Nuno Souto

Been a while since my last post.  Then again, Oracle administration has become such a small part of my work that I hardly find the motivation... But the latest idiocy from the Larry Ellison camp is just too much! Yeah sure: another iteration of the "let's get rid of all those DBAs" nonsense that has essentially killed the company here in NSW Australia, since the days of release9! This one is Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com0

Yeah...    Aka: Oracle Enterprise Damager... For those who might not know - yes indeed, a few of the so-called "cognoscenti" are not all-knowing! - we've been engaged in using grid control to monitor all our db servers for quite a while. That's both MSSQL and Oracle RDBMS servers.  For 4 years now! In a nutshell and to cut a very long story short:  - we started with 10g.  The lesser said Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com2

It's interesting how from time to time something happens that makes sense and seems logical afterwards, but at the time it causes a bit of a surprise.  Part of the fun of working with this type of software! A few days ago we had an incident in an Oracle DW database when a developer tried to load an infinitely big file from a very large source.  Yeah, you got it: big-data-ish!  Suffice to say: Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com6

Dang, been a while since the last posts!  A lot of water under the bridge since then. We've ditched a few people that were not really helping anything, and are now actively looking at cloud solutions, "big data" use, etcetc. Meanwhile, there is the small detail that business as usual has to continue: it's very easy to parrot about the latest gimmick/feature/funtastic technology that will Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com2

Some quick and basic Unix and ksh stuff that crossed my path recently. As part of the move of our Oracle dbs to our new P7+ hardware (more on that later...), I'm taking the opportunity to review and improve a few of the preventive maintenance and monitoring scripts I have floating around. Some were written a few years ago by other dbas and have been added to by myself as needed.  Others were Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com0

First of all, apologies for the long delay between posts.  We've been evaluating various avenues for this cycle of hardware and software refresh in our data centres and for obvious reasons I could not make any public postings or comments that might be mis-interpreted by the various suppliers.      In these situations there is a confidentiality protocol that must be followed and simply cannot be Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com2

I've said it before here and will say it again: the Oracle implementation of proxy logins is flawed from the start. I've given at least one demonstration of why.  And why using ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA is a much more manageable and secure alternative. Despite that, folks insist and persist on using proxies... Consider Tom Kyte's article on the latest Oracle magazine, with the examples Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com5

Sorry for the marked absence of posts, folks.  This year we've been upgrading all our Oracle dbs to 11.2.0.3 and all our MSSQL dbs to 2008R2 - hectic is an understatement for how things have been! On top of that we've been told we may need to increase the size of our main Oracle dbs by 10X in the next 2 years. So, in the process of upgrading I had to ensure the groundwork for that sort of Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com2

The few who follow this blog know I don't at all like the way Oracle is slowly forcing customers to use the OCM and direct Oracle support links, for patching and upgrades. Why? It's very simple: our db servers are in an intranet, in a designated set of subnets that will N-E-V-E-R be open to anything past the DMZ. And even then only as the originators and to a known IP address. This, I stress Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com6

Regular readers of this irregular blog will recall it's a loooong time since I had anything positive to say about Oracle and its marketing and support organization.Mind you: it's not a problem with the folks that man the fort at MOS - or whatever the blessed thing is called this week!In general I've found them competent and helpful and have actually recommended quite a few for service awards. Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com0

...that's been bugging me for a while, about time I blog about it.This post is mostly for my own reference. Although of course it might be useful for the odd budding dba out there who still believes the command line is a useful weapon in their armory.Yeah, they do exist! I'm one of them, thank you.So, have you been using sqlplus of late? And been bugged by the default Oracle data format we all Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com2

Finally worked out how to change the admin email ids in the blog!For some reason I never quite fathomed, Google took the wrong email id for admin of this blog when they took over Blogger. With the result that for quite a while I had to login with a different address than my usual gmail and/or yahoo to administer this blog.It's been a pain in the you-know-what to manage, with yet one more email Noonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04285930853937157148noreply@blogger.com6

Back in 2008 my wish list included sparse object allocation (deferred allocation in Oracle's translation).  And bingo, I got it in 11gr2! It was almost as if someone came here for inspiration! Prior to that in my "No Moore" series I actually described the Exadata architecture, long before it became public. Not that such a thing would ever be acknowledged by Oracle, we know that!  After all, I Noonsnoreply@blogger.com9

In the last 48 hours or so there have been two interesting events in the Oracle and IT front in Sydney.   First one was the Oracle Cloud Summit at the Sofitel Wentworth. Like so many other marketing events it had its fair share of "ooh-aahh" stuff. You know, the usual:   "Exadata can finish work before it started",  "Exalogic can finish it before it was thought out in the first place", Noonsnoreply@blogger.com2

Been a long time since last post.  It's been a busy period since the start of 2011. Mostly because we are in a period of turmoil when apparently every man and his dog is trying to get into our site for "outsourcing".  Even though that is most definitely not what we are doing.  But never let reality interfere with a good dose of marketing... We've seen a lot of "cloud computing" and SaaS Noonsnoreply@blogger.com10

2010 was a bit of a roller coaster... First, the passing of four very good friends and colleagues: - John Alexander Wildgoose, a fellow dba and IT pro as well as my long time golf buddy and friend. - Dr. Paulo Abrantes, a very good adolescence friend I hadn't seen in many years, who quietly passed away recently. I do miss our talks about the future, Paulo. - Noel Vanspaal, my database Noonsnoreply@blogger.com4

A thousand apologies for the lack of news. Well, it's been a wild ride since the last post, way back in March! On the work front:We finally finished the new DR site. And it's all working fine. Not just that, though: a LOT more!If you go here you'll see in the files area a presentation on how we do SAN-driven DR database replication. It works with SE Oracle, EE, or any other kind of Oracle Noonsnoreply@blogger.com6

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last coupla months.Not only have I been very busy at work, but also a very dear old friend has passed away after a short tussle with cancer. That affected me a lot more than I thought. Vale, John Alexander Wildgoose. My fierce Scot friend, IT colleague of 29 years and long time golfing buddy. A master of the comic understatement, his last words to me were:Noonsnoreply@blogger.com4

And I'm not talking about the one between Mars and Venus!Some of the regular readers will no doubt recall my comments regarding the MOS introduction.Yes, dang right they were strong words! We pay Oracle YEARLY in excess of 6 figures in maintenance fees.A large chunk of which is for our access to Metalink/MOS/whatever.The last thing I need when that is unusable for a long period is some idiot Noonsnoreply@blogger.com3

(edited to remove stronger words, no need for that and I apologize to my readers)Here we go. I already expected this...A perfect example of the low-life, unprofessional, kind of people that populate Oracle Support nowadays.chris - if that is indeed your name: 1- With the exception of a lonely voice, there has not been ONE SINGLE POSITIVE user community comment about the utter disaster that was Noonsnoreply@blogger.com10