Book Adverts

I'm very pleased to announce two Oracle related books I have co-authored are to be published shortly by Apress.


The first book is entitled Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table and it will be officially published in December. There are 9 chapters currently available for eBook download via the Apress Alpha program. The Alpha program allows you to purchase (at a substantial discount from the full publish price) an unedited, unfinished pre-release format. The full book isn't available yet, but when it becomes available, you will be able to download the full eBook at no additional cost. It's a good option if you want to get a jump on what's to come! I wrote the chapter on Managing SQL Performance. I'm really excited about the book and am very proud to be among the group of Oak Table folks who are co-authoring it together.

Not far behind the Oak Table book will be Beginning Oracle SQL. The book is a revision of the classic Mastering Oracle SQL and SQL*Plus by Lex de Haan originally published in 2004. Again, I was fortunate to be able to work with a fantastic group of co-authors to revise Lex's work to include many of Oracle's latest developments to the SQL query language. I knew Lex for only a very short time before his passing in 2006 but I knew him to be a brilliant and wonderful man and I'm very honored to be able to contribute to revising his original work.

These books represent my first time as a published author. I've written many whitepapers and articles for various Oracle user group periodicals and such in the past but never attempted the process of writing a book. After having this experience, I'm grateful that my first time was as a co-author. It's comforting to know there are other folks out there sweating the process with you!

The folks at Apress have been awesome and I hope that my first experience as an author won't be my last!

Things that make you go "hmmmmm"

I was reading a blog post entitled How Good is Good?. It was written 8 years ago by a graphic designer by the name of Stefan Sagmeister. The post was speaking about creating designs that were meaningful and make an impact on the world (or the part of the world each design is directed toward). While the post was interesting, it was one of the comments that caught my eye. Most of the commenters were inspired by the post but one commenter, in reference to the idea of making a match between good causes and good design a priority vs the more mundane every day marketing stuff, said:

Simple, don't go into graphic design, Choose something else. Cause if you don't do "that" work, other designers will. Do people really think that everybody enjoys their job?

It was the commenter's question that made me thoughtful: Do people really think that everybody enjoys their job?

I've always felt very fortunate to be able to do work that I really love doing. There may be times when I get frustrated with some of the particulars, but overall I know I'm doing "the thing" I'm supposed to be doing.

My choice of career path came to me in college. I started out as an accounting major but after my first computer-related course, I switched majors and knew that working in the information technology field was for me. So, I got my degree and have worked in the field ever since.

I honestly can't imagine working in a job that I didn't like. So, it was just a bit of an "ah-ha" moment to consider the idea that not everyone enjoys their job. What would that be like? What would it be like to wake up every morning and go do something that you don't enjoy for 8 or more hours? That would seem like torture to me.

But, I suppose it may be more likely that more people don't enjoy their jobs than do. Have you ever seen the TV show "Dirty Jobs"? Some of those jobs are (in my opinion) just horrid. I can't imagine having to do some of those tasks every day. But, there are a lot of jobs out there that I can't imagine doing that many people love.

However, I think that it may be more about "doing what you gotta do" many times vs actually choosing a job you want/enjoy/love. I just find it sad, and somewhat humbling, to think about all the people who do things they don't enjoy just to make enough money to maintain a life for themselves and their families. To think of spending such a large portion of my life doing something I found no enjoyment in really makes my heart ache.

Are you doing what you really enjoy?

OOW09 and my favorite 11gR2 feature

I decided to wait until the end of Oracle Open World 2009 before I posted anything. So many people have been tweeting and blogging and shooting video of this year's event, I figured I'd put in my two cents worth at the end.

Man...it's been a l-o-n-g week. I don't know if it's my increasing age or what, but being in a herd of this size for an entire week has left me feeling somewhat bruised (both physically and mentally). I started at 9am on Sunday morning by attending Tom Kyte's keynote for Oracle Develop and have made it through Thursday - which seems like a minor miracle somehow. But I have survived!

So much goes on here, it's hard to keep moving through it given the mass of people and multiple session locations (not to mention the after hours opportunities for fun and frolic). Add a bit of rain (some kind of monsoon as it seemed to me) and, at times, it was like being in an undersized kennel filled with wet dogs. :)

The sessions I attended, and there were many, were all quite excellent. I sat in on most all of the 11gR2 sessions and am really amazed at many of the new features and options 11gR2 offers. My favorite is edition-based redefinition (also referred to as "online application upgrades"). This feature isn't getting nearly as much press time as some of the other more sexy things (for instance, you couldn't move 10 feet without seeing or hearing about Exadata) but as far as I'm concerned, editioning is a hugely beneficial new feature.

By the way, it is a feature, not an option. Wow...for once it's something you don't have to pay extra for! I loved that when Tom Kyte did his "10 - no 11 - top things about 11gR2" session, that he gave editioning two spots on the list. So what is editioning?

1. You can create a new edition to contain any new code changes.
2. Data changes can be made (add new columns or new tables) and the new code can safely write to the new stuff without any of it being seen by the old edition.
3. Different projections of tables are exposed via editioning views so that each edition is allowed to see only its own columns.
4. If the old edition makes data changes those changes are propogated using cross-edition triggers into the new edition's columns (or vice-versa).

The bottom-line is that now with 11gR2, if you want to make changes to procedures, packages, views, synonyms, etc, you can do it using editioning and maintain both the old (original) version as well as the new. It also means a lot less headache. Have you ever tried to CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE in production while the instance is in use? What happens? Well, if the package is in use, Oracle has to wait until it is no longer in use in order to replace it. So, Oracle waits. But, if new requests to use the package come in during this time, those sessions must wait also. That doesn't even begin to touch what happens if the new package causes other objects to be invalidated and thus they need recompilation also. It can be a pretty long, arduous and resource-intensive process to get something seemingly so simple done.

