Recent Posts

Jeff Moss article about the commercial and free versions of Toad and the incredibly tenacious, persistent breed of salesperson bred by Quest Software got me thinking about the Oracle DBA tools I use.

• People
• SQL*Plus
• Statspack
• putty

People are important because people have developed the application, people are using the application, people are managing the servers, people are managing the database and intelligent people have configured that very expensive storage array.

These people know a lot about the application, the history of the project, the successes and failures, the lessons learned, the architecture, the infrastructure whereas I may know, quite literally, nothing about the same subjects.

I have seen people using Toad (and similar GUI based Oracle development tools) very effectively, multi-tasking, flipping between windows at breakneck speed. Sometimes it makes me quite tired just watching them.

However, I prefer SQL*Plus to do most of the work because :-

• SQL*Plus provides a complete report of my session, with timings, query plans, statistics. No need to frantically try to write it all down.
• The SQL script can be incrementally developed and is repeatable. It is quite easy in Toad to execute an arbitrary set of mouse-clicks so it is not clear which of the six 'alter session' statements were actually in effect when you finally got the optimal results.
• SQL*Plus is the 'vi' of the Oracle world. It is the one Oracle tool you are guaranteed to have access to, everywhere. The sys admin may not allow you to install commercial software without a valid license or may use another tool you have never seen before.
• SQL*Plus can use bind variables, provide the query plan (with or without retrieving the 6 million records) and provide the vital statistics (consistent gets) just the same as the GUI tools. Almost everything you need in fact.

Statspack is important because it is an Oracle package. Oracle will maintain and develop statspack for the latest features available in 10g. Statspack produces reports in a standard format which can easily be analysed by others (colleagues, DBA's, even Oracle). Statspack can also be configured to run automatically at regular intervals. If there is always a problem with the overnight ETL at 03.30, I would rather statspack gets the overtime and gathers the performance metrics rather than me sitting there in the middle of the night.

Statspack tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is incredibly tempting to use an Oracle monitoring tool like OEM or Spotlight, obsessively watching the screen, drilling in on what appears to be an expensive query and your salvation. The problem is that you don't know the query in question is only spawned once a quarter for the accountant's financial report and runs in batch. The query could take 37 minutes and no-one would care. It is simply not important. It is not what the users are complaining about.

Worse, because your refresh interval is 5 seconds, you are blissfully unaware that you have missed the crucial SQL query with literal SQL that takes 1.7 seconds but is executed hundreds of times per second. Statspack does.

Setting the default statspack level to level 7 means that statspack can (retrospectively) produce the query plan for any problematic SQL statement identified in the summary report. This is handy where you may have long winded SQL statements where the summary report has tantalisingly truncated the SQL text just as the WHERE clause starts.

Putty is important so you can run O/S utilities (prstat, glance, topas, top, iostat, vmstat) to monitor the actual database server during the investigations. If the server is a development server hosting multiple Oracle instances with 2 CPU's running at 100% and saturated disks, then the performance of the application will be impacted, no matter what wizardry you weave.

Dear Bill

I live in London (near England) and would like to buy Microsoft Money and Microsoft Office. My preferred method of obtaining the goods would be to download these programs from your Web site and pay using a credit card.

A small discount to reflect the reduced administration costs, packaging and margin taken by the retailer would be nice but not essential.

However, when I attempt to buy these Microsoft products in the UK, I am redirected to third party Web sites (Amazon, Dabs, PC World etc) or I can delay the purchasing decision by downloading a 60 day trial version.

Buying the products from another outlet means that I have to do extra work just to make the order. This delay will be irritating and I might even consider using OpenOffice which I can download for free and start using now.

In fact, the only disadvantage of OpenOffice is that I anticipate my children handing in a piece of homework that Microsoft Word/PowerPoint/Excel is unable to convert correctly. Consequently their fantastic effort will receive a mark of zero and a detention as the teacher will not accept 'But, Sir, my Dad is an OpenSource evangelist' as a valid excuse.

Once I have ordered from Amazon, I then have to wait for the goods to be shipped, pray that Royal Mail doesn't mislay them and the postman doesn't leave the package unattended on my doorstep in the pouring rain (just because I didn't tip him last Xmas).

When I finally receive the goods, I then have to unwrap a large box containing fresh air to finally get my hands on the CD-ROM. There is no hardcopy user guide included as all the product documentation is now available online.

Note that Microsoft Money only costs 20GBP so comes supplied in a smaller box with less fresh air than Microsoft Office which costs 90GBP and, obviously, comes in a larger box with more fresh air.

