We Do Not Use Blogs

The only thing you should NOT ask Icelanders (and maybe Norwegians) to do...

2010-07-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

I love to visit Iceland. Not because of the landscape (We Do Not Use landscapes), but because of the people there. Man, they're funny and good to talk to.

This time (last week, for two days only) I detected a deep, slow-burning anger in the folks up there, that I haven't felt before.

One of them - a very stylish, suit-dressed bartender in his 40's, who broke his principle about not talking politics with guests (hey, the bar was empty), said that he suspected there would be real riots in the fall of 2010 if the few guilty bastards were not punished for real in court.

The handful of real bastards have been driven out of Iceland, by the way: People simply spat on them when they met them on the street AND painted their houses and cars red at night. One of the bastards re-painted his house in its original color. Guess what happened the following night.

They all now live in the UK or Florida.

Fine and good. Now you know.

But this post is about the one thing you should never ask an Icelander to do: A list.

You see, back around year 900 several Norwegian vikings sailed to Iceland. They pretty much remembered everything: Clothes. Food. The ship. Oares. Live animals. Tools. Pen & Paper. You know - all the usual stuff for a 400 years voyage.

But whoever was in charge of The Norwegian Iceland Travel List forgot one thing, and whether they discovered it quickly (i.e. on the journey) or when they had settled in in their small mud huts, I do not know. But man, they must have told The List Guy a thing or two upon suddenly remembering what they had forgot:

Women.

Anyway, they apparently decided to do something about it, because DNA-tests of Icelandic women some years ago confirmed that they originate from the British isles.

The British scientist who found this out, and who was interviewed on Danish Radio, commented on the fact that Icelandic women look Pretty Damn Good by saying (rather drily): "They probably didn't take the ugly ones."

So now you know.

Oracle Closed World - now closed

2009-10-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

It's Friday morning and I'm on my way away from San Francisco after a splendid week of OOW, good guys, a few beers, and a lot of tech talk.

We ran OCW four times from Monday to Thursday, and it was really good presenters we had talked into showing up:

Monday: Jeff Needham on processors and how Oracle runs on them. Opteron good. Nehalem good. A reporter named Kate was present in order to write about OCW. Code: 41.

Tuesday: Jonathan Lewis showing why the crowd were not experts. Ouch. Code 43.

Wednesday: Jeremiah Wilton about the Cloud, and especially the Amazon Cloud. He seems to know a good deal about Amazon. Code 24.

Thursday: Uri Shaft on counting eg. NDV in the optimizer, and some compression theory - and then Dan Norris & Greg Rahn about the Database Machine. Code 42.

And Kate's funny article about OCW appeared in the daily conference newspaper on Thursday. She got all the technical and non-technical stuff right - very impressive! She also gave away the secret location (Thirsty Bear on 661 Howard, upstairs), but thankfully only on the very last day of OCW :).

I truly enjoyed it, and so did several others, so we'll probably do it again next year.

Apart from that, it also appears that the guys from Miracle who were here with me (Morten Tangaa, Jesper Haure, Kaj Christensen, Claus Sørensen) got good things out of the conference.

While I remember it: Thank you to Victoria Lira, Lillian Buziak, and Justin Kestelyn for allocating a reporter for OCW, for managing the whole ACE Director thing, and many other favors that make the conference work.

Extra! Extra! Oracle Closed World today.... on Cloud

2009-10-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

We had planned not to have any OCW presentations today in order not to steal Larry's audience from his planned keynote, but we're doing it anyway.

It's at 1200 hours, NOT 1300 hours as usual.

More details via text messages later, including todays codeword. If you want text messages from me for the OCW sessions, send me a text/SMS on +45 25277100.

Cloud computing is 'hot'. So is Larry when he talks about it on YouTube. Funny as Hell, actually.

There are at least these two videos. They are partly overlapping, but that doesn't matter- you'll want to see him do this standup routine a couple of times, trust me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o

Which is why today, at the secret location, Oracle Closed World will present a couple of guys that know everything about 'the cloud'.

Mogens

Oracle Closed World - an underground conference...

2009-10-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

I'm here in San Francisco for the Oracle Open World conference along with four other guys from Miracle, the two crazy Miracle Finland guys and some other crazy people - we've rented a couple of big apartments as usual, and are doing work, beer and other essential stuff together.

Last year at Oracle Open World (OOW) my friend Iggy Fernandez, who edits the NOCOUG (Northern California Oracle User Group) magazine/journal, suggested an Oracle Closed World conference, where REAL, TECHNICAL presentations would take place underground in secret locations, using secret passwords, and what have you.

Well, it's here. Monday, Tuesday and Thursdag at a secret location we'll do deep and very technical presentations about various topics. The secret location (which is indeed underground) has the capability to serve beer, by the way.

Let me know if you're interested in hearing more about OCW - email me on mno@MiracleAS.dk or text me on +45 2527 7100.

Mogens

Things you never wanted to know about SAN's...

2009-10-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

Here's some information you will try to forget after reading. It explains why SAN's always cause trouble, why "a firmware upgrade" is really a complete change of an OS and therefor really dangerous (and impossible to plan or test for) and more.

From now on, think of the firmware in a SAN as a whole OS, just bigger. Scary, right?

My question to this very smart guy I know was this:

"Could you repeat what OS'es are used in what SAN's for me? And how many code lines the ExaData is using?"

=======================================================================

oh god...that is a huge question... First, Exadata software is small (less than about 100MB of bits)...but that is an unfair comparison to the glut of stuff in a full-featured array... Exadata has Linux underneath it, but then we execute about 98% User, 2% Kernel so really, the only thing we get from Linux is scheduling and I/O... Exadata is small because it doesn't do any of the fat stuff arrays like Clariion do (e.g., snapshots, remote mirror, etc).

Netapp's is called OnTap and it is a heavily developed BSD (Net/1 to be exact). It is huge and full featured as you can tell by how many add on packages it support, but just in protocol provisioning it is huge. Consider the fact that it can support front-end FC yet the LUNS are actually files in the WAFL filesystem! Wild.

Clariion OS is called FLARE and it sits on top of a full Windows distro (XP). EMC NAS (celerra) is called DART which is written from scratch.

HP StorageWorks Clustered Gateway is Linux +hundreds of thousands of very specialized PolyServe code.

EMC DMX OS is called Enginuity...DMX cpus are Power and I have no idea what the origin of this OS is. If I were a betting man I'd bet that it is scratch like DART.

IBM DS83XX is full blown AIX plus more (this is the old SHARK array) in fact, it is a cluster of AIX boxes in there...

I don't know what HP calls the stuff that runs inside EVA ...

as you can see...it is very confusing.
=======================================================================

Oracle Discoverer - help people write ugly code :)

2009-04-09T01:34:00.000-07:00

There's been a discussion going on among some of my friends about all this horrible-looking (and often badly performing) auto-generated SQL coming out of Discoverer and other tools. Here are some of the comments made during the discussion, and some of my memories of how I got started with Oracle with the help of my good friend Mogens Egan...

=======================

Me:

"Oracle Discoverer - helping developers write ugly code for more than a decade."

=======================

NN:

"no no no!

the real beauty of discoverer (and similar tools) is not that it lets developers write ugly code, but it lets people who don't know what code is (business users), write code and share it with other users who also don't know what code is. It's entire purpose in life is to let people who don't know what they are doing, do it. developers do what they do with some understanding and can, sometimes, be educated. accountants and hr people can't."

=======================

Me:

"This brings me back. From 1987 to 1990 I was in a bank, sharing an office with Mogens Egan (the father of Morten Egan) and basically creating a datawarehouse (although we didn't know it) for internal users in the bank.

Our strategy was this:

1. Every night (or once a week or whatever) we would transfer data from the banks mainframe system via a SNA gateway to our VAX. The data came from IMS databases and was delivered as flat ASCII files (one physical record = one logical record) which often resultet in very very long records, of course, since IMS is hierachical. We would then load it into tables and let the users access it.

2. I would hold one- or two-day courses where I'd teach the attendees (who had probably only used a PC for a very short time) how to log onto the VAX using Smarterm, how to use VMS basic commands (including the editor), how to use SQL and SQL*Plus, how to create default forms in Forms 2.3 - and some other stuff.

3. Mogens Egan's idea was that it was better to turn users/experts (SME's in todays jargon) into "programmers" than vice versa. And then it should be our job to fix run-away jobs (read: SQL that performed bad or messed up things for others).

A rather anarchistic approach, you could say. But man, it worked. In three years we had 1000 users, some of who turned out to be natural super users, who started creating systems that helped their co-workers.

Since they were not officially named super users they couldn't demand to be given time to develop something they thought could be useful - they were by natural selection only allowed to spend time on something their co-workers thought useful.

Mogens and I are still in contact with many of those users. The machine is now an Alpha cluster, the data it manages runs a rather large banks' trading stuff, and all that - but its name is still Samson. And the super user we created back then is still called Supermule, which is the Danish name for Super Goof. With the introduction of English-speaking consultants in the last 10 years it has proved a minor mistake - they all ask "What's a super mule?"

So yes, we had many incidents of run-away jobs where the poor user had issued a SQL statement without the proper where-clause, etc. But then we would discover it, kill it, help the user - and all of the victims of this bad SQL knew it could be their turn one day, so they didn't get mad or upset.

That playground which we created back then generated a lot of Oracle-lovers who are still around in various higher positions, and perhaps it would have been even easier for them back then if we had had Discoverer.

So I think you're absolutely right: Discoverer will help computer-illeterates write really bad code even faster. But at least it gets them to use Oracle, and it creates wonderful problems that finances our fantastic lifestyles.

Mogens

PS: In the World as a whole, I think Discoverer had a presence (penetration) of about 2% of customers. In Denmark it was 20% due to my ex-wife Laila (Nathalie's mother), then product sales rep for Discoverer, who insisted that every single customer should have this product, like it or not. And notice how well Miracle is doing here. Perhaps there's a relationship."

===================================

SAPPU

2009-03-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

SAP is a huge, mysterious, expensive animal.

In my very private opinion it is probably the worst ERP system you can buy today. Hence, most whiteshirts will choose it.

To compensate for the fact that it's old and silly technology, it's also exceedingly expensive. Introducing SAP to your company is the only reliable way to tell whether your company is so financially strong that it almost resembles a monopoly.

But what I really hate about SAP is that it removes people from the Oracle database field. I think most of us have experienced the following scenario:

A colleague or a bunch of colleagues are selected to help implement SAP. Until then they've been ordinary DBA's, fixing stuff, running databases and leading normal family lives.

Then they go away for EXTENSIVE training over a LONG period of time. In between the 42 week-long classes they have to take (per year, of course), they usually rest with their families and might show up for short, social functions among their (still) colleagues. But they have these myserious, far-away eyes... you can't quite reach them.

Then you get the famous message by mouth or email stating:

"We're now almost ready to , so for the next transition period of , I'll be working half of my time with my old stuff and half of my time with SAP before moving to full-time SAP obligations."

AND THAT'S THE LAST YOU EVER HEAR FROM THEM!

I think, but I could be wrong, that they're sucked into a place and time in space that the rest of us can't see or in other ways sense.

A Harry Potter-like parallel universe.

From which, mind you, they never return.

Numerous are the good Oracle DBA's who disappear from the real Oracle world this way.

Now it appears that in their parallel universe (the SAPPU, it could be called) they're slowly corrupted into thinking about Oracle databases the way the real (the few, the remaining) Oracle DBA's thought about databases in the 80's.

They're forced to unlearn all the right things they had learned. A kind of communist re-schooling or indoctrination. So sad.

Here follows a real mail thread from some friends of mine that know more about Oracle than most. They shall, of course, remain nameless - we still have no idea about the powers and general abilities of our disappeared friends in the SAPPU, and so a certain degree of fear for the unknown make us cautious....

======================================================================
Oracle Person One said:

I find myself once again embroiled in an SAP/Oracle Issue.

It seems I broke something in the production database by applying security patches, even though the 5 development and production servers have no such issues. (No, we can't afford a full system to test patches on - sigh...)

There are a number of ORA-7445 and ORA-600 errors being issued when DML is attempted, along with requisite trace files. (Yes, there is a an active SR already)

The SAP Basis team see's ORA-3113 and ORA-3114 errors.

I think I finally have them convinced to stop trying to 'fix' the ORA-3113...

Which brings me to the point: The usual method of troubleshooting SAP problems, as practiced by the SAP team, and nearly every SAP person I have worked with (not a terribly large sample - maybe I am just really lucky), goes something like this:

1. Search the SAP support site for every note containing ORA-600, ORA-7445. There are a few as you can well imagine.

2. Call a meeting to discuss which of the actions in these notes should be taken. Whether or not the contents of the note actually match the problem at hand seems to be irrelevant.

3. Ask the DBA to run a script (recommended by SAP support) to check for some problem or another in the data. This script will launch full table scans for every table in the database... Using a for/next loop. Fortunately for me, the script is broken as is. ... and I can't seem to find the problem with it.

4. Rinse and repeat - effectiveness is unimportant, only looking busy is important.

To memorialize this method, I have created a link to the following short, but accurately portrayed method of this troubleshooting methodology:

http://tinyurl.com/sap-troubleshooting-method
===============================================================
For that Person Two commented:

Make that, 'development and test'
===============================================================
Person Three need this off his chest:

So, regarding recent security patches that might cause havoc:

The one that prevents old client retries in clear text when the encrypted handshake is rejected affects some connection attempts.

“Repairing” the permissions of the archive log destination can ultimately get the archiver stuck far enough behind to toss a 7445 (I think) I didn’t look it up and since my databases never have problems I get rusty on the error messages. (tongue firmly in cheek). If memory serves (see previous sentence) one of the security patches suggests repairing the permissions on the archive log directory without telling you to make sure the ownership is correct.

What are your vintages? I’ve only done SAP stuff ONCE (and walked away quickly and quietly having proved that a certain physical reordering solved all their stated performance issues on the load testing system only to be informed that any manipulation of the data outside of SAP was not allowed.)
===============================================================
Person One felt he finally had someone to talk to who understood him:

Yup, that is SAP SOP.

So far I have refused to do that particular operation, except in a couple cases where it retrieved a lot of empty space due to archival of data.

The 'make work' analogy from "The Longest Yard" (the old one with Burt Reynolds and Eddie Albert) was used in reference to the "SAP Reorg" mentality when they last asked me to do a db reorg.

They didn't get it.

For those of you that don't already know it, the 'make work' for the prison workers in the facility where Reynold's character was incarcerated consisted of the ollowing:

Morning: shovel mud out of the swamp.
Afternoon: shovel mud back into the swamp.

By the classic definition of work, nothing was accomplished in the end.
But the inmates were still sweaty, tired, thirsty and hungry.
===============================================================
Person Five then finally could say this to a friendly crowd:

I wholeheartedly agree with both of you.

I spent almost 4 years as part of team that supported SAP. There were 3 dba's on the team, and both of the other two received their primary dba training from SAP. Their method was to manage EVERY database as if it were an SAP database.

I volunteered to do every non-SAP upgrade and rearranged everything back Oracle standards when they weren't looking. :) Took about 2 years to get to them all but it was well worth the trouble.

As for the SAP databases, patch application and upgrades always had different results on dev, test or prod. It was utterly baffling.
===============================================================

Ah well, based on all this, it is really no wonder that SAP is so wildly popular and has won the whole upper(ERP market) over less complicated, cheaper, more technologically advanced - and way more agile - competitors.

