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In honor of the July 4th holiday, I’ve been thinking about how Paul Revere’s famous ride would have gone if he had access to today’s technology. Here’s a possible current-day rendition:
The colonists in Lexington, Massachusetts know that it’s only a matter of time before the English troops arrive to assert their authority. The threats they’re hearing on their streamed BBC broadcasts are growing more menacing every day, and King George III’s blog entries are sounding downright cranky.
To prepare for the attack, the colonists have been asked to subscribe to Paul Revere’s Twitter feed, and to check it frequently, as the attack will almost certainly be a surprise.
A few weeks ago, Paul had poked around on LinkedIn and found some English military officers assigned to the “Colony Unrest” project. Today, he checks their most recent postings, and they seem to imply an upcoming trip to the northeastern New World. One of their TripIt feeds (“Ian Smith is leaving on a trip to Boston via TripIt”) confirms it. Asking a Patriot American Airlines reservationist for information, he finds that the flight left England six hours ago, and it is scheduled to land in 45 minutes. Paul knows he’d better spring into action. He looks at flight progress on Live Flight Tracker – it’s running on time. Drat!
Paul tweets what he knows so far, then calls William Dawes on his cell phone to tell him to start his parallel warning journey. William fires up his Harley, and off he goes. Paul logs into the airline site and signs his iPhone up for alerts on the flight, then hooks up the flight alerts to his RSS feed.
Next, he engages the reverse-911 system to notify local residents of the imminent British arrival.
Paul bolts to the pre-appointed church, sprints up the belfry stairs, and hangs two high-intensity LED lights. He scrapes his hand while trying to cram the lights in between all the bells and pieces of cell phone transmission equipment, although he gratefully recalls that the space rental fees from the transmission equipment is helping fund the Revolution. He grumbles all the while, “Why can’t all these Luddites just read their darned RSS feeds?”
Paul pauses to text his buddy at air traffic control and asks him if there were any way to delay the flight. His buddy, a staunch Patriot, directs the flight into a turbulent area for a while, and then flies it around the airport a few times, but that is all he can do without raising the suspicions of his Loyalist supervisor.
Next, Paul figures the soldiers will be tired, cranky, and hungry, since the English government only springs for economy class seats. How to capitalize on that? Paul calls some hottie young Patriot ladies asks them to hand out free fish and chips and free pints of beer in the airport terminal. (Yes, fish and chips and beer are all low-tech devices, but the allure of some things is just timeless.) Then he calls his Patriot plant in airport maintenance and asks him to put some Monty Python re-runs on the airport TV system. Those ploys collectively buy him a good two hours.
Just in case some residents were either Luddites or out working their fields, herds, and barbwire fences without their cell phones, Paul hops onto his Vespa and makes his famous ride, shouting from his megaphone, “The British are coming! The British are coming! Read your RSS feeds, people!”
Samuel Adams and John Hancock are able to avoid arrest by the British, and the Patriot citizenry makes it to the main munitions storage area in plenty of time for the Lexington Green battle.
The rest, as they say, is history. You can read about it on Wikipedia!
Hooray! For the first time since 2007, Sun server sales are up.
I’m pleased to hear of this milestone, especially given how difficult it must have been for Oracle to soothe the worried minds of existing Sun owners after the acquisition. I’m also curious how much of this increase was due to Exadata server sales.
See http://www.itworld.com/168151/oracle-returns-growth-sun-server-business-idc.
The D/FW Unix Users Group (DFWUUG) unexpectedly and belatedly needed a speaker for its May 5 meeting. I volunteered to speak, in case they wanted to hear about Oracle architecture, but warned that I didn’t have a presentation put together, so it would be very informal. Oracle sounds like an odd topic for a Unix meeting, but DFWUUG is liberal in its topic choices, as long as they are thought provoking.
On the morning of May 5, I read in an email that I was scheduled as one of two speakers for that evening. I also noticed that the headline for my speech, created by DFWUUG, was “Stump the Oracle Guru.” Uh oh. This is a bright bunch of people who doesn’t suffer fools, and I didn’t want to be offered up as their stump-the-chump challenge. Preemptively and hurriedly, I created a basic slide deck with an architecture diagram of an ancient version of Oracle (to keep it simple – current version architecture diagrams look the city plan for a large metropolitan area). I added a slide with the nine mistakes from my “Common Oracle Mistakes” blog series.
During the 45-minute presentation, I talked at a rudimentary level about Oracle architecture, then talked through the nine common mistakes. The perceptive questions and observations from the audience only served to remind me further of how bright this group is.
Thanks, guys, for inviting me to the “other side” of the DFWUUG audience. You’re a great group, and I enjoy your hospitality, humor, and intelligence.
Everyone else, consider trying out the DFWUUG. The organization’s free, open to the public meetings are every first Thursday – see www.dfwuug.org for more information.
