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
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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
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
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.
...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
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
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
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",
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
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
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
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:
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
(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
It's been a while since I posted anything to do with my "beloved" Peoplesoft...umm... well, you know what I mean...Some might recall this post a while ago? It's where I discussed our approach to this common problem with scratchpad tables in Peoplesoft.Anyways: some developments I reckon could be of use to anyone going through the same problem.I've since had a good exchange with Dave Kurtz where
Some of you folks might recall my 2008 wishlist for Oracle.The number one pet peeve was the need to create the initial segment of any data object even when it is empty. A big no-no for products such as Peoplesoft, where in a typical installation one gets 25000 tables and 35000 indexes of which only around 1000 are ever filled with any data.Well, it appears someone at Oracle is reading this blog,
Not really. Well... You know what I mean. ;)Anyways, sorry for the "catchy" title. This entry is prompted by some of the ongoing exercise in fine tuning our AIX db servers.AIX is a great OS but the information needed to eek out the last ounce of performance for Oracle dbs is sparse, or across many documents. This blog entry is for my future reference on how to make Oracle use large pages in
Frankly, the amount of hype surrounding the "cloud" thing is reaching the limits of what is acceptable by anyone with half a brain and a working mind!If anything, it is only discrediting the architecture and reducing it to yet another "j2ee" scam.I recently found this in one of the blog feeds.“Private, on-premise clouds are also an option that that may lessen security-related concerns”I beg your
Yeah, well: I never said this blog would be a regular thing, so there!I'm not sure what is going to happen to the world economy. I keep hearing about these fantastic rescue packages that seemly no one has to pay for?Recently, I was reminded of why I am so cynical of modern theories of education and economy. I do have a lot of respect for the engineers who made the moon landings possible
Long time no post!Sorry folks: been busy with a lot at work and at home. It's Winter outdoor sports season here so all spare time is spent ferrying kids from venue to venue.Anyways: attended a recent Oracle seminar on high availability.Good stuff. And for once, we didn't get another "injection" of "Larry Ellison did or said this or that or the other": Hallelujah!!!Interesting also to see some
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