With editioning, a new edition is created and the modified package is compiled into that edition. No muss, no fuss...and no waiting! This is just a bit about this great feature, but I recommend you look on OTN for more info and several whitepapers Oracle has available on the topic.

There's so much more I could blabber on about, but I'll save other thoughts for other posts. All in all, it's been a good week, my presentation on Tuesday was well attended and I got great feedback, and I've got lots of great material to take back home for further review and sharing with colleagues.

Memorization vs. Understanding

This graphic was recently pointed out to me (thanks Jared!) and I loved it...so I thought I'd share.

The key point (as noted in the upper right) is:

Understanding how something works can drastically reduce the need to memorize a bunch of seemingly arbitrary facts.

I believe this is an accurate statement. I've been around many people who seemed to be able to spout out the most arcane command syntax or provide the "textbook" definition of virtually any topic. But, if there was a problem where something more than knowing the definition of something or being able to quote the documentation on a topic was required, they quickly got lost and didn't know what to do or how to proceed.

Certification exams, for instance, ask questions that can be answered correctly if you've memorized a lot of facts. I've always jokingly said that if I gave my mother (sweet southern homemaker that she is) enough material to memorize, that she could likely pass the Oracle certification exams in 1 or 2 tries. And although she'd never indulge me to see if I could prove that theory, I suspect it's close to the truth. She's a bright woman with a great memory so I think she could memorize and do pretty well on the tests.

I once met a kid that had just graduated college and had started his first real job with a client I was doing some work for several years ago. The company paid for him to take a two week "boot camp" course and take the certification exams. So, with about 2 months of on-the-job experience, he went to the two week class, took all of the exams at the end of it, passed them all and returned back to work a "certified expert". Of course there was a big production flame-out right after he got back and he got razzed pretty good about "not knowing" what to do since he was now an "expert".

The bottom-line, as I see it, is that memorized knowledge can (and likely should) be part of your foundation. But, it will only get you so far. It's the ability to really understand something and how it works that will help you solve issues that just aren't solvable with memorized facts alone.

Cost and value

I just read a post by Seth Godin entitled "If Craigslist cost $1". I've used Craigslist and I agree with him that even a small charge for the service would likely clean it up a whole lot. At $1 per listing, most people with a legitimate need would still choose to use the service. But, for scammers and those with not so virtuous purposes, the small charge and thus the requirement for verifiable identification for the money exchange, would push them out of the game. Plus, the money coming in for using the service could go towards making the service better or making the owners richer or be used for philanthropic purposes or whatever.

The post made me think about cost and value. What if the cost to use the service was higher ($5, $10, $20)? At what point would the cost outweigh the value? Well, certainly the higher the cost to use the service is, the higher the cost of the items sold on the service will be, right? I mean, I don't think I'd want to pay $10 to use the service if I'm going to sell my item for $10. Maybe if I'm selling my item for $20, I'd be willing to pay half of that to get it sold.

My actual, real-life use of Craigslist has typically been for a few basic reasons:

1) I no longer use the item(s) but they are in good enough shape that I think someone else would/could use them.
2) Having someone come pick up the item and take it away is much easier than trying to figure out how to get it to my local Goodwill (stuff like furniture and larger items).
3) I bought something on a whim and either never used it or only used it once or twice before realizing that I really didn't want or need it.

The real bottom-line for me has typically been that I just wanted to get rid of something that I was no longer using but believed the item to be in good enough condition that it "shouldn't" be thrown away. (Waste not, want not!) So, in most every case, even if I only asked a few dollars, the point was that I was able to get the items out of my house and off to someone else who wanted them. I didn't have to do anything except put up an ad, answer a few calls and then exchange the item(s) for cash when a buyer appeared.

It wasn't about the money that I received for the item. Even if I hadn't sold the item, I would have gotten rid of it somehow, so the money was just a "nice to have" benefit. The value of the service was that it was easy for me and I believed it was a win-win for both me and the buyer. I'd have been willing to pay a fee to use the service.

But really, this isn't about Craigslist. It's about the cost (price you're willing to pay) of something versus the value having or using that something has to you. Another example is software. Some of my favorite software tools have cost me little to nothing to obtain. I use them constantly and have been very happy to pay for them (most everything I'm thinking of has cost less than $30 each). But there are other products that cost *a lot* ($1,000 or more) and while I really might like to have them, I'm not willing to pay that cost. I'm particularly not willing to pay when there is a comparable product that is available for free or at a very low cost. The first example that comes to mind is TOAD vs SQL Developer. [sidebar] I am not advocating either product nor am I comparing features or virtues of either. [/sidebar] Since SQL Developer is free, I'd very likely choose it instead of the costed product and use it until I found that it didn't meet my needs to such a degree that the cost of buying TOAD would be outweighed by the benefit of having it. Even then, I'd hesitate unless the feature I needed was so key/critical that I could easily identify how having that feature would save me money in the long haul.

But, if TOAD was priced much lower, say under $300 (instead of the base edition being nearly $900), I don't think I'd hesitate to buy it. This is where I wonder how companies decide to price their products. Is it truly a "what the market will bear" pricing strategy or what? I likely have a poor way of looking at it, but if I had a software product that I think everyone should use, then I'd be willing to sell it at a lower cost in hopes that I'd sell more and thus make up the difference. In other words, I'd rather sell 1000 copies at $300 each than 100 copies at $3000 each. I'd say there is an excellent reason why pricing isn't done this way and there's also a reason why I'm not in sales and marketing. ;)

How about you? How does cost and value fit into your personal buying decisions?