Re: Oracle Myths

In article <uedi3onto96hdf_at_corp.supernews.com>, you said (and I quote):
>
> I think the strange thing here is Howard Rogers site got shut down by
> Oracle, and what you are doing is clearly an attempt at reverse engineering.

Relax, Sy. It isn't. Oracle's own doco describes the contents of blocks in detail and the contents of the dictionary itself are available for anyone to see. Many books in the market describe how to dump blocks and analyze them. There is no reverse engineering here whatsoever, just integration of knowledge.

> I would also imagine when you make your 'tool' available, you are not going
> to assume any legal responsibilities for using it.
> This alone would be a sufficient reason to strongly discourage anyone to use
> your 'tool' at all. After all, if you hire Oracle to rescue your database
> and Oracle screws your database, your legal position is completely
> different.

This is a good point. For anyone writing tools (of any kind!) this is always a concern. Better to keep a tool like that for oneself. And use it only when absolutely needed. After all, it's simply not fair that Oracle charges 4 or 5 grand a day for use of a tool but a DBA outside of the "sphere of illuminati" cannot get a job at $200/day because he/she is "too expensive", TCO, yadda-yadda. It's only natural that people may look for better deals when what comes from Oracle is grossly over-priced.

> You, however, are hacking and reverse engineering, which is clearly illegal,
> and not in the interest of the user community.

Hacking is not illegal, Sy. Not at all. Or else we have to chase up Steve Adams, Jonathan, Tom Kyte, yourself, Howard, me, etcetc. Do you think that is even feasible? RE is illegal, but that's not what is taking place here. In fact if anything, what Steve and Jonathan do can be more readily classified as RE than this. Yet is isn't, and for good reason.

> I would just love to see Oracle stops your reverse engineering work. This
> would mean a legal move, definitely more justified than shutting Howard J
> Rogers site down.

Hmmm, don't think they would have a leg to stand on. Either they make this sort of info available like they do in the manuals and wear this sort of hacker activity, or they clam up and incur the ire of anyone with more than a passing interest in point-and-click (which is what they did before V7 and got into trouble for). So, moot point, really.

Now, anyone that writes a tool like this and makes it:

1- update data.
2- commercially available

is truly inviting trouble. That is for sure.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam