‘A change of speed, a change of style A change of scene, with no regrets ' I simply couldn’t take any more so I reluctantly handed in my resignation yesterday. I have moved my blog to another cheap hosting provider, Bluehost. If this ends in tears, then I swear I am reverting to hosted WordPress. As Steve Redgrave once said ‘If you ever see me signing up with another cheap hosting provider, shoot me !’ ...

…is worth a thousand words, particularly when annotated.

Modern versions of Siebel use the Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) so the strategy used for gathering (and refreshing) statistics and histograms becomes increasingly important. Sometimes, the strategy can be articulated by the Oracle DBA or may even be documented or SQL scripts may be supplied that define the strategy. Normally, however, the definitive version of the truth lies in the data dictionary. SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>user,tabname=>'PERSON',cascade=>TRUE, method_opt=>'FOR ALL COLUMNS SIZE AUTO'); SQL> select column_name, to_char(last_analyzed, 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss') as last_analyzed, num_nulls, global_stats, user_stats from user_tab_col_statistics where table_name='PERSON' and column_name = 'SALARY'; COLUMN_NAME LAST_ANALYZED NUM_NULLS GLOBAL USER SALARY 10/23/2006 14:55:15 0 YES NO SQL> exec dbms_stats.set_column_stats(ownname=>user,tabname=>'PERSON',colname=>'SALARY', nullcnt=>1000000); SQL> / COLUMN_NAME LAST_ANALYZED NUM_NULLS GLOBAL USER SALARY 10/23/2006 14:55:18 1000000 YES YES So when trying to answer to question: ‘Have you ever had cause to manually populate column statistics ?’, although the Oracle DBA is your friend, the USER_STATS column in the DBA_TAB_COL_STATISTICS view is your best friend. ...

The perfect job for Aishah Azmi. Maybe this time, she should go dressed for the interview as she intends to carry out the job.

Apologies for the brief radio silence. I was shocked and alarmed by this news on Wednesday so I have been busy purging my blog of all contentious, provocative, controversial articles and erasing every last trace of my true identity (which is Norman Brightside, 23 Baker Street, London) to an amusing pseudonym that can never, ever be traced (even by clever people from Essex). I have also taken the sensible precaution of moving house and going X-directory. ...

Arsene Wenger is bleating about a referee who ‘doesn’t see things that exist’. This is the ultimate irony from a man who, after 10 years, still constantly fails to see things that do exist on a football pitch. Thierry Henry is a superb footballer but should similarly be discouraged from giving post-match interviews after a defeat. His moaning, whinging performance almost rivalled his self-pitying rant following his dismal showing in the European Cup Final. ...

There is nothing worse than a blog entry titled ‘Dear Diary’ - hence the title - but this is my humble submission for ’ One Day in History’ so please forgive me. Of course, I could author this piece directly on the site but that would mean checking I am within the 650 word limit which is far too much work (unless I use Microsoft Word). Get up at 7am and unload dishwasher. My one and only household chore but one I perform very well. Breakfast of cereal, tea and orange juice. ...

Today I have accepted a new and challenging position after a series of gruelling, demanding interviews and in depth technical tests. My new role is working for Dreamhost as a BMC Patrol Monitor Agent. My key responsibilities are as follows: Write a blog article offline using Performancing. Post draft. Preview article in WYSIWG format on the blog. Blog is slow and unresponsive. ssh to Dreamhost server which is slow and unresponsive. Run ‘w’ to determine load average which is slow and unresponsive. Raise ticket with Dreamhost technical support. Wait for a period of time. The performance problem is ‘resolved’. Perm any one from: ...

Feedburner - WordPress.com provides users with statistics about feed subscriptions. At best, these metrics were questionable and I used to provide two RSS feeds (WordPress and Feedburner) so the metrics didn’t capture all feed activity anyway. As there is no equivalent functionality in WordPress 2.0.4 out of the box, I resurrected my Feedburner account and installed this WordPress plugin which automatically routes any subscribers to the WordPress RSS feed through Feedburner. Sitemap - I started from zero when I created this site so I could try my hand at organic gardening. The only search engine I submitted to was Google. When I was trying to encourage Google to index the new site, I discovered that a sitemap could accelerate the process. This WordPress plugin generates a sitemap which tells the Google crawler about the site structure and recently updated pages. The sitemap automatically gets updated after each post and helps to reduce network traffic. ...

Just downloaded Firefox 2.0 RC3 and it worked a lot better then my previous experience. My lengthy list of extensions (or add-ons as they are now called) also worked fine. Google Browser Sync CoComment Performancing My thoughts now turn to the day when Microsoft unleash IE7 on the world through automatic updates to universal acclaim apart from my wife who will comment ‘Why did they have to go and change everything ?’