As developers, analysts, adminstrators, etc, I think most of us tend towards perfectionism. We want to do the job right and we want to do the job right the first time around.
Agility means being able to move forward with less than perfect information. Sometimes it means moving forward with information that is known to incomplete or even potentially inaccurate.
So what does that mean for analysis? Analysis, by definition, is the separation of individual components from the whole. The goal being, at least in my universe of activities, to be the understanding of a business proccess’s basic feature set and the relationships between those features.

From The Database Geek

I like playing with new tools and software so I thought I would start a new weekly series, Cool Tool of the Week. I will just cover a tool that I have used or discovered that I think is cool. I’m not necessarily endoring it, just giving it a little publicity so that others will know about it and can give it a try.

This week is the open source data modeling tool Open ModelSphere. This Open Source project is available for windows with a GPL license. It was originally known as SilverRun. I used this windows-based CASE tool when I was at Yale.

From the Database Geek.

Part of the ANSI SQL standard calls for an INFORMATION_SCHEMA. This schema contains a standardized data dictionary that is (or is supposed to be) common across various databases. Most database vendors offer a native data dictionary and a sub-set INFORMATION_SCHEMA (called info schema from this point on). Oracle is the only major database vendor (that I know of) that doesn’t even offer a subset of the info schema.

Oracle’s data dictionary (especially if you include the V$ views in that) is the most robust of all the databases I have used.

Paul Gallagher, of the Tardate blog, emailed me this morning (or I guess it was last night) and sent me some code to enhace ORA_Tweet.  He wrote a package to call out to an is.gd API to convert a long URL to a short URL.  The really cool thing is that he used a regular expression to find matches INSIDE the comment body.  That means that ANY URLs will be replaced with a short URL, you don’t have to call the API individually.

His API is easily called and can be used for projects other than just ORA_Tweet.  Check out his write up on the SHORTURL package:  Tweeting from your database with short urls

I updated the ora_tweet code so you can download the entire set of code if you would like.

Recently I posted an article about ORA_Tweet, an Oracle Twitter Client. I was asked by someone reading the code why I put several variables in the BODY of the package rather than the SPEC. The question was posed something like this:

Why not put the variables in the package spec where they are modifiable? That would involve less maintenance.

I specifically put them in the body so that they are not modifiable. I don’t see public global variables as a particularly good thing. To understand why, let’s take a look at the benefits of a package.

First, you can group logical functions and procedures together.

Hi all.

This post is just a catchup of what I have been doing recently.

I cleaned out my email inbox. I had 5000 unread emails. I have a problem that if I get an email that is not spam but is not critical, I put it aside “to read later”. Sometimes, I actually do go back and read them. More often, I never see it again. I would *LIKE* to respond to every email and blog post that I get. Unfortunately, I just don’t always have time. By the time I do have time, I have plenty of newer posts and emails.

I have been in search of a good PDF viewer for my BlackBerry. I tried out several different readers and even use MobiPocket to convert them. I wrote up my experiences in Mobile PDFs – 4 Way to Read PDFs on your BlackBerry.

In that post, I am review 3 native PDF viewers for the BlackBerry: PDF to Go, Repligo Reader and BeamReader. I am also review the MobiPocket mobile ebook reader. While it doesn’t do PDF, it does convert from PDF to its native format. Finally, I review ShortCovers, a new ebook social network/service.

Summary

For PDF viewing, I found that BeamReader has some shortcomings.

Posted by the Database-Geek.

DBAs and developers, do you suffer from PD? PD, performance dysfunction, is not a topic that many like to discuss. A few people do but they mostly hang out together at conferences and talk about the size of their tuples. For the rest of us, PD is an evil, evil thing.

There are as many types of PD as there are causes. Today I want to talk about a particularly insidious type referred to as PO or Premature Optimization. PO can strike at any time, any where. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about but it is something to fix.

This is very frustrating to me. Apparently a change was made here at ittoolbox that is screwing up the HTML PRE tag. Posts that used to look good now look like crap. If I allow line breaks, it is somewhat readable but doesn’t keep spacing. If I don’t allow line breaks, which I usually don’t, it is pretty unreadable.

I’m not sure how long this has been going on. I posted a new entry a little while ago and thought something was wrong with my new post. However, after wasting part of my sun

Thank you very much for sharing the information of the book,in fact i was depressed by SOA..when boss told me that the new project needed SOA,in my mind,there is a big question…why ?what and how? boss said to me,you must designed it,and big questions appeared…but i cant say that boss,i dont know how to do it and why it is needed… so i searched much information about SOA,in fact,this is not a software or ide,just a thought… later i went to a meeting about SOA,and learned something

1.w

Oracle Modernization Solutions
A practical guide to planning and implementing SOA integration and Re-architecting to an Oracle platform
Authors: Tom Laszewski, Jason Williamson

Co-Authors: Mark Rakhmilevich, Michael Oara, Prakash Nauduri

Publisher…

Hi, experts, and coders,

I am looking for the groups those discuss the methods and procedures that can make the oracle data extraction and integration at the oracle CRM database interface client section. Please add me to any tools using discussion, such like Visual basic, Java, or SQL server, or Oracle Siebel CRM itself, or any similar applications that will help.

Thanks!

Hwei

!***! Entry Link: <a href=”http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/oracle-guide/you-should-write-a-blog-1876

Someone on this site has hi jacked my nom de plume IFRSexorcist. I wish to report an identity theft.

Darla

IFRS Exorcist

http://ifrsexorcist.com

!***! Entry Link: YOU Should Write a Blog!!***!

Cathy,

Thanks for the comment.

I think 4 is the hardest for many people. It was the hardest for me. 6 is hard for many people too.

Good luck in 2009!