Mary Elizabeth McNeely
There’s a genre of hair products called normalizing shampoos. The general idea is that they clean the oil away but still don’t dry out your hair too badly. I’ve used a certain normalizing shampoo for years, but, alas, the brand has finally been discontinued. I’m almost done with the last bottle I have, and I’d like to memorialize my beloved normalizing shampoo with some parting philosophical questions.
I wonder how the shampoo has helped me over the years. Has my hair reached fifth normal form? What would that look like? And how long did it take? A week? A year? Did it work faster for me because I’m a database specialist? What happens if a statistician uses it? A ballerina? Can red hair achieve 5NF? Really long hair? Dreadlocks?
Does Chris Date know about normalizing shampoo, and does he approve? (The answer might depend on the shampoo’s policy on nulls. Mr. Date is quite opinionated about nulls.) Is E. F. Codd spinning in his grave?
What will happen when I stop using the shampoo? Will my hair lose all normal form? Will repeating groups tumble down my shoulders and back? Will newly emboldened non-2NF-compliant keys stop cowering behind the conditioner bottle and leap into my ears? Will transitive dependencies accumulate on the shower curtain, causing an odd odor?
Do any of my database friends out there have any perspective on these things? As I begin the switch to a moisturizing shampoo, I’d like to know what to expect on the journey ahead.
I’d like to share an interesting story about how Oracle database technology is helping those in need, one transaction at a time.
The Aidmatrix Foundation is a non-profit whose mission is to provide technology that matches organizations serving those in need with the supplies, services, volunteers, and cash contributions they need. Those who represent the needy, for example, food banks and disaster relief organizations, record their specific needs – perhaps, 10,000 gallons of bleach, 250 mops, and 250 pairs of rubber gloves (sounds like someone is trying to help out a population with flooded homes). Potential donors record what they have available – perhaps 1000 pounds of chicken, packaged in 5 pound increments (sounds like the chicken plant is feeling generous today) or a high-end used copier (perhaps the manufacturer has collected equipment after a lease period expired and is interested in saving on disposal costs and getting a tax break).
Air carriers and freight companies can donate or heavily discount transportation services, lessening the cost of obtaining the donated goods. Non-profits can ask for computers, printers, copiers, office supplies, whatever they need to keep their operations running smoothly. Donations of cash can be made during a disaster to benefit local non-profits helping with the disaster. Volunteers can enter their skills, location, and availability during a disaster.
No delivery of supplies or services will be brokered unless an interested non-profit indicates it is needed. The non-profits pay a nominal fee to Aidmatrix to help defray the cost of producing and providing the technology.
Under the covers, there are several systems making all this happen, but one of them is an Oracle-database based supply chain software package. Stepping aside from the emotional aspects of helping those in need, one can see that it really is a supply chain proposition. Why not use supply chain software to make it work better?
This is no two-bit garage operation, either: Aidmatrix processed $1.5 billion in aid last year.
I’m proud to hear what Oracle technology is doing at Aidmatrix.
If you’re interested in learning more about Aidmatrix, visit their website at www.aidmatrix.org.
Mary Elizabeth McNeely
February 2011 marks McNeely Technology Solutions’ sixth anniversary. Time has flown – it seems like last week that we were excited about our fifth year anniversary.
As the years continue to click by, we are reminded again how grateful we are to our clients who make this all possible. We are indeed fortunate to have a roster of clients who are kind, intellectually curious, and committed to a quality work product. We look forward to many more good years together. Thank you, thank you.
A word from Mary Elizabeth McNeely:
This anniversary for some reason is causing me to reflect more than the others have. Perhaps it’s because we’ve gotten past the “magic” five-year mark. Perhaps because the economy has been so tough for the last few years. I don’t know all the reasons.
But – if you’ll indulge me, I’ll reflect a little here, too. Being a business owner has allowed me freedom like I’ve never had before: Freedom to build McNeely from scratch, breathing life into it and forming its personality and unique brand as I see fit. Freedom to choose my actions and be responsible for their outcomes, for better or for worse. Freedom to be frank with my clients about what is best for them, even if the “best” choice brings less revenue to McNeely.
Being a business owner has also caused a genre of stress that I’d never known before: The continuous grind of having to make payroll. Being responsible to those who represent McNeely and having to trust that I’ve chosen the right people to be responsible to me and to McNeely’s clients. Being so busy that I must say “no” to some requests, even if I find them reasonable. Finding a group of trusted advisors whose advice will not run my business into the weeds. Sitting in the chair where “the buck stops.”
So, would I do it all again, realizing how much work it would be? Absolutely … yes.
I look forward to checking in with you again after our seventh anniversary. I hope between now and then, you’ll follow a dream of yours, be it big or small.
In January, McNeely Technology Solutions sponsored the Dallas Oracle Users Group meeting. The speaker was Cary Millsap, who discussed some fundamentals of Oracle performance measurement and tuning.
It takes a person with a deep understanding of a topic to be able to clearly and confidently convey it in simple terms. Cary has that gift, which is a good thing, because he covered what some consider to be difficult concepts. But those concepts are basic building blocks to a “common sense” approach to performance tuning.
