Re: Bad Generalisations by Don Burleson

Thank you very much for your reply.
"Tianhua Wu" <twu_at_workmail.com> wrote in message news:b9939609.0205090952.602fd375_at_posting.google.com...
> Everybody makes mistakes, so does expert. And mistakes do not make
> you a less person (or expert). Also the sentence should not be taken
> away from context. However, sometimes an author makes speculations
> (or tips) in his book, and that could affect people and database
> administration behavior. I remember I read a book (a very common
> Oracle book from Oracle press) a long time ago, it claims Oracle will
> not reuse the space in a index after delete or update (I can not
> recall the exact sentence), anyway, I took that and acted accordingly
> for quite some time until I took Oracle Internal Seminars more than a
> year ago...

There is nothing wrong with questioning authority! Good-grief I do it all the time, people throw things at me.
But this questioning can get out of hand, the direction that this thread seemed to be heading towards, involved burning books and 'tar and feathering' the authors.

I read a lot of Oracle books some are wise some are otherwise, but they all contribute in their own way.
Don Burleson has written some very good Oracle books, and contributed many fine articles. A lot of people have learned from him. I don't believe he deserved the bashing he got here.

Yes, debate and point out the mistakes, if indeed they are mistakes! But the newsgroups are an extremely powerful medium, the potential audience is enormous. I just think people should be more aware of that.

George Barbour
Oracle DBA. Received on Fri May 10 2002 - 03:26:15 CDT