LewisC

!***! Entry Link: What Should I Learn? 6 Things That Will Make You better!!***!

THANK YOU Lewis C. This is a nice listing of how to start the 2009 work year tomorrow. I have copied this listing of 6 and following through. Full stop.

Each of these steps are actions that I have either done half-heartedly and I need to complete what I have started, OR some are of a newer realm that might be a little uncomfortable for me. But I wrote in a blog recently, get out there and make yourself uncomfortable because that is when you learn the most and push yourself (and those a

I spill some water on my laptop. Now i broke my k key. I cant press the k button. I have to use a on screen keyboard just so i could write the letter k. What should i do. If my dad gets home, he’d be pissed.

!***! Entry Link:http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/oracle-guide/laptop-f-key-go-byebye-11773!***!

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology
I was reading about a new tool (pattern?, methodology?) that can find relationships and patterns in very large, time dependent, interrelated data (sounds like a warehouse doesn’t it?). From the descrip…

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology
I want to be a DBA, what should I learn?
I want to be an Oracle developer, what should I learn?
I want to get into IT, what should I learn?
I want to get promoted, what should I learn?
I get questions …

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology
Well, I have been using Oracle’s new SQL Developer Data Modeler (OSDM) for a couple of months now. I’ve upgraded to beta 2. I have to say I really like it. I have given some feed back and the response …

David,

Thanks for the comments.

does that mean that if I visit USA on business for a year or so and get a US driver’s licence, I will be eligible for jury duty, but if I stay off the motor vehicle driver rolls, I will not?

No. First, each state decides how to pick jurors. Some use election rolls but most have switched to drivers licenses. Why? Because people were not registering to vote so that they wouldn’t get picked. Everybody wants to drive.

“I’m 42 years old and have been driving since I was 15 (jurors are picked from motor vehicle driver rolls) and have never been chosen for jury duty.”

As a British citizen, I was surprised that US jurors are picked from motor vehicle driver rolls. In Britain, jurors are picked from the electoral register – the roll of people entitled to vote.

I am curious – does that mean that if I visit USA on business for a year or so and get a US driver’s licence, I will

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology
AVG
Last week, AVG suggested to some users that user32.dll was a trojan and offered to delete the file for them. Know what happens when you delete a key dll like that? Kerblooey, that’s what.
AVG has s…

Oracle provides a lot of XML functionality in the database. This entry will cover the different tools Oracle provides and future entries will get into the details of each.

The three primary XML tools that oracle provides are: XML Developers Kit (XDK), XML DB and SQL Extensions for XML (SQLX and XMLType). Below is a definition of each.

XDK

The XDK is a complete XML development toolkit that was introduced for 8i. I think the first version was labeled XDK9i but the toolkit actually was available for 8i. I remember using the beta product.

It looks like the job market for Oracle is opening up. I’m seeing many of my friends find new jobs and I’m doing a lot of interviewing at work. I hope this is a trend that continues. In this entry, I share my method for interviewing Oracle resources and provide some sample interview questions and answers for developers.

Interviewing anyone can be difficult. Interviewing technical resources is very difficult. To me, probably the hardest thing is pinpointing exactly what you want this person to do. What, exactly, will this person be doing in their day-to-day job?

This is part 4 of a 3 part series. Heh I guess this qualifies as a little lagniappe on security and audit. I could have called this Oracle Audit but I already spoke about audit in Part 3. I just decided to continue on in the series.

This is a brief, technical discussion about the implementation of audit in Oracle 10g. I’ll quickly show how to turn on standard audit and how to see some of the audit taking place. I’ll follow that with an implementation of FGA and finally a trigger based audit.

One aspect of auditing is to audit your administrators.

Regardless of any regulations you are required to meet you can implement a security and audit scheme that will cover you for most, if not all, eventualities. Having good security and auditability should be desirable regardless of regulations. It protects your business.

In parts 1 and 2, I covered the security side of it. So what do I mean by Audit? Well, auditing is knowing what’s going on in your environment. Future research requirements, accountability, error correction, etc are all covered by audit.

So how does Oracle implement audit? There are several ways you can do it: Standard Audit, Fine Grained Audit and Trigger Based Audit.

Warning: Personal Soapbox Approaching.

I was reading a newsgroup discussion and the topic of DBAs and their usefulness/trivialization came up (yet again). This topic seems to show up at one time or another on every Oracle discussion board.

Whether I agree or not with any of the things said in the discussion doesn’t really matter. It got me thinking about the topic and I have a different perspective to the question. My personal soapbox on this issue is the definition of DBA. Are DBAs being trivialized in the enterprise?

This is the second entry of a three part series. In part one of this series, I defined what security is and what the different aspects of security in Oracle entailed. In this entry, I am going to show the technical details of implementing security in Oracle. I will create a user, give that user access and then give an example implementation of row and column level security. In part three, I will add auditing to this mix and describe some security best practices, both to protect your data and to meet regulatory requirements.

I’m going into this level of detail because I think some people are not familiar with it and it seems mysterious.

This is a three-part definition of Oracle Security (specifically in 10g but applies to later versions also). Part 1 covers the various types of security Oracle provides. Part 2 deals with Users/Schemas, Roles, Permissions and Data Access. Part 2 will be a more technical discussion than parts 1 or 3. In part 3, I will discuss implementing an Oracle auditing scheme and how to ensure you comply with security and audit regulations.

What exactly do I mean by security? There are several aspects of security in an enterprise work place: locked doors, guards, cameras, etc. There are just as many aspects when protecting enterprise data.

Here is an entry from a Project Manager blog called: Eight Steps on the Collaborative Way. I found it to be a very interesting article and very true. I haven’t seen this list before but it’s contain items that I try to include in my development projects, whether I’m working in a project manager role or not. Definately worth a read.

Lewis

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