If you can sit in the local CEO club and claim: "We actually managed to pay for the WHOLE SAP implementation with our own money and we're still functioning in several departsments..." your fellow CEO's will know that you have more money than God or AIG's dealers.

You will have the uttermost respect from them, as they scramble to try and explain why their predecessors in their respective companies chose to implement something different from SAP. Cheaper, of course.

But one day, when they have gained enough financial strength....

Here's one final salute to all those lost colleagues from the Oracle database space. We'll always remember you. You'll never be forgotten. Long live your memory.

Wherever you are. In whatever lifeform.

Oracle Open World 2001 in Berlin: The Truth (Finally)

2009-02-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

It’s time that we admit it. We did horrible things at OOW in Berlin. We’ve not told anyone for all these years, but the pressure is building inside. So I’ve decided to come clean.

We had just started Miracle, so we were only about eight folks or so in total. So we decided to go to the conference in Berlin all of us. We rented two or three apartments and also invited our friends (customers) to stay with us.

We drove down there in a few cars and found out upon arrival that the apartments were empty except for the mattresses on the floor. Oh well, easier to find your way around.

I’m still not sure why Peter Gram or someone else decided to bring along our big office printer/scanner/copier, but the guys quickly set up the network, the printer and the laptops, and then we just sat around, worked on the laptops, drank beers and talked about all sorts of Oracle internals.

I went down to registration and got a badge, so that was good. Then someone (forget who) came up with the idea that we should simply copy my badge so the rest of the guys could get in for free.

It wasn’t because we didn’t have the money or anything. Oh no. It was just because it sounded stupid and a little risky. So that’s why you’ll find pictures here and there (including in my office) of the guys copying and modifying badges.

The biggest challenge was that the badges had an “Oracle-red” stripe at the bottom.

But Oracle Magazine had a special conference edition out which had a lot of “Oracle-red” on the front cover, so it was just a matter of using the scissors in the Swiss army knife.

It worked perfectly for the whole conference and we were very proud, of course.

It was also the conference where I was introduced to James Morle by Anjo Kolk, our old-time friend from Oracle. I had placed myself strategically in a café/bar between the two main halls in the conference center which meant that everybody came walking by sooner or later. So I met lots of old friends that way. And a new friend named James Morle, who was in need for an assignment – and we had a customer in Germany who badly need his skills, so he ended up working for Mobilcom for half a year or more.

So the next bad thing we did was to crash the Danish country dinner. Oracle Denmark might not have been too fond of us back then, because they thought we were too many who had left in one go. Nevertheless, we thought it was not exactly stylish of them not to invite us to the Danish country dinner – as the only Danish participants.

Our friend (and future customer) Ivan Bajon from Simcorp stayed with us in the apartments and he was invited to the country dinner. So we found out where it was, snooped around a little, and then simply climbed a rather high fence and gate-crashed the dinner.

That was fun. The Oracle folks there were visibly nervous when we suddenly stormed in, but what could they do in front of all the customers, who very well knew who we were? So we sat down at the tables and had a good evening with all the other Danes there.

We had lots of fun during those few days in Berlin, had many political debates and beers, and went home smiling but tired.

To my knowledge we’ve not faked badges or gate-crashed country dinners since.

There have been a few suggestions since then that the badges we copied were actually free to begin with, but that can't possible be. I strongly object to that idea.

Teaching a horse not to eat

2008-12-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

My friend Ole told me this story many moons ago - and many times since:

A man decided to teach his horse not to eat anymore. Gradually he reduced the amount of food the horse got each day, and the programme worked really well.

Unfortunately, just as he had finally taught the horse not to eat at all something unforeseen and tragic happened to the horse and it died suddenly.

I was reminded of the story the other day when I was studying this article in my beloved The Economist (I've subscribed non-stop since 1983):

Stopping in a hurry

Dec 11th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Cars are getting better at avoiding collisions. Before long they may be communicating with each other to make roads safer

.... and somewhere in the article this is stated:

"Jan Ivarsson, head of safety at Volvo, believes it should be possible to build a car in which people will not be killed or injured."

On the other hand I can read in various newspapers that Volvo is not doing too well, and may in fact soon be either sold or closed, just like Saab. Or maybe Sweden will try to put those two together and create a small (by international standards) entity that might survive with state funding and what have you.

So you have this carmaker - Volvo - who has been making cars safer and safer and safer over the last several decades, and JUST as they're sensing the possibility of making the perfectly safe car - in which people will not get killed - the carmaker Volvo unfortunately died. Like the horse.

In my own, little world I have also been witnessing how perfect the databases are getting, how much they can do, how much stuff you can put into them in order to save on the application coding and development side - and how coders, developers and programmers have stopped using them. Just as databases were getting damn near perfect ... people stopped using them.

I have for several years now claimed that any computer technology that reached a state of perfection, a plateau of predictability & stability and a high level of usefulness ... will be replaced with something more chaotic and hence much less productive. I have seen no exceptions.

I now realise it is connected: Technology reaching maturty, car safety reaching its logical conclusion - and feeding of horses.

Miracle's fight for intellectual property rights in China

2008-11-26T03:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a conversation I've been having over the last several weeks. Hope you enjoy it... Debra Lilley told me to put it on this blog. I always do what she tells me to do. Mogens.

Dear CEO,

We are EUWIN Network Service Co., Ltd in China, which is responsible for the registration of internet trademark and domain name of global enterprises overseas. Today we received an formal application that an international company named "Robe GmbH" wants to apply to register "miracleas" as its own Internet Trademark and Asia domain name in China. According to registration process, we will do a check to their application, and during the process, our computer database displays that the name is being used by you.
Because the final registration relates to the copyright of the name, to avoid unnecessary disputes of intellectual property rights, so we want to confirm your opinion. Looking forward to your quick reply. If you have any questions, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Karen Feng
Principal of Checking Department
Overseas Registration Organization
Tel:+(86)731-8187 719
Fax:+(86)731-8187 739
Mobile:+(86)158 7339 0351
Skype:internetbrand
web:www.euwin.com.cn

==============================================
Hello China-business-girl,

How much for Miracle.China.Com? Very interesting CEO happy day.

Moans Longballs Nogood.
==============================================

Dear CEO,

Thank you for your reply. In order to deal the matter better, I will tell you the price now:the com.cn domain name is 30EUR per year, the aisa domain name is 40EUR per year, and the internet trademark is 100EUR per year.

During our checking period, the owner of the name has the priority to register "miracleas" internet trademark and com.cn domain name. If you want to register it, according to our dispute registration principle, please provide written document(business licence or trademark certificate registered in the local place)to prove you are the owner of "miracleas". We will keep the priority for you during the checking period.

Look forward your early reply. Thank you for your cooperation.

==============================================

But how much for Miracle.China.Com??? Please email in written statement for good happyness here and everywhere for you!

Also, with respect to your irrevocable demands and undisputed popularity will we pay in Icelandic Kroner cheap cheap?
==============================================

Dear Moans Longballs Nogood,

Thank you for your reply. The Miracle.China.Com is 20EUR per year. Meanwhile as the procedure of register:

.I will send a application form to you, please find the attachment.

2.Please choose the domain name and internet trademark whice you wan t to register, then fill in and fax to me as soon as possible.

Please contact with me if you have any problem, It my pleasure to help you. Look forward your early reply!

==============================================

Dear Karen Fang-SAN,

Thank you much. This also will good for Miracle Japan, no?

I have question 100 Euro for Miracle China and 20 Euro for Miracle China is good, yes?

My pleasure your pleasure. It is very early in Dinamarca now, so very early reply! You should go home and eat your children, no?

Happy eating!

Moans Longballes Nogood.

==============================================

Dear Moans Longballes Nogood,

Thank you for your reply, I am terribly sorry to bother you so early. In fact: register the internet trademark and china.com is very good and necessary for your company. You can protect your intellectul property right by it!

I hope you can fax the application to me early, so I can help you to deal the matter better. Wish you have a good rest. And now it is 9:40a.m in China. Ask a question:what the means of "eat your children"? My English is not very good, sorry!

Thank you for your cooperation. Look forward your reply.

==============================================
Dear Karen Euwin Feng,

My Mother's name was Longballs, not Longballes. But OK. I am very tired now, but register is very important, so I must not sheep. I know I must protect intelletual property night and day, no!

You are very helpful and good with deal the matter. Thank you so much! It is now 03.42 in Denmark and I am sleepy. We do not eat children here, what it means is that we must protect children in Darfour, yes! They get killed by Chinese weapons, but guns don't kill bullets do. I understand. We all friends.

Chinese love.

Moans.
==============================================

Dear Moans Longballs Nogood,

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry for my mistake. Register is very important, but the rest is important too. Rest good in order to work well, yes? You can raply me when you in the office, and you can have a rest now.

About the children get killed by chinese weapons, I do not know the matter at all, and I feel very sorry about it, sorry!!! Of course we all friends.

Thank you for your cooperation. Look forward your reply.

==============================================

Dear Karen-SAN,

Rest is neccessary to work good, you are right. Thank you for letting me sheep.

We must both rest now with the children. I have big time thank you for your help.

==============================================

Dear Moans Longballs Nogood,

In order to deal the matter better, could you tell me whether yo have received the application form from me?

If you have received it, please fill in and fax to me as soon as possible, and I ca help you to register the domian name and internet trademark better.

Thank you for your cooperation, look forward your early reply!
==============================================

Dear Karin Feng -

Yes, many applications here in Danmark. CRM, ERP, backend, frontend, office, retail - MANY MANY applications! They must all protected for property now?! This is very serious. I will contact rest of Danmark NOW.

It is now 06.20 here, so early reply.

PS: My real name is Magnus Ling Ming. My father big King Ling Ming Chinese come from Greenland 42 years ago. You know him?

Moans.

Also sell mail and femail stones if interest. You have MANY stones in China, no?
==============================================

Dear Moans,

Thank you for your early reply. I am sorry I do not know how to call you. I think the property's protect is become more and more important,

and we should strengthen our awareness of protecting our right, otherwise it will effect the development. I hope you can make decision early,

so I can help you to deal the matter better. Do you received the application form?

I am sorry I don't know your father, maybe I'm too ignorant, but if you tell more details maybe I can know better. Stones? yes, there are many

stones in China.

Look forward your early decision. Thank you for your time. Wish you have a good weekend!

PS:I'm sorry to bother your so early many times.

Karen Feng
==============================================

My very dear happy Karen,

I am much pleased. My father was belonged to Muslim minority in China (the Han Muslim Minority in Beijing Province he told me many times over and over again when he talked about his home country China).

He is famous! I have photo of my father in front of BIG BIG unhappy tank in Tianenmen Square! That was my father! Reason for my middlename Longballs when the tank hit him!

I think he died later, but not sure. My mother is no big talker.

But I am very proud and happy of him and I smile with happiness when I visit his unknown grave. It has good karma. Big man! I think some things on my body are big because of him, so very very happy.

So how much money for the intellectual rights again? I have not received any papers! Must be very urgent now. Can you fax them? Or send a letter? My country blocks all emails with documents from China. Why I don't know yet.

Just send letter to:

Moans Longballs Nogood
C/O Miracle ASS
Borupvang 2C
2750 Ballerup
Dänemark

and I think I will receive it. Can you send it hurry hurry urgent with jetplane, no?

Love,

Moans

PS: I am in love with you! You are very clever!
==============================================

Dear Moans,

Thank you for your reply. I'm very you can tell me so many details about your father, thanks! The Miracle.China.Com is 20EUR per year, the internet trademark is 100EUR per year. I have send a application form to you, but very pity you didn't receive it. I'll send it again, I hope you can receive it this time. If you can't receive, or I will fax to you later, please give me a early reply! Thank you!

Best regards!

Karen

==============================================
Dear Karen-san,

It is with love I finally write you and your all family (I hope for happiness for all and good luck for the rest! Always!).

I have been very busy in these days. I have a goat that was ill, so I have slept with it for three nights now, and it is better now (love is good healer, no?). I cannot afford to lose goat again. My father always told me to be careful with goats and chicks and not have too many babies. Hahaha. But he is not here anymore, so I do what I must do many more times.

So sorry for not talking to your many four or five emails to me so kind and so loveful.

My mother is a small talker. She say I MUST check on http://www.cnnic.cn/en/index/index.htm to find you and so you are not fake and trying to steal fortune and luck from me!

My mother not understand that I trust and love you, Karen-san, so I must ask you to tell her that it is OK that you are not offical company for me and my many wives?!

My mother's name Karin Ming, just like yours! But she is OK just not big talker. Very very secret woman.

I must protect my company!

I love you more and more and much.

Moans.
==============================================

Dear Moans,

How are you? We have keep the priority for you for a long time, but I don't get any reply from you about the registration.

And today our management give us the last notice, after we tell you once again five days, if we

don't get your any reply, then we will consider that you give up the owner of name "milanplast", meanwhile, we

will obey the registration principles:first application, first possession to accept the Robe company's application,
I hope you can understand our position. In our auditing period, if you have any suspect about their application,

please contact us directly both by email and by phone. Thank you.
Wish you have a nice day.

Karen Feng

==============================================

My Loving Dearest Karen,

I have been very very very busy digging big holes, so no answer you in long days and nights. Sorry, sorry. You forgive me?

My love goat died suddenly. Perhaps the pressure from sleeping with many of my friends? So BIG hole for it in my garden. Big hole! It is Winter here, so ground is frozen. Very very hard work to put goat to the ground.

But also my dear mother died! Same day! She never was big talker, but now she never talks again. She small woman! So not so big hole in frozen garden this time. I decide to let her stand up in hole instead of lying flat on stomach. Much better. And smaller hole.

I am very sorry about ownership MilanPlast. I think perhaps only Miracle register, yes? Now also MilanPlast and Robe company? I'm do not like this. Can I why not just register everything in China and we can all sleep together? Not cheap-cheap, perhaps, but very easy and good for future business, yes no?

Your Moans, My Moans

PS: I travel to Taiwan with my mother and make big hole for her there so we can meet and have dinner-sleep?
==============================================

Dear Moans,

Thank you for your reply. I'm very sorry I have make a mistake, I means the ownership of Miracle but not MilanPlast,

sorry about it. If you want to register domain name and internet trademark, please fill in and fax the application form

to me as soon as possible, so I can help you to register it timely.

Look forward your early reply, thank you for your cooperation.

I'm sorry to hear that your mother was dead, don't be too sad.

Best regards!

Karen Feng
==============================================

Dear Moans Longballs Nogood,

Hope you enjoy your day. I'm very sorry to bother you again, because my management hasten me to deal with the matter earlier. I'm afraid I can't keep the priority for you for any more. So if you want to register the domain name and internet trademark, please give me a reply as soon as possible. Otherwise we'll obey the registration principle to accept the third party's application, help they to register the domain name and internet trademark. Please understand.

Thank you for your cooperation!

Wish you have a good weekend!

Karen Feng

==============================================

Picture of Yes We Can shirt....

2008-11-26T01:15:00.000-08:00

I just transferred the picture from my digital camera. I have no idea how to turn it. But if you put your screen/laptop on its right-hand side you should be able to get a rough idea of the shirt layout.

Let me know if anyone wants one. I'll take care of it. I think they were about 15 dollars for a normal T-shirt. Viktors shirt was bought in haste by his mother in a near-by shop because the shirt guy didn't have very small sizes.

