Yea, I know. Quite the dramatic title. Work with me for a sec.

I’m pissed. Really pissed. Advance warning: I will rant now.

I forget the exact year but in the early 90s (I think 1993 or 94), I signed up for a novel service. Online email. Remember this is the early 90s. I was an early adopter even back then.

The internet was mostly character based and mostly used by universities, some larger companies and government. People using the internet were using email, usenet and ftp (and some crazies were using veronica, jughead, archie and gopher).

So what can I say? One of the phrases I hate most is “We’ve had problems with that.” I have seen that, or some form of that, question used as an excuse to not try new features, to not use best practices, keep a head in the sand, stick to Oracle7 features, etc.

As an example, in my early days with data modeling, I once created a new schema. It wasn’t a very big schema; probably 10 tables or less. I spent a lot of time doing the analysis to make sure I got the data structures correct. The ERD was sent around and got approval from everyone.

When overloading a procedure or function it is the calling parameters that make the difference. The return type does not make a difference as far as the ability to overload. Generally, when talking about overloaded procedures, you will hear or read something like “You must change at least one of the parameter data types to overload it.” But that’s not really true.

Well, it’s not exactly new. It’s a product called Optim Development Studio. This product used to be called Data Studio Developer and also sometimes refered to as DB2 Data Studio.
Yes folks, IBM has joined the PL/SQL band wagon. With DB2 9.7, you can now develop PL/SQL applications that run within the database. There are limits to the support (inherited from enterprisedb) but it does support packages and plenty of Oracle syntax. I’ll have more on this in the future.
Optim can develop PL/SQL in DB2 but it can also connect to Oracle databases and explore or compile code.

Conversation:

Dev: Here’s the new package.
Me: Why are the procedures autonomous transactions.
Dev: Because they use the xxxx table.
Me: ???
Dev: That table is used by a lot of processes.
Me: ???
Dev: if I don’t use autonomous transactions, I get a mutating trigger error.
Me: An autonomous transaction does not “fix” the problem.
Dev: That’s the way we’ve been fixing it.
Me: !!

I need some aspirin.

LewisC

• DB Geek says: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-02-22:
  Having trouble with my web sites today. Very .. http://tinyurl.com/aw3kn4 #
• Test #
• Twitterberry says success when testing your connection, even if you put in an invalid password. Hmmmmph. #
• I am loving my new blackberry bold. I didn’t realize how out of date my 8700 was until I started playing with my bold. #
• @shanegold yo gaba gaba is the weirdest show since the tele-tubbies. The, um, actors? are creepy. in reply to shanegold #
• I have an awful head cold and an awful headache going right now. I wish I were home in bed. #
• @jameskoopmann Thanks.

• Having trouble with my web sites today. Very slow access. My hosting company must be having issues. #
• A new look for my database blog. Tell me what you think. http://database-geek.com/ #
• Blogged “PL/SQL Code Parser Part 3″ http://it.toolbox.com/trd/46/2/30035/3/ #
• @surachart @OracleCert Thanks. I am going for clean and easy to read. My old theme was hard to read when there was a lot of code. #
• @jaylward No iphone. Apple is evil. in reply to jaylward #
• Check out this killer barebones rig from tiger direct: http://tinyurl.com/bvazu8 I am thinking about building an i7 but this quad is cheap! #
• @serge_a_storms Isn’t it.

Ahhh. Disney in the morning, nap after lunch and pizza for dinner. The weekends go too fast. #
Monday is proof that all good things come to an end. Actually, I guess that just proves 1 good thing comes to an end. Close enough. #
Defining Cloud Computing – Part 2: Distributed Computing [...]

3 Cloud Operating Systems You Can Use Right Now http://tinyurl.com/c52puq #
Blogged “Building a PL/SQL Parser (using PL/SQL), Part 1″ http://it.toolbox.com/trd/46/2/29703/3/ #
Blogged “I apologize for the state of the code formatting” http://it.toolbox.com/trd/46/2/29705/3/ #
@wfavero the first time it is annoying, the second frustrating but after a handful of times, they need to start testing better. in reply [...]

@bananakin why no laptop? #
New podcast; Aptana Cloud ?http://tinyurl.com/b3yg4l #
RT @Database_News DB2 Storage Engine for MySQL Coming Soon – System iNetwork: DB2 Storage Engine for MySQL Coming. http://tinyurl.com/c3qena #
Sprint laying off 8000 by march http://tinyurl.com/d484yq #
@bananakin I guess you got an apple with a wyrm in it. #
Home depot laying off 7000, caterpiller [...]

@peglegpug Yeah, I left after the imax dome. I’ve been fighting a cold and was in bed by 9:30. Sounds like a good times was had though. in reply to peglegpug #
@mositampa How do I contact you about the Mosi Ambassador and the Jan 21 show? I’d like to be involved in [...]

