Category: Uncategorized

Tomorrow is the final day of 2005 and my 40th Birthday. The next day I fly to New York for a one week celebration. How a group of Scots decided to check in at 7am for a 9am flight on the 1st January is still something of a mystery to me. (To be honest, it… Continue reading So long 2005 and thanks for all the memories

I noticed the following blog as an incoming link on Statcounter http://oracletoday.blogspot.com/ When I went to take a look, it turns out that SQL*Net message from client had been a blog subject back in September. It’s worth taking a look at another example of how this ‘idle’ event can be a sign of problems in… Continue reading I swear I didn’t know

I think I’ve got to the bottom of the underwhelming Tom Kyte effect on my blog. I remembered that about the same time as Tom linked to my blog, I swapped Bill in as my new avatar! I knew he was pretty scary but he’s not that bad … Actually, he is, isn’t he?

Rob Vollman blogged about the Thomas Kyte Effect. Pete has (and no doubt others have) before. Well, I have to say I’m a little disappointed and I’m thinking of writing to Tom and asking for a refund (and perhaps he can make Metalink run faster while he’s at it). I noticed a link to my… Continue reading I want my ‘Thomas Kyte Effect’!

I can’t promise this means I’ll be quiet until January, but The Boys (and Girl) insisted on wishing everyone happy holidays and a hopefully peaceful New Year. Have a good one …

Now I realise that some of you may think that this is Treelo (I think he’s called) from children’s TV, but bear with me. Bill turned up in the post one day. He was parcelled a bit tightly so he’s looked a bit strange ever since, but he was a present from my mate Dave… Continue reading Bill

We’re implementing a new packaged application at work. It includes a history import job that takes data in a flat-file and loads it into database tables. It performs some degree of data transformation but, in essence it inserts about 500,000 rows into one table and thousands in to a few others. During the testing, the… Continue reading Another 10046 Success

I’ve been thinking about training versus DBA work recently since it’s been a while since I did any training work. I noticed an entry on Chris Foot’s blog that mentions training which got me thinking even more. There was a time in the late 90s when recruitment agencies would look at my cv, notice that… Continue reading In Praise of Good Trainers

First of all, let me be clear that I’m not a fan of GUI tools. That’s not based on a misguided macho opinion that somehow you need to be able to struggle with a command line interface to prove that you’re a good DBA but because :- I’m a contractor who works at a large… Continue reading Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR2

What’s more, there’s a solid logical argument. So that’s that, then!