[link needed]. Others have done that before me, and did a much better job then I could hope to do.

I know my limitations.

I am going to take as Simple an approach as I can.

In a crisis, you call the DBA

2009-03-06T11:44:00.021-01:00

There is renewed demand for Real DBA skills.

And I now understand why.

In these stormy days, there is an increasing need for sober, simple and honest craftsmen (and women). Solid DBAs who know their job, who do not over-stretch or over-promise, and who can tell it like it is.

It really helps that Customers have no more patience for FUDdies and timewasters.
The vendors of over-complex, every-expanding, ever more costly contraptions are the first to go. Houses of cards cannot stand the storm. And the groupies that dont carry their weight get blown away with them: They add no value to Real Application Business.

In these Fearfull times, the demand for Uncertainty and Doubt is suddenly gone, and there is a need for Real Application Solutions.

Those who tried to boast their CV by implementing ever-more-misty FUD and "business" oriented layers of complexity are now finding a deaf ear. The Customer is too busy surviving, and their shiny layered contraption may have to go in the freezer, or down the drain. Simple Real Application Survival is more important.

I have always liked a good crisis.

A crises is when you call your DBA.

A crisis is the moment, the Opportunity, to solve some Real Application Problems.

And remember Professor Dijkstra:

"Simplex Veri Sigillum"
simplicity is the hallmark of truth.

Dijkstra then went on to state:
"Unfortunately, Complexity sells better"

Customers got wise.
Customers stopped buying!

And many sensible customers are actually using this so called "crunch" to reduce the complexity. The cold wind will blow away the chaff, and leave more room or serious, quality engineering.

Simple, solid and robust systems are de rigeur again. Real Application Simplicity.

Tip for salesmen: If you want to sell anything: try selling something simple.

PS: Thanks to a Miraculous friend for inspiring this blog! I hope his presentation went well, and I told him:
In case of doubt: Choose the more Simple solution.

Real Application Simplification is the word!

Herding TOAD

2009-03-05T19:01:00.006-01:00

You have to see the Fun side of this credit-crunch thing!

We had some great humour sprouting up inside our company when management went into cost-cut-panic. Hence the squeezed lemons.

And now this: A tech who turned maybe-manager and who will rationalize our TOAD license into "compliance".

Controlling ~~Developers~~ TOAD is like hearding Cats.
Actually, it is much harder then that!
(I think this was Pete Sharman's favorite line)

Here is an appropriate classic line by a Nerd from this 90s movie:

"The kind of control you are trying to exert is just not possible"

I am simply saying that ~~Licenses~~ eh ~~Toads~~ eh Life Finds a Way.

Luckily, the current office dinosaurs are not half as scary as the ones in the movie. But let me just check that My Green Friend is still legal, in case I get a spot-check on my laptop next week.

Never forget how a lean and mean american client, always brutally efficient, avoided to pay for a very complex and very bespoke report from the E-Business Suite:

"So, Who wants this report again? ... "

(....timid answer...., followed by a Grunt from the Boss)

"So what if we just get rid of him?"

Database wise, that is called Optimization by Elimination.
Funny that this client is still doing quite well...

Optimization by Elimination...
That reminds me of Dave Ensor...

My next Presentation on the Northern Server Tech Day might just be about Indexes, simple and advanced, and on what you can do if CBO doesnt "get it". Tapio and Richard Foote to the rescue.

Elimination is key. I'm still working on it.
Elimination of useless effort.
Elimination of Complexity.
Simplicity.

Of course, I do not have the Definite answer to CBO headaches. 42, and some paracetamol may still be your best bet.

Update: Lisa and the folks at UKOUG have chosen to re-run my rather boooring presenation on "Is my Back(up) (re)covered ?". On the one hand I find it my most boooring presentation, but in the last 12 months, it has been The most asked-for topic I present on. I guess "Recovery" is even more of a fixation then the infamous CBO. I'll do a plug on the "Northern Server Day" later, but suffice to say York is a very nice town and the NS day is alsways a relaxed gathering of Oracle Professionals. Funny enough, there is a Scottisch DBA-SIG event the day after./

Anyway, one more about Rationalizing TOAD:

Respect to those who manage to ride this herd into town succsefully !

Miracle Open Oracle World

2008-10-22T08:36:00.003-01:00

Mooow.

This is a Shameless Plug.

I'll blame it on the credit-crunch: I was looking at a slow-ish week with a few documents to review, a few meetings left-right-centre, and especially a lot of boring car-commutes.

What saved me was a brief chat with Anjo Klok from Miracle Benelux. There were a few spaces left at the Miracle Oracle Openworld (Moo?) Event in Lalandia.

So, Im writing form the back of a minivan on my way to the Event. and to justify my use of the Miracle Taxi Service (MTS), I should give the good folks at Miracle some free publicity.

Here is the Banner

There are a few aspects that make this event unique:
First, the quality of the speakers and presentations. Secondly, there is the relatively small scale of the event. It is about the size of a good UKOUG SIG meeting, and offers a good opportunity to mix with the speakers. Mogens, the organizer, deliberately did not provide a speaker-lounge, hence the Gurus cannot hide from the hoi-polloi. Ample opportunity to harass them with questions.

Oh, and dont mention it to your manager, but the Danes also know how to throw a party, or two.

More later!

Birmingham UKOUG annual conference

2008-10-20T10:00:00.005-01:00

If you can attend just one Oracle event per year: Come to Birmingham.

Despite the logo, the event is more then just a party:

The size of the event makes it unique and the provides a huge range of topics and speakers.

And if the bean-counters question the need for membership-fee and participation-effort, then question them on the amount of licensing- and consulting fees that need to be paid annually to this large software vendor....

Because if your employer is spending millions per year in licensing, they should at least make sure they keep checks on what other users do. A Usergroup is an excellent opportunity to discuss and argue with colleague-victims who are held hostage by the same vendor.

"The Conference" is one of the Largest and Best Organized non-Oracle-Oracle events (e.g. not organized by Oracle, but still about Oracle) on this side of the Atlantic.

Why do I really post this?

As always, the blogosphere is asked to plug, to promote and to web-Link this event into the search-engine rankings (the request went out weeks ago, and I am probably the last, fashionably late, blogger to put in an entry... But hey: there might be drinkies again at the blogger-event).

