RE: Oracle Book Mal-practice...

        Some old myths will continue into eternity, this probably being one of them. Now I'll admit to liking indexes in a different tablespace from the data, but for a whole other reason, that being maintenance and sizing (I've become a real fanatic at locally managed uniform extent tablespaces). But on the other hand, even with SAN's, disk caches, large SGA's etc... A sysadmin can create a reason for following the old myths. I just had a recent experience of that with a san that's just mirrored, not stripped. Performance was poor because one drive set was being pounded. I moved one tablespace containing only table data to another drive & things are now flying.

        BTW: I don't write books. Principally because I don't like writing and secondly because I make mistakes myself. And I sure would not want some young poor soul following me on some of those blunders.

        Humm, maybe that's a book that should be written, a "How to mess up Oracle in one easy step"!!!

Dick Goulet
Senior Oracle DBA
PAREXEL International

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Robert Freeman Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 9:11 PM
To: Oracle-L Freelists
Subject: Oracle Book Mal-practice...

So, I'm reading a particular book tonight. I don't want to say which one it is at the moment because I know one of the authors and I want to make sure that this author did not write this chapter.

My question is, what constitutes Oracle Book Writing mal-practice (and I pray I've never committed it). Certainly mistakes crop up in books all the time, I'm as guilty as any writer of this. This chapter I'm reading though, in an effort to get the reader to doing something quickly, does not lay any foundation, skips critical steps and actually prompts them to do what I consider some very dangerous things.

It would be one thing if the book said, "Look, this is not the way you should do this in production." but it does not. In this chapter, a very junior DBA might well follow the instructions and, having successfully completed everything, think that they are done. The truth, a nasty truth, is that all they have done is taken some very big risks and they have some nasty gottya's coming down the pike.

In my mind, this isn't a simple mistake. This isn't an editorial mis-step. This is someone trying to make something seem easy and leaving out some very sailient instructions without any warning.

Very bothersome.... For your Junior DBA's all I can say is buyer beware. Get yourself a good mentor to go with all these books.

Cheers all and buyer beware...

RF

 Robert G. Freeman
Oracle ACE
Author:
OCP: Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Professional Study Guide (Sybex)
Oracle Database 11g New Features (Oracle Press) Portable DBA: Oracle (Oracle Press)
Oracle Database 10g New Features (Oracle Press) Oracle9i RMAN Backup and Recovery (Oracle Press) Oracle9i New Features (Oracle Press)
Other various titles out of print now... Blog: http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com The LDS Church is looking for DBA's. You do have to be a Church member in
good standing. A lot of kind people write me, concerned I may be breaking
the law by saying you have to be a Church member. It's legal I promise! :-)
http://pages.sssnet.com/messndal/church/parachurch.pdf
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Fri May 22 2009 - 11:45:34 CDT