It took Oracle a lot of time to certify Oracle 11gR2 and Fusion Middleware, but they finally did it, according to Wim Coekaerts blog post. And the good news doesn't stop here, he also announced free access to bug and security fixes from Oracle public yum repository. Something that was reserved for the ULN subscribers. Good news for many of us who felt ULN is not worth a dime without Ksplice and Dtrace. This is certainly a bad news for Red Hat, as they'll likely loose some percentage of their existing customers, I'm afraid. I sincerely hope this pressure on Red Hat from Oracle will end up with a happy ending for Red Hat.

Marketing bozos at Oracle struck again, with so called "study report" done this time by ORCInternational, titled "Database Manageability and Productivity Cost Comparison Study: Oracle Database 11g Release 2 vs. IBM DB2 9.7". It's interesting that they came to the same percent savings (43%) as Edison group who published similar (if not exact) pamphlet in 2009.
Nevertheless, that "oracle red color" in all table headers looks very nice, Big Boss must be very happy with this report!

The last time marketing bozos at Oracle published report that "proved" that Oracle11g saves 41% DBA costs compared with MS SQL Server 2008. This time around, study (again) confirms that:

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Quote: Study Confirms Oracle Saves 43 Percent More DBA Time Than DB2.
ORC International interviewed Oracle and DB2 database administrators (DBAs) and IT architects; then ran tests to measure DBA daily routines and tasks. Their comparison revealed significant time and resource savings when using Oracle Database 11g over IBM DB2 9.7, including productivity savings of more than US$51,000 per DBA annually.

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What a pity that saving is 43% and not 42%, at least we should be laughing with a good reason.

The wait for OracleXE 11g is closing to an end, Oracle announced OracleXE 11.2 Beta, available for Windows x32 and Linux x64. I can't remember if Oracle published public beta for OracleXE 10g at all!? It certainly seems a right thing to do, to offer Oracle community a chance to put the new release through realistic tests. Enjoy downloading and installing!

[Update] The rumor was that Apex 4 will not ship together with the OracleXE 11g, at least in beta this is not true.

According to license agreement from documentation set, Oracle raised the database size limit from 4GB to 11GB, 1 instance per physical server, 1 CPU and 1GB RAM remains unchanged restrictions, which I found reasonable.

Let me start this note with a small confession. There are technical books on my book shelve that I read (some of them twice) and/or refer to almost on a daily basis. There is also a (growing) stack of unread books that is likely to be read in the near future (right now, Pro Oracle SQL and Python Algorithms being on the top of the stack), but there is also a book, that will never be read from cover to cover. Title of this book is "An Introduction to Database Systems, 8 edition" by C. J. Date. Hat off to any and every one of you who read this book from cover to cover. Moreover, if you was enjoying reading it and you're looking for a job in Slovenia, please, drop me a line.
Now, that I relieved my soul, I would like to invite you to attend Chris's Date two day seminar that will take place in Ljubljana on 23-24 May 2011. Seminar is more than reasonably priced (394€ for early bird registration for non-SIOUG members) and it's something you should not miss -- and please, bring a copy of the book, I'm sure Mr. Date will not object signing it, no matter how worn it is (hmm...I think I have an idea how my copy of the book can get a worn look in a short period of time -- I believe I found a new toy for my baby girl ;-).

Today I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the news on my favorite public forum that Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is a free product.
In the time when I feel that system analysis is a bad word among youngsters, something that only old school mastodons still practice and preach (or at least they're trying to), came Oracle announcement that Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is available for free, quite a drop from 3000$ per named user price. I'm sure they were trying hard to sell the (overpriced!) product, but they simply could not make a significant sell figures. Golden times when Oracle Designer ruled the scene are over.
I truly hope that Oracle decision is correlated more to the economic downturn than the fact that nowadays system analysis is often neglected phase in the project, so one would expect smaller demand for the modeling tool such as SQL Developer Data Modeler.
I'm sure this is not a good news for Quest - while Toad Data Modeler is reasonably priced, it doesn't run on Linux and this is becoming a major issue for me. I'm sure we'll immediately freeze additional Toad Data Modeler purchases of new licenses and investigate the possibility to migrate to Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler.

We'll see if economic downturn has any impact on attendance of fifteen conference organized by SIOUG! I hope not. SIOUG 2010 conference, two and a half day event hosted in my beloved Portorož is approaching and once again, I was questioning myself if is it worth spending more than a day or two on the conference. Despite my initial pessimism, I put together itinerary that justify a bit my discomfort with the conference venue. Here it is:

Monday, September 27

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Christian Antognini, "Join techniques"
Boris Oblak, "Vodenje revizijskih sledi brez posegov v aplikacije"
Kantamestarit Oy,"Dude, where's my database?"
Randolf Geist"Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting - Live Session"*
[*Although Graham Wood session on Exadata is tempting too.]

Tuesday, September 28

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Uroš Mesojedec, "Java 2010 - pogled v prihodnost"
Jože Senegačnik,"Pravilna uporaba SQL ukazov v PL/SQL kodi"
Peter Robson,"CTRL-Z in SQL*Plus - Infinite Rollback!"
Piet de Visser,"Still using Ratios"
Graham Wood,"DB Time-based Oracle Performance Tuning: Theory and Practice"
Jože Senegačnik,"Kako lahko z definiranjem "constraintov" pohitrimo izvajanje aplikacij?"
Andrej Žabkar,"Virtualizacija z OracleVMjem - razgrnimo tenčico"

Wednesday, September 29

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Grant Ronald,"The Fusion Development Platform"
Gregor Malenšek,"Kaj pa prehod na Forms & Reports 11g?"
Darko Golec,"Workspace Manager za potrebe časovnih baz"
Robert Korošec,"Oracle DataWall - nadaljevanje Oracle *Vault strategije"
Jure Kajzer,"Oracle za spletkarje"
Lovro Vreš,"Kdo dostopa do moje baze"

My Hero was nagging me to update the firmware for a past few days. At first, I didn't bother to read the message with firmware version details, so I was surprised when I finally gave up yesterday night and checked the HTC web site for firmware details - OTA (over The Air) firmware is available that will upgrade Hero from Android 1.5 to Android 2.1.
Honestly, I expected that 1.6 would be the last supported Android release for Hero. Thanks HTC!