See you in Brum!

UKOUG 2008 Bloggers Assistance.

2008-04-22T08:13:00.004-01:00

It is that time of year: the UKOUG is on with the Organisation of the next Big Yearly Conference. And as this is the 25th edition, it may just be Extra Feisty.

The call for papers is out and can be found here: http://conference.ukoug.org/

As always, the blogosphere is asked to plug, to promote and to web-Link this event into the search-engine rankings (the request went out weeks ago, and I am probably the last, fashionably late, blogger to put in an entry... But hey: there might be drinkies again at the blogger-event).

To be honest: This one is Worth It!

It is one of the Largest and Best Organized non-Oracle-Oracle events (e.g. not organized by Oracle, but still about Oracle) on this side of the Atlantic. Another good one is the SIOUG in Slovenia[link]: surprisingly Large Event and in a very nice location (yes, I was there last year, and it was Great Fun).

Time to go over my project-notes from this year to see what I can bring to the party. I had several ideas in the last months, but none of them are very "nice". But then, that is what user-groups are for maybe: Calling a Spade a Spade ?

"Upgrade Nightmares"
Indeed, why do we do it each time? why do we take the bait and the FUD each time and go through these Painful Upgrades...
My Cost+work saving tip for today would be: If you are still on 9.2 or even 8.1.7.4, and are considering to upgrade (as you should) why not show real balls and wait for 11.2 to come along?
If you have to go through the pain of an upgrade, you might as well
go to the highest possible version and be done for at least the next 2 years...

"Is my Diaster (re)Covered?"
Well... yes, but... (Oracle will never say No..)
If and Only If you took all the right precautions, and after you have managed to DIY the recovery all by yourself, Then the jovial Oracle representative is ready to share in your success!

If you had failed, then that is exactly what would have happened:
"YOU and only you, the miserably non-manual-reading, non-certified,
non-budget-spending, non-patch-applying DBA, would have Failed".
It could not possibly be the fault of those expensive Oracle products, could it?
Actually, let this narrow-escape be a lesson to you:
In future, you will need to buy more (licensed options) of these products just to make sure you show your total determination to spend your whole budget on their products.
BTW: the long winding small print on all Oracle products (the screen with the "I agree" button)states the equivalent of:
"Any disaster will still be your responsability..."

Right.
Those titles should get me in the "good book" of someone (whoever pays for my UKOUG budget), but probably not in the book of Oracle... hmmm.

In short:
If you want to know what works and what does not work with Oracle Products and Tools, then come to the UKOUG conference. The information you can get there is about as good as it gets.

See You There!

Laptop again.

2007-12-11T16:07:00.000-01:00

Laptop ~~misery~~ Fun Again.

Last week I had a great time at UKOUG. And of course I made a load of last minute changes to my presentation.

So when I had to deliver, I rapidly did the upload about 1 hour before giving the presentation and then went off to see this topic on Streams.
Good Topic. And Good Work done by Gordon and his team. Unfortunately the ppt was a bit obfuscated due to the complexity of the topic and it was crammed into 45 minutes. (I recommend we re-invite these guys to a SIG soon to re-present and re-discuss).

So, running late...
I rushed into hall 5, the hall one with the blinding lights (as Christo pointed out: bring sunglasses) only to find that my latest+greatest 3-week-old Laptop would not hand out a proper external video signal.

OK, no problem. Plan B. Two memory sticks with copies of the ppt....

Yeah Rite..
When started on the other available laptop, M$ prompted us to donwload some viewer. My brand-new M$Softice was one step too far for the installed version on the working laptop...

Luckily the hall was also freezing cold, which compensated for me fuming and sweathing.

I was about to try and do the whole thing orally, thinking I'd turn it into an improvised roundtable and learn something from the audience. After all, that is what I do as a consultant: listen and learn from my customers.
Alternatively, we could all go and listen to Doug Burns, who was re-iterating the importance of properly applied OFA. A topic very much related to mine.

The guy from ICC kept his cool (now I know why that airco is set to refridgerating temperatures). He was most helpful. While I started to summarize my message (simplicity!) without the help of complex visuals he quietly investigated.

When he couldnt get my laptop to work, He ran off with both my memory sticks and converted my PPTX to something that was presentable on the UKOUG provided (working) laptop. Took him probably less then 10 minutes. Well done!

Minor detail: out of my rather full backup-memory-stick he converted the slightly older and longer (two-hour) version.
No big deal. Just lots of clicks, and a few additional sad jokes.

The uploaded verion of the presentation is the "intended" version, and some of you may find that you need some M$ plugin to download before you can properly view it.
If you have any problems: drop me a mail, and I'll send out a ppt-downgraded version.

UKOUG: Working for a (not so) Big Company.

2007-12-04T22:24:00.000-01:00

UKOUG is a good conference.
It is also a big party and Birmingham is buzzing with techie-nerds, sales-nerds and expo-babes.

It is always interesting to see what kind of crowd you can link up with and have some good fun. After all, I never make it a secret that I mainly work to have fun.

I got two invites for Tuesday evening:
One from a "competing company" who did something nifty and for whose techies I have great respect.

The other was a last minute invite from a drinking club. Mostly elder men who have, via good marketing, via good beer and via good parties, made a reputation for themselves.

Background:
My management actually want me to try and join up to this club, as it would make good marketing sense. My management wants to get more "reputable names" out in the Oracle-world. The company tries to do that by re-selling Oracle licenses at high margins, and by sucking up to Oracle in general in the hope that we get a few more "Aces"-assigned (Not very successfull, as we seem to lack both the sucking-talent and the real talent - Talent tends to go Independent, I need to draw my conclusion from that).

So I decided to take the latter invite. I have already spent many occasions with these folks, and I got to like most of the colorful characters in that group.
They are generally good for a Laugh. And I might pick up a few good pieces of info and some IT warstories.

So, after the entree, the head-honcho and champion-drinker of this club took me aside, and said: "Since you represent the biggest company on the table, and since you seem to want to attach yourself to us... Why don't you pick up the bill? A big company should be able to do that..."
I explained that I could not pick up the full amount, but he was rather insistant on this and I found him to become rather rude.

