There is actually more than one banner to bypass. One of the them is the message of the day banner, commonly located in /etc/motd. Typically friendly, example in AIX

****************************************************************************
*                                                                          *
*                                                                          *
*  Welcome to AIX Version 6.1!                                             *
*                                                                          *
*                                                                          *
*  Please see the README file in /usr/lpp/bos for information pertinent to *
*  this release of the AIX Operating System.                               *
*                                                                          *
*                                                                          *
***************************************************************************

This is easy to bypass, simply place .hushlogin file on your serverside homedirectory :

$ touch $HOME/.hushlogin
$

Yes, it is that easy.

A bit more cumbersome is the ssh banner. Which rather have an aggressive look with criminal punishment threats.

|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| This system is for the use of authorized users only.            |
| Individuals using this computer system without authority, or in |
| excess of their authority, are subject to having all of their   |
| activities on this system monitored and recorded by system      |
| personnel.                                                      |
|                                                                 |
| In the course of monitoring individuals improperly using this   |
| system, or in the course of system maintenance, the activities  |
| of authorized users may also be monitored.                      |
|                                                                 |
| Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring  |
| and is advised that if such monitoring reveals possible         |
| evidence of criminal activity, system personnel may provide the |
| evidence of such monitoring to law enforcement officials.       |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|

$ cat $HOME/.ssh/config
LogLevel=Quiet
StrictHostKeyChecking=no
NumberOfPasswordPrompts=1

This is so quiet that you will not get any feedback if you cannot connect, but I prefer quiet than noisy.

A very commonly used Windows ssh client is putty, and there, O miracle, there is a pre-authentication-banner option to uncheck in SSH-Auth.

This appeared in putty 0.62 and it made my day today

It is a zero-flash interface with more capabilities than the “html” interface we used the previous years. It still provides about the same browser experience as the flash one.

Have a try… according to Oracle : “it will eventually replace the Flash version”
To my French speaking readers : eventually does not mean “éventuellement” but rather “à l’occasion”.
Google Translate is quite ok this time : “elle finira par remplacer la version Flash”

To do it with command line and powershell, proceed this way.

Open a powershell window

powershell

runas /user:yourdomain\youruserplusadmin powershell

then access the environment assembly

[environment]::setEnvironmentVariable("PATH","c:\oracle\product\11.2.0\client_1\bin;C:\WINDOWS\;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\Program Files\Putty;C:\Program Files\Perforce;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0","MACHINE")

MACHINE is a for a Machine-wide setting and USER is for a USER-wide setting.

I hope it will be of some use

Completly unrelated, Enterprise Manager 12c for AIX is out. Do not wait it for HPUX, it is not planned. For Windows 64bit, it will come “between March and May 2012″ according to note 793512.1 on metalink

What did change in the Solaris/Oracle Database world?

First, Oracle delivered Exadata on Sun Hardware (x86_64).
Second, they delivered Exadata on Sun Solaris Operating System (x86_64).

But now, they announced a combination of software and hardware that will run Oracle database faster than anything ever before.

I am happy to read Oracle is still investing on R&D on the Sparc processors server line !

As written there and there, recursive with has more capabilities. It is also ANSI and implemented in DB2, MS SQL Server. CONNECT BY is an Oracle oddity. But does recursive with perfoms as well as connect by?

1. Create a big emp

create table big_emp as
with t(empno,mgr) as
(select 1, null from dual
union all 
select empno+1,trunc(dbms_random.value(1+empno/10,empno))
from t 
where empno<100000)
select * from t

2. execution plan

CONNECT BY


select empno,mgr
from big_emp
connect by mgr = prior empno
start with mgr is null;

E M 
- -
1 -  
2 1 
4 2 
6 2 
8 6 

Operation                 Object    Rows Time Cost   Bytes
------------------------- ------- ------ ---- ---- -------
SELECT STATEMENT                       3    3  185      78
CONNECT BY WITH FILTERING
TABLE ACCESS FULL         BIG_EMP      1    1   61      10
HASH JOIN                              2    2  122      46
CONNECT BY PUMP
TABLE ACCESS FULL         BIG_EMP 100000    1   61 1000000

recursive WITH


with e(empno,mgr) as (
select empno, mgr 
from big_emp 
where mgr is null
union all
select f.empno,f.mgr 
from big_emp f, e 
where e.empno=f.mgr)
select empno,mgr
from e;

E M
- -
1 -  
2 1 
3 1 
4 2 
5 3 
...

Operation                 Object    Rows Time Cost   Bytes
------------------------- ------- ------ ---- ---- -------
SELECT STATEMENT                       3    3  183      78
VIEW                                   3    3  183      78
UNION ALL (RECURSIVE WITH) BREADTH FIRST
TABLE ACCESS FULL BIG_EMP              1    1   61      10
HASH JOIN                              2    2  122      46
RECURSIVE WITH PUMP
TABLE ACCESS FULL BIG_EMP         100000    1   61 1000000

In this particular simple case, it seems CONNECT BY have a 1% higher cost.

3. execution time

CONNECT BY


select sum(mgr)
from 
(
select empno,mgr
from big_emp
connect by mgr = prior empno
start with mgr is null
)

SUM(MGR) 
------------
2745293877 

1 rows returned in 0.73 seconds 

recursive with


with e(empno,mgr) as (
select empno, mgr 
from big_emp 
where mgr is null
union all
select f.empno,f.mgr 
from big_emp f, e 
where e.empno=f.mgr)
select sum(mgr)
from e;

SUM(MGR) 
------------
2745293877 

1 rows returned in 1.24 seconds 

Honestly I am not surprised that CONNECT BY is faster, CONNECT BY has been in the Oracle database forever and has been massively tuned in 8.1.7.4.

And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you.