Mine is just a plain T-shirt in black with the YWC motif.

Yes We Can

2008-11-24T17:15:00.000-08:00

So when I first saw this speech and the hair on my arms did funny things (the relevant stuff starts 10.28 minutes into it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe751kMBwms

... I thought: He'll win. He's the first presidential candidate EVER to use the creed of Bob the Builder (Bygge-Bob in Danish, which is exactly what my son Viktor, three years of age, calls my friend and employee CarpenterTorben, by the way).

So he won. Of course.

Then I told Dan Morgan of PSOUG the story last Sunday. He went home and found out that the Obama campaign had used the Bob the Builder figure at a rally or two. It was no coincidence.

Which might explain why McCain invented a false plumber named Joe.

So last week in Seattle (at the SQL Server PASS conference) Anette stumbled on a shirt shop that had a T-shirt with a picture of Obama and the words 'Yes we can' on it.

We talked to the guy, told him the story, and then he promply went into some Adobe product on the laptop on his desk and replaced Obama with Bob the Builder carrying multiple tools, put Obama's campaign logo on his hardhat, and made his skin colour slightly brownished...

The result was perfect, and I think he is now displaying shirts with that motive in his window in a small mall in Seattle.

Viktor was overjoyed (size four years). Dan Morgan, too (3XL) - he might even wear it in Birmingham for the presentation he's doing for Jeremiah (who can't come) at the UKOUG conference next week.... I'll certainly bring mine (2XL).

And for those of you who don't know Bob the Builder: Whenever Bob and his friends (machines and a few humans alike) are going to do some heavy stuff together, like digging a hole in Mrs. Petersen's garden, Bob will ask them all:

"Can we do it?"

and they will answer with gusto, enthusiasm and unbound energy:

"Yes, we can!"

In Danish it's:

"Kan vi gøre det?"

and the answer is:

"Ja, dét kan vi!"

Just so you know.

My sincere thanks to Viktor and Bob the Builder for helping me re-learn a few fundamental things about human capacity, and the power of optimism.

How I got picked for special attention in Denver International Airport

2008-08-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

So my wife Anette and I are on our way home from Tim's wedding.

We flew British Airways both ways. In Copenhagen I told a lady at the BA check-in counter that I might have discovered a way for terrorists to put bombs on planes without being on the plane themselves.

You see, the last couple of times where I have had to change terminals in Heathrow and there's been approximately two hours or less between the flights my bags haven't made it.

So if the bags are onboard a plane but the passenger doesn't show up, they'll pull the bags. But if the bags are delayed they'll let the passenger fly without his luggage.

Everyone knows there have been huge problems with luggage in Heathrow. At one point there was more than 42,000 pieces stacked up. IBM had stopped a DW/BI project without having created even indexes on the Oracle database tables, so every piece of luggage required a full table scan of a rather large table, so it took a while to get over that one.

So I told the lady at the checkin in Kastrup airport, Copenhagen, that there might be a security risk in Heathrow and she said she would relay the information.

Well, apparently she did, because the checkin guy in Denver yesterday suddenly started behaving very strange, went into the backoffice to "do a security check" and marked our boarding cars with the dreaded "ssss" code highlighted in yellow which means "pay very special attention", and which meant that both Anette and I had to go through the new machine that will blow air on you so that it can smell traces of explosives, etc etc.

We're currently in Heathrow, about to board for Copenhagen. I wonder if our bags will make it.

So much for trying to warn the folks about a security problem :-))).

Mogens

Tim is getting married...

2008-08-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

Anette and I are in Denver, Colorado these days, because Tim Gorman is getting married to Lori tonight (Saturday). It's a hot wedding: This is, I think, the 20th day in a row with over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes it the hottest period since 1857 or something like that.

Tim is very well known in the Oracle community: He spent many years inside Oracle where I had the pleasure of communicating a lot with him on the wonderful HELPKERN list there.

He also wrote a couple of books and contributed to the Tales of The OakTable book. Here's his website: http://www.evdbt.com/

Good luck to Lori & Tim! (said the guy on his third marriage...)

Free hash in Holland - and some fun consequences

2008-05-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

I heard this story from a Dutch friend, and I'm sure a) he's completely wrong and b) I've misunderstood everything he said. We must have been drunk both of us. With that in mind, here's the story as I recall it....

It's legal to use hash in Holland. It's also legal for the "coffee shops" to sell it. We all know that.

But of course it's illegal for the coffee shops to purchase it. And as an utterly natural consequence it's illegal to grow it. Of course. Makes sense.

And yet - despite this state of things - the Dutch haven't quite managed to push the hash thing out of the gangsters' hands :-)).

So the gangsters are now growing hash in apartments, on boats, and other places.

They use artificial lights, of course. And carbon filters so it doesn't smell. They circumvent the normal electricity circuit in order to avoid detection. They force weak people to front this kind of activity, of course.

So the Dutch Police are of COURSE trying to find all these places that illegally grow the hash which can be sold legally in the coffee shops. They even use IR (infrared) devices to detect lofts and other places where the heat/lighting raise the temperature of the growth rooms. In response, the gangsters are of course insulating the rooms.

It's all very green and sustainable, I think. And lofts and bad apartments, maybe even boats? - get insulation, which saves energy. It rocks.

The Police has of course out-sourced the removal of illegal growth places that they detect. A private company is called upon, and they'll arrive shortly afterwards and remove the plants, the equipment, and what have you.

This, I think, is brilliant. The private removal company now has an interest in people creating these illegal places, of course. Just like the folks that bred rats in New York in the 1890's because they could get a bounty per rat tail they turned in - because New York City wanted to get rid of all the rats in the city, of course.

As I started out saying: I must have misheard most of this and misunderstood the rest. Even Frederic Forsyth couldn't dream this one up.

Mogens

The beginning of Oracle Denmark

2008-03-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

I started working for a bank called Sparekassen SDS 1st of January 1987. They had just bought Oracle, and that's how I ended up in the database world.

In 1990 I joined Oracle Denmark's support organisation under the magnificient leadership of Jannik Ohl.

He was fired by Peter Perregaard in 1998 or so, because they didn't like each other. Until then things were fantastic. After that things were not.

Jannik was replaced by Allan Marker, who was not nearly his equal in any which way you choose to look. Especially when it comes to the art of thinking instead of wondering how you can survive in the corporate culture for the next few months.

But that's how things are. Peter made a mistake, and he regrets it to this day, I'm sure (as in: sure).

So Jannik went into geo-stationary orbit. In other words: He joined the Oracle EMEA organisation (Europe, Middle East, Africa).

When you "go into orbit", ie. join EMEA or some global stuff, you're never heard of again. In space, nobody can hear you scream, as they say.

Until it's time to lay off some bodies. So Jannik, uhm, resigned just now.

Today I served a bit of Miracle beer for my friend Jannik in Oracle Denmark's canteen.

To honour the best boss I ever had.

And to honour one of the most creative minds I've met. Really.

He was the one that came up with the idea of doing serious database stuff in Lalandia (which is why Miracle now do two conferences there a year).

He was the one that told me: "With all this internet stuff and not-being-able-to-call-a-person thing going on in Support, people will pay for extra services that allow them to talk to people and get their problems resolved without too much bullshit" - and we now have 130 Miracle Support customers.

He came up with the idea of having a credit-card thing for Good Oracle Customers (GOC).

Miracle Support shouldn't be allowed to live. It's feeding off the failings of the big vendor support organisations, because they're failing. That's wrong. But it's a fact.

I just hope Jannik doesn't do the boring thing of leaning back and waiting for the early-age pension to arrive. He's not old, he's not spent. We need him.

As for the headline (The beginning of Oracle Denmark) I'll just say this piece of information from an unknown source:

The beginning of Oracle Denmark: Jørgen Balle, Ole Bisgaard, Hanne Cederberg & Jannik started at the same time. Then came Pete Francis, og later Klaus Holse Andersen.

We need more details, folks :-))

Mogens

A Day On The Road (To Hell)

2008-03-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

My ringtone on my mobile is currently Highway To Hell with AC/DC, but I thought Chris Rea's The Road to Hell was more appropriate as a title today. I hope you'll understand why after reading this.

I've just come home from 10 days in a Danish town called Horsens doing a reality TV show called "The Secret Millionaire", which has run for two seasons in England.

Now they've done 11 programs in Denmark. Mine will probably be shown in the fall of this year.

Basically, a TV crew of three followed me all day long while I (complete with a cover story) visited places where good souls help out people in need. At night I stayed in a borrowed, Turkish immigrant apartment.

At the end of the 10 days I put on one of my Armani suits and told the good people that in fact I was not that much down and out, and that I'd like to donate some of my own money to their cause (a total of 250.000 Danish kroner, to be exact).

In fact I'm not a millionaire in the sense that I can take out that amount from my bank account at all. Instead, we had to take a loan in our house, which my wife Anette was OK with (and thank you so much for that!).

The 10 other folks look a LOT more like millionaires than me, let me tell you that.

Folks like the guy behind JustEat, a guy with his own investment bank in London, a big IT-guy called Asger Jensby, and so on and so forth. Some of them with private chauffeurs, one live in a French castle, for crying out loud. You know the type.

The filming ended last Thursday - a week ago - and it was a good day. Lots of happiness, tears, and much more. And of course I threw a big party with more than 200participants at the end of it.

Fantastic. But perhaps the most emotinally draining thing I've tried.

Then last Friday (the day after) after spending 30 minutes in my house while re-packing and re-grouping, I found myself with my co-director Lasse racing snow scooters and drilling holes through 70 cm ice on frozen lakes in Northern Iceland with hard, Icelandic men around me.

Talk of a change of scene within 24 hours.

A couple of rough days here in Denmark, and it was time to relax on this beautiful Easter Thursday...

The plan was to eat brunch with my friend Søren (who buys breweries for Carlsberg) and his family. Well, I made it, but late of course, due to all sorts of things.

Then I left around 1400 hours in order to drive back to my town Maaloev and pick up three kids and then take them to a football match between Brondby and FC Midtjylland due to take place at 1500 hours. Running a bit late...

I had 10 free tickets from Brondby because I tried to help them with a social project called "Fra Bænken Til Banen" (from the bench to the field) where they try to get kids into jobs (they've been so successful that they're now starting to find jobs for the kids' fathers, too).

But nobody wanted my free tickets, so I ended up throwing six of them away. Bah.

I was running a bit late for the game. Perhaps that's why I was driving too fast on the street where the Police was checking speed.

I was charged with driving 97 where 60 was the limit. Ouch.

That means 2500 kroner in fine (that's OK) and I have to take a new driving test (which cost a lot more and takes a lot of time). Hmm.

But hey, I get to learn about all the new street signs and rules that have appeared since I learned to drive back in 1982. Might even get one of those new, fancy credit-card style driving licenses.

While I was standing there talking to the cops, another car was stopped for speeding in the opposite direction of me. Turned out he had just been at Brondby Stadium, but had discovered that the game had been moved from 1500 hours to 1800 hours due to demands from Viasat television, since they had another important sport thing to cover today, too.

So evidently, one should check game times and not rely on whatever is written on the tickets. Anyway, that's how I discovered that it wasn't neccessary for me to drive faster today :-)).

So we drove back, and then we went to Brondby and saw a fine match (2-1 to Brondby) in rain and snow, then back to Maaloev with the kids and then back into Copenhagen to pick up my girl Nathalie (9 years of age) who had stayed with Søren to play with his daughter Louise.

Shortly before arriving in the street where Søren lives, I hit something with my right front tire and all air went out. Then I spent half an hour in heavy rain and sleet trying to change the #%&/Q tire.

Due to very slippery cobble stones, the jack kept slipping and the car crashing down. That happened four times, the last time with the tire only half way off, and that's when I called for professionel help (and a professionel jack).

They came, tire was changed, we drove home.

All through this I was looking forward to a nice evening with my wife Anette (whom I hadn't seen too much of in the last couple of weeks) and some cheese and champagne that she had promised me.

Like in 'Driving home for Christmas'. Chris Rea. Can't wait to see those faces. Oh, I'm driving down that lane.

It was late when I finally made it home, and Anette had had to go to sleep, of course. She had been up early and had been taking care of little Viktor all day.

Bummer. But there's always email and blogging for you, then.

But I just got a text message from my oldest daughter Christine (18 years old), who's on some kind of survival training thing with the scouts.

She wrote: "By the way: I love you, dad. Have I ever told you that?".

No, you haven't. And you never needed to. But it was the finest of timings when you did :-)).

I've just poured myself a large Bowmore 12 year single malt (Enigma edition).

Here's to life.

Unconventional Oracle Installs, part One

2008-01-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

You have to watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHzV4LZnvHc

We'll follow it up with a few other initiatives in order to help the big companies bring down the time spent to install Oracle from, say, 50 hours to one or two.

Perrow and Normal Accidents

2008-01-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

While reading the book 'Deep Survival' (most kindly given to me at the UKOUG conference in Birmingham by Sir Graham Wood of Oracle after the fire in my house) I happened on a description on page 107 of a book called 'Normal Accidents' by a fellow named Perrow (get it? per row - a perfect name for database nerds).

Perrow's theses is that in any tightly coupled system - in which unexpected interactions can happen - accidents WILL happen, and they're NORMAL.

Also, he states that technological steps taken to remedy this will just make matters worse.

Perrow and IT systems
=====================
I have freely translated Perrow's thoughts into the following:

IT systems are tightly coupled. A change - a patch, a new application, or an upgrade - to a layer in the stack can cause accidents to happen, because they generate unexpected interactions between the components of the system.

This is normal and expected behaviour, and any technological gear added to the technology stack in order to minimize this risk will make the system more complex and therefor more prone to new accidents.

For instance, I find that two of the most complexing things you can do to an IT system are clusters and SAN's.

These impressive technologies are always added in order to make systems more available and guard against unexpected accidents.

Hence, they will, in and by themselves, guarantee other normal accidents to happen to the system.

Complexing and de-complexing IT systems
=======================================
So you could say that it's a question of complexing or de-complexing IT systems.

I have found four situations that can complex IT systems (I'm being a bit ironic here):

1. To cover yourself (politics).
2. Exploration.
3. SMS decisions.
4. Architects.

1. Reason One: To cover yourself (politics)
===========================================
You might want to complex systems in order to satisfy various parties that you depend on or who insist on buying certain things they've heard about at vendor gatherings:

"Yes, we've done everything humanely possible, including buying state-of-the-art technology from leading vendors and asking independant experts to verify our setup".

This is known as CYB (Cover Your Behind).

2. Reason Two: Exploration
==========================
Ah, the urge to explore unknown territories and boldly go where no man has ever gone before...

Because you can.

The hightened awareness thus enabled might be A Good Thing for your system and your customers.

It could also create situations that you and others find way too interesting.

Reason Two is often done by men, because we love to do stupid or dangerous things.

3. Reason Three: SMS decisions
==============================
A third reason for complexing IT systems could be pure ignorance in what is commonly referred to as Suit Meets Suit (SMS) decisions - where a person of power from the vendor side with no technical insight talks to a person of power from the customer side with no technical insight.

These SMS situations tend to cause considerable increases in the GNP (just like road accidents and fires) of any country involved because of all the - mostly unneccessary - work following.

The costs to humans, systems and users can be enormous. Economists tend to love it.

4. Reason Four: Architects
==========================
A fourth reason for complexing IT systems can be architects. Don't get me wrong: There are many good IT architects. The very best ones, though, tend not to call themselves architects.