Windows 7 boots and shuts down much faster than vista. #
Netflix watch now works great in win7, too. I was afraid it might not. #
I’ve lost my back and forward buttons in firefox though. Not sure what’s up with that. #
@fuadar it’s cold here in florida too. It was low 40s today. [...]

What’s a good db framework (ala jdbc) for PHP? I would rather not use a specific db interface. #
@surachart thanks. in reply to surachart #
@piontekdd abt tje in reply to piontekdd #
Abt the twiter client. I settled on blackbird. #
@oraclenerd planning on mosi. Looks like fun. in reply to oraclenerd #
@oracletechnet I [...]

If you are into social sites, check out the newest for OSS: Open Source Universe.

I like this because it seems to me that most people in OSS (developers, designers and even users) tend to cluster around projects. I mean, that makes sense when actually working on the project but mixing with other projects (on a regular basis and not just at the occasional conference) makes sense. If there is regular social interaction, I think that will trickle down to ideas which would make for even better products.

Of course, this isn’t just an issue with open source. Technologists seem to want to spend most of their time with people dealing with the same technology. Who today isn’t using (even if not developing) multiple OSS applications and tools? On a daily basis I am moving between PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Linux, FireFox, and a plethora of other tools.

So anyway, that’s why I wanted to give a shout out to OSU. Now, having said all that, it’s a new site and there just isn’t much there right now. The forums need help. I don’t like the fact that the forum is grouped around project. If I wanted to just hang out with Drupal folks, I would go to the Drupal forums. I think the forums should be grouped by technology. Let database folk hang together, let the PHP, Perl and Python folks hang out in the Language forum, etc.

The link exchange is a but cheesy for my but they are already listing some jobs.

If you don’t already have a blog, you can start one. I would rather start one on blogger or wordpress though.

So, give the site a check and maybe post something in the forum.

Lewisc

Technorati : database, open source, oss

Got a new twit client for the bb. Have to see if it works better than twitterberry for me. #
Right now I am having a dr who marathon (season 3) courtesy of netflix watch instantly. #
I just updated my Squidoo page: Learn Oracle / http://tinyurl.com/5atjaz #

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I was recently asked this question:

Do you find that its beneficial to start a blog on the blogger platform versus installing it on your own site?

My opinion on this has changed in the last few months. I used to think that blogger or wordpress.com were “good enough”. I now think you should host your own blog on your own domain. My only reason for this is the amount of control you have by doing so.

I have started several new blogs (on tech topics) on my own domains. I chose wordpress a my blog software. The number of plug ins that help me format and control my blogs is amazing. I don’t want to spend a lot of time tweaking and with these plug ins, it’s mostly install and move on.

NOTE: Don’t confuse wordpress with wordpress.com. Wordpress is a blogging package (that you can get from wordpress.org). Wordpress.com is a hosting service that uses wordpress as it’s blogging software. You can use wordpress the software on your own domain and if you chose wordpress.com as your blogging provider, you will be using wordpress the software (and can ONLY use wordpress the software).

From talking to family, friends, peers and co-workers, I don’t think most people care about the domain being a custom domain or the blogspot domain. I have read some bloggers who feel that a custom domain gives you a certain amount of legitimacy that a blogspot or wordpress domain wouldn’t. I don’t agree.

So, the short answer is that if you want a very quick start up with no muss and no fuss, blogger (or one of the other hosted domains) is a perfectly fine choice. If however, you are like me and want the additional control, you should buy a domain and install your own blogging software. All of the major blogging packages are incredibly simple to install and most web hosters offer additional assistance in the option of cPanel and SimpleScripts.

LewisC

Technorati : blogger, blogspot, domain, hosting, wordpress

Photos courtesy of Logan (5 years old) and a new digital camera. I love the perspective he put on the photos.

Technorati : christmas, family, holiday, vacation

The Amazon AWS blog has a good story about about Soocial.com. Soocial.com is an address book on steroid. It works with (or will work with soon): outlook, blackberry, gmail, mac address book and other phones. They just need to add Yahoo and Windows Contacts.

I wrote about it on my cloud blog, 100% AWS.

The AWS blog post has a good overview of the overall architecture. They are using Postgres and pgpool II on EC2 and EBS. They use RabbitMQ for messaging. For high availability they are using HAProxy and memcache.

It sounds like a pretty sweet setup.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, aws, cloud computing, pgpool, postgres, postgresql

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology
TUSC, actually ROLTA, has announced that they have purchased Piocon.

Rolta, one of India’s leading Engineering and IT companies, today announced the acquisition of Piocon Technologies, Inc. of Chicago…

Foxit just announced a new ebook reader, the Foxit eSllick. At less than a half inch thick, it has a built-in MP3 player and it uses the same eInk technology that Amazon Kindle uses. It comes with an SD slot and a 2GB SD card. It doesn’t have wifi but it comes in at $100 dollars less. It also lets you update the device via USB and supports rich PDF documents, that means that you can load your own documents painlessly (unlike the kindle that makes you jump through hoops and does not support rich documents).

