RE: Radiohead lyrics in Oracle RDBMS code

In our software, there is a series of event-based functions - i.e. our software sees that a particular event has occurred, and springs into action to resolve it. The developers may have refactored this to remove it, but for several years, those function calls were "Object.GoGoGadget_____" where ____ was the type of event. So, "GoGoGadget_DatabasePatch" and "GoGoGadget_ConfigureASM" were scattered all through the logs.

On a slightly related note, for years, even after Microsoft purchased Hotmail, you could do a host -l hostmail.com and get a list of all the DNS names under hotmail.com. They were all really boring, mail47.slc.hotmail.com, etc. etc., except for one server called rotate-the-shield-harmonics.hotmail.com.

Or every Java class using the hex phrase "CAFEBABE" as its magic number.

I personally find it amusing when these things crop up. As long as it doesn't negatively impact the product (i.e. why not use Radiohead lyrics when you need a string?), I'm all for it.

Matt

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Matthew Zito
Chief Scientist
GridApp Systems
P: 646-452-4090
mzito_at_gridapp.com
http://www.gridapp.com

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

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org on behalf of Ric Van Dyke Sent: Tue 1/26/2010 9:33 AM
To: troach_at_gmail.com; dennis_at_conus.info Cc: ORACLE-L
Subject: RE: Radiohead lyrics in Oracle RDBMS code  

You'd be surprised (or shocked) at some of the things that have creep into the code over the years...  

Ric Van Dyke

Hotsos Enterprises

Hotsos Symposium

March 7 - 11, 2010

Be there.    

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Roach Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 7:44 AM
To: dennis_at_conus.info
Cc: ORACLE-L
Subject: Re: Radiohead lyrics in Oracle RDBMS code  

I wonder what other lyrics are in the code :)... Could this explain why Oracle keeps taking more room to install? : )

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 3:16 AM, Dennis Yurichev <dennis_at_conus.info> wrote:

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Hi.

strings oracle.exe | grep radiohead

Starting at least at 10.2.0.1, function kfasSelfTest_update() (located in kfas.o) use Radiohead lyrics to test... something related to ASM probably.

Schematic pseudocode:

#define STRING "I'm a creep, I'm a winner, what the hell am I doing here.I don't belong here - radiohead"

kfasSelfTest_update()
{

       kfasOpen (...);
       somestruct.somevalue=STRING;
       kfasUpdate (somestruct);
       kfasClose (...);
       newstruct=kfasOpen (...);
       if (strncmp (newstruct.somevalue, STRING, ...)!=0)
       {
               // raise error 99999?
               kserec1(99999, 1, ...);
               kserec2(99999, 1, ..., STRING, 1, ...);
               return 0;
       };
       kfasClose (...);
       return 1;

• -- My PGP public key: http://yurichev.com/dennis.yurichev.asc
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=LRVc
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

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Thomas Roach
813-404-6066
troach_at_gmail.com

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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Tue Jan 26 2010 - 09:04:44 CST