One of my dear friends once stated that an architect is often a developer that can't be used as a developer any more. Very funny.

However, what I have witnessed myself is that the combination of getting further away from the technical reality and getting closer to the management levels (the C class, as it were) tend to make some architects less good at making architectural decisions after a while.

That's where the vendors get their chance of selling the latest and greatest and thus complexing new and upcoming systems.

Summary: The end of reasoning
=============================
Four reasons must be enough. There are probably more, but I cannot think of them right now.

Anyway, imagine what savings in costs and worries you can obtain by moving just a notch down that steep slope of complexity in your system.

You might be able to de-complex your system to a degree where it becomes
absolutely rock solid and enormously available.

That should be our goal in the years to come: To help our customers de-complex their systems, while of course trying everything we can to support those who chose to complex theirs.

Two new angles on tuning/optimising Oracle

2008-01-02T16:00:00.000-08:00

Now and then some new angles and thoughts emerge in a field where a lot of people think there's not much new to be said.

Two examples:

1. James Morle told me a while ago, that he thinks all performance problems relate to skew, to latency, or to both. It's brilliant, I think. I hope James will one day write about it. He's a damn fine writer when he gets down to it.

2. This one from Dan Fink. Impressive piece, I think. Enjoy it.

http://optimaldba.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-useful-is-wait-interface.html

When I emailed Dan and told him I admired his angle on this, he responded:

"I think it is a matter of keeping an open mind and knowing that you have friends and colleagues who are open to new ideas. Support is absolutely critical, even when you don't necessarily agree with what is being said. That keeps the flow of information open.

I shall never forget walking into a conference room. In big letters on one of the whiteboards were the words "THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX". For emphasis...someone had drawn a nice large box around them! "

I like that one :-)).

Google - just another big, dumb, brutal organisation?

2007-12-31T02:42:00.000-08:00

I found this article in The Economist interesting:

http://economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10328123

There's some truth there, I think. Google is buying stuff (like blogger), is making pirate copies (sorry: clones) of other companies' software and in general trying to be as dominant and brutal as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and the others. Yawn.

What the Hell happened to "Don't do evil"? Why did Google sell out to the Chinese horror regime?

They're just after the money and the happiness of shareholdes. Boring stuff.

Mogens

Mobile phones, fats and backups

2007-12-27T02:56:00.000-08:00

As with such things, life has been rather dull since the fire - relatively speaking. Fortunately, I had a wonderful thing happening to my mobile phone that brightened several of my days before Christmas.

It all started about half a year ago, when the menu button on my Nokia E60 stopped working. That's rather inconvenient, but I could still call people up and receive calls, so no big problem.

Then, one Saturday in December, the old team from the National Nurses' Dormitory in Copenhagen had our annual, traditional, Danish Christmas lunch in a place called Told & Snaps in Copenhagen. When the frist dish was brought in - pickled herrings, of course - my dear friend Ole and I decided to see if soft butter on the keys could bring the menu button back to life. So we, uhm, buttered the keyboard - and it worked! The menu button worked again!

Flushed with succes we decided to try and repair the problems I had with the microphone and loudspeaker in the E60. So we used fat (from a duck, I think) on the, eh, bottom of the phone. Didn't seem to have the desired effect. In fact, in the days that followed I had to shout louder and louder in order for people to hear me. It was getting silly - I had to be in the privacy of my car in order not to disturb the general population with my shouting.

But I could still send and receive SMS messages, so things were OK.

Then my wife Anette and I had dinner at restaurant Avanti and that's when Anette hit the oil lamp on the table so that the E60 became soaked in oil. The display looked like a lava lamp and the keys became very loooong and soooft to use.

During the night, while I was asleep, the E60 sadly expired.

That's when I discovered that my 800 contacts were residing inside the E60, not on the mini-SD-card. So I got a new phone from a friendly phone broker (an N-73, which seems to be a fine phone, by the way) but every call I received were wonderfully new and exciting since I didn't recognice any of the numbers.

Of course I didn't have any backup. I'm a man.

Then a miracle happened. Anette and some good Miracle folks managed to wake up the phone for a short while and unload my contacts. That was a good day.

So people have told me: This will teach you to remember to take a backup!

But look at it this way: I started carrying a mobile phone 25/8/370 back in 1991 and this was the first time I was in danger of losing everything. And I have never taken a backup.

Chances are it won't happen again anytime soon either, unless somebody steals it.

So I think I'll continue with my usual mobile phone backup strategy :-))).

Merry Christmas.

Mogens

The Fire, part II

2007-12-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

Turns out there are many more good things to be said about this incident:

a. The entire house will be cleaned for Christmas.
b. All windows will be cleaned.
c. The entire first floor will be re-painted.
d. We'll get a complete list of our posessions.
e. Since the entire first floor has been emtied, we can now do all the things we always dreamed of doing up there.
f. My hand-made Italian shoes will be replaced, which is good, since little Viktor removed one of my shoe laces some months ago, and we haven't been able to locate it since.
g. We now live (with the consent of my wife Anette) on top of a bar, and the owner - Jytte - is one of the most heart-warming people I've ever met. Her magnificient helper Linda immediately moved out of her apartment so that we could stay there - just to mention one detail out of many.
h. Christmas will be special this year, no matter what happens. Just like in the movies, where the Christmas peace is secured in the last minute.

I cannot even begin to see the downsides of this unfortunate incident :-))).

Mogens

Boring life.

2007-11-29T14:57:00.000-08:00

As my 18-year old daughter Christine said yesterday when she arrived at the scene: "There's ALWAYS something going on in this house."

Here's what happened:

We have insufficient pressure on the cold water in our house these days. It means that something must be done, so CarpenterTorben called on Grethe's brother, who can fix water things.

It required that we broke up a bit of the floor in our entre/foyer/whatever it's called in our house and dig a big hole on the outside in order to get to the water pipes. Torben and I joked about an idea: Why not tear down the whole house and build a new one where there's plenty of space for pipes, wires, and such?

Well, one should be careful about what one wishes for.

Grethe's brother arrived around 1400 hours yesterday and within minutes I had complaints from my wife via text messages and phone calls that he was leaving dust everywhere, and how on Earth were we supposed to get it cleaned in time for the weekend?

So when Anette called the third time I was tempted not to answer, but I did.

This time she wasn't worried about the dust. She was in our bedroom upstairs with Viktor and Melina (2 and 9 years old) and the staircase was blocked due to fire and thick smoke downstairs.

Grethe's brother had been cutting a water pipe when a spark ignited the styrofoam used for insulation under the floor. Since he had cut the water supply he acted quickly and took a towel, dipped in the toilet, and tried to put out the fire that way. Didn't work. It kept creeping further and further under the floor through the styrofoam.

So he called for fire figthers while Anette shut doors upstairs and opened the windows in the bedroom where she was, ready to throw the kids out of the window into either blankets or arms of the people gathered under the window. She even had the wherewithal to look for tape that could seal the door from the smoke. She then called me, CarpenterTorben and others. Then she made sure the kids were dressed warmly. Cool lady under pressure!

Turns out I can drive 180 km/h on a bike path and cross lots of red lights if I have to (due to the rush hour traffic blocking the roads). I found out later that Torben had done the same in an attempt to get quickly from our new office to Kratvej.

When I arrived there were already seven fire trucks, ambulances and police cars on site. Anette and the kids had been saved out of the window by a big, strong fire fighter, and the fire had pretty much been put out.

Anette, Viktor and Melina were taken to ER, had oxygene and came home again in a taxi, still with no shoes. All shoes are kind of rubbish. They slept in NabooPeter's house, Christine slept in the Garage and I slept (of course!) on the couch in the living room, just in case somebody wanted to sneak in and steal my laptop or other important things.

So nobody got hurt, and we didn't lose any dear possessions (bar all our shoes), which is very nice.

Oh, the Emergency Service company that took over when the fire fighters left wouldn't listen to CarpenterTorben, who kept saying that it was still burning somewhere underneath the floor. But suddenly they were convinced, too, and the fire fighters had to show up a second time. This time Torben had to break down the floor in the entre/foyer with a huge drill hammer (or whatever it's called) so they could get down to the styrofoam. Otherwise, the fire would have spread underneath the floors to the kitchen and living room (and possibly to the oak table!). Good man, this Torben. I think he saved my house yesterday.

We can't live in the house for some days - it has to be cleaned due to the smoke, particles and such. But Jytte, who runs the local restaurant, has made an apartment upstairs ready for us, and all the neightbours are ready to house us, too.

So we wished for a lot of cold water with high pressure. We got that, courtesy of the Ballerup fire brigade.

We also wished for easy access to the water pipes. We got that.

Anette wanted new shoes. Check.

I never liked the white colour of the entre/foyer walls. Man, it's black now.

Viktor always loved fire trucks. Check.

Women dream about being rescued out of a burning building through the window by a big, strong fire fighter. Check.

Tomorrow we'll have the traditional, Danish Christmas lunch in Miracle. We have things to talk about now.

Mogens

PS: And I forgot to mention that it was CarpenterTorben's birthday that day!

Things I learned at Oracle Open World in SFO 2008

2007-11-20T13:53:00.000-08:00

I just came back from a few days at OOW, and it was fun. I shared a biggish apartment with Anjo Kolk, Krister (Sweden) and Oliver (Danish CSC), and it was beautiful to see the beer bottles (good beers, mind you!) gradually filling up the kitchen table allocated for that purpose.

On Sunday, November 11, I was invited to a seven-hour briefing for Oracle ACE Directors (I am such a thing). It was mostly about the Fusion Middle Ware (MW) and in the end a bit about the 11g database.

I have three observations:

1. During the MW presentations I saw more acronyms than in my entire military career.

2. 'Oracle' was the only word with less than seven letters in all those slides.

3. The best thing that can happen to any product is to be bought by Oracle. Turns out, that the purchase itself will transfer the product overnight from being worth-, use- and hopeless to being an absolutely state-of-the-art, best-of-beer product.

Interesting to learn that MW is database agnostic and Apps server agnostic. This obviously generates some interesting discussions inside Oracle.

And, man, do things change in the MW: Forget SOA, here comes SCA. Forget hub-and-spoke - it's just SO yesterday. Forget Portal - here comes WebCenter.

I am tempted to quote the standup comedian Billy Connolly, who said some years ago: "... and it will all change tomorrow, so f.... stay awake!"

Apart from that, it was a good day with knowledgeable presenters, and I learned a lot. Thanks to the Oracle ACE ladies (Emily & Victoria) for setting this up.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I simply set up a virtual office at the tex-mex restaurant Chevy's and met a bunch of friends from inside and outside Oracle during those days. It was good, and it generated a lot of good ideas.

There were 1600 presentations in total. 100 of these were database-related. Interesting.

Oracle copies MOOW :-)

2007-11-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

As you all know, Miracle held the first Miracle Oracle Open World (MOOW) conference at Lalandia earlier this year:

http://miracleas.dk/index.asp?page=168&page2=390

Alas, it didn't take Oracle long to copy the idea...

http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=67922&src=5598370&src=5598370&Act=11

Of course it's slightly disappointing that they substitute the word 'Miracle' for 'Mini', but we can live with it.

Election in Denmark

2007-11-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

The MEEP program is generating some interesting side-effects. Jan has fallen ill (and have been granted a few days off), about 10 other folks have shown interest (as in: They want to work for Miracle), and two IT magazines want to know more.

MEEP is not much else than a real education as opposed to all those marketing classes by the vendors where you are presented with 100's of pages that market new features and a few, extremely easy, exercises that everybody can do in a few minutes. If not, the answers are available in appendix B. After the "class" is finished, you'll get your diploma whether you've done anything or not.

Perhaps that´s why nobody learns anything from those standard classes. Perhaps that's why they put the white binder with the course materials on the shelf along with all the other binders. Never to look into it again.

Actually, leave out 'perhaps'.

And now to something completely different:

We're having a national election here in Denmark on 13 November. It's possibly the most boring election campaign ever. The only new thing is the new party named New Alliance. They're pretty boring, too, but not as boring as the old parties, so I'll vote for them, just for the heck of it. Basically I can't vote for any of the parties here. It's simply too shameful to watch their attempts at spending the national budget more than once.

Blah, blah, blah. Enough of that. Miracle has produced an election video where I promise everything and demand nothing.

If you go to YouTube.com and search for 'valg 07' (election 07 in Danish) you'll find three Norwegian videos ahead of us, but you'll also notice that we're now ahead of all the political parties in Denmark.

We promise three things on our election posters (of which we've produced 1.426 so far):

* Better Hair
* Perfect Sex Life
* Beautiful Sun Downs

If you'd like your own election poster, just send me a digital picture of yourself, and we'll return an A4 PDF with your election poster (mno@MiracleAS.dk).

MEEP: Miracle Extreme Education Program

2007-10-22T13:13:00.001-07:00

Right, so it's now October 22 and I haven't written anything here since May 7. Not good. Might as well get started again.

Here's a text I sent out yesterday (yesternight, actually) to the OakTable-list:
==========================================================

We're legacy. No new folks entering our fields. We secretly wish our children don't copy us. Universities are not teaching anything about databases anymore - they teach the fresh-faced, blue-eyed ones to create 'database-agnostic' applications.

So we've decided to try and build some new database experts via MEEP.

It takes three months of hard work, which means they'll need to also study at night -and they can be dumped/failed at any time, if they don't deliver.

The first one (his name is Jan Wigh) will start on this on Monday. He has been given Mr Kyte's latest book and he'll read a chapter per day (total of 13) including showing that he can do small tests on his laptop, etc. - he will be helped during the study by other Miracle guys, of course.

After that book, it's time for Lex' first book about SQL and SQL*Plus, and then other books will follow in an order we haven't decided yet, but they include James Morle's, Cary's, Tapio's, Tow's, Jonathan's CBO-book - and of course several Oracle manuals including Concepts, Admin and Application Development.... Suggestions are welcome. I know that Cary wants them to also read The Goal, for instance.

After two months on intense Oracle, we start introducing them to SQL Server (it is, pretty much, a subset of Oracle's good database) - but the main focus will be on generating new Oracle database experts.

During the course, they will be evalutated as individuals (can they read the books, do the tests, prove and disprove things, and document under which circumstances it was (dis)proved), as team players (they'll work partly out of Miracle Support) and as consultants/supporters (never give up, be nice, and all that). If we decide during the three months that they're not delivering, we won't hire them, even if they could become good people, but we'll help them find another job. It's either-or.

External people can participate (from our customers, friends, partners), and if they make it they'll be granted life-long membership of Miracle's internal techies-list (unless they do something really stupid).

These three months in Hell won't make them database experts, but it will give them the foundation.

While they read eg a book by Tom or Cary or James, they'll be introduced to the authors via email by me. Please treat them nice. James has suggested that we give then an extra challenge: Come up with a question that challenges the author :-) . I think that is not a half bad idea.

So they could end up with a solid foundation having read more serious Oracle-books cover to cover (and tried out things while reading them) than most ever do. They should also have a few good connections via the authors and the Miracle folks who'll help them during the three months in Hell.

Ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Mogens

PS: I spoke to Juliette (Lex' widow) yesterday (she's visiting our museum and Denmark in general Monday and Tuesday with her new boyfriend called The General) and told her that it would be pretty hard for me to put the students in touch with Lex, but she said I should keep trying, and if it didn't work she'd be happy to answer any questions they might have regarding SQL and SQL*Plus :-))).
===================================================================

So now you all know... And Jan Wigh has created a blog where you can follow his progress (or not) during the 90 Days In Hell:

http://meep90days.blogspot.com/

Jan - we're all behind you. Waaay behind you :-))).

The Oracle of Azkaban: The Wisdom of the Wise

2007-05-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

The Oracle of Azkaban: The Wisdom of the Wise

How utterly strange. Earlier today I was mentioning you as one of the guys I'd like to do a keynote at the Miracle Oracle Open World (MOOW) conference in September here in Denmark. And then I receive this update from LinkedIn that you've switched to SAP.

What's your new email, then?

Best regards,

Mogens

May Day in Finland...

2007-05-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

Tuomas Pystynen had organised a splendid one-day conference in "Corona Baari" in Helsinki on Monday the 30th of April.

Speakers included Heikki (the guy behind InnoDB which was bought by Oracle), the DUDE-guy Kurt, the always crazy Piet de Visser, Michael Möller of Miracle and other good people.

Guests included Scary Hairy Ari, world-famous for his quote from the last Miracle Database Forum in Lalandia: "I think I need to find Finland" and about 40 other good people.

After the conference, we walked around a bit before having dinner in a Russian restaurant with - you guessed it - a few glasses of vodka and other niceties.

The next day, Tuesday, was the 1st of May and a beautiful day with blue skies and not-too-cold weather. Everyone who had ever graduated with a "student exam" or a "polytechnical exam" were wearing their traditional student caps while having champagne and other liquids in a nice park.

Tuomas had arranged for lunch in a very nice traditional restaurant called Cosmos where a female accordion player made a lasting impression on us.

And then home to Copenhagen Tuesday night. Tired, but happy about the whole thing.

Tuomas used the occasion (it was 10 years to the day since he started his own company Deepbase) to announce that he is starting up Miracle Finland Oy.

That should work!

RAC Alert Log Consolidation Script from M2

2007-04-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

M2 - aka Michael Möller - of Miracle A/S has created a neat, little program for Oracle RAC (ab)users. Extremely open source. Windows only. Beta, until proven otherwise.

It will neatly display time-coordinated output from 2-8 alert logs side-by-side.

Send me an email at mno@MiracleAS.dk and I'll send you source and documentation.

Looks cool, Michael!

Mogens

Me & Spiderman

2007-04-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Don't worry about the Danish speak here:

http://crn.dk/index.php/news/video/id=23459

It's my video blog on Computer Reseller News (crn.dk), and it's been going on for a while.

This time I'm talking about Fast Beer (TM) by the big standard breweries like Carlsberg, where they use enzymes to speed up the brewing process from 3-4 weeks or more to two-nice days (max).

But watch the Spiderman trailer before and after that enzyme talk. That's cool :-))).

So few really need uptime

2007-04-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest take on high availability:

1. Very, very few really need it.
2. The vast majority can live with being down for days.
3. Those who really, truly need it must be able to spend a lot of everything on it - continutally.
4. Those who buy HA-gear (software and hardware) without realising how much they have to spend on it will suffer downtime much worse than without the HA-gear.

Pity those folks who buy the gear and think it works like advertised, out of the box, like the vendor said, like the POC showed, and so on. They're the true victims.

Typically, it takes 8-9 months to truly test and stabilise a RAC system. As I've said somewhere else, some people elect to spend all of those nine months before going production whereas others split it so that some of the time is spent before and, indeed, some of it after going production.

But that's not all: Even when the system has been stabilised and runs fine, it will a couple of times a year or more often go down and create problems that you never saw before.

It's then time to call in external experts, but instead of just fixing the current cause of your IT crisis, I'd like to suggest that you instead consider the situation as one where you need to spend a good deal of resources in stabilising your system again - until the next IT crisis shows up.

Your system will never be truly stable when it's complex. The amount of effort and money you'll need to spend on humans being able to react to problems, running the system day-to-day, and - very important - keep them on their toes by having realistic (terribly expensive) test systems, courses, drills on realistic gear, networks of people who can help right now, and so forth... is huge.

The ironic thing is this: If you decide that you can live with downtime, and therefor with a much less complex system - your uptime will increase. Of course.

Mark Souza of Microsoft said it: Complexity is the enemy of availability.

DBVerify? I think not.

2007-02-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

Waaay back when I was younger and worked in Oracle Support we were competing fiercely (and with any weapon) against Informix, Ingres and Sybase.

Especially Sybase was the great enemy, and we used to laugh a lot about their DBVerify facility, which their Support organisation required their users to run before they called Sybase Support.

Since running DBVerify could take more than 24 hours if the Sybase database was sufficiently large, it was obvious to any idiot that it didn't make sense. And why did they need such a facility? Didn't they have faith in the DBMS' ability to keep blocks out of corruption charges?

DBVerify was mentioned in Oracle competitive marketing materials as one good argument for not choosing Sybase.

Then Oracle copied it, including its name. Incredible. And to this date it is - if possible - even more useless than its Sybase forefather.

Yesterday I had a conference call with a large customer who had been down with their CRM system because DBVerify told them they had numerous corrupted blocks in their database after a restore and some reorg stuff.

I simply told them to ignore this bug in dbv (newed blocks are flagged as corrupted) and only think in terms of corrupted blocks if they ever see an ORA-1578 in their alert log.

They didn't quite believe me (it's an official Oracle utility, after all, this dbv nonsense), so I had to explain all sorts of stuff about block internals, checksums, hard and soft corruptions, and what have you.

In the end I promised them that I'd give them all the consulting help they'd need to fix corrupted blocks if they had any - and to just put the system back in production.

But imagine: A large company, down for five days because of the age-old bug/issue with dbverify calling blocks corrupted when they're not - and Oracle Support (and other involved parties) not knowing that it's just nonsense because they might not be aware of its history.

Spread the word: Stop using the useless piece of c... known as dbverify :-))).

Meet Kevin

2006-12-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

If you want to know about clusters and RAC and such, Kevin Closson is the man.

He's a member of the OakTable, was one of the guys that designed the Sequent computer, ported Oracle for a lot of years, and is now chief architect at Polyserve.

He has one HELL of a website, where you can learn so much about the Oracle technology stack you wouldn't believe it. As a warm-up, try this:

http://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/2006/12/03/rac-expert-or-clusters-expert/

The Russian Drinking Contest

2006-11-21T17:19:00.000-08:00

It's a story I've forced Tuomas Pystenen (Oakie of Deepbase, Finland) to tell again and again.

So his Finnish collegues on a project many moons ago were invited to a party with their Russian project counter-parts. Tuomas was the only one not too much drunk when the Finns arrived in Russia by train, so he was picked by their Russian hosts for the drinking contest.

The idea was brilliant: A Finnish guy and a Russian guy having to each empty six glasses of either water or vodka in front of an audience. If the audience saw any flicker or other nervousness in their faces they had lost. One of the glasses would be vodka, the five others water.

So Tuomas emptied the first glass with 100 grams of liquid in it. It was vodka, but his face didn't move, of course. He's from Finland. So he was happy: The vodka glass had been identified - the rest would be easy.

Time for the second 100 grams glass - it was warm to the touch so Tuomas was certain it was water. It wasn't. It was vodka, and warm vodka goes very fast to the brain. Just so you know.

In fact there was vodka in all the glasses. It was rather hard according to Tuomas and the others who participated. I seem to remember that Tuomas won the prize. Highly deserved.

How CIA stole Oracle from the Russians

2006-11-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

Dear readers,

At the UKOUG conference in Birmingham last week, the OakTable got a new member - Kurt van Meerbeeck from Belgium - the author of DUDE, Pepi and Pretoria, and a guy with a slight hint of humour.

His presentation had people laughing rather hard, and so I've chosen to publish his theory on Oracle's origin - in other words, how CIA stole the source code from the Russians, who had developed it originally!

Here we go, in Kurt's own words:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe, to truely understand X$ tables you need to have some basic knowledge of an eastern european language ... just to even pronounce them. Now - Oracle used to be named after a CIA project right ?

And Oracle hasexisted ... for how long now... 31 years ?

I think the Americans stole the source code from the Russians during the cold war - and asked Larry and his team to read in the tape (they were developing tape driver software weren't they).

Probably they were expecting some list of agents and I can imaging the CIA was quite dissapointed when they saw this source code full of X$ garble.

I guess they told Larry he could keep the tapes and on he went revealing this relational database power... of course they couldn't use the X$ stuff so they wrote V$ views on top of them ... so people could understand...

It's not a coincidence that after the fall of the Berlin wall a *lot* of features were added - Oracle 6 was almost a complete rewrite !!!

So to end this - and you are probably wondering about this ... how come Jonathan Lewis is such a wiz in X$ tables ???

There's only one explanation - MI6 ! His codename was probably OO-600 ... with a license to kill your instance ;-) (math-teacher ... yeah - right !)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps it should be pronounced 006-hundred?

Funny, very internal, remarks from the OakTable

2006-11-07T04:04:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. The internal mailing list we use in the OakTable Network is for exactly that - internal communications.

But now and then it's hard not to let others know what goes on there. This is such a case. I will not name names, and I will not disclose the real reason for these brilliant submissions - but I hope you'll enjoy it.

Here's the first entry:

While I understand your point here, I have to say that using high performance technology to increase the performance of a system where the architecture is broken is a suboptimal approach.

When teaching design classes (design? does database design training still exist, but I digress) I used an example of going shopping to show the benefits of using the array interface:

If I'm going to the store for milk, butter, bread and cheese I can either drive to the store, buy milk, drive home, put the milk in the refrigerator, drive back to the
store, buy butter, drive home, put the butter in the refrigerator etc, or can drive to the store, pick up a basket, put the milk, butter, bread, cheese and beer in the basket, buy everything in the basket, drive home, make a cheese sandwich and drink a beer while congratulating myself for having optimized the shopping task.

Here's the second entry (in response, of course):

DB corruption:

I drive to the store for milk, butter and cheese. I pick up the milk at the back of the store and see that there is a special on beer. Put milk, butter and cheese on the floor of aisle 7, and load basket with beer. On making way to checkout counter, decide that basket is too heavy, so stop in aisle 3 to have a couple of the beers. Find some crisps in aisle 3 - grab some of them and munch them down. Now thirsty again, down 4 more beers from basket in aisle 3. Remember something about needing to come to the shop to get some milk and cheese. Head down to the milk section - have a couple of beers on the way. Oh look, som dufus has left some milk, cheese and butter on the floor in aisle 7. Celebrate with another brewsky. Start singing my favourite football song, washed down with another ale. Vaguely recall something about chilk and meese. Ah what the hell - where's the beer aisle.

-----

That's all, folks. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :-).

Mogens

M2M and Oracle Legacy

2006-11-04T04:13:00.001-08:00

Money-to-Miracle (M2M) is my tongue-in-cheek way of saying that you might need assistance from consultants, thereby spending money, thereby giving my fantastic company money.

So I predicted in the original YPDNR paper that you would need (expensive and specialised) consultants if you were going to use RAC.

Was that true? And if yes, is it still true?

RAC was introduced in Oracle9i, making it RAC version 1.0. Conventional wisdom has it that you should attempt not to run any software in version 1.0.

Fortunately, RAC was based solidly on OPS, which was partly put into version 5 (five!) of Oracle and officially introduced in version 6.0.35 a.k.a. version 6.2, and so it worked pretty much as planned from the beginning. But you certainly needed special skills setting it up and, to a lesser extent, running it. Those skills were hard to come by back then. So yes, M2M.

With the RAC implementations of Oracle10g (especially 10gR2) many things have become much easier, including installation and administration. Also, due to the perhaps 1500 RAC installations worldwide , there are now more RAC-trained people than ever before.

However, something happened: The Oracle DBA world has become a legacy world. It’s the same (older and older) people meeting each other at the conferences and writing to each other in magazines and on mailing lists.

No new, fresh faces show up. Our children want to write game software or design mobile phones instead of becoming Mainframe tape operators or Oracle DBA’s.

Also, the old DBA’s are beginning to either leave the field because they see a brighter future somewhere else, or because they retire or are being diluted, working with other databases, managing application servers and handling storage issues as well as being an Oracle DBA.

Combine that with the surge in IT-spending we’re experiencing at the time of writing (2006), and you can perhaps see the irony in companies hiring super experts from Miracle for ordinary DBA tasks. They cannot find the qualified people anymore.

There’s money in Legacy for years to come, make no mistake about that, and we’re talking a lot of money and we’re talking a lot of years. Just stay on top, stay focused, and don’t get scared about all those other people around you learning all sorts of new programming languages and databases.

Take pride in the fact that Oracle is still by far the best database on the market. Just as the IBM Mainframe or the AS400 are still by far the most stable IT platforms on the market, or the fact that VMS is a fantastic operating system.

So perhaps Oracle is the mainframe of databases, and perhaps PL/SQL is the Cobol of databases – but you won’t find a more stable, scalable, tuneable and widely used platform for database-centric solutions.

According to my Second Law, Oracle will, therefore, be replaced with something less stable and performing. That happens to all technologies that reach a state of perfection.

So you probably don’t need the same amount of specialised consulting skills for setting up and running RAC. But the ordinary skills just got harder to find. Which is why I quote the famous Vera Lynn song to new RAC customers:

We'll meet again,
Don't know where,
Don't know when,
But I know
We'll meet again
Some sunny day.

A Brief Intro to Marketing (or: You Need RAC!)

2006-11-01T22:52:00.000-08:00

Three and a half years ago I wrote the paper You Probably Don't Need RAC ("YPDNR I"), and that got a few people out of their comfortable chairs.

Most of the official responses from Oracle to 'YPDNR I' have been highly emotional (i.e. negative) despite the fact that I ended the paper with the words “Now prove me wrong”, and offered to correct any mistakes in my paper immediately.

I think there are two reasons for the negative reactions despite lack of any technical arguments against my paper so far.

1. RAC is something Oracle is (justly) technically proud of, and since it’s a unique technical feature it is also a unique selling feature.

2. I used the word NOT in the title.

In marketing terms, using a negative word when talking about your own product is just not done. You always put a positive spin on it:

* Forty-two Reasons for Choosing RAC
* Using RAC in Critical Environments for Better High Availability and Lower Costs

If I had used one of these (or similar) titles, yet had kept the original content, I don’t think anybody would have reacted.

In fact, I’m certain nobody had objected if I had not used NOT in the title, because I’ve seen several colleagues do exactly that: Put up a positive-sounding title of a presentation or paper, and then proceed to document that in fact most people don’t need RAC.

Why would you deliberately choose a positive-sounding title for a presentation about why people probably don’t need a certain thing? I can think of two reasons:

1. So The Big Vendor doesn’t get mad at you.
2. The paper will get more easily accepted by the paper-selection committees of the various user groups (see my previous post about prostitution).

The first reason is widespread: People are afraid of “Making The Big Vendor mad”. Well, companies don’t get mad. People inside companies get mad (or at least react as if they do).

They get mad instead of getting factual because of lack of, well, facts, but that just makes them madder. Feeling powerless is not good.

The second reason (getting papers selected) is a real problem, and certainly not just in the Oracle world. Many user groups these days suck up to The Big Vendor, imposing a ‘self-restraint’ or, to put it in plain English, self-censorship that would make Yahoo and Google (and their Chinese friends) proud.