And, sometimes, don’t we all need to just stop, breathe, and re-absorb the basic concepts of our chosen technology? The basics are so easy to forsake, to mislay, to overlook in the clamor of competing ideas, doubting peers, vendor product claims, panicked deadlines, and promising-sounding Google search results.
I hope Cary will come back again next year and share some more “sense.”
What if there were a Superbowl for Oracle database professionals? Who would referee? Who would play? Who would sponsor? What sort of tomfoolery would ensue?
Here’s my Oracle database Superbowl scenario …
Teams
DBAs vs. sys admins
Referees
Tom Kyte
Cary Millsap
Arup Nanda
Tanel Poder
Sponsors
Microsoft – which would fill their ad space SQL Server propaganda
Austrian Red Bull GmbH – the maker of Red Bull. Their tag line could be, “Red Bull, keeping system administrators awake since 1995.”
PepsiCo – the maker of Mountain Dew
H&R Block – which wants in on the financial planning business for all those rich DBAs
Location
An expanse of artificial turf spread out over the frozen pond at Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. Larry Ellison graciously donates $5.4 million dollars for cooling equipment to freeze the pond, since it never would have frozen by itself in California. Oracle Corporation springs for rental bleachers on each side of the shoreline.
Pre-game rally
The DBAs hide in the locker room and play cards during the rally, claiming to be working a critical database issue. The sys admins attend the rally, but are late and don’t pay any attention, as they are too fixated with the possibility of installing Ubuntu on an electric pencil sharpener they just found.
The audience
The two teams burst from their starting gates through the paper tape barrier made from some Oracle7 documentation, to find a roaring crowd of network administrators, developers, and Oracle employees.
Larry Ellison has been given complimentary 50 yard line front row seats, unlimited beer and ice cream sandwiches, and a laminated listing of the remaining few small-to-medium sized tech companies that Oracle has not yet acquired. He has a grease pen with which he may circle the companies he’d like to order during the game, and the hot dog vendor will negotiate the sale during half time.
Fouls, penalties, and skullduggery
The sys admins deallocate most the database server’s memory so they can allocate it to their secret World of Warcraft game server. Referee Arup Nanda calls a “tripping by member of either team” penalty on the sys admin team. The sys admin offensive coach stifles a smile.
The DBAs watch the sys admins’ fingers as they type the root password, which is cleverly set to “root,” and borrow it to reallocate the stolen memory, plus some extra for good measure, from the game server back to the database server. Referee Tanel Poder is genuinely amused by this play, but being bound to adhere to the game rules, calls an illegal motion penalty against the DBAs. The DBA coach doesn’t even bother to stifle his smile.
Cary Millsap, MacBook neatly tucked under his arm, calls an illegal low block penalty on the DBA team for a failed attempt to tune a database with a UTLESTAT/UTLBSTAT report. Cary doesn’t really think this poor behavior actually constitutes an illegal low block, but he likes that it sounds like “row lock.”
Tom Kyte, smiling wryly like Tom Kyte does, assesses an unnecessary roughness penalty on the DBA quarterback who is attempting to insert ten additional rows into dual. The DBA head coach protests, claiming a My Oracle Support article said adding rows into dual provides an excellent performance boost. The coach is unable to prove his claim, as the My Oracle Support site is currently down. The penalty stands.
Arup Nanda, blowing his whistle and wildly waving an Oracle magazine cover that he’s colored yellow with a Sharpie marker, calls a penalty against the DBA wide receiver for gratuitous partitioning.
Other goings-on
Tanel Poder, out of boredom with the game (civilized people watch the real football: soccer!), pipes derogatory comments about American football directly into the memory space allocated to the football stats database SGA, crashing the underlying server. The other referees put him in a specially designed penalty box fitted with an electronic security lock. Tanel proceeds to defeat the lock by finding a vulnerability in its Oracle Enterprise Linux operating system. He then lures a sys admin into the box, promising to tell him about the vulnerability, then quickly slams the door shut, leaving the sys admin team one man short. Tanel then sneaks up to the stadium bar to drink European beer and watch soccer on the big screen.
Larry Ellison, feeling festive after a couple of free pilsners, pencils in “IBM” to the “to buy” company listing and hands his order to the hot dog vendor, who shrieks in horror. Both are hog-tied and carried out of the park by a pack of burly European anti-monopoly regulators.
Happy New Year, everyone. We hope your year is already sparkling with potential, and that you’ll enjoy it in good health and in good stead.
While we’re posting silly songs, we might as well post last year’s song, too:
The Twelve Database Days of Christmas
By Mary Elizabeth McNeely, 2009
On the first day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
An index that’s a b-tree.
…
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Twelve cache hit ratios,
Eleven time zone patches,
Ten consultants a-sleeping,
Nine sysops dancing,
Eight scripts a-spooling,
Seven users a-squawking,
A six-digit salary demand,
Five function calls,
Four TKPROFs,
Three corrupt blocks,
Two raw devices,
And an index that’s a b-tree!
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