I would prefer any response from Microsoft to be in the form of a old fashioned handwritten letter instead of this new fangled email technology.

Kind regards

Norman Brightside (Mr.)

My post about Patrick Gibson reminded me of another Irish genius who, sadly, is currently critically ill in a London hospital.

A bell-boy was summoned to George Bests luxurious hotel room. He stared in amazement at the scene that greeted him. Empty, discarded bottles of champagne everywhere, a scantily clad Mary Stavin (Miss World) lying on the bed surrounded by ten pound notes.

'Tell me, Mr Best, just where did it all go wrong ?'

A kind lady called Sarah encountered my blog, was horrified by what she saw, and and proffered this suggestion for tweaking the standard blogger template to add the readability of long articles by adding the heading to the footer section.

Eventually, I managed to successfully apply the changes (she left a spurious space character to ensure you have a little work to do) so I hope you enjoy the changes as much as I do.

What would you do with 1 million GBP ?

Would you buy a mansion, a yacht and a Ferrari, give up your job, go on holiday, donate it all to charity, buy your parents a new house, take over your local football club or get U2 to play at your son's birthday party ?

Don't worry - I haven't succumbed to the lure of '1001 subjects to blog about' for people with vacuous brains.

This was precisely the quandary facing Patrick Gibson in 2004 when he scooped the top prize of 1 million pounds on the ITV show 'Who wants to be a Millionaire'.

Anyway, Patrick chose to buy the complete Iain Banks' books catalogue together with DVD's of Quentin Tarantino's films and every single episode of Channel 4's hilarious TV comedy 'Father Ted'. The reason was that these were to be Patrick's specialist subjects for BBC's Mastermind quiz.

Don't laugh - Patrick was crowned Mastermind of Great Britain on last night's enthralling show ! Even better, the narrow victory for the Irish software developer prevented an Australian gentleman hoisting the impressive, crystal glass fruit bowl aloft.

Another crushing defeat for the Aussies - oh dear.

So, you have set up the blog, got loads of interesting ideas for articles, robots and spiders are crawling everywhere, Adsense is configured and has already produced a massive return of 0.27USD and you are all set to go. One last problem, what are you actually going to call this blog ?

What's in a name ? Well quite a lot actually. I usually like to read the title and extended description of any blogs I encounter. I think the title alone can tell you quite a lot about the author and the content.

Unfortunately, I am totally devoid of imagination. That's one of the reasons I was never in a band. I simply would never be able to think up song and album titles let alone lyrics. The other reasons are that I can not play any musical instruments, sing or dance.

My imaginative offering for the name of my blog is currently 'Andy C' for the title and 'Blog in Isolation' for the description as it seems quite apt. Originally, this blog started out in life hosted at blogger, under a large black cape of anonymity and was called 'RomanTotaleXVII' because no-one in the world knows what it means (the name is a character from a Fall song).

'Blog in Isolation' is a reference to a wonderful song 'Soul in Isolation' by the most underrated band in Manchester - The Chameleons.

Other candidate titles considered were:

• Andy C's blog (boring but plenty of people use it!)
• The Wonderful And Frightening World... (The Fall)
• Open Up Your Eager Eyes (The Killers)
• Oracle Performance Tuning with Hit Ratio Harry (may yet appear as an article)
• View From A Hill (The Chameleons)
• Pedantry Begins At Home (oblique reference to The Smiths)
• In My Area (The Fall)
• Under The Covers with Norman Brightside (useful opening slide for technical presentations)
• Oracle Oldies Blog (featuring dictionary managed tablespaces, constant reorganisations, manual rollback segments and configuration of sort_area_[retained]_size)
• This is the way, step inside (Joy Division)
• The life and times of a (failed) dot com millionaire
• 77 Barton Road (where Ian Curtis took his life - too morbid)
• The NWRA (The North Will Rise Again - The Fall)

Absolutely anything can be a suitable subject for a blog entry; a Website of interest, OpenSource software, breaking news, a personal anecdote, a witty comment from a colleague, politics, a joke, a holiday, Microsoft, music, gadgets, your teams latest victory, anything.

Just because someone else (an esteemed blogger or maybe even a professional journalist) has written an article on the same subject, don't necessarily let that put you off. Lots of people are searching blogs for a personal view and not that of a journalist. For example, if I am considering the purchase of a digital radio for my car, I would rather hear your views on the same make and model rather than read a two year old review in AutoExpress.

As for technical content, while there might be reams of manuals, a wealth of text books and assorted wizards engaged in long running, complicated discussions with religious fervour that simply overwhelm you, remember that there will always be newcomers struggling in silence to insert their first row into their first table. So, if you have just written a squash ladder in PHP and mySQL, go ahead and share your knowledge.