Apart from my dislike of rudeness, I simply cannot spent that amount of money (some 40 ppl, good meal, lots and lots and lots of drinkies). Spending that amount without prior approval would get a minion like me in Deep Trouble from the "big" company.

And quite frankly, I did think it smelled of blackmail or extortion: you want to join us, why dont you show us your desperation ...
I would have understood this attitude in a latin country, but not from (what I thought to be) honest scandinavians.

Right. End of road for me.
And I am now looking for a "bigger" company to work for.
Or at least a different company.
And considering to move away from the Oracle arena as well.

Oh, and regarding payment for the meal:
I paid him (cash, no receipt...) approximately double what I thought my meal and drinks could have cost, and I left.

Update.
I just read about the fire-incident.

Really feel sorry for the people involved. Luckily they all seem to be OK and in good humour. Respect!

Good Luck in putting it all back together again!

Road Trip

2007-10-03T10:07:00.001-01:00

Normally, I perfer trains and airplanes to get to work: More time to think. Taking the car to work generally means getting stuck in traffic.

But last week we drove 2800 KM across the Alps. A drive on which we visited the SIOUG, Venice and Salzburg. All Highly recommended. Work can be such a pain...

Driving towards the Alps takes a while, but on approach, you get these rewarding views:

The SIOUG is held in a very nice location on the Slovenain coast. A great place to take your other half. I'm already pondering my submission for next year (The barely visible conference venue is located on the far-right corner of the picture):

The SIOUG can be blogged on the "work blog", but for a seemingly small country, it is a surprisingly Large Event with 500+ delegates. On a personal note I can say it was a Good Idea to bring the Mrs along. She was able to take valuable notes at sessions where I could not attend myself, and provided me with some interesting comments on my own presentations.

Venice was Beautiful, Romantic, and wet. The Mrs bought a pair of wellies on day 1. For someone from a country where the sea is an ever-waiting menace (link to 1953?), it is ennerving to see how the Plazza San Marco simply inondates during high-tide. I am glad I've seen Venice before it risks sinking into the sea (it does give that impression!).

Salzburg, the birthplace of W.A. Mozart, is simply Beautiful. Highly recommended. Very well kept and organized. And a lovely place to take your Partner.

nb: the Mrs has the camera and all the pictures are stil on Her laptop.
But then, no matter how careful you take the pictures, there are always nicer ones on the web.

Touting for Business

2007-09-17T08:59:00.001-01:00

For the moment, October is heating up with a very full Agenda.

Remember, I must also bring in some bacon for my bosses. Hence keep an eye on my billability. Combined with various other activities and just-one-more-presentation popping up, It looks like October is counted for.

November, by contrast looks Quiet. First three weeks of November see a surprising drop in demand (demand for my services, that is). I am looking forward to doing some Research and Development, and to refresh my Hands-On experience.

But... as a good consultant, with respect to Shareholder value (not to mention my managers-managers-bosses who want to retire early) I should be ~~charging my time~~ Adding Value to some Customer (Mind you, November, and I'm stocked up on firewood...)

Anyway, need to get serious. Hence this simple Tout:

Hire Me. (in November)

I can poke fun at your vendors.
I can make your Architects Cringe.
I can make your DBA's laugh (or cry)

Simply put: I am an Oracle DBA.
For more of my credentials: see the right-hand side of this blog, or just Google me

NB: No FUD here, I will not stick around to eat all of your budget: I'm booked for the last week of November. Then I'm going to UKOUG (that takes care of 1st week of December), and then I'm booked for at least one week in December. And Christmas is approaching.

After the Holidays, I already have Various part-time commitments for January and February, so that looks good (to my manager).

But November has some space.
Hence the shout.

Broken Laptop - Again

2007-07-30T10:53:00.002-01:00

Laptop broke on Tuesday, 13 days ago.
Disk made funny vibrating noises and screen said "non system disk or disk error".

Had to use loaner PCs everywhere to get By.

Had to schedule appointment in a far away location on Monday, now 7 days ago where the helpdesk decided it would not replace my harddisk, as it seemed miraculously repaired barring some "bad sectors".

The lappy kept working throughout the week.

But... This Saturday, after a brief mail check and a brewing a cup of Coffee, I came back to the office-with-the-view to find the same error on my screen.

Shock. HORROR.

After some quiet calls to India, again, (and some in-the-void SHOUTING from pure frustration) I am now waiting for them to direct me to yet another far away location to have another good chat to a helpdesk repair person.

Many thanks to the folks who lend me their PCs. As luck has it, many desks are unused during the holiday season.

NB: the very un-PC image miraculously turned up when Google-images looked for "helpdesk repair".... ?

Layered Approach, sometimes...

2007-06-15T08:47:00.000-01:00

One of my current jobs is a typical fix-it-when-it-breaks thing. Various release of The System go "Suck-it-and-see" into testing and then into Live...

So there is me politely telling the developers which queries and constructs (redundant running totals, Locking!) are showing up as problematic in live or test-environments.

I generally add recommendations like: Please include the month as a selection-criteria (all and sundry is partioned on month, sometimes a date, somtimes a yuyymm integer, and a few forgotton exceptions). Or I suggest to add a field to an index to get index-only lookup. And yes, I often suggest IOTs (my Pet Topic!). Great for lookup tables or parent-child constructions with read-mostly data.

Developers/analists/architects then politely refuse to follow my recommendations. and using their obscure business-knowledge, they find plausible excuses such as:

"That will never happen in real-life" (it just did...), or

"That table will never grow bigger" (so why did it just explode ...), or

"that functionlity is never supposed to be used" (love that one: user has entered the wrong menu...), or

"pigs can ~~never~~ sometimes fly, you know..." (yep, if I throw you out of the window and into the river...)

Design for this project is done elsewhere, and we follow a "Layered" approach. That means no database-person gets anywhere near the ~~morons in charge~~ "architectural decision layer", nor does anyone using or operating the system in real-life get consulted.
Because that would not be J2EE compliant, would it ?

I am greatly in favour of "layered" approaches: Cold-weather clothing needs to be layerd to Isolate. All data should be stored in a File - that is a proper, abstract, layer between "data" and "bytes". Hence my desire for a proper Clustere file system to replace the muddling with Raw devices or ASM.