It will be temporarily available for $229 (MSRP is $259). That’s still more than I would like to pay. I think $99 is the ideal price point for an ebook reader. For that price, I’d like to see an FM tuner and some kind of video playback. I know the eink technology doesn’t refresh fast enough for video though. Still $229 is a bit steep.

Since it supports PDF, that means that any of your business documents can be converted (software included). .doc, .ppt, open office, cad and just about any other document can be viewed on the device. PDF can be zoomed for better reading and an interesting feature is reflowing. That means that if you use a large font for easier reading, the device will flow the text so that you don’t need to pan around the screen.

As a bonus, you can listen to your music while reading. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t already have an MP3 player or a cell phone with MP3 capabilities. Having an MP3 player in the reader is a nice touch, I guess, but I would prefer it to be MP3-less and $50 cheaper.

The OS is an embedded Linux running in 128MB of ram on an ARM 400MHz processor. The SD can take up to a 4GB card. The rechargeable lithium ion battery will last 8000 page turns. That’s like reading Battlefield Earth 8 times. That’s a lot of reading.

I am somewhat tempted to get this. I don’t have a kindle or a sony reader and I am an avid reader. I’m also a gadget freak. Still, I can do so much to my EEE PC or my laptop with $200 and both of those are far more useful to me than an ebook reader. I’ll have to think about it some more.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, books, ebook, eslick, foxit, kindle, reader, sony

The local temp on 12/16, 82 degrees. The reason to live in Florida.

Picture of the Day. Dakota, the Siberian Husky, relaxing his old bones in the sun.

LewisC

Technorati : florida, home, riverview, temperature

Open source the way it ought to be. Today, Percona announced a replacement for InnoDB that improves performance and fixes bugs. The new engine is called XtraDB.

According to Vadim at Percona:

It’s 100% backwards-compatible with standard InnoDB, so you can use it as a drop-in replacement in your current environment. It is designed to scale better on modern hardware, and includes a variety of other features useful in high performance environments.

The release is pure GPL (v2) and commercial support is available from Percona. If percona keeps this up, they just might become the new MySQL.

The source is available from Launchpad and from Percona. Binaries are also available and OurDelta will start using XtraDB in future builds. Percona expects a 6 month development cycle. I don’t see on here how they plan to incorporate contributions but that may just need a little time to figure out. They do say that they have already incorporated most patches that are available and that make sense for their customer base..

This announcement excites me much more than Drizzle ever did.

LewisC

Technorati : database, mysql, open source, osdb

The local temp on 12/16, 92 degrees:

Picture of the day (I got a new camera). I doubt I will really do a picture a day but I like this one. It’s some really fuzzy clouds in a weird pattern.

LewisC

Technorati : florida, home, riverview, temperature

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There is a new dark Jedi in town

The force is strong in this one

Your Jedi mind tricks are no match for my….Oooh. Bright lights.

Check out these moves!

Bwahahahahaha! Take THAT stupid pillow!

Technorati : family, fatherhood, kids

I just added chapter 1 from my new book, The SQL Starter Book 1 – DML.  The link to the web based content is here.  I will add the rest of the chapters over time.

I have written a new book on SQL DML. This is a total beginner book: how to commit and rollback, how to query, how to add data, etc.

Probably not of interest to most of the people who read this blog but if you know of anyone completely new to SQL, this would make a great Christmas present. Only 14.95. It is completely vendor agnostic, although the examples all use Oracle and MySQL.

You can view the Table Of Contents, Preface and Index here. I plan to release some of the chapters for free on the blog and will make the PDF of the book available at a discount. I have several more books like this (DDL, Intro to Relational Databases and Cloud Computing) under construction. I also plan to do some intermediate and advanced books in the future.

LewisC

Technorati : database, learning, mysql, sql

The results are not complete yet but I wanted to post some summary data as I get it. Here are the answers to a few YES/NO questions on open source usage.

Check out the summary of responses by country and primary database usage.

Technorati : database, osdb, survey

Well, I have started formatting the results from the survey. This will take a little while as the survey software doesn’t make it easy to download and clean it up (without paying for a subscription). As soon as the data is cleaned up I will post the entire data set and a link for everyone to download.

However, while I work on the data, I will provide some summary results. Here is a list of countries who had respondents. If a country is not listed, it had 0 responses/

Check out a summary of Primary Databases and a few questions on open source software usage.

LewisC

Technorati : database, open source, osdb, survey

This is the last week to participate in a database usage survey. If you haven’t already done so, please take a few minutes to answer 25 questions.

LewisC

Technorati : survey