If you can't think of anything to say, say nothing. Don't be afraid of radio silence. Personally, I don't bother with sites offering solutions for writers block such as '99 subjects to blog about' as I am not really interested in your response to 'If you were an animal, what would you be and why ?' [Although curiously enough I was asked exactly this question at interview once !]

Think about your favourite Web sites and blogs and why they are of particular interest to you. If you love reading about long haired Persian cats, and you have a long haired Persian cat, then write about that as it's likely that this will appeal to a group of people with similar interests.

Don't get discouraged because no-one comments on your blog or nominates you for 'Top 100 Blogs'. Think of all the blogs you have read in the last week with interesting, valuable content where you never had the common courtesy to take the time to say 'Thanks'.

Finally, think carefully about any brilliant ideas that surface while under the influence. Your audience may enjoy it immensely but you might live to regret it.

I used to have a Psion 5. This was a neat little personal organiser in a clam shell case with a mini QWERTY style keyboard. The Psion even had a port of the vi editor available. However, after the novelty wore off, I didnt use it much other than a few short-lived pointless games and as a glorified address book when sending out my Christmas cards.

Years later, I worked with some young, trendy individuals who wore Diesel trousers who taunted me as they all gradually acquired new, shiny Palm PDA's. Of course, I simply couldn't face them with my aged Psion so I went out and bought a Palm Vx.

Inevitably, the initial novelty soon wore off, the young things upgraded to different designer trousers and yet another trendy mobile phone (with camera) and I didn't use my Palm Vx much either apart from as a glorified address book for the annual Christmas card list.

Anyway, over the weekend, I decided to dust off the Palm and see whether it might be useful for capturing ideas for blogs. As the Palm had lain unused for so long, the batteries were totally dead and the device had been reset to its factory status. I performed a synchronisation with Palm Desktop using the Infrared link to check the communications were working.

Then I went to re-install Beyond Contacts from DataViz which synchronises data from Microsoft Outlook with the Palm. All my details were stored in my online profile at DataViz, so I was able to quickly obtain my registration key and upgrade to the latest version for free.

So now I can use the Graffiti application to enter information into the Palm, synchronise to my PC and then into the blog. I wonder if this will be quicker and more convenient than scribbling with a pen onto the back of an envelope. We will see.

Doug Burns recently was kind enough to refer to my little, embryonic blog.

I had been lurking around the Oracle blogs for a while and had commented on a posting on Doug's blog about his wife's positive reaction to the recently launched Teleport service (TV and video on demand)

Now this wasn't purely a trite comment is a desperate attempt to get someone other than the Technorati bot over to my blog. I am a Telewest customer and had previously remarked on the launch of the Teleport service on my own blog.

However, it struck me that if I had been at UKOUG and if I had just happened to be introduced to Doug Burns (an admittedly unlikely but possible scenario), would I have uttered the same words to his face as I posted on his blog ?

Now you're back from Birmingham UKOUG, take your wife out for a meal. If she is getting 'excited' about re-runs of Tuesday night's BBC news and Binge Britain Uncovered on Teleport, she desperately needs it :-)

And, well, to be honest, I am still not sure. I guess it would have depended on whether he was wearing a kilt or not.

Take some time to think of ideas and develop content for the blog. I tend to jot down lots of different ideas for possible brilliant, informative articles for the blog. However, most get discarded as when I subsequently re-read them, I discover that they dont even make sense or interest me. Some ideas are developed and refined over a longer period while other blog entries are more spontaneous.

As you are composing the article, review the text carefully as you go. If the blog editor has a 'Preview' option, use it to review the text again before finally hitting 'Publish'. When the article is published, review it yet again. I almost always still manage to find a nonsensical or rambling sentence on this final pass. I also subscribe to my own feed and read the article in Thunderbird where there is still scope to find the odd typo which is irritating as it means modifying and re-publishing the entry.

Although you are not writing an essay for an English exam, people are more likely to enjoy the content if the article is well structured and readable, spelled correctly and free of careless typos. I prefer to use English and avoid the use of slang or text message speak.

Keep the article short. Maybe I am unusual but I have a very short attention span. If a blog entry is five pages long then I am unlikely to persevere right through to the end unless it really is compulsive reading. Similarly, I tend to break articles into short paragraphs to be easier on the eye.

If the article is long or contains detailed technical content (code examples), consider breaking it into separate, shorter articles (Part 1 of 4) or maybe present the material in a different format (like a conventional Web page or write a book).