People keep telling me it is simply because of the money involved. Perhaps. I doubt it, but let's consider it.

If you make fun of Carlsberg’s 'Probably the Best Beer in The World' campaign, you effectively question a multi-billion Kroner marketing investment. If you question RAC, you potentially hurt the Oracle sales force’s forecast for up-selling RAC and other Enterprise Edition (extra-cost) options.

On the other hand, very very few people are actually driven by money.

I say that as someone who studied Economics for a few years, is a liberal at heart, and all that.

All serious research I've seen in the last ten years or more point to the fact that people are driven by other things than financial rewards. Which is just part of the reason why micro-economic theory (the theories, often with very heavy math involved, about actions and interactions of the individual agents in the economy) can't explain anything after all these years, except when they partner up with sociologists and other socialists :-) .

Most of our community is not driven by money. A few individuals are, but you know they are, and it's just an illness they were born with or forced to adopt because of some slip in their childhood.

We shouldn't generalise based on a few exceptions.

But we all want acknowledgement and friends - to beloong to a group, etc. The threat from someone (be that a marketing guy from The Big Vendor) of losing friends or connections or membership of a group can make a lot of people blink.

Just remember: As soon as you blink in situations like that, there's no going back. You have moved a step or two down the ladder. The only thing that might save you is the fact that The Big Vendor will do his annual re-org no matter what and so perhaps move the Pressure Guy somewhere else and replace him with someone who doesn't know you blinked :-) .

I knew these ritualised, annual re-orgs were good for something!

Oracle prostitutes and the (Google-in-)China syndrom

2006-10-31T02:54:00.000-08:00

It's time to start blogging a bit again. Why not start out with a topic like this right after the giant Oracle Open World.

If a user group gets financial support from The Big Vendor, the vendor might try to intervene directly if a) they don’t like a certain title or item on your agenda, and b) you let them – just once – do it.

In the latter case, rest assured they can smell weakness, and they won't forget it.

It’s not very nice to see, especially not when you see chairs of SIG’s and user groups giving in. But it happens. And as I said: When it has happened once, it won’t stop – there’s no way back.

As in other power games in life, if you blink first, you lose.

What you'll often see is what I call the (Google-in-)China syndrome: The Chinese threatened (stick), yet offered financial incentives (carrot), and sadly the so-called "non-Evil" guys at Google blinked to the Evil guys and will forever be tainted by it.

Forget Yahoo, who did the same – they never claimed to be cooler and more independent, like Google does. But Google became Yet Another Prostitute (YAP) that sad day. Shame on them. I simply fail to understand why anyone would want to work for such a spineless "leadership".

Regarding the user groups, it should be said in all fairness that it’s mostly a problem at the aggregate (national and supra-national) level, whereas I see many excellent, independent local conferences these days, perhaps as a counter-reaction.

Three examples of things I've seen:

Exhibit A:
==========
Oracle now invites speakers to present at Oracle Open World, pay their expenses, etc. – provided they do exactly what they’re told, including only sounding positive about Oracle features and adhering to various standards, including Powerpoint templates. Nobody else can present at OOW - only the ones Oracle has found well-behaved enough.

Tempting, isn’t it? The Devil comes in many disguises, as they say. In effect the word for it is prostitution, I’m afraid. What you can be certain of is that any presentation by non-Oracle's at OOW will have been officially OK'ed by Oracle marketing types. No independent or critical points of views are allowed anymore.

Exhibit B:
==========
Oracle successfully managed to scare the UKOUG RAC SIG chair person from letting me present the 'You Probably Don't Need RAC II' paper at a meeting by threatening to cut financial support. The chair blinked, unfortunately, and will have to continue blinking from now on (he's their bitch now, as they would say in modern speak).

In effect, therefore, this SIG cannot ever become independent again under this chair. By the way: I don’t care whether I present my paper or not for this SIG – I’m just illustrating how it happens and what the consequences are.

Exhibit C:
==========
Oracle’s EMEA manager for the Oracle Spatial extra-cost option tried to have a presentation by ESRI (a big, American Oracle partner that makes a spatial product based on Oracle databases) removed from a Scottish user conference. The argument went that this was a product competing with Spatial. Uhm, well, user groups are among other things about telling users what choices they have, including what partner solutions are out there based on Oracle technology. So much for partner programs in Oracle. As should be expected, the Scots refused, and Oracle backed down.

Please note, that although I personally don’t like Oracle trying to influence contents of magazines and SIG meetings and conferences (I see WAY better behaviour from IBM and Microsoft in that respect), I guess that’s what some people in Oracle do, and Oracle is probably not the only vendor doing it. It's up to individuals to resist these temptations on behalf on the other users. If the individual person doesn't resist, then the divide-and-conquer thing can happen.

My point is that user groups should be fiercely independent of vendors in order to be – well – user groups for its members. Users shouldn’t expect mouth pieces and sanitized marketing PPT’s from a group of users (a.k.a. a user group).

It used to be that way. When I started the Danish Oracle User Group together with my friend Mogens Egan in 1987, Oracle would contribute when we asked or when we thought it was good stuff, but otherwise they'd stay in the background and be happy about a lively user community.

Larry's personality shines through the whole organisation in this respect, too, unfortunately. Users should behave - or else. Some of them are either scared or tempted into submission and will - sadly - forever be Larry's prostitutes.

A whole, separate class of prostitution is of course the companies that will try to sell anything Oracle says they should sell, even when they know it's not for the benefit of the client. Those guys will take any message from Oracle and go out and try to convince their clients that this is the truth, the only truth and nothing but the truth. Yet they talk about how they will stop at nothing to deliver the optimal solution for the client, etc., etc. These people are lying prostitutes, and that's of course worse :-). You know them when you see them.

Salsa

2006-09-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

Too long ago, I was making salsa together with one Cary Millsap and Miracle's very own Torben Holm (who has the best hair in all of Miracle), and with Mario Broodbakker and Frank Ives sitting at the oak table drinking beer.

Cary, Torben and I were also drinking beer while making salsa based on Cary's recepie and Torben's brother's homegrown chilies. Yes, we're talking chilies grown in a garden in Denmark. I know it sounds like building a snowman in your Texan garden in the middle of the Summer. Nevertheless, these chilies come out rather hot, and so we were ready for salsa.

We made several pots of the salsa, and they all turned out well - but different. So we decided to write down the strength of each batch on the lid of the small glasses we put it in.

It was Torben's idea to first sanitize the small glasses with Icelandig snaps (Brennevin) instead of some kitchen chemical, and it has worked very well.

The first one we tasted was rated at strength 42, of course, and then the others were rated relative to that.

For instance, I clearly remember the one we designated "10046 level 8".

So last night we had several teenagers for dinner: CarpenterTorben's son Nick, our new aupair from England Sarah, and Nick's friend Rikke (who happens to take care of little Viktor in our local nursery). So I served the last two batches of the salsa, and the two girls didn't really eat that much, while Nick loved it. Surprise. They were termed 35 and 8 on the lids, but I think a second digit was missing after the "8" after having tasted it carefully.

Hence this salute to Cary and Torben Holm: It was good salsa (thanks to Cary's recipie), and it lasted for a very long time (thanks to the Brennevin technique pioneered by Torben), but now it's all gone.

But back to the fateful evening when it was made in my kitchen: We had beers and tasted the various pots and had great fun. Then, around 2200 hours, Torben Holm and I decided that we should be better husbands and go and see our wives, who were chatting in the living room, seperated from us by a closed door.

We opened the door with smiles on our faces, but were immediately, and forcefully, informed from a distance of five meters, that we smelled absolutely awful and that we should stay way from them. Hmm. We tried to approach, but they insisted that we smelled worse than anything they had ever experienced, and that we should immediately close the door again - with us on the opposite side of it.

So we did, and I shall not talk much more about this, except perhaps mention the strange fact that both Torben Holm and I that night were banned from our usual beds and had to sleep in seperate rooms from our wives. In fact, Anette claimed that little Viktor's eyes actually watered because of my bad breath.

"Was it worth it?" (Copyright Pet Shop Boys).

"Yes, it's worth living for" (same).

Cary - is it time, perhaps, that you reveal the reciepie we used to the entire Wor.. Planet?

Torben Holm - how's the supply of chilies this year? Ready for another round?

Gunnar - do you have more Brennevin up there in Iceland?

Miracle Scotland, RBS and a trolley

2006-08-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Story of my life: Anette, Viktor and I went to Edinburgh Wednesday to do "startup instance MiracleScotland" (and to see the tattoo on Thursday), and of course this whole thing with mixing milk bottle contents litterally explodes rigth there on Thursday, so we had to put our laptop in the suitcase today (Friday), our mobile phones and our books for the long wait into the other bag, and so on, until we had our few, miserable belongings in two clear plastic bags.

One surprising thing was that they allowed us to take Viktors rather biggish trolley with us all the way to the gate. However, for the first time ever in UK history, a large trolley was - on the insistance of a female security officer - ordered up on the belt and through the X-ray machine. The result, of course, was that it was stuck midways through the machine and had to be drawn out with a stick with a hook on.

Then, of course, they sent the trolley though again, this time with the weels pointing upwards. Very funny.

Our bottle of water was not allowed through security, even when I offered to taste it. We had to empty it and throw it away.

The plane was delayed. When we finally got into it, we were informed that they had to replace an instrument - one of those pieces of information that makes you think about all sorts of things. But then, an hour on the runway is nothing these days.

Fortunately, in the future it will probably not be possible to inform anyone about delays, since the mobiles are in the check-in luggage.

I see a LOT of new opportunities from this latest security development:

1. Louis Vuitton (spelling?) should rush a new series of bags to the market, which are all made of exclusive, soft yet sturdy, look-through plastic. I can just see a deluxe model with lots of pockets for the few legal items you can take with you on board.

2. Technologies to make it possible to have a laptop with all your data in the other end of the journey, since bringing your own laptop is now dangerous (it could easily get lost or destroyed in the check-in luggage process). As Peter Robson said today: Maybe this will speed up the whole WWW2-thing. Forget WW2. We're talking WWW2 here.

3. Solutions that allow you to find your mobile phones stored numbers in the waiting lounges and onboard the plane, then make calls that cost the same as if you had used your own phone.

4. Solutions that allows you to read books onboard the plane without having to buy it again in the taxfree shopping area.

5. Services that allow certified companies to take care of - and return - your dear belongings that are confiscated in security. Today I saw a poor fellow who had his electronic car key confiscated. He couldn't even go back and check it in, since his luggage had long since been checked in.

Finally, I should mention that Anjo told me today on the phone that he could see a very different future, perhaps only two years from now, where we're all sitting in the plane stark naked. Well, that was the theme of a cartoon in the newspaper I read on the plane. Perhaps it will happen. It would solve the problem of people trying to rush on board the plane. Every sensible man would try to be the very last one to slowly walk down the isle (of the plane!).

So what about Miracle Scotland Ltd? Well, I'll make it brief: The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS - and the initial remark on your lips about RBS standing for something to do with roll back is not far-fetched here) insisted on me showing them an original of my gas, electricity or water bill TO CONFIRM MY HOME ADDRESS.

When Danske Bank (the biggest here) sent them all sorts of confirmation about my name, address and such, RBS kindly said thank you, all very good and fine - but we need the utility bill. Original, that is.

Considering that these days the only way we can get such a thing here is by downloading an electronic document from a utility website, I'd have thought anyone could then manipulate the address... But no, RBS had to see a utility bill.

The very young Mr Mark also informed me that fax was a very insecure form of communication. He was barely out of school. I loved it.

The second meeting (today) ended with young Mr Mark promising to (get this) try to phone 2nd-line Support about other forms of id to confirm my home address...

Five hours later he phone Thomas Presslie (CEO of Miracle Scotland) to let him know that my identity was now confirmed...

I just can't wait for the coming months where we'll be starting up Miracle Sweden, Benelux, and others....

Mogens

Nijmegen - bummer....

2006-07-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

As some of you have noticed, I've been training for the World's biggest march, the Dutch Nijmegen 4-day event. My team is a 33-member, Danish military one, and a couple of them were preparing to get their 30year medal down there - an incredible feat.

But after the first day, the whole thing was cancelled for the first time ever - well, it wasn't held at all from 1939 to 1945, but cancelled after it was started? Never.

The reason for cancelling was very valid: Three people dead (one of them military, which is unusual), 30 still in hospital and more than 300 had been in and out of hospital - after the first day. That number was bound to become higher in the following days due to the heat...

48,600 had pre-registered. 44,000 registered on Monday. 43,000 showed up Tuesday morning for the march. 42,000 (which is the answer, of course) completed the first day of either 30, 40 or 50 km.

Here's my story as I told it to the OakTable guys when I returned home on Wednesday night...

I have prepared rather well for this thing, although nothing can truly prepare you for 4 x 40 km with 10kg on your back, I guess. I've done a couple of 2 x 40 with 10 kg without too much of a problem, but this first day was the hardest one I've ever done.

That heat thing really does it, and even one of the team's very experienced guys (9th time doing the Nijmegen, former Triathlon lunatic) got into trouble because
he had forgotten to eat (not drink) enough, and had to have emergency sugar and be "helped" home by walking alongside some strong-willed guys who talked to him and got his mind off the hopeless situation.

The team I walked with is apparently considered one of the best Danish military team you can walk with at Nijmegen. There's an active Special Forces guy (he carries the flag), a couple of ex-Special Forces types, several people who have walked the Nijmegen between 20 and 30 times, etc., etc.

The team was a total of 33 or so, and 9 of us were "pinkies", ie. we hadn't walked the Nijmegen before. The eight other pinkies are all active-duty sergents or officers in the Danish Army currently.

At some point during the walk I began to doubt whether I could do it. I said so to the nearest guys. One of them was the flag guy. He just looked at me and said "I have NEVER walked with a team that lost a man", and that was the end of that...

Another example: We had two support guys on bikes, who make sure we get water and food at the resting areas, etc. One of them is a 73 year old ex-Special Forces guy, who got his legs pretty much mashed in an accident where a tree trunc went through the bottom of the car and into his legs, suddenly started yelling at me out there, forcing me to drink more water. He kept nagging me for about an hour, until he was satisfied.

All through the day, the guys kept shouting "Skål!" to each other in order to ensure enough water got drunk. I must have consumed 6-8 liters that day, and still there was plenty of room for beer at the end of it all :-).

All in all, not the worst guys to be with when you do this kind of thing.

A total of 5000 soldiers from about 10 nations were in the military camp (sealed off).

The biggest foreign contigent is the British one, and it's truly impressive to see them.

The second biggest foreign contigent is the Danish one, and it looks rather more relaxed and cozy than the British one, I'm sure you can imagine. Yet they can bloody well WALK, those folks, and I think standing on the parade ground with those 500 other Danish folks singing our national anthem was fantastic. Hair-raising,
to be honest. Actually, I might have had a few tears.

Then there's the biggest thing of it all: The local Dutch citizens. It's nearly impossible to do them justice, but I'll try:

We started out at 0445 hours from the camp, and from then until we were home around 1400 or so, we had Dutch people sitting and standing all along the route pretty much.

I'm talking 10's of thousands of people that were cheering the 43,000 walkers on, all the small towns had arranged for bands to be playing for us, 100's of houses had put out loudspeakers where they played rock or pop music for us, children everywhere handing out sweets, fruit, vegetable, water bottles and even little coupons that read "Dear participant - I hope you have a succesful walk... I would be really happy if you could perhaps send me a postcard to the following address...", people standing with garden hoses or just water guns and spraying water on people if they wanted it, and... it's just STUNNING!

