{"id":1283,"date":"2007-06-10T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/?p=1283"},"modified":"2007-06-10T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-10T12:00:00","slug":"blogs-oracle-com-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/10\/blogs-oracle-com-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"blogs.oracle.com … part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, I finally have a few technical things worth blogging about, so let me get this non-technical one wrapped up first. Here’s part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other part of Kevin’s blog<\/a> that was very relevant to my recent musings was the section titled ‘Aristocracy or Meritocracy<\/em>‘. He talks about the close contact he enjoys with some of the techies at Oracle Corp.<\/p>\n

“These days when I find myself sitting with Vice Presidents or members
\nof the technical staff in Oracle Server Technologies Division (ST) or
\ndoing something like writing a jointly produced whitepaper with ST (as
\nI am right now on a cool Oracle11g feature) …<\/em>“<\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d already been thinking about this in the light of Brian Duff’s blog<\/a>, which encouraged similar activity. <\/p>\n

“We need to connect the bloggers outside Oracle<\/a>
\n(the number of whom has grown enormously over the last few years) who
\ncare about our products with the engineers inside Oracle who care about
\nand build those products.<\/em>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brian’s blog had come after my original rant and I’d already been questioning this type of statement I made there. (There were a few similar examples.)<\/p>\n

“Maybe I’m being harsh, but the world is full of largely uncritical
\nwriters enjoying their travel expenses and free drinks whilst raving
\nabout how release blah-point-blah will change the business landscape or
\nperfume X will change your life.<\/em>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Brian’s argument is much better than mine, but I just have a degree of paranoia about the dangers of ‘getting into bed’ with any large company. Then I thought it over some more, discussed it with Mark Rittman quite a bit in the pub, and it occurred to me that there are several leading lights in the community who I have loads of respect for who receive invitations from Oracle including travelling expenses. Am I suggesting that they say whatever Oracle or some other company wants them to say?<\/p>\n

No, of course not. What matters most here is the attitude of the recipient. Do I think Kevin’s going to wax lyrical about the current implementation of ASM because he knows the lead engineer? Is Jonathan Lewis going to say the Cost Based Optimiser is flawless because Oracle pay him to record a few seminars; or claim that Method R is the only performance tuning methodology because he presents at Hotsos? Of course not, because I trust them as individuals. In fact, I’ve never found the technical people who work<\/em> for Oracle to be dishonest corporate mouth-pieces!<\/p>\n

I have a lot to learn about how to cope with such invitations, they’re still new and only occasional, but at least there are examples out there to learn from and I’m genuinely grateful for that.<\/p>\n

In the end, I think if the software engineers in Oracle, Microsoft, Sun or wherever want to engage people in the community then, fine, as long as everyone maintains their integrity. Some of my favourite moments attending conferences have been the ability to discuss Statspack or AWR with the people who work on them and my cynicism shouldn’t stand in the way of that. In the end, I am pretty keen on Oracle’s software. It’s one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of strong user groups. As long as Oracle have some techies visiting us (which they do) and not just marketing people (which I can understand) then their contribution is more than welcome.<\/p>\n

I also shouldn’t be so distrusting of people. I blame it on the parents! 😉<\/p>\n

You know what this is really<\/em> about though, right? I need a paid holiday to San Francisco one day 😉<\/p>\n

Switching track a little, what of this statement from Kevin?<\/p>\n

“When I think about it, it seems my blog more than deserves at least a
\nlink from blogs.oracle.com, the bigger question is what criteria goes
\ninto that blogroll? Is it aristocracy, or meritocracy?<\/em>“<\/p>\n

Regular readers will know that I’ve often raised the same question. But, if we’re going to question the integrity of the blogs.oracle.com ‘selection process’ then, while we’re at it, we’ll have to question the Oracle ACE process as well as the Oak Table Network (the OTN in the title of part 1 of this blog, not Technet!). All of these have their own process and as far as I can tell, none of them have easily measurable<\/em> criteria. There’s always a human element so they can all be open to misinterpretation, abuse, simple cock-ups and so on.<\/p>\n

Maybe the safest thing is not to give *any* of these things too much credence? I’m not turning my nose up at any of them and they’ve been positive and welcome invitations but, really, don’t you think there are tons of people out there who are just as qualified but people just don’t know who they are yet? <\/p>\n

Still, my mum doesn’t know them either, she still thinks the Oracle ACE award is pretty and I’m not going to shatter her illusions 😉<\/p>\n

Good, I feel better now. It might not be obvious but I’m feeling less cynical than normal. Sadly, some main fuses have just blown, so it looks like it’ll be Sunday house maintenance after all, rather than mucking around with Oracle. Oh, well, that technical stuff will be along shortly …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, I finally have a few technical things worth blogging about, so let me get this non-technical one wrapped up first. Here’s part 1. The other part of Kevin’s blog that was very relevant to my recent musings was the section titled ‘Aristocracy or Meritocracy‘. He talks about the close contact he enjoys with some… Continue reading blogs.oracle.com … part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1280,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/08\/blogs-oracle-com-oracle-ace-otn-does-any-of-it-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1283,"position":0},"title":"blogs.oracle.com, Oracle Ace, OTN, does any of it matter?","date":"June 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I actually woke up early today to write this blog as I wanted to sleep on it first and blogging on-site is a real no-no. Anyway ...Many of you will remember the ongoing shenanigans around Justin Kestelyn's complaints about how Oracle is perceived by the Web 2.0 community. I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 17 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1553,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/13\/my-favourite-oracle-blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":1283,"position":1},"title":"My Favourite Oracle Blog","date":"December 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Some features in this post require a Diagnostics Pack license.I think there a quite a few decent Oracle blogs around. There are links to some of them over there on the right. But by far my favourite this year has been Kerry Osborne's. I think there are a number of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 9 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":873,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/25\/bits-and-pieces\/","url_meta":{"origin":1283,"position":2},"title":"Bits and Pieces","date":"January 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Having finally finished work for the day, I have some bits and pieces before I get back to the Hotsos tests.Mike ScottI mentioned that Mike Scott has been been really helpful with preparing test environments and offering intelligent argument. Mike's a Unix System Administrator and has some really interesting articles\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1508,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/21\/the-best-oracle-parallel-execution-paper\/","url_meta":{"origin":1283,"position":3},"title":"The Best Oracle Parallel Execution Paper","date":"July 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd already made a note to read and blog about Greg Rahn's Parallel Execution over RAC blog post which is excellent, as usual, but Jonathan Lewis beat me to it \ud83d\ude09 What struck me when I eventually took the time to read it, though, was the link in his post\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 7 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1263,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/01\/oracle-and-community-involvement\/","url_meta":{"origin":1283,"position":4},"title":"Oracle and Community Involvement","date":"May 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Dammit, I'm going to have to start writing about Oracle again! Even worse, it's not technical but (cough) opinion and analysis \ud83d\ude41I saw Justin Kestelyn's blog last week and my immediate reaction was slightly sympathetic, but I decided to sit back for a few days and watch the fun develop,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 11 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1049,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/09\/historical-perspective-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":1283,"position":5},"title":"Historical Perspective (Part 1)","date":"August 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"As mentioned in a few blog comments in the past, it's not the greatest idea to advertise on the web that you're going on holiday (or vacation if you prefer), given the easy availability of home addresses online. You might as well leave the back door open for the burglars\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}