RE: From ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L?

Things I learned from history: Just before things die they expand. If I was just starting out I think I would be looking for an Oracle group and not a database group. I think we would be better off staying as an Oracle group. I'm pretty confident that whatever issue I have somebody here knows the answer.   

Donald Freeman

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Robert Freeman Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 12:29 PM
To: Tim Gorman; ORACLE-L
Subject: [Non-DoD Source] RE: From ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L?

Tim,  

My two cents… and of course, some of this depends on how much time you really want to invest in all of this… J  

There is a lot of benefit in maintaining the Oracle specific focus of ORACLE-L:  

– Technology specific content means that there is less sifting through the “cross-pollination” of topics to get to the technology specific question you have. Purity is important I think.

– I would suspect that technology specific lists will attract those who specialize in those specific technologies. A pure stack is probably likely to get more authoritive answers than a watered down stack.

o I’ve seen technology neutral boards/lists often provide inaccurate information posted by folks who are not spending a lot of time with the technology they offer answers on. I think you would see a lot more “I think” or “I guess” kinds of answers.

o I’ve also seen technology neutral boards/lists have holy wars about the various stacks, that are no fun. Granted, many of those threads eventually get policed.

– In many cases, standards, processes, terminology and other things differ across stacks. This could confuse beginners. Things in the Oracle world change fast enough – multiply that several times for each additional stack you add to the mailing list.

– You have beginners here often, and I’d be concerned that cross-technology/stack posting could get confusing for them.

– With all of the stacks, there is such depth and breadth that I’d be afraid a less focused mailing list would become less useful.

– A less focused technology list will be harder to search for the answer you are looking for.  

This reasoning extends to other active and emerging database stacks, they should have their own lists.  

Then the question that comes to my mind is, can we have our cake and eat it too?

Why not source, from these DB specific lists, a consolidated and searchable list from all database specific lists? Something like DBALL-L. I would think that it would be easy to automate the copying of threads to such a list? This would be helpful for those who want to look for topics related to more than one stack.

I am debating if one should allow posts in the DBALL-L list… That would require some level of moderation to ensure that posts don’t really belong in a database specific list, though I do suggest a possible DBINTEGRATION-L list that could be the place to post cross-platform questions.  

Second, (just thinking aloud here) with respect to social media - Is there some way that we can integrate lists like ORACLE-L into social media platforms like twitter, facebook and linked in (and maybe that’s already done in some way – I have largely removed myself from social media – I just was finding the signal to noise ratio - inefficient)?  

Is there some way to integrate the technologies so that we can actually improve the usability of all of them? Perhaps such a thing is more effort that it’s worth…. I just wonder if there is an ORACLE-L post, if there should not be some related tweet that goes out to the ORACLE-L twitter subscribers with maybe a subject and link to the post (just thinking aloud here – there could be great arguments not to do this). Or a Linked in daily post with the digest contents of Oracle-L…?  

Along with ORACLE-L or MSSQL-L I think there is a good argument for a few other lists? (depending on how many lists one wants to have/manage).  

For example:  

– DBALL-L – Integrated list of all *-L lists for those who love super cross-pollination.

– DBINTEGRATION-L - List services for those trying to integrate stacks. I think such a list could certainly be cross-stack.

– DBMIGRATION-L – List services for those migrating between database stacks.

– DBCLOUD-L – List services specific to database cloud offerings

– DATASCIENCE-L – List services related to data science topics.

– DBREPLICATION-L – List services related to replication services like Golden Gate or Shareplex

– DBRETIREEARLY-L – Self-explanatory – Currently among my favorite list ideas.  

I guess, in part, all of this really boils down to what is the need of the community? What will drive them to use the tool that has been so wonderful in the past – Namely Oracle-L.  

My thoughts…. VMMV….. Cheers!!  

RF  

Robert G. Freeman

Deliverer of Data

Businessolver

Cell: 801-703-3405

Anon: Science. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t correct those mistakes, you’re doing it really wrong. If can’t accept that you’re mistaken, you’re not doing it at all.        

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Stefan Knecht Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 10:48 AM
To: Tim Gorman <tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com>
Cc: ORACLE-L <oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Subject: Re: From ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L?  

Personally, my vote would be oracle-only. Perhaps add a second list maintained with the same style that is for other DBMS.  

