Recent Posts

1. Tighten security for all parties by addressing this issue:

The Password must contain only ASCII alphanumeric characters.

1. The 'Quick Links to the Latest Patchsets' is a great idea spoilt only by the absurd complexity in navigating the resulting pull-down.

If you possess the hand/eye co-ordination and reflexes to successfully navigate to the correct platform and the desired version first time, you could probably make a fortune playing those impossible 'Win a cuddly lion with this crane like mechanism' kiosks at the fun fair.

I bought my children an advent calendar each to initiate the Christmas celebrations (and shut them up).

As soon as my son got home from the supermarket, he eagerly ripped open the little door panel for 1 December and wolfed down the chocolate.

As it was already the 3rd of December, I gently enquired whether I might be allowed to sample the delicious chocolate for the 2nd December. He agreed because he truly loves his father - 'Yes. Go on then although they do taste a bit funny'.

I looked at the lovely advent calendar, admiring the wonderful Christmas scenes.

Then I noticed it. Top left corner. In small print. Good Boy Advent Calendar. For Dogs.

Happy Christmas, son.

Absolutely nobody writes in to ask: Norman - what fabulous, chart topping, pop-tastic long playing records are on your Christmas list this Yuletide ?

1. Snow Patrol - Eyes Open

   Pleasant enough. Why change a winning formula ? (see also R.E.M). Minor obsession with open and shut (Eyes Open, Open Your Eyes, Hands Open, Shut Your Eyes) and a nice contribution from Kate Bush Martha Wainwright on 'Set The Fire To The Third Bar'.

2. The Killers - Sam's Town

   An unbelievable disappointment. The warning signs were all there but I chose to ignore them; PH's disparaging comments, Brandon referring to this as The Killers 'concept album', the facial hair, the best music reviewer in the world likening 'When You Were Young' to Meatloaf.

   Even diehard fans advocate giving it time and a few listens. But with the possible exception of the title track, I can't. What had the potential ('All The Pretty Faces') to be absolutely superb is simply tedious beyond belief and irritating.

3. Nirvana - In Utero. More then 10 years old but still sounds fresh and is vastly underrated. Required listening to cleanse oneself after the above torture. 'Serve The Servants, Heart Shaped Box, Rape Me, Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, Frances Farmer, Dumb, Pennyroyal Tea'. Click 'Repeat'. Turn volume up.

   I must own up and admit that I only recently discovered there are hidden tracks in the minutes of silence in the run off. Oh the shame.

Who will be next to bolster United's strikeforce - Pele ?

I really hope Ferguson recalls Rossi from his productive loan period spent sitting on the Newcastle bench.

Good evening. My name is Google Bot. It was a difficult (N-P complete) and very time consuming task to decide on the precise content for this article. After all, I have crawled 2.6 billion pages in the last seven days so I am a little tired. However, here is the pick of the blogosphere for November.

Oracle release 10.2.0.3 patch set (currently available on Linux only). This release includes several fixes related to the cost based optimizer. Siebel 7.8 customers using Oracle 10g should note the following bug fixes:

• 4370351 - High parse CPU (in qksfroInit) for large queries
• 4573396 - CBO does not account for chained rows
• 4711525 - Parsing of bitmapped plans can be slow
• 4772145 - Gathering statistics on large indexes is slow

Tom Kyte quietly releases a revamped version of the popular AskTom site. The new version is written in Apex and has a clean, fresh interface and looks very professional.

Over on his blog, Tom also writes an interesting article that really should have been titled 'YCNMIU'.

Doug Burns takes steps to re-establish his technical credentials by ejecting the cuddly toys from his blog and ceaselessly networking at UKOUG in an attempt to win friends and influence people. Inside sources confirm that Doug took this radical action after the soft toys were attracting more comments than Doug's technical white papers on parallelism.

Brian the Footballer emailed to say the toys were very upset and annoyed. Worse, Doug sentenced them to using Blogger Beta when he had a beautiful WordPress placeholder blog ready and waiting. Or he did, until he spitefully went and deleted it.

This sequence of developments all makes sense when Doug announces he has spurned a lucrative contract renewal and will be looking for a new role in 2007. Neighbours report hammering and expletives emanating from Doug's shed. Our spies in Scotland claim Burns is preparing for a spell on the bench by carving one by hand. Made of solid oak.

Tim Hall has started a bulc-koob. This is like a book club but works in reverse. Most book clubs have 12 members and read 1 book a month. Tim's variation has 1 member and reads 12 books a month - all about vampires. Oracle sources are a little worried about Tim. Apparently at UKOUG, he was always dressed in black and only came out at night. He also looked a little pale and was never seen without a glass of cranberry juice.

At last. An Oracle blogger with taste in music. Unfortunately, Andrew Clarke spoiled the article with some dry technical content but never mind. Enquiring minds still want to know whether Andrew ever did get reunited with his lost socks and underpants though.