And we're talking a Dutch holiday week where they stay at home to celebrate the walkers.

The other team members told me it just gets more intense with this whole local backup thing as the days progress, culminating in the fourth day where most of them admit they're shedding tears because they're so moved by the local's enthusiasm. Fantastic.

All military teams end their march in the huge beer tent, and are applauded in there by the ones who have already arrived. When a Danish team arrives, everyone starts singing "Oh when the Danes go marching in" - and then we have a few beers to freshen up, of course.

Yes, I'll have to do it again next year. I know. And I have a cunning plan for doing proper preparation:

I will have a HUGE Miracle sauna constructed with a built-in 40-meter long walking/running belt where the whole group can march in very high temperatures for 8 hours or more. The support guys on bicycles can just sit on stationary exercise bikes alongside the walking belt. Oh yes.

Anjo Kolk called me from Tokyo the other day and informed me that Wednesday (which should have been the second day of the marches) was the hottest day ever in Holland, I think.

It was the right thing to do to stop the marches, but I hope it's happening again next year.

This year was the 90th time, and only during WWII did they not walk, as I mentioned above.

One or two?

2006-05-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

Right. So I'm here in Scotland. I have eaten. I have drunk. I have been to various public and private bathrooms.

It's all the same: There are separate outlets for hot and cold water.

The two outlets are spaced a good ways from each other.

So what do the Scots (and the English) do?

I can come up with a number of suggestions:

1. They always wash their hands in very cold water.
2. They always wash their hands in very hot water.
3. They turn on both outlets and try to move their hands (complete with soap) fast between them.
4. They don't.

Which one is it?

A critique's review of my April 6 presentation

2006-04-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

The Symantec-sponsored UKOUG event on 6 April in Reading went rather well, I think. Good turnout, long waiting list.

If you go to www.Rittman.net and clieck on the 6th in the left-hand side of the picture you can see a rather good review and comments about my presentation and others'.

MCs, SOUG, ODTUG, DBF, UKOUG or PASS and more...

2006-04-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

(Parts of this post might sound like a commercial for Miracle, so have a beer before and after reading).

I can really feel how well the World economy is going these day. A certain indicator is the number of Oracle-related events being offered, including the shape/profile of Oracle's offerings (Oracle World, Oracle Open World, or whatever they call it this week).

This year, there are many good technical (and not so technical) events available, and Oracle techies seem to be allowed to attend more than usual.

So to give you an idea, here's what I'll be doing (until further notice):

1. Attend Jonathan Lewis' Master Class here in Denmark 2-4 May (the last day being my birthday, so I'll treat Jonathan to one beer).

2. Present at the Scottish User Group (SOUG?) in Edinburgh 9 May (DBA Performance Day). Yes, of course I'll be wearing my kilt and all.

3. Attend a very unusual three days of training here in Denmark 14 to 16 June: Carel-Jan (Data Guard and Standby), Tuomas Pystynen (RMAN) and Kurt van Meerbeeck (DUDE - a tool to get data directly out of datafiles) - will do a total of three days where each day will be a) something picture perfect gone wrong b) how to solve it with RMAN and c) how to solve it when RMAN doesn't work. It's a new idea, brewed up by Henrik Rasmussen of Miracle, and I think it could become very interesting.

4. Attend ODTUG in Washington 17 to 21 June. ODTUG (Oracle Development Tools User Group) wants to have some database stuff added to their magazine and conference, so I've started up a regular OakTable column in the magazine and will present at the conference. Of course when I finally visit Washington, Tom Kyte is out of town, so I'll have to find the good places for dry martinis myself. Tom, you're fired.

5. Nijmegen March 28 to 21 July. Arrrggghhh.

6. Oracle Ekspert conference in Denmark on 30 August. OE is a Danish-language Oracle-related magazine run my Marc de Oliviera, and the annual conference is a) all the usual suspects meeting each other and b) pretty good.

7. Scottish User Group conference in Glasgow 12 September. Not sure about the topics yet, but, yes, I'll be in kilt, and there will be whiskies.

8. Miracle Database Forum 28 to 30 September. Yes, yes, yes, I know we did the last Database Forum (DBF) in 2004, but people kept asking, so this is the absolutely, very last (honestly!) DBF we'll do. We'll have three or four tracks, each with a track leader, who will make sure the quality of the presentations is good, that there's a natural flow in the track, and all that. Performance: Graham Wood. Availability: James Morle. Worst Practices: BIG surprise. Big.

9. JAOO conference in Århus, Jutland - right after our DBF, some Oakies and others will venture to Århus in Jutland to participate in this 1200-people J2EE event taking place 1 to 6 October. There will be a special database-track on 2 October.

10. Slovenian User Group meeting 8 to 10 October. I'll do a keynote and perhaps some more, and just imagine: Close to 1000 people show up each year at this event. Joze is the man.

11. 27 October: Miracle 6 year birthday party.... If you're around, this will be fun. If you're not around, it will still be fun.

12: Dilemma: 13 to 17 November: I will either have to participate in the annual UKOUG conference in Birmingham (which is very good) OR go to Seattle to do the PASS (Professinal Association of SQL Server) annual conference. Very hard choice.

So there. As you can tell, I clearly need a private jet plane.

Scott McNealy of Sun & The Economist

2006-04-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

My favourite magazine is The Economist, which I've subscribed to since 1984. Doesn't come any better than that.

Here's an article about Sun in their latest issue, and I think it nails Sun's problems very well: Scott still doesn't QUITE acknowlege the coming of the small commodity servers...

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=6768230

Really cool and useless stuff

2006-04-10T02:23:00.000-07:00

If Tom Kyte can write about random links, and random stuff he's bought, so can I!

So I bought the World's Warmest Sleeping Bag. I was in this REI shop in Denver looking at warm sleeping bags (I've had cold feet since my birth) and this retired doctor walks up to me and explains that if I want REALLY warm sleeping bags I should go to

http://www.wiggys.com ...

Bingo! Look at this text, for instance:
------------------------------------------------
"Antarctic Sleeping Bag

Product #: 6.3.1

A -60 degree bag. I believe the Antarctic model is the only -60 degree bag made in the world. The loft averages 10 inches, and the weight for a regular length, wide body model is 6.5 pounds. The long wide body weighs 7 pounds. Add $144.00 for the Flexible Temperature Range Sleep System (FTRSS)."
------------------------------------------------

Of COURSE I added the FTRSS option, which will take it down to -80F (or -60C). The result was that Cary Millsap's wife Mindy had to order it and I had to carry it home from Dallas after the Hotsos Symposium.

Let me just say, that having the World's Warmest Sleeping Bag means you also have a very, very big and heavy sleeping bag. In fact, I think it's easier to pack the rest of your stuff, including your backpack, into the sleeping bag.

But man, is it warm and incredibly thick and cool. It's currently stored on my loft.

But go and enjoy their website - it's the only sleeping bag made in the US, and the guy writes the right stuff in the right sort of language that generates trust.

Then I needed a pair of boots, because I have talked myself into doing the World's biggest march, the Nijmegen (http://www.4daagse.nl/) , this July.

Four days with 40 km per day, including 10kg of lead somewhere on your body because I'll be walking on a Danish military team along with a small guy from Miracle called Martin Gamtofte (he's about 2 meter and 5cm tall and wider than most doors), who has done the Nijmegen NINE times, including once where he managed to actually do permanent, structural damage to his heels, yet continuing.

So I needed a pair of boots. Was in the UK last week, so went looking for English boots on the internet - figured they must have been doing some walking for some years over there, and in various climates.

Then I found it: The last British boot maker, with a fantastic website:

http://www.altberg.co.uk/

Well, fantastic in the sense that they have a LOT of text on the front page. A lot. They're bootmakers, not marketing people.

And then, halfway down in the text, you'll find this very very cool thing: They are discussing the good things about their competitors. Not a bad word about them, just facts about the good things they're known for, and who have been especially happy with them, etc.

These Alt-Berg guys are not marketing guys. They're bookmakers. So again: Instant trust.

I wrote them an email asking where I could buy their boots in London, but got no reply, of course - they're bootmakers, not webmasters.

But James Morle knew a place that might have them, because he went to college on the opposite side of the street:

http://www.silvermans.co.uk/ (or http://www.military.co.uk)

So I went there (Mile End Road - very fitting name), and found a very small shop, and a very big warehouse behind it. Two guys working in the shop (servicing a couple of English troopers on their way to Iraq) and 20 guys or more working in the warehouse.

Yep, they had begun selling Alt-berg five months earlier. Might they suggest their Peacekeeper P1 boot, not water proof of course? People appeared to be rather happy with that one...

If the boot didn't quite fit, I could ship it to Silverman's and they would have the changes made at Alt-berg and shipped back to me. No problem.

The guy had only worked in the shop for 18 years. He knew SO much about even the Danish military camouflage patterns, webbing stuff and what have you. If you ever see their catalogue you will be impressed, too. Professional people, who value knowledge and advise over slick impressions, yet seem to make a good living out of it - and man, must they enjoy their work.

It would appear that a lot of stuff is a bit cheaper there than in many of the more fancy outdoor stores, too, according to my daughter who's a scout.

So I went walkabout in them new boots yesterday (or tabbing, as the Brits would say) for 17 km's and they were good and nice to wear. No blisters. My wife even thinks the boots look nice with a pair of jeans.

So there. Important information for the masses.

Is Windows a better choice than Linux?

2006-04-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

Sorry I haven't posted for a long time.

I recently posted a message or two on the huge and rather brilliant Oracle-L list, and either the weekend or some Tsunami have caused complete radio silence on the list after that. Or something is wrong with my mail-server.

So I'd like to use this blog to invite some comments on the (probably completely wrong) way I view the issue of Windows vs Linux.

First of all, let me say very strongly that I HATE monopolies, be they private or public. I really do. They end up being so immensely bad for the greater good of consumers/users/customers.

Doesn't matter if it's the Old Phone Monopoly or the Police or the socialised hospital systems in many countries or indeed the dominant position of some software outfit.

The WASTE is of unimaginable proportions, the impetus for change and innovation utterly lacking and the motivation of employees - strange, isn't it? - is practically non-existent.

Does that mean I don't like Microsoft?

Yes, I really hate Microsoft for their various silly attempts at making the customers choices fewer and trying to change standards into Microsoft standards - not because they have to, mind you, but because they can.

No, I don't hate Microsoft for most of what they do, since it seems to work and we can all use it, and strictly speaking we're not talking monopolistic activity in most areas.

As an ex-Oracle guy, I think I know some of the points of view of Larry Ellison. He would so very dearly like to become the monopolistic guy instead of the monopolistic guy (Bill Gates).

The "deep" insight he thinks he gained in Japanese business culture of "competitors are stealing rice out of the mouths of our children" is about as intelligent as the rest of that nonsense Ninja-and-small-gardens-with-waterfalls semi-religious idea he and others think will create great insight and inner peace. It could, mind you, if you had enough beer or vodka. Otherwise, I think not.

But Larry doesn't HAVE that dominant position. He's trying (buying ERP-systems all over the place), but he's not there yet. Nor is Microsoft in many important areas.

Given the chance, both Bill and Larry would dearly love to have a monopoly, so they could command high prices, yet deliver so-and-so service and products - maximising profit.

Enough about my personal attitudes on monopolies and monopolistic behaviour.

But does all that mean I will recommend Linux to my customers? Actually no.

When I consider what's best for a given customer, I often will say Windows because it's easier for them to hire qualified people. Doesn't matter if we're talking Unix, VMS or Linux. It's harder to come by SA's for them. Which is why users of these systems many times end up outsourcing to the three-letter monsters so they can be sure there's somebody there who can manage their old-school system (Unix, VMS) or new-school system (Linux). And then they're hosed.

You can say that Microsoft is a monopoly. Strictly speaking (as someone who studied Economics for three years), it might be in certain areas, but they're few. Dominant in several areas, oh yes.

But isn't Linux trying hard to become a monopoly? They use ideology constantly to try to kill the competition (Microsoft), and they make pirate (free) copies of many of the competitors products. How cool is that?!

Just because a lot of people are working for free doesn't mean they're Doing Good.

Lots of people are working for free in very weird political organisations, but I don't consider their causes good.

Free is not Good by design.

Isn't Linus about as dominant as Gates? Why on Earth did he not want a decent scheduler in Linux for so long? That's just something Windows HAD to have as per requests from large clients. He might not want to be viewed as dominant, but people will try to interpret his every word and move and treat him like a demi-god.

My point is that users don't have anything to say about future developments and features of Linux. They're powerless. They become the M of S&M.

Now, what would happen if the US Government or the EU decided that Linux had a too dominating position on the market? Who should they take to court? Can the Linux community be held accountable for their actions if they do something which is not in the interest of the customer/user?

What if Linux was hit by a wave of very serious security attacks (succesful, too) but nobody in the community wanted to fix the code? Who could force them to shut down development of new stuff for a couple of months while they focused on the security issues?

From another comment on the Oracle-L list (and this guy is not a beginner):

"Anyone with intimate knowledge of what Operating System supports a GOOD, boutique port of Oracle relies on knows all too well that not even Oracle Corp has managed to influence the Linux Kernel sufficiently! Some of the complete junk they are mainlining is astounding, and the motives for acceptance of same is generally a bit
dubious."

I'll look forward to your comments on this.

Mogens

Lex de Haan

2006-02-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

My friend Lex died 1st of Febrary, 2006, at 1600 hours CET.

He asked to see a few friends before the final shutdown abort, and James Morle and I flew in on the Sunday before and visited him in the hospital.

On Tuesday I visited him again, in his home, and he told me he had decided he would leave this place the following day at 1600 - he had gotten permission from two doctors independant of each other the previous day, and seemed very much at peace with his decision.

After 90 minutes of splendid conversation about things past, present and future we hugged and said goodbuy.

He did ask me to accept one final present, which turned out to be a tie with Asterix and Obelix. We were both big fans of these cartoon characters. But not until later that afternoon did I learn that that was the tie he had worn for his wedding.

And not until the following day did I learn that he had left us with a riddle: 1st of Febrary, 2006 can be written as 1-2-6, which he had repeated to his wife and daughters a couple of times in his last 24 hours. As some perhaps know, Lex was famous for his work with 3-valued logic, and the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. So 42 times 3 is 126, which was figured out independently by Lex' oldest daughter and my wife Anette.

I have many good memories of things Lex and I have done or participated in together. When I look through old pictures I keep saying 'Ah, yes, he was also there!'. And always with a friendly, positive attitude and a sharp mind.

My best wishes for Lex' family.

Mogens

Itanic according to Doug Rady...

2006-01-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

I guess not too many of you know Doug Rady, but he's one of those guys who can understand very technical stuff, write so that it can be understood by others than Einstein, yet remains open to new ideas and knowledge.

He has worked in several companies, but especially in Oracle Development, and he knows people and reasons for things heading the way they are.

He's also a member of the OakTable. His mailid is drady@willcode.com ...

Here are his thoughts about Itanium (which I call Itanic) and I thought the clarity of the whole argument deserved to be known outside a small group of friends:
------------------------------

Regarding Itanium ... unless you NEED the ability to put 2TB, 4TB or more of RAM on a single system managed by a single O/S ... AND/OR ... you need to have more than 64 or 128 processors on a single system all running within a single O/S ... DO NOT BOTHER with Itanium.