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:42 PM, Zahir Mohideen <zahir.dba_at_gmail.com> wrote:

        Tim -          

        it is a great idea to expand oracle_l to database_l .          

        My question is , if we were to expand , are we restricting the discussions to RDBMS only or include NOSQL dbs as well.          

        Usually , we ( I am also in SQL server side ) communicate in Twitter with #sqlhelp tag .          

• Zahir

	Zahir Mohideen 
	http://mfzahirdba.blogspot.com/

	
	Nothing so GREAT was achieved without enthusiasm

	 

	On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:56 AM, Tim Gorman <tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com> wrote:



		>> So, of course, I ask Oracle people about it.  :)


		
		This thread is a good argument for expanding ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L.
		
		There is a vibrant technical community in SQL Server and it is long past time that these communities cross-pollinated better.
		
		As this thread shows, it isn't that one or the other DBMS is better, but they can be different in subtle ways which can trip up even the most experienced of us.
		
		And, as this thread shows, many of us are tasked with administering both DBMS packages, in addition to PostgreSQL and MySQL.
		
		I'm proud to cite my wife, Kellyn <http://dbakevlar.com/> , as an example of this breed of renaissance geek, as she is currently president of both the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group <http://rmoug.org>  and of the Denver SQL Server users group <http://denversql.org> , and she is likely soon to become the first person in the world to achieve both Oracle ACE Director (now alumnae) and Microsoft MVP recognition.
		
		One noticeable difference between the two communities is age.  On average, Kellyn and I find attendees at SQL Server users group events to be about 10 years younger than Oracle users group events, based on unscientific eyeball observation.  Also, the SQL Server users group community has a much larger percentage of women attendees and speakers (i.e. about 40% for SQL to about 20% for Oracle).
		
		As a result, while the ORACLE-L list has been yakking along happily here on email for the past 20 years, the SQL Server community has been largely conversing on Twitter.  Both communities blog at about the same rate and volume (in my opinion), and both communities seem to use LinkedIn to the same degree (in my opinion).  So, the biggest difference in online communication style seems to be email vs tweets.
		
		So, if we were to go through the effort of changing from ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L (leaving aliases from ORACLE-L to point to DATABASE-L so folks can still find us), we would find adoption by the SQL Server community to be slow, because they would have a struggle paying attention to, and responding to, a high-volume email list.  There are undoubtedly good ways to integrate email and Twitter, and I'm sure they can be quite seamless, but the first question is:  what do y'all think?
		
		How do you personally feel about discussing and learning about SQL Server as well as Oracle?  Would it enhance your prospects?
		
		
		
		
		

		On 3/15/18 07:23, Rich J wrote:

			On 2018/03/15 07:34, Jeff Smith wrote:

				Brent is a friend and an ex-coworker. He wanted to share the background of this customer's scenario, in case it would help you with yours.

				I let Brent know some folks were having...fun...with his take on autocommit.

				Jeff

				 

				Heh heh heh, I can only imagine. The difference on optimistic vs pessimistic concurrency nailed it though - the default combo of optimistic & implicit transactions makes sense in Oracle, and the default of pessimistic and automatic transactions makes sense in SQL Server. It's when you change only one of those two settings that you're screwed.

				The blog post stemmed from an app that had been written by SQL Server people, and then an Oracle guy came in and made a few changes. He switched to implicit transactions without understanding that everybody was doing single-line inserts/updates all over the place in code, not bothering to set transactions. He didn't understand the impact of what he was doing. (Not an Oracle jab by any means - the guy was well-meaning but just not prepared.)

				We got called in because performance went straight into the toilet. Even worse, rollbacks were rolling back completely unrelated transactions, and nobody knew why, hahaha.

			Ah, that context adds a lot to the assertion.  I still disagree that autocommit is a good practice for applications, whether it's Oracle or SQL Server, but I understand where Brent's coming from.

			And my intent wasn't to have "fun", but a sanity check for myself.  IT changes constantly outside of my narrow focus, and as I've been following Brent's blog for years, that entry offers an opinion that is completely backwards of my understanding of how any modern RDBMS should work.

			So, of course, I ask Oracle people about it.  :)

			Thanks all for the sanity check!
			Rich

			 

		 

	 





 

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