Entries from April 2009
Oracle has two type of parameter files for initial parameter configurations: PFILE and SPFILE. The parameter file and the shared parameter file. They are used to specify parameter values at the database startup. The SPFILE is used in a RAC environment and PFILE is used in a stand alone database environment.
The other day I had a problem starting up my RAC and later on it was discovered that the problem was because of these startup files. The recommended way of using an SPFILE in a RAC environment is to specify the (shared) location of your SPFILE in the PFILE. All nodes have their own PFILEs which point to the same SPFILE which is located on a shared storage. I had set it up all right but it was not working. And this was because Oracle searches the configuration files in the specified directory in the following order:
- spfileSID.ora
- spfile.ora
- initSID.ora
- init.ora
So I had my initSID.ora setup but was not being used because I already had one spfileSID.ora in the same location which always got preference.
Categories: LifeFactor · Oracle · TechFactor
Tagged: init.ora, initSID.ora, Oracle, pfile, preference, RAC, sequence, spfile, SPFILE.ora, spfileSID.ora
In a news today by CNN, Oracle confirmed it will buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 bn. This also strengthens the belief that Sun refused IBM because it had a better offer.
Acquisition of Sun will be fabulous for Oracle because it can now enter in the servers market and that with a BANG! Sun’s powerful hardware and trusted Operation System ‘Solaris’ will be a huge plus for Oracle but the future of two most widely used open source relational databases remains uncertain. Sun has bought MySQL a couple of years ago and was supporting PostgreSQL as well. What is the use of MySQL for Oracle? And support for PostgreSQL will most probably be dropped.
Sun was a better buy for IBM anyway.
Categories: LifeFactor · TechFactor
Tagged: $7.4 bn, acquire, buy, IBM, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SUN
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/10/report-founders-want-to-buy-skype-from-ebay/
As the New York Times reported,
Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are in talks with several private equity firms and are amassing their own financial resources to make a bid for the internet phone business. eBay bought Skype from Zennstrom and Friis for around $3.1 billion in 2005. We reported last year that eBay would be willing to sell Skype if the company couldn’t support eBay’s core ecommerce business.
eBay has been having trouble finding ways of using Skype across its other products. eBay removed Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom in October 2007, reportedly due to frustration at the financial performance of Skype. Ebay also negotiated down the huge earnout due to Skype stockholders and took a $936 million one-time loss around the transaction.
As we wrote last spring, a sale was projected to be likely late last year or in the first half of this year. Of course, with the economy in such poor condition, the sale was probably put off momentarily. There was something brewing between Google and Skype last spring, but nothing came of it. Google recently launched its own voice product, Google Voice (formerly Grand Central).
Skype recently launched a nifty iPhone app, which was downloaded 1 million times in the first two days of its release. Skype recently made a move to be a player in the enterprise space, but it wasn’t clear how much of a money-maker the new service would be.
There’s no doubt that Skype brings a lot to the table but eBay was probably just not the right buyer. Skype’s scalable technology and a proven platform in the VOIP, VOIP2POTS and P2P Video is impressive to say the least. The service currently has more than 405 million registered users.
Following their respective departures from Skype, Zennstrom and Friis formed VC firm Atomico and founded online video/TV site Joost.
Categories: LifeFactor · TechFactor
Tagged: Atomico, ebay, Google Voice, Janus Friis, Joost, Niklas Zennstrom, P2P, Skype Founders, Voip
Generating a series of numbers is a very common practice in SQL environments. The objectives are but not limited to generating testing data and constants to use in SQL statements. Oracle provides a number of ways to accomplish this but the most simple to me is using the CONNECT BY clause.
1: SELECT ROWNUM N FROM dual
2: CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 20
The statement generates integers starting from 1 to 20. It can be altered in many ways according to the acquirements e.g. adding a WHERE clause to offset the series or applying a mathematical equation at N to generate different types of series. For example:
1: SELECT (ROWNUM * 0.02 + 3) "N" FROM dual
2: WHERE LEVEL > 10
3: CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 20
Another objective of series is the requirement of constants in the SQL statements. For example I used constants of week days (1-7) and number of hours in a day (1-24) to generate some statistics by hour by day of week.
1: SELECT DECODE (DN,
2: 2, ‘MON ‘,
3: 3, ‘TUE ‘,
4: 4, ‘WED ‘,
5: 5, ‘THU ‘,
6: 6, ‘FRI ‘,
7: 7, ‘SAT ‘,
8: 1, ‘SUN ‘) "Day of Week",
9: Hour,
10: (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tblsupport
11: WHERE tktopendate > SYSDATE – 90
12: AND TO_CHAR(tktopendate, ‘D’) = DN
13: AND TO_CHAR(tktopendate, ‘HH24′) = H) "Ticket Count"
14: FROM
15: (SELECT ROWNUM DN FROM dual
16: CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 7) WeekDays,
17: (SELECT ROWNUM Hour FROM dual
18: CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 24) Hours
This statement generates statistics data about number of tickets received during the last 3 months grouped by week day and hour.
Categories: Oracle · TechFactor
Tagged: CONNECT BY, Constants, Integers, Numbers, Oracle, Series, sql
- Accept your mistakes – the important thing is to locate and deal with them in a timely manner.
- Do not invest your emotions in your code – this can lead you to taking critiques of your code personally.
- Seek out the input of others – programming is a collective effort.
- Consult your colleagues before you rewrite a sequence of code. Any such revisions should be part of a team-based review process.
- Show deference to those who know less than you about a project. To show impatience reinforces a stereotype of developers as egotistical prima donnas.
- Be open to new technological developments – the world of programming changes rapidly, and you need to keep up to date. You should welcome new developments as opportunities to improve your work.
- Knowledge is the only real determinant of authority on a software project – you should defer to anyone better informed than you, regardless of their place in the pecking order.
- Understand that sometimes your ideas will not be accepted. This is part of the experience of being a team member. Don’t make a big deal of it if it turns out later that you were right.
- Work in an open, collaborative environment. Those who code alone tend to be less effective than others.
- Criticize code rather than programmers. Your critique should be positive in tone and should be for the purpose of improving the code.
Categories: LifeFactor · TechFactor
Tagged: egoless, Lamont Adams, programming, rules, technologies, Ten commandments
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