Just a pointer to a rather good discussion over at Howard's site about how to tell oracle.exe processes apart if you are mad enough, or constrained enough to be running multiple databases on one windows server. Who knew that tasklist was that flexible?

I have had 2 presentations accepted for the UKOUG conference 2007. It's probably not a surprise that one of the subjects I will be covering is the application of Critical Patch Updates to an oracle E-Business Suite installation.

I recently mused upon the fact that some bug records on metalink that are publicly accessible show details of customers data processing platforms. I don't want to revisit that discussion whilst support are considering my comments, but I will point out that the search box on metalink has more options than you might imagine.

I was prompted by a thread over at Dizwell and nearly wrote a long and perhaps unhelpful, perhaps posting guideline breaking rant there. So you get it here instead - sorry. Do be aware that this is emphatically not a rant about the individual post (largely why it isn't an appropriate forum response) but the state of wheel-reinvention in the Oracle world. The gist of the complaint is essentially

When I use DBMS_OUTPUT to debug pl/sql it isn't very helpful - it spews all the output at the end in one chunk, and has some limits as well in earlier versions. It means that you can't monitor long running operations.

My reaction is pretty much - that's what happens when you re-invent the wheel - or use the wrong tool. The original poster's complaint though is fairly common. What might we do about the problems they identify. 

I see via Doug that the rather wonderful (at least from a DBA's viewpoint) Oracle-wtf has been replaced by spam. WTF indeed. APC of Radio Free Tooting fame remarks that this is likely because oracle-wtf was first marked as a spam-blog by google and then deleted. Googles test for spam blogs:

spam blogs ... can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text

hmm, a good job this site no longer relies on blogger then. Indeed it seems to me that at least part of the time the whole purpose of blogging is irrelevant nonsense, or at the very least its close relative irreverent nonsense.  

No Oracle content at all today.

I grew up in Worthing in the 1980s. I love cricket, even more than football. All this makes me a Sussex man. My football, as various Italians know, runs to Liverpool the predominant force in the UK in the 80's. I always defended this unashamed childhood glory hunting by reference to Sussex CCC  the first First Class cricket club formed in 1839 and yet never winners until Mushy and the wonderful summer of 2003. This is all by way of introduction to the comments on the last Test Match by England and Sussex's Matt Prior. Quite frankly I'm ashamed. Winding people up by childish games is bad enough. If he really said what the BBC claim he did, well frankly it's unbelievable and shameful.

I'm rather less proud of Sussex today than I was.