Itanium cannot compete with Opterons (or most Xeons) for
integer compute operations as Jeff described. For the most
part, Oracle lives in the generic integer and branch prediction units of a processor. Currently, this (along with the HyperTransort memory i/f) means the Opterons will give you the best Oracle performance at the processor level.

Itanium does not compete well on integer.

If you need LOTS of memory and can wait a bit, the Opteron boards are finally getting to the point having enough DIMM slots. Still, back in 1995/1996/1997, Intel was telling Itanium "partners" that they should plan for 16GB or RAM per CPU.
Most are just getting to that level today with dual-cores Itaniums coming soon.

Unfortunately, the memory i/f hasn't changed, so that will become even more of a choke point. [for some reason, a lot of cpu/system folks don't scale up the memory i/f when they scale up the cpu speeds/counts. and then wonder why customers complain when the "new" stuff goes slower!]

For further amusement, go back and look at the history of how Intel has positioned Itanium. It has gone from being the end all be all replacement for x86, to being a server-only chip, to being an enterprise-server chip, to being a database server
chip, to being a high-end HPC server chip that can also do DB.

There aren't many niches left for them to corner Itanium into. Then consider the string of delays that have been part of the Itanium life-span so far. Merced was late and still-born. McKinley too was late and has not kept up. Montecito has been
re-vamped & delayed. The follow-ons have been pushed out.

While Itanium is not (yet?) a 432 ... it doesn't seem to have any hope of being a 860 or 960. How long will Intel keep sinking ca$h into Itanium with so little ROI?

drady
-------------------

Outsourcing is OUT

2006-01-17T15:24:00.000-08:00

Yep, not exactly the fun, technical topic you'd all dream about.

But this is what Gartner suddenly said in Cannes towards the end of last year, and it has met with massive silence from - surprise - the OUTsourcers:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3559661

The funny thing is that Gartner have been saying 'Outsource, outsource, outsource' for the last many years.

One of the important points in Weinberger's books about being a consultant (thanks to Jakob Hammer-Jakobsen for introducing me to him) is to ALWAYS suggest the opposite of what the client is doing.

Don't be surprised if some of you will have lots of things to do in the coming years due to insourcing, knowledge transfer to newly hired people, and all that.

A couple of observations regarding outsourcing:

1. If you give your iron to somebody else, you don't have the control anymore. Whether you like to be able to control your own iron or not is a matter of taste.

2. If you let another party take care of Change Management, you will soon discover that it's the Mother of all Horrors. It's way more Management than Change. You will find yourself unable to act upon business-critical issues, and you will discover that it's possible to waste unlimited resources (time, money, people) on CM.

3. You will be one of many. Chances are, you'll be small compared to all the others. Guess what that means in term of being unique. Guess what that means in terms of being focused on.

Mogens

System-wide slowdowns

2005-12-14T22:09:00.000-08:00

When I talk to customers with performance problems, I ask these two questions:

1. Is everything slow, or is it just specific stuff like a form, a report or a job (Cary Millsap would call it a Business Function, I think :) )?
2. Has it always been slow or did it just start?
3. Do you know what changed?

If everything really IS slow, ie. what I call a system-wide slowdown, then I still don't think you can find the answer fast and reliably (and certainly not without pure luck combined with decades of experience) by looking at system-wide data such as 'sar', StatsPack, v$sysstat, v$system_event and such.

[With one exception, though: Most of the times, this situation is caused by running too many reports or other heavy jobs at the same time, ie saturating the CPU's with CPU-intensive, long-running jobs. Cary wrote about 'The Magic of 2' some years ago, and he'll 'kill' that topic during his Master Class in Copenhagen in January, so that'll be fun. Anyway, when you can establish that CPU usage is 100% (or 0% idle) it's mostly just because of Month's End or similar situations where many reports have to be run.]

Back to the main topic: In the relatively few cases with system-wide slowdowns I've been involved in where it wasn't just because of too many 'batch' or 'CPU-intensive' jobs running simultaneously, it has been possible to find the reason for the general slowdown by 10046'ing something that was used widely, because whatever slows the system down will also impact this fellow.

To be safe, you might want to 10046 (perhaps it should be called Deep-six when it's level 12....) two or three such typical thingies to be sure.

The symptom of whatever is bothering the whole system will show up in the trace files.

So, again, I don't think you can use the system-wide stuff for anything :-).

This should conclude my trilogy on this topic. 'Baselining' and 'StatsPack' were the first two.

What good is Statspack really?

2005-12-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

I remember the days of bstat/estat, and especially the Oracle Support bulletin (version 6 days) about how to interpret the numbers in the resulting reports.txt file. The bulletin was a long list of things you could look at in the file, and that was about it. From it, you could of course conclude nothing about performance problems.

Of course? Yes, looking at aggregations will not, ever, tell you the reason for a slowdown in an application or even in a whole system. The tracing of a form, a report or a job can do that. Not various summaries and averages.

The one exception is when only one thing was running :-) ... then the summary becomes just a summary of that one form, report or whatever. Otherwise, things will be mixed and hence messed up.

Dave Ensor, Graham Wood and a few others made the st7 utility, which allowed you to collect more snapshots and get a report of the time interval between any two snapshots. Still I couldn't figure out how to link the users' performance problems to these numbers.

Then came Statspack. Now, Statspack is much better technically, AND it can collect SQL statement information that will help you identify heavy statements. AND it will summarise the waits, etc. at the top.

It's still not possible for me to find anyone who can use a Statspack output to identify the reason for a form, report or job running slow.

Also, having the haviest SQL statements mentioned is fine, but if the response time changes (see one of my former posts) for an end user, its likely cause is a new and exciting execution plan for a SQL statement in the application, and that SQL statement doesn't have to be the heaviest at all.

I fail to see what I can use Statspack for at all. Please enlighten me :-).

Could someone please explain Baselines to me?

2005-11-30T21:38:00.000-08:00

I see the word baseline used a good deal these days. Enterprise Manager or Grid Control (or whatever it's called this week) either has or will have the ability to collect baselines, I'm told.

My first problem with this is that I don't know the definition of a baseline, let alone a baseline for a database-centric system. If somebody has a good definition, please let me know. How exactly does a baseline rise from the collection of, say, statspack reports?

My second problem with baselines is that I cannot see the usefulness of them, but that could easily be because of my first problem.

Here's my background for putting this topic forward:

1. As mentioned, I see the word used, but I never see any examples of an implementation of baselining.

2. If everything in a system is slow (controller died, disk system exploded, months' end, etc.) then I want to know how a baseline can pinpoint the reason.

3. If a batch job or a report or a form is slow, then I'd like to know how (if) a baseline can find the reason.

The max value of Null

2005-11-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

Nulls are always hot to discuss, especially as it often ends up being something DBA's and developers can argue about for entire lifetimes. Surprisingly few lifetimes are shortened because a DBA and a developer get into a fight over the Very Important Topic of ... Nothing/Null.

Well, two recent examples on how to handle nulls in important systems are so funny that I have to tell them, then I shall say no more on this topic. After all, Chris Date has written entire books on the topic, while another good friend, Lex de Haan, somehow restricts himself to entire days of the (three-valued) logic of Nulls.

First Case: A huge, public system is based on a system developed for another database than Oracle, and so the whole application is made "database independant".

I quoted Jonathan Lewis' chapter 10 of Tales of The OakTable where he says that only many users or much data will create problems for database-independant designs, and since this system will be big and busy, it should be fun to watch in the decades to come.

For one thing, no RI stuff was implemented using the standard SQL way of doing so. After all, who needs PK, FK, and all the rest when you can - hold on to your tables and chairs - can implement the whole thing using PL/SQL in triggers and procedures. Hey, never mind the famous /*+ no_trigger */ hint available in some versions. We're going on that picnic.

Second, nulls were implemented as 192 blanks. No, I'm not drunk and I haven't eaten funny mushrooms. I haven't even had more than a lot of beers in the last hour. 192 blanks it is. Of course I think 192 is a beautiful number, near-perfect, to tell you the truth. But why exactly that number to represent a null value? We'll possibly never know.

Second Case: A DBA told me this story: It had been a long and hard Summer, trying to convince the developers to use, say, only not null columns in primary keys - and not succeding. Well, there were glimpses of hope, they were beginning to understand things about ER diagramming.

That's what the DBA was thinking, hoping, perhaps even believing... until the other day.

The other day one of the developers had come to the DBA with a Very Good Question:

"How do I find the max value of nulls?"

That's when the DBA started crying, left work early, and consumed a bottle of alcohol that night.

/developer/null is the only thing I can add.

How often should stats be collected?

2005-11-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

If you ask Microsoft (or Oracle from version 10g), then just leave it to the database and the clever developers to find out when new stats should be gathered.

Right.

When you collect new stats you are almost guaranteed to change some execution plans in your system. Do you want that? No, you want the same execution plans as long as they have the response time your users want. They haven't asked you for a better (or worse) plan.

Here's a response I saw on a list the other day:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle suggests the following best practices for collecting statistics. http://www.oracle.com/technology/books/pdfs/book_10g_chap9_ce1.pdf

· Collect statistics for normal data dictionary objects using the same interval that you would analyze objects in your schemas. In addition, you need to analyze the dictionary objects after a sufficient amount of DDL operations have occurred.

· Use the procedures gather_database_stats or gather_schema_stats with options set to GATHER AUTO. With this feature, only the objects that need to be re-analyzed are processed every time.

· For fixed objects, the initial collection of statistics is usually sufficient. A subsequent collection is not usually needed, unless workload characteristics have changed dramatically. In the next section, we will examine the changes introduced
-------------------------------------------------------------

And here's my reply:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd argue that you should be scared of socalled best practices on this and other issues.

How can people seriously write about best practices, when in reality we're talking practices that worked for a few sites that will never, ever resemble your site anyway?

Better to document more and more worst practices, as Cary Millsap suggested several years ago - that way you raise the bar instead of just placing it at a certain position.

By the way: Note the vagueness: "...the same interval" (what interval?), "...after a sufficient amount of DDL operations have occurred" (how much?). Can't be otherwise, but that doesn't make it more usable.

It's like the recommendations from Microsoft regarding SQL Server: Always run automatic stats gathering. Always set parallel to automatic. Always....

Two schools inside Oracle are interesting to study (and we're talking the real experts, not the document writers):

Benchmark guys: Collect 1% estimate after initial load, then never again.

Real World Performance group: Collect compute stats once, then never again.

But there's a better way, I think:

Analyze if it's neccessary!

It's only neccessary if the response time for a SQL statement becomes worse. So monitor the elapsed_time and the hash_plan_value (or plan_hash_value) in V$SQL to see if something goes South. If yes, one possible reason could be stats that are no longer representative for the data (more employees in department 42, much more data due to aquisition of a new company, whatever). THEN it's time to analyze.

Don't do it if you don't have to. Monitor the things that matter.

The reason you can't find any useful rules is that ... you can't find any useful rules.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Plan_hash_value and elapsed_time were added to V$SQL in 9i. Before that you'd need to do your own hashing after an "explain plan for..." command in SQL*Plus and store the result. Peter Gram from Miracle has done it for a 7.3 database.

I could talk for ages about this. How customers have run splendidly for years without analyzing (or precisely because of it), and how it's always ground-hoc day tuning when something changes: A system doesn't "become slow", an application doesn't "become slow". It's one or more SQL statements that change execution plan(s) for the worse. Since we never monitor those we do the same thing over and over again: Find the SQL statement with the largest response time, tune it, back to start.

But what if the SQL statement with the longest response time was NOT the one that changed? What if the SQL statement with the longest response time already had been optimised as best as could be done? That happens more often than you'd like to know.

So instead of zero'ing in on the SQL statement that changed execution plan (and therefor response time) for the worse, and return it to its former state or find out why it went bad, we end up tuning another statement that might not be easily tunable.

Hence my abstract for the Hotsos Symposium 2006: "No, Cary, we're STILL not tuning the right SQL statements" :-).

GCC - Global Communist Conspiracy...

2005-11-05T21:32:00.000-08:00

GCC - the Global Communist Conspiracy

Thanks to David Kurtz for these pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidkurtz/sets/1285559/

They were taken in Holland recently (week 42, of course) during the Steve Adams seminar arranged by Lex de Haan.

During the evening dinner event I presented my GCC theory.

To make it short, Bill Gates, Sam Palmisano and Larry Ellison are really sleeping Russian agents trying to:

1) de-stabilise all our important IT-systems and

2) turn men into non-men through bureaucracies worse than anything seen in the old Eastern Europe days.

You see, when men can't work, their testosterone-producing thingies fall off, and they can no longer defend their countries.

There's nothing we can do. The Sarbanes-Oxley's of the World are taking over.

I just thought you should know...

UKOUG, Scotland, Tuomas & 7th NF

2005-11-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

Turning a comment into a post....

Thank you all for the welcome. Good to see people like Roderick on this blog planet. For those of you who doesn't understand Roderick's last (Danish) comment, it means "Bottoms up or the rest in the hair", ie empty your glass, or you will have to pour the rest over your own head. Oh yes, we have many ways of making the long winters bearable here.

Apart from that, it was a fine UKOUG conference last week, again making it one of the finest Oracle things you can go to. The UKOUG staff was doing it even better than last year, and especially Rachel deserves a promotion to Army Chief of Staff or something.

After UKOUG in Birmingham I went to Edinburgh for the Chris Date event there and finally managed to meet up with my wife Anette and our two months old son Viktor. After all the travelling I've done, I either had to buy her something made out of gold or spend time and money on a nice stay somewhere. We chose Edinburgh, famous for castles, whiskies, beer and rain. What more could Anette ask for?

Tuomas Pystynen, an OakTable member and an old-timer from Kernel Development in Oracle, was with us, too, and he's a guy who knows stuff. His company is called Deepbase, and I think that is a pretty good name for what he can. He also knows his middleware and much more.

Chris Date presented the 6th normal form (oh yes), which basically means that ALL your tables consist of two columns: A meaning-less key (joke, Lex, joke!) and a column with data.

Next: The 7th normal form, where all tables only consist of a meaning-less key (joke, Chris and Lex and Fabian, joke!!).

Strange names & The Fat Index Guy

2005-11-03T21:30:00.000-08:00

Mogens' is pronounced with a silent g, so it becomes 'Moens' which in Danish sounds just like 'Moans'.

'Nørgaard' is impossible, but Nor-gaard is good enough for me. Nogood is shorter, easier and a bit funnier, though.

My middlename 'Langballe' means 'long cheek' in Danish, and so the jokes about www.miracleAS.dk are not too far off the mark.

So these days I tend to register myself at conferences as Moans Longballs Nogood. Much easier.

Speaking of strange names, ever heard about Tapio Lahdenmäki? Me neither. He's written a book together with Michael Leach called "Relational Database Index Design and the Optimizers" which is not too bad a book at all, to put it mildly. They cover optimizeres and indexes, and that's about what matters. They are focused on response times, which is what matters. They kill myths. They have ideas. Hence, according to Tuomas, they call Tapio The Fat Index Guy...

This book can seriously focus/simplify your thinking about indexes. More info on www.Tapio1.com...

My first blogging

2005-11-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

After some very useful help from Doug Burns, I'm now also a blogger.

I haven't had any beers yet today at the UKOUG, so I can't be creative right now, but I shall be back...