But Isolation is not always a good thing. Sometimes, you need to abandon a few layers to make things work.

Layers of management ?
Only if they stay well out of may way (and out of my margin)

Layers of objects ?
Only if you can afford to do all those JNDI lookups inside your 100ms SLA

Layers of Design-expertise ?
Only if the architects engange the Relevant Expertise. Early.

But then, as the guy opposite my desk repeatedly said: Respect for the zombies. All those incompetent layers of gremlins will always make a mess of things and keep us in a job.

Loose ends

I just got told to update my bloggie-thingy, as is is now a month old. But I have very little content at the moment. And have had to run after all sorts of family- and work-related stuff. More later..

how do you get away with it

2007-05-18T08:29:00.001-01:00

All these trips n stuff...
How do you get away with it ?

The honest answer is: I just tried it, and it worked - so far.

But it still amazes me more then anyone. I'll enjoy it while it lasts. My employer is OK with it as long as I fly the company flag (it is yellow).

Here is the plan for December: UKOUG Conference in Birmingham.

I will sound like a vendor myself now, but sometimes one must fight Fire with Fire and FUD with FUD. Independent Usergroups are one important way to keep the marketing-hype from large vendors in check. And these events, where you can call a spade a spade without some mitigating vice-assistant cleansing the slides, can be a real revelation.

This conference, and participation in a usergroup in general is a must for every Oracle Customer. And dont tell the suits, but the Annual Conference is generally a Great Party at that. See my company blog from Last Year for more Serious information on this event.

Background:

My aim in life is to visit as many places as I can, and preferably get to know places and people by working there. E.g. I didn't get to know Philadelphia by just visiting Liberty Bell and the Rocky-steps on a one-day-drive-by. I actually worked there several times, two or four weeks at a time. I now know how to walk from the Museum to Betsy Ross house. And I now know my way around the King of Prussia.

One way to get around is to present at usergroups and other nerdy-gatherings.
A nice example is the UKOUG mentioned above. I have "submitted" in the hope of getting my blurp accepted. And that will then provide me with a free entry to the conference, my employer with some exposure, and it is a perfect excuse to visit Birmingham.

It worked for me: check the list of links on the Right.

So do me a favour, and mention my name when you click on my employers website...

I'm off to catch another train now...

Apologies

2007-05-17T08:54:00.000-01:00

To all you occasional viewers.

I've been in too many different places lately.
It was great fun (well, most of it, not all of it) but I'm way behind on updates to the blog.

Will try to post my pictures of the trip to the angel soon.

todo list:
- contact all the interesting folks I met, notably in London.
- submit abstracts for UKOUG brum (two, I now have them written).
- plan/book/arrange trip to Wolverhampton (I found it on the map...)
- file expenses...
- finalize my ppt for the DBF-Scotland.
- update this blog (bottom of the stack)
- post my piccies from the field-trip to the Angel.

Oh, and take some time out to recover.

Edit: I need some quick links, and this a good way to store them:

ILM

Databases and Systems

connection pools

Revealing RAC SIG

UKOUG 2006

UNIX SIG jan 2007

RMOUG

Norther Server Day

UKOUG announcement

The Angel of the North

2007-04-25T15:30:00.000-01:00

Had you not seen it yet then ?

It looks like it will finally happen. I now have an appointment with a fellow-DBA to go visit "The Angel" to have my piccie taken.

The folks here up north are mighty proud of this gignormous statue. although some say that the iron could also have been used to lay an extra railway track all the way to London. This welcoming Angel stands ready to embrace any Geordie thas has dared to venture down south and is now returning Home.

The structure is extremely visible from both road and rail, and is a great icebreaker. Especially on a busy train, the visiting foreigner should show admiration and awe when passing the Angel.

I tend to say something like "Wow, Indeed, it is Impressive. And Bigger then I thought it would be." One or more of the locals sitting around you will generally react along the lines of "Had you no seen it yet then ?", "you should visit it you know, Like." And this classic: "When it was only just put up, one night they dressed it in a Newcastle United footbal shirt, you know, with the black and white stripes like. Greet Stont, like."

And to show how friendly and open the folks here are, I had several invites: "It is very special you know. And, like, If you want, I can drive you up so you can have your picture taken."

Well, I now have one of those invites set in my agenda. And I hope to be able to show "me piccie" soon. Like. Looking forward to this memorable event!

Planning again.

2007-04-23T13:51:00.000-01:00

This week will see Newcastle (work), York (ad-hoc dinner to catch up), Leeds (UKOUG, nice to go back to Leeds, and presenting a paper there too), Newcastle (regular job) and Home (to prepare next months presentations).

Next week will see some clever movements to maximize billable days.
Next month will see various trips to London and Midlands. Life is still interesting.

And we go through great lenghts to keep management and shareholders happy.

The trick is to be in the right country on the right day. To avoid the public holidays and maximize workable, revenue-generating time.

Also of note: the UKOUG has the call for papers out. If you want to go to Birminham, check HERE for your free entry.

This Image.
Just because I adore these Embrears. Sleek, Elegant, Flexible. And space for only 40 odd people, making it a more private experience then the 100 or more cattle herded aboard larger planes.

And you cannot board it via a jetway. You have to walk over real tarmac, through blistering sun or freezing cold, you get to feel rain and wind. You get to smell Rubber and Kerosine. You get to see this elegant piece of engineering from real close-up before you physically climb into it via a real staircase.

Inside, 2 out of every 3 seats are "Window" so you can always look out. In flight, the altitude is high enough to get above the clouds, and low enough to have nice vistas.

This is what travel is about.

It's Just Not Cricket!

2007-04-18T08:48:00.000-01:00

The following was brought to us via Chris.
If he is not developing Web-, SOAP-, Java- and XML-based solutions for various Customers of [multinational] or [high-tech-gurus] he is glued to his DataCard equipped Laptop to follow events in the Windies.