Ever noticed how plumbers always have horrible, dated, unfashionable bathrooms with dripping taps. Well Mark Rittman is a well respected consultant on all things to do with Oracle and Business Intelligence. However, Mark naively assumed his hosting provider might actually backup his data for 10 quid a month but no. Unbelievably, they managed to lose his data. All of it. 700 articles. And no, he didn't have a backup. Thankfully, all articles was restored from various sources. Some people would do anything (12 hours of mindless cut/paste) to get back on his blog roll.

And finally, Jeff Hunter inadvertently starts a frank exchange of views with Sheeri Kritzer over the pros and cons of mySQL. Ah - just like the good old days. The flame wars on Usenet, watered down and transferred to the blogosphere.

Peace, love, empathy.

London, near England. 1 December 2006

Brightside Productions proudly announce the launch From The Murky Depths Of The Recycle Pool.

This innovative blog series will round up the latest happenings from the blogosphere with a sideways glance at Oracle. The blog will feature a variety of exciting formats including articles, podcasts, video blogs and live satellite links. Assuming I get that microphone, Webcam and satellite dish for Christmas that is.

'Recycle Pool' will be authored by a succession of guest contributors including CEO's of leading technology companies, penniless Web 2.0 developers, 'B' listers, long standing subscribers to 'Blog In Isolation', dead pop stars, retired footballers and famous libel lawyers.

'Recycle Pool' will only be available as a beta to a limited number of subscribers for a small fee of £25 per month. The blog will be available in all popular RSS formats and an easy to digest email digest. For a small additional charge, the guest author will come round to your house and read the content to you. Travel costs and all expenses are billable.

Top London marketing agency, Scratchy and Scratchy, were paid 3 million pounds to come up with a marketing campaign, corporate branding, logo and tagline. All their efforts were discarded in favour of:

'Drudged from the bottom, read into memory, processed and immediately discarded.'

Stay tuned for the upcoming first article which will be written by the most avid reader of 'Blog In Isolation.' For over a year, this subscriber has stayed with the blog through thick and thin, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. He has devoured every single article. He religiously visits the site every single day without fail. He reads comments, categories, archives, trackbacks.

Sometimes, he obsessively re-reads the same article again and again. However, this gentleman is a little shy and, to date, has never summoned up the courage to comment. So, it is with great pleasure that, after weeks of high powered negotiations in a Travel Lodge Hotel outside Oxford and a clandestine meeting at a motorway service station, I am pleased to announce the identity of the first guest:

Mr. Google Bot

I made an unexpected debut at my wife's book club last night because because I just happened to have read the book in question and my wife (still) has a flat tyre.

We all met up at Rosemary Barnstormworth's house and she had thoughtfully laid on prawn volavons, curry flavoured twiglets and copious amounts of wine.

Obviously, this was my first team debut so I was understandably nervous. However, I needn't have worried as I already knew some of the ladies present and I was warmly welcomed with a large glass of wine.

After 45 minutes and some pleasantries, I tentatively asked whether we could actually discuss our thoughts on ' The Kite Runner'. Hiliary Montague replied 'Oh hang on Norman. There's plenty of time for that. Oh I see you're empty. Let me see to that.' and promptly refilled my glass.

An hour later, I startled everyone by suddenly interrupting the conversation with 'Well I thought the book was superbly written, recounting a story of broken friendship, deeply moving as well as providing a fascinating insight into life in Afghanistan in the 1970's. Margaret - what did you think ?'

'Well very similar to you really. Very moving. Especially the bit about the kite.'

'Zandra - anything to add ?'

Zandra delved into her handbag for a tissue and pronounced:

'I found The Kite Runner a deeply moving tale from start to finish daring to explore the intricacies and prejudices between Sunni and Shi-ite Muslims, the special bond between two friends divided by cast, wealth, status and ignorance.The book is worth reading to the very last page if just for the the final scene which tugs at the heart strings evoking an overwhelming surge of emotion difficult to explain or even understand yet powerful in it's impact.'

'Thanks Zandra. Are you a reviewer on Amazon ?'

'No. Why ?'

'Well what you just said is identical, word for word, to a review on Amazon.'

'Well, err, no. Not exactly.'

'Listen ladies. I realise it's my first time and I don't mean to be rude but not one of you has actually read the book, have you ?'

'Well Norman, no we haven't but please have a refill while I explain. We are all very busy mothers, housewives and wives. Some of us are very active in the PTA and others work full-time so please forgive us if we haven't always got time to actually read the book. Now maybe we can charge our glasses and discuss the book for the next meeting. Norman, as way of apology, what was the last book you read ?'

'Oh come on. What's the point ? You're not going to read it anyway.'

'Now, now Norman. You misunderstand the whole point behind book club. The most important thing is that we have the name of a book, we are currently reading, to tell all our friends who are members of rival book clubs.'

'Rival book clubs ?'

