Category: Archive

If you have the money, the time and the chance to get to Denmark, then this training looks pretty good. Okay, so I know the organisers and one of the ‘experts’ but, if the description is to be believed, I wish there were more courses like this available. A guy I work beside attended a… Continue reading I wish I could go to this

There was a note waiting for me when I got home tonight. “Neighbours! Wednesday the 17th of May is the Norwegian Constitution Day. On that occasion, the boys in Number 5 are having a small party in their garden. The party will only be during the day, from about 2pm till about 10pm at the… Continue reading Norwegians

No doubt this is incredibly old hat and I’ve just missed it somewhere along the line, but with a nod and a wink from Andrew Fraser at work and using my more stable server connection, here’s a small thing I didn’t know. On Unix and Linux, you can have a personal .tnsnames.ora (note the leading… Continue reading .tnsnames.ora

More interesting links from the past week. To start with something non-technical, there have been a number of blogs (and a deluge of comments) on Tom Kyte’s blog about classic book recommendations. I’m sure Tom would welcome a couple of dozen more recommendations (Joke!). That blog of his will end up being as time-consuming as… Continue reading Blog Round-Up

Many months ago, when I first bought the old server, I decided I would need to get some network connectivity sorted out for it because the noise it makes is ridiculous. Personally, I don’t mind it that much, but not everyone feels the same way so it was only fair for it to live in… Continue reading Driving Me Crazy!

Okay, let me start by issuing a loud and fair warning. If you don’t like industrial-strength bad language, skip this blog and find something else to read. Equally, you probably don’t want to have your speakers turned on in the middle of a quiet office when you open this link. However, the audience at yesterday’s… Continue reading We Do Not Use Keys

Well, to start with, it was a great venue. Perfect size, perfectly ‘Edinburgh’ and a nice coffee/bar area. I understand some people were freezing cold, but I think I got lucky. It was also nice to see quite a few familiar faces, including the entire Edinburgh University IT posse! (At least you can get a… Continue reading OUG Scotland

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s event. As well as seeing my colleague, Simon Kelsey, present for the first time (after I talked him into it), I’ll get to catch up with some of the usual suspects and I won’t have to go through any airports to get there 😉 It’s a top line-up and a… Continue reading OUG Scotland – Perspectives on Server Performance

One of the problems in working with Parallel Execution is that you tend to work on it in bursts, usually when a data warehouse is running into problems, and then don’t work on it for months. I’m in the middle of one of those bursts and there are a couple of related issues that I… Continue reading PX Issues Continued

One of my highlights of the Hotsos Symposium 2006 was meeting Kurt Van Meerbeeck. There are some people I think I’m going to be friends with as soon as I meet them. Kurt is one of the those guys. It turns out we have quite a lot of tastes and views in common (and I… Continue reading DUDE, Where’s My Data?