Over the past few weeks, the small islands of the West Indies have been
invaded by the Cricketing greats! One of the most eagerly awaited
matches of the tournament, namely England and South Africa, was a tragic
disaster for all but the Winners. Much had been said about this game.
The big spat between Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, and Kevin
Peitersen, the ex-South African turned England number one batsman, was
hyped up in the media. Kevin was itching to take the fight to Smith,
who returned the favour by taking a superb catch at mid wicket to send
Pietersen on his way for just three runs! England's demise was firmly
on the cards and with only 154 runs on the board, the Big match was
turned into a display of school boy errors. With South Africa wielding
the bats for the second half, Smith and de Villiers set about
dispatching what the bowlers were offering. And with just one wicket
down, South Africa raced to 157 runs in less than 20 overs. How could
this be a tragic disaster I here you say? For starters England's hopes
of World Cup glory have been shredded. The supporters who followed
their teams to and anticipated strongly contested battle were left with
an empty afternoon and a ticket stub. The last few games are just a
formality. How the stands will be empty for all but Australia vs New
Zealand. The world wide television coverage and advertising revenues.
Big games get the big sponsors. With such a short second session,
television viewers started switching over. Lastly a disapointment for
the West Indies. The hotels will now be empty of Cricket fans, but for
those few supporters of the top four teams. The final game between
England and The West Indies a mere formality. A great day at the office
for the South Africans, who have been lacking form in the tournament,
but for a sad day for everybody else I'm afraid to say! Unless, like me
you are South African! So Come on Boys, bring home the Trophy!!!

Cheers,

Chris.

The climate to travel

2007-04-11T14:19:00.000-01:00

Would I have caused it ?

Does my weekly commute also contribute to this global-warming phenomenon ?

If so, then I will now do something very un-PC: I'm going to Enjoy a wee moment sitting in the sun on Quayside or Millenium-bridge to enjoy the weather.

I sometimes sit there till the sun sets...
Possibly reading or tweaking on my lappy for an article, a report or a bloggie, sometimes just feeling lucky while I still can.

Click on the "My View" link to the right, and see if you can spot me ...

Have a Good Day!

chocolate and jets

2007-04-10T12:18:00.000-01:00

Chocolate, because everyone came back from Easter with a craving for more choccies. If you want to benefit from quality-chocolate regularly, join Hotelchocolat.co.uk. They have chocolate in many styles and flavours and will take your money to put gifts together for every occasion you fancy.

Or just ask someone who commutes to Belgium to bring you some supplies. It can be Intense and Sensational.

And Jets. My commute to work is hugely inconvenienced by the new flight-schedules introduced by my current carrier. NetJets.com would solve a lot of the hassle.

Jokes and sponsors

2007-04-03T13:56:00.000-01:00

This should become the meta-page for jokes and funny-links. Jokes will attract traffic, which will make the sponsoros happy.

Chris started it: he sent me a mail recently requesting to put jokes on the blog. I'll gladly oblidge. His first suggestion was very appropriate for Newcastle: it was a beer joke.

But as this blog is either about Travel (fun) or about my professional life (should also have a large fun-component), I'll try to limit the jokes to topics related to Travel.

More Jokes and Suggestion welcome.

Beer turns you into a Woman!

Last month, scientists released the results of a recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer. Men should take a concerned look at their beer
consumption.

The theory is that beer contains female hormones (hops contain phytoestrogens) and that by drinking enough beer, men turn into women.

To test the theory, 100 men drank 8 pints of beer each within a 1 hour period. It was then observed that 100% of the test subjects:

1) Argued over nothing.
2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong.
3) Gained weight.
4) Talked excessively without making sense.
5) Became overly emotional.
6) Couldn't drive.
7) Failed to think rationally
8) Had to sit down while urinating.

No further testing was considered necessary.

Note by PdV: did they do a comparison-test by having 100 other men drink water ? or red wine ?

The next two jokes are shamelessly stolen from Mr Cockrane.

The Parrot
A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity. John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary.
Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.

John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the Bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The Parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behaviour." John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behaviour, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

Maxims for the Internet Age

Home is where you hang your @

The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail

Speak softly and carry a cellular phone

Too many clicks spoil the browse

The geek shall inherit the earth

What boots up must come down

Virtual reality is its own reward

A user and his leisure time are soon parted

There's no place like http://www.home.com

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks

Dunes, Wind, Sand, Beaches

2007-04-02T09:26:00.001-01:00

The past weekend was spent on a family reunion and a visit to my roots.

We hit the area before the Easter holiday rush had started, and it was lovely, quiet, and very relaxing. Get an impression of the scenery Here

A recommended Break or Holiday destination. But to really benefit from it: Avoid the peak-times.

Plans and more Links

2007-03-22T13:05:00.000-01:00

The Plan for next three months is now approved, and all bookings are confirmed.

Work-wise, this week is a Quiet-ish. Waiting for rollout of a new version, but that seems to stall a bit.

That gives me time to do some research for an upcoming paper in Edinburgh for the Miracle Scotland Database Forum.

And Luckily, I have Chris sitting opposite and we can exchange jokes. Chris just "queried" the blog. We can link to one-another. His links are Here.

Huh ? Wow!

And we also had good laughs at these guys.

I should also really be doing my expenses. Sigh.

Bookings, Savings...

2007-03-19T16:35:00.000-01:00

Our travel agent sends out an email for each itinarary or each booking.

Normally, I just open the "travel" folder in the mail, and from the mail-subjects I know when and where to go.

The mail doesnt contain the exact intinarary, however. It contains a weblink to the page with the complete details. The mail alone is therefore not enough. That is normally only a minor problem: just connect to the internet, type the relevant data in www.viewtrip.com, and presto.

Not so for April, May and June.

For starters, I seem to have very little mails for the coming weeks. Did I forget to request the bookings ? Bank-holiday-confusion again ?

But it gets worse:
I click on all the links, nothing makes sense. From some trips I dont seem to return, or leave. How do I get from Helsinki to Leeds ?

Help - When/where am I supposed to go ?

I puzzle through all the mails, I start making notes, and end up composing a calendar in my own spreadsheet. For starters, I only got half the number of expected mails. And most of the mails have a title that is off by 1 week from the
actual reservation inside (click, surprise: other dates pop-up..???).

Confusion.

Travel-agency is understaffed and overworked, so phone-hell awaits. When I finally get to a person (a very friendly one, but audibly busy), she explains: It is not the fault of the agent (do I care?) It is the consequence of a demand by my employers' bookkeepers. They have tried to get cheaper deals on "combined bookings" (I care even less, but I can sense trouble).