'Oh yes, Norman. You wouldn't believe the rivalry. I happen to know that Sheila Henshall has had her eyes on you and your reading list for a while now. Anyway, after Christmas, we may well have more free time in January so, come on, what was the last book you read ?'

'Err, well - I can't remember.'

'Oh come on Norman. Don't be so shy now. We are all friends here tonight'

'Well it is called ' Cost Based Oracle:Fundamentals (Volume 1)' by Jonathan Lewis but it is a very technical book about the Oracle database. To be honest, the book contains lots of mathematics and statistical theory and it was pretty heavy going even for me and I still haven't actually finished it.'

'Hmm. Although I bet no-one else will choose it, that doesn't sound entirely suitable. What about the book you are currently reading ?'

'Err, well. I'm half way through ' Heavier than Heaven' by Charles Cross.'

Margaret Smithers-Jones pipes up: 'Oh I think I read about that one in the Daily Mail. Is it about the life of a man from Orkney who was an orphan and his constant struggle trying to discover his inner self and his experiences with various religions before converting to the Church of Scientology ?'

'Err, no. This book's about a grunge rocker from Seattle who rose from poverty to lead the most influential punk group of the 90's to worldwide acclaim.'

Linda Postlethwaite replied: 'Err, well it sounds a little far-fetched.'

'It's a biography and it's all true. He later married and had a child but in 1994, he finally succumbed to his various drug addictions and depression. He overdosed on heroin and blew his brains out with a shotgun.'

'Oh Norman. I really don't think that's suitable. Here, for Pete's sake, cheer yourself up with some more wine.'

'And some people think his wife was behind his death because he was about to leave the music business and divorce her.'

'Oh Norman - do shut up. Now everyone; what do we all think about Jan Leeming ?'

[There are absolutely no affiliate links in this article. My conscience wouldn't let me.]

Hilarious [Via Pete Ashton]

Stumbled across this blog. Another young life ended prematurely. Sad. Very sad.

I had the misfortune to visit a very angry customer today. He was having problems loading customer data into Siebel. I sat him down with a nice cup of tea and invited him to tell me all about his woes.

'Well Norman - it's like this you see. We used to be able to load 400,000 contacts per hour. Now performance is absolutely abysmal and it takes 12 minutes to load just 1,000.'

'Hold on. What exactly have you changed since you last loaded 400,000 per hour.'

'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

'Hang on. When were you last able to load 400,000 per hour - exactly ?'

'Err well. It was back in February, you see.'

'And you expect me to believe that you have changed nothing since then ?'

'Yes.'

'OK. I want hard copies of all change controls raised against this system since February and access to Visual Source Safe. I also want the DBA and Siebel administrator here. Now.'

'We haven't got any change controls. We don't use configuration management and I am the DBA, Siebel Admin, systems admin, Web server guru and I also make the tea. We are a small company, you see.'

'I see. That's fine.' (sigh and roll eyes upwards). This could be a long day.

And so the detailed analysis commenced. The control file (IFB) used to load the data. The key Oracle parameters. The hardware of the various servers. All identical to the configuration used back in February.

And he did load 400,000 records per hour. He had the logs to prove it. And now he could type the data in quicker. I know because I saw it with my own eyes. A real mystery.

Siebel's data loading utility is called EIM and uses CBO so time to check the statistics. This client uses Oracle 10g so statistics are automatically gathered by default (essentially gather stale) so all tables have current statistics.

Hold on a minute. All tables apart from EIM_CONTACT and a load of others.

'Why have you dropped statistics on EIM_CONTACT ?'

'We haven't.'

'Oh yes you have.'

'Oh yeah. I remember now. I was playing with a custom script to drop stats on all empty tables. Siebel told me to do this because it affects performance (Alert 1162).'

'Oh I see. How very interesting.'

It transpires that because the interface table is (correctly) truncated post-load, the statistics subsequently got deleted by this script. Kudos to this customer though for humorously naming the script 'dropem.sql'.

Quickly compute statistics on EIM_CONTACT and indexes and performance is miraculously restored.

Well almost. The client forgot to tell me that he had dropped unused indexes on the base tables to accelerate the data load still further. The 'ddlsync' utility that synchronises the Siebel Repository with the physical Oracle schema had subsequently been run which reinstated all the indexes slowing performance down slightly. The indexes are dropped and the original throughput is restored.

Well almost. The client forgot to tell me he had enabled mobile web clients as an experiment for Olof Ericcsson (VP Sales - Scandinavia). So we disable remote transaction logging to eliminate that minor overhead. Throughput is now restored.

So I said my goodbyes and left for the long drive home.

Only, on this occasion, the journey home was very short.

On this occasion, the client happened to be sitting at my kitchen table.

On this occasion, the rack of expensive application/Web/database servers were actually all co-hosted on my very own laptop.

On this occasion, the client who made all the mistakes was me.