I searched the net for reports that could indicate possible troubles related to 2.1 upgrade, other then "...upgrade will wipe out all your data and settings...", which is false for OTA based upgrade, couldn't find anything else.

Just in case some little green ones pop up, I backuped all my data on SD card, then I switched on WiFi connection on Hero and downloaded 80MB update from HTC (depending on your data plan download alone can cost you a small fortune -- so don't do it over 3G on a beach - especially not in Croatia;-), use some free WiFi spot. Fortunately HTC will warn you about that before you start downloading.). The hole process of downloading and installing 2.1 took approximately 30 minutes - make sure your battery is charged!

Everything went smooth with OTA upgrade, way easier then the last time when I upgraded HTC ROM from a PC.

Here are some sample screenshots taken from my Hero 2.1:

1) Firmware version after upgrade

2) New Power Widget (at the top) that I like

3) Settings with icons - I don't like them, pure text based menu was fine

4) I like the way we can trace down battery usage...

Two days ago I was attending annual, one day conference, dedicated to virtualization with VMWare products.
More or less all presenters were using vendor provided slides, often the same or very similar (boring). Only a handful prepared their own presentation. In my opinion the highlight of the day was gentlemen from SRC d.o.o, who illustrated very well the paradox of various (failed) predictions from Gartner, Forrester Research and similar bunch of companies who're "predicting" the future with "statistical observations", with a joke about predicting the winter.

Here is my translation of the joke from Slovenian to English (with my interpretation):

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It's autumn and time to prepare for the winter in a small North American Indian village.
Local Indians are visiting their shaman to get some advice about the coming winter.

Indians: "Hau shaman, can you tell us how chilly this winter will be?"

Shaman: "Hau my people! Better prepare the firewood for the winter, because long and chilly winter is ahead of us."

Indians: "Are you sure about that?"

Shaman: "Of course I'm sure, I'm not your shaman for nothing!?#%?... But, I'm willing to seek further confirmation with our Manitou. Please come back in a week or two."

Indians: "Ok, chief, we'll start to prepare the firewood immediately, see you next week."

As soon as Indians left the shaman tent, he called his white man friend, meteorologist in the nearby city.

Shaman: "Hi Bill, long time no see, we shall meet and smoke a pipe or two. By the way, can you help me with the weather forecast for this winter?"

Bill: "Sure chief, what do you want to know?"

Shaman: "What'll winter be this year?"

Bill: "Ughh.hmm...I think it'll be long and chilly winter."

Shaman: "You think or do you know?"

I tried for several days to somehow make HTC Sync (the latest and greatest Version: 2.0.18, that should work with Windows 7, but does not) connect to my HTC Hero. Finally, I gave up and decided to use Windows XP workstation for ROM upgrade. The reason I decided to upgrade from ROM 1.76.405.6 to 2.73.405.5 was sluggish screen navigation. Barely noticeable but annoying, nevertheless.

Here it is what I did to upgrade ROM on HTC Hero:

• made a backup of my files on SD card
• downloaded and installed the latest HTC Sync Version 2.0.18 on my Windows XP SP3 Workstation [protected with UPS, of course]
• connectec HTC Hero to Windows XP workstation with HTC Sync
• downloaded and installed ROM Upgrade for HTC Hero, Version 2.73.405.5, after I read accompanying readme. Update was done in approximately 4 minutes.
• new ROM means that you'll need to repeat registration process (make sure you note down APN data of your mobile provider, otherwise you'll not have data access to Google!) and make some minor tweaks, such as pick your default ring tone, setup wallpaper, re-create bookmarks, thumb pictures of your favorite people, enter your stocks in Yahoo Finance! etc. I hope some day HTC will provide a better backup method than limited HTC Sync with calendar and contacts backup. And that is not all, you'll also need a fresh installation of all the applications that you installed from Android Market.
  [Unfortunately, I found out about Android excellent Astro File Manager application too late to use it to backup my old applications. Sic.]

...is apparently the German word from which Slovenian slang words "šalabajzer" and "šalabajzerstvo" are derived from. The word "Schallabweiserrei" is used to express personal discomfort with superficial and incompetent work by artisans. I was using this slang word sporadically, not really knowing it's origin.
No one is perfect all the time; I'm a šalabajzer from time to time (definitely when I'm trying to fix some broken part in the house, car, etc., without a proper tool(s) and know-how), but as much as I hate to spit in my own plate, can't help not to admit that IT sector is without a doubt the business area plagued with the largest number of šalabajzers per capital. Who is really to blame? POP culture?, fast-food life style?, complex technology hidden behind user friendly API's and GUI's that gives everyone a feeling being an "expert"?, modern IT yuppies with ties, polished shoes and posh talks -- mostly selling stuff, rarely solving problems?, "experts" that "excel" with PowerPoint's and nothing else?, business managers not really knowing their core business and processes?, phoney "managers" on all levels - they're extremely common in all post-socialistic-communistic countries, Slovenia is not an exception?, business executives buying all this...or even belonging in some previous mentioned category? I really don't know.
Now I'm going to fix that damn light bulb...(Fingers crossed).