But the combined-bookings have failed in one of the systems, and had to be re-done (Now I care - I feel sorry for her, she had to do all this work, and she has explained this Many, Many, Many times).

As a result, in my emails, I only get to see half the data. It is a known problem, and she will send me new, complete, mails for every itinarary by COB (now I care: we are moving towards resolution).

At my insistant request, she did verify (and sort-of-convinced me) that my bookings were all (re-)done as planned and requested (I care a lot!). I should be ok for seats. It is just the email-notification that hasnt come through yet.

Moral of the Rant: Penny wise and pound foolish !

This has kept several people quite busy for several hours each:

- The bookkeeper to come up with the idea (he probably had to get it reviewed, risk-analyzed, and approved by various manager too. They all mean well, they are just pointed towards the wrong problems. Consider applying that brainpower to knitting tea-cosies for charity. It might cause less damage).

- The ladies at the agent who had to do and re-do my bookings.

- The IT-jockeys at the travelagent who build and later fixed the systems, not to mention the semi-automatic mails.

- Myself, in major panic for two hours, afraid to be marooned in an inhospitable climate.

- The ladies at the agent, again, when they had to explain it all to me (and 420 others?), and who then had to double check everything to get me (only half) convinced that it is all OK now. Maybe others would be more trusting, I'm just a suspicious bugger.

- Most Important: My friendly assistant who though the whole plan was done and dusted, but who will now recieve 13+ more semi-automatic emails to file away. I've already tried to explain it in an email, but I can sense a follow up by phone, and a box of choccies (hm, that box of choccies would have been done anyway).

I'm still awaiting the mails with new confirmations though.

On a more positive note: It was a Beautiful Day today.

Trains - Need a newspaper

2007-03-14T10:58:00.000-01:00

Yiihaaa. This cowboy is riding again. Trains, that is.

(insert picture of romantic Western Train ... nah, too lazy)

Sunny. Crisp weather. Smell of spring.
The gentle clickety-rolling of wheels on the pavement.
The comfortable feeling of my Trusted Tumi-trolley handle in my hand,
the gentle hugging of the laptop-backpack on my right shoulder.
The familiar noises and smells of the messy real-world-crowd of train stations.

The only discomfort is the visibility of the mobile-screen: I like to know who's calling before answering. Mental note: increase brightness - screw battery-life.

The Train-parts of the journeys may be less glamourous, but trains and stations feels less sterile then planes and airports. This is much more "real world". And the seats are more comfortable then on planes. More breathing space, more fresh (?) air. There are less queueing moments (even at Eurostar), and more thinking/working opportunities (especially at Eurostar).

Note when I finally got to internet: If trains get cancelled, you can generally take the next one. My flight got cancelled, and I ended up in the wrong city. Oh well: nice trainride ahead tomorrow. More time to think.

I'm Grateful for the thinking-time. Short hops, or Cattle-class long-hauls flight are not a good place to think, as I could find out again last week. And I have a lot of stuff from the last weeks to catch up on, and a lot of notes that still need action, despite two days of pretending-to-work-from-home-ptr.

Minor Niggle: This afternoon, I forgot to bring a newspaper.
Not to read.
I'm reading/writing on my lappy most of the time.
I need the paper to kick off my shoes and put my feet on the opposite seat.
True Cowboy Style.

working hard

2007-02-16T20:35:00.000-01:00

Today I'm working from a ski-resort at 3000m altitude.

We are four nerds grouped around a wooden table, and there are some more wondering around the house (one of them has a case of altitude-sickness, headache - and not because of what he drank yesterday)

And as all pistes are closed due to excessive winds, that is quite acceptable. I'm not so sure where I'd have been if the weather had been better though.

Life can be a bitch.

EuroStar Shines

2007-02-10T15:37:00.000-01:00

This Months "Duh" goes to BMI and partly to our travel-agent.

For the second time in 2 months, my flight from Leeds-Bradford got cancelled due to weather. BMI will do NOTHING. Customers are told that a refund "will be made" and are sent home (or rather: sent away).
Staff could reluctantly book some people on the Sunday-Evening flight, 48 hrs later. Most of us were planning to come back to Leeds by then, rather then to fly out belatedly. "Or you could try finding an flight via the internet, sir..."

Some of my fellow victims were lucky, They had a travel-agent that was still listening to them at 20:00 UK time. Our agent closes after 1700 Euro-time, and the backup-numbers cant help you, as they close 1 hour later...
Some lucky bastards were able to snap up the last five seats on a plane from Manchester the next morning. I hope they didnt get stuck in snow on their way to MCS.

First, I needed a base to work from, a place to stay.

Full Respect to Katya, Shift-leader at the Leeds Marriott front-desk: As opposed to the call-centre-reservation-scripted-staff, Katya recognized my voice, and understood the situation immediately. Her hotel, my regular pad in Leeds, was fully booked. But it only took her 10 min to sort me out: She called around and secured me options on rooms in 3 different competing hotels under my name. The first positive point: for beds, at least, I was now Spoiled for choice. Thus I was able to help two other victims to secure a bed for the night. Katya has again earned every chocolate-box I ever brought over.
Katya, You are a Class Lady: Expect a large box on 13 Mar!

Taxis at the airport were rare, as the snow had reduced traffic. After a long queue-wait, I found a couragous driver. By the time I got to the hotel and on the internet, I was no longer able to secure a seat on any alternate flight anymore. The ppl who could litterally Phone-an-Agent had probably taken them all.

Normally, I would have taken a weekend-break in the UK, but I was scheduled to leave for the US on Monday-morning. I had to get home, somehow ...

Eurostar to the rescue.

Next morning: Up at 05:00, taxi at 05:30, and was on the 06:10 GNER to London. Very little delays on the main line, I guess it was the right kind of snow... A surprisingly busy Kx for a Saturday morning, what was happening ??
Underground schedule slightly upset due to "engineering works" but manageable. However, Waterloo station was Chaos: too many people, families with kids and skis, queuing for security. And the security-area, actually the whole terminal, is designed pre-9/11, pre-7/7, and in general pre-Extreme-Checks. A long queue tailed back up the stairs. That didnt look good. but the Premier-queue was very short. I decided to take a comfortable ticket. It worked, I whisked through with a ticket for the 10:42 and I hit the lounge with 20 min to spare (20 min free internet!). Finally had brunch on the train.

Oh cuddly comfort: The more posh coaches on Eurostar are Great! The service was Excellent, the food was ok for on-the-road, and there was lots of SPACE. The only thing missing was wifi. But I'll took that as a bliss: at least my thinking process was not distracted by compulsive surfing. I did make notes of a whole list
of items to verify-when-online.

A proper Eurostar ticket includes a free ride to "any station in Belgium", so the that was also sorted. A rapid connection at Bxll-Midi ensured I got on the earliest possible train East. For the next 36 hrs, I am Home - where the heart is.

LinkStory

2007-01-18T08:52:00.000-01:00

So you wanted a link...

....,....1 ...,....2 ...,....3 ...,....4 ...,....5 ...,....6 ...,....7 ...,....8 ...,....9 ...,....0

Flight Cancelled.

2007-01-13T19:54:00.000-01:00

Due to hard wind...

In that case, the airline seems to get away with doing absolutely Nothing for you, as it is not their responsability.

The offered alternatives were such that I would be able to make it home just about the time when I'd have to leave for the next trip. So I decided to go for re-emboursement and spent a weekend abroad.
Very Relaxing.

Oh, and the money and the changes to the next trip:
Well, agent at the airport cannot hand that over to you but if you contact your travel agent on monday, I'm sure they will sort it out for you.
Yeah... We'll see.

end of travel (for this year)

2006-12-24T21:17:00.000-01:00

Home sweet home.

Firewood.

Good Food.

Quiet.

Relax.

Next flight is on the evening of 01-Jan.
Until then: no more travel.

Happy ?

2006-12-11T16:12:00.000-01:00

Just been asked if I wanted to stay in the new year.

YES.

The project is sometimes a bit slow, but we have some Real Interesting times ahead.
I'll continue asking all the weird questions, liven thing up if needed.
There will be (cross fingers) occasions to escapt to short ad-hoc troubleshooting jobs too, and I have papers accepted all over the place: That will spice stuff up (and be a bit hard on the personal life).

The commute is LONG, but comfortable if the train has seating (it had, at least this morning, good omen).

And the current location is good for networking.

Let me repeat it : Travel is not a bad thing (if you are taken well care of)

Count me in!

Too much travel ?

2006-10-04T20:06:00.000-01:00

No!

I am convinced one can not travel too much.
The buzz of an airport or a large trainstation,
especially if there is a new destination ahead,
is just better then Drugs, and almost as good as S**.

Ok, the last week was a tad busy.
Too much obligatios, and too much interruptions.
I also do have a normal customer to please.
However, life could hardly be any better.
Now I need to get back to work and obligations.

situation normal ?

2006-09-03T15:10:00.000-01:00

Back to normal. No more medical emergencies in the family, kids back to school tomorrow, and project in "normal" situation. Had to explain SNAFU last week.
I feel a blog coming on the role and Responsability of "architects".
speakinf of architects: there is a building project starting next door.
Stay tuned.

hot hot hot

2006-07-18T19:22:00.000-01:00

After having ma in hostpital, I'm back at work.
The office is ok, and has airco. but anywhere outside is just plain too hot.
heatwave hitting Europe.

concalls goin fine, but slowly.
and install is nice hands-on experience.
Tel-support for perf-problem: I should have planned a visit...

hot...

Welcome Back - let me update your workstation.

2006-06-29T14:26:00.000-01:00

Revisited a site where I had not been for 2 month.

My passwords needed immediate re-setting.
My customer-provided laptop had been stored in a locker under a desk for 2 months, and got bombarded with system-upgrades.
Took me about 2 hrs to get up and running again
probably not bad.

It was nice to be back though.

Wow - this is how flight should be

2006-06-18T19:58:00.000-01:00

Wow-Factor: just had a Great flight from Brussels to LBA.

Partly cloudy, and a bit hazy so didnt get the nice view of Zeeland (wave to parents), but on entering the UK, the clouds were on 3 levels, and it was only partly cloudy. Weaving through the coulds gave us some GREAT VIEWS of cloud formations and the country below. Lots of Silver Linings too. This is what I enjoy most about flying (or any travel) : Gazing out of a window to some beautiful sights.

Combined with the fact that Embrears require you to board walking (jetway is too high), so you get the smell of real aviation (rubber, fuel, exhausts) and some rain (on landing), the experience of Real Travel is complete.

Now sitting comfortably in exec lounge of well known brand of hotels, enjoying my complimentary fruit and bitter lemon.
Nice close of the day.

salon based working - wow

2006-06-16T12:06:00.000-01:00

Got some really boooring stuff to do, so trying to postpone it.

Have just worked two weeks in a new city, with hotel in comfortable walking distance of office, all smack-bang right in city centre. Good!
the hotel is part of the nice-chain, and very good.
the lounge/bar has free wifi access, and that is very convenient.
A nice change from the car-based working in my home-country.

But nice to be back in Maastricht office for a day,
and busy trying to only do the interesting parts of my job.
and got some really interesting feedback on the concept of my next professional blog/article.
more later...

Kms... (miles for the imperially inclined)

2006-05-26T07:45:00.000-01:00

Just did 3000+ kms for various job-assignments in the last two weeks, and used yesterday (a pub-hol where I live) to recuperate. To reassure the ppl I saw: it was great, and it already generated 1 company-sponsored blog-entry (so there!). I enjoyed the meetings (even the sales-pitch) and the disucssions. But I have had it with driving to work for the coming week!

Salon-based working is much more relaxing (that is lounge-based, for the non-french speakers).
I vote for couch (UK: settee) and self-brewn coffee.
Today, it is even cold enough here to warrant a fire in the fireplace. Great way to write reports.

The first hint to my work-related blogs:
http://www.bloggingaboutoracle.org/archives/disaster-recovery-and-replication-at-what-level

And I think I need to generate another story entry on lpars, unix-deployment and risk-mitigation soon.

What a life!

2006-05-15T16:45:00.000-01:00

Worked in comfortable communting distance of home today.
Wonderful! When I revert to working in M I always have this "wow" feeling.
The comfort of an office, without the loneliness of a hotel.

Now all I have to do is make sure the work stays interesting (as it will, for about a week, I guess).
Must admin I'm already looking fw to my next meetings and client visit. I need the interaction with peers.

On the positive side: I mowed the lawn on one of these short-commuting-days last week. And Today I was home in time to tear the grass from the driveway, and clean up the corner of the garden where the boss wants patch of flowers (well, let us just say: I started the cleanup).

Loking fw to some relaxed days in the coming weeks (just dont tell my management).

buzzing around

2006-05-14T16:40:00.000-01:00

Almost 1 week, and nearly forgot my blog.
Been home, been Rotterdam, had travel arrangements re-done, went to meetings, wrote texts. Studied.
Worried about backup of documents, mail, knowledge.
Ran into waaay-too-full harddisk so trying to clean that up.
Oh, and had some very relaxing weekend time.

Ppl to thank: Natas for re-arranging my plans, Manon & admin crowd for processing expenses.
Management for letting me do my thing.
Rob and Eduard for interesting opportunities.

CU all soon.

Countdown - and expenses.

2006-05-09T08:08:00.000-01:00

Final day in the UK.

The way to do expeneses is to re-enjoy the good meals that resulted in all those receipts. Look at it as a privilege, not a chore.
For BP and MM: the expenses are filed up to 07-May. Not bad eh ?

Clean up tasklist.
Reset passwords so they last a month.
Keep human connections alive.
Do shopping.
Avoid any task that cannot be completed in minutes.
Book taxi (Helen, Nial!).

Notably: Thank Martin for all the intersting stuff.
Internal joke: nr Nine really has a great wow-factor.

Looking ahead: plan for rest of week is packed. Plan for next week is a mess.

CU all later.

refrence here.. HERE see.

help - time crunch again.

2006-05-07T07:33:00.000-01:00

Last day of my "extreme working weekend". Won't complain about taxidriver (but I should). At least breakfast crew was now used to me getting out Very Early even on weekends (Thanks!).

The usual problem when ending a stint: Time Crunch (have you addressed such-and-so's item as well? can you get it out before leaving?). Notes... and re-producable cases (proof) needed for all problems and issues (I know you are reading).

Was lucky yesterday: managed to squeeze myself on last tour of local castle and learned some local history (promised guide I'd verify on the web, later). No pictures allowed ??

On blogging general: I'll soon tell more friends and family about these pages, so we can keep tabs on one another.

one more working weekend

2006-05-06T06:18:00.000-01:00

If the job is interesting, and instructive, it is not that big a deal to work long and weird hours. But the breakfast-lady at the hotel (not ready) and the cab driver (yawning) who picked me up from hotel to drive me to office wondered who in his right mind would go into work at 0645.
Well guys, I'll have to do this again tomorrow...
Now let me get on with my job.

language hell

2006-05-03T09:26:00.000-01:00

Deinstalled firefox, and re-downloaded, finally got an english-speaking version. Edit now shows up as "edit", rather then some foreign language.

Work wise: still nice quiet, but knowledge-transfer issues become evident. may have to do some ppt work later on to properly introduce new team-members.

Would rather just get on with job, as real work will be ramping up nicely, but teh intro of new-ppl is vital to sustainabiltiy..

daily writers block? not yet

2006-05-02T12:58:00.000-01:00

Still new enough to do my daily lines...

Networking is Fun: having dinner with pal from 2 years back. found veggie restaurant. And will try to find a particularly hard-to-get item from outdoor shop.

no pictures yet: I'm not the picture taking person anymore.

(what a nonsense eh ?)

now you are supposed to larder a blog with emoticons, icons, pictures, and links to friends.
(do I have any?)

sitemap

2006-05-01T16:16:00.002-01:00

Here are the introductions to PdvFirstBlog and SimpleOracleDBA,

Intro - if available - This is where I started my my blogging era

Simple oracle DBA - The main topic.

Various Oracle Tips and Rants and Opinions, all to do with practicalities.

Simple Oracle DBA - Availability, Scalability, Manageability... It has to be Simple

Bitmap Indexes on an OLTP system - ORA-00060... Classic Deadlock

Backup on a different Level - in the SOA layer.

How To Pool Connections - One of the challenges

Databases Everywhwere - Systems and Databases, how many databases.

ILM, Information LifeCycle Management - another Three Letter Acronym.

Index Organized Tables - Many Benefits

txt - txt.

UKOUG - I do value my usergroup events.

Various Rants, all to do with practicalities.

In times of Crisis you call the DBA - Who you gonna call...

Rationalize TOAD - Toad will find a way...

M O O W - Miracle Oracle Open World...

My blog-plug for the Conference - UK Oracle USergroup...

Travel related stuff.

Angel of the North - My most visited leasure page...

Inconvenience of Leeds Bradford International Airport.

Eurostar is Perfect - Very comfortable and reliable.

Colorado - Winter Park, actually.

Back to Normal - on the train.

Climate - Enjoy while it lasts....

Cricket - I have no clue.

Work, Dinners, Fun - and lots of miles on the train.

Angel - of the North, my most searched for picture.

UKOUG - my excuse to travel.

txt - txt.

The usual links to groups etc..

my agenda (normally at the right hand side of the blog)

UKOUG main url

Miracle BV

the home of Oracle-L : Best Mailing list

link to Oracle Forum.

My own linked in profile (shameless plug)

Dont believe me ? Google

See you Somewhere, and say Hi if you feel like it!

different country, different styles

2006-05-01T12:46:00.000-01:00

Getting re-used to the brits. Allthough I cant insult the locals by stating I'm in "England". Hopefully get to do some touristing around...

And I helped someone create a metalink account (hadnt done that in ages).

Off to see a new city... might include some phone-pictures tomorrow.

Hello world (how many others would have this title)

2006-04-28T10:25:00.002-01:00

TWIMC,

Hi Yall!

After some company-sponsored and company controlled Blogs, this is my First Attempt at complete Freedom. Not counting the fact That I depend on blogger.com and firefox to keep it all running.

Supposedly, I can include links to others, like the worlds most popular book (last years):
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-da-vinci-code

and pictures, see below..

I'll experiment a bit, before creating a more serious blog (e.g. this is my dev-testing site, I may consider an acceptance test as well before going full production)..

Regards,
PdV