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Easy text/html multipart emails with Email::Simple::Markdown

Yanick Champoux — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:23:55 +0000

These days, to craft basic emails, I go with Email::Simple. For the more heavy stuff with attachements and what-nots, I reach out for Email::MIME. Together, they make a pretty awesome duo. But… (come on, admit it, you knew there was going to be a ‘but’) But there is a fairly common use-case that falls pretty [...]

Pythian and NoCOUG Announce: The Third International SQL Challenge

Gwen Shapira — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:28:33 +0000

For the third consecutive year, NoCOUG is hosting an international SQL challenge. Last year we ran into a small difficulty where the international DBA community proved too clever and solved the challenge before we could properly publicize it. A good DBA learns from her mistakes, and this year we are pre-announcing the challenge: The challenge [...]

Oracle VM Manager: OVMAPI_6000E Internal Error: Connection refused

Yury Velikanov — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:05:47 +0000

This is just a quick post to share my first 3.1.1 Oracle VM Manager (OVMM) troubleshooting experience. After the initial installation I rebooted the server, tried to access OVMM https://ovmmhost:7002/ovm/console and received the following error in a browser screen: Unexpected error during login (com.oracle.ovm.mgr.api.exception.FailedOperationException: OVMAPI_6000E Internal Error: Connection refused Connection refused[[ < date > ), please consult logs [...]

Installing Oracle VM Manager 3.1.1 under Dom0 host, or How to save resources on your sandbox

Yury Velikanov — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:26:56 +0000

It happens to be very short blog post as installation the Oracle VM Manager 3.1.1 under Dom0 host isn’t different from installing the previous version. For all tricks that you need to use please see my Oracle VM Manager 3.0.3 under Dom0 post. Just to make this post to look like a proper blog post :) I am sharing the [...]

Upgrade Exadata to 11.2.0.3

Gleb Otochkin — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:12 +0000

During last couple of month I was seeing some discussion and question in different online conferences and user groups about upgrade RAC and exadata to 11.2.0.3. The questions were mostly about upgrade procedure, timing, what can happen during the upgrade and how a system behaves after upgrade. I’ve recently upgrade couple of exadata to 11.2.0.3 and want [...]

Infernal…

Tim... — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:02:18 +0000

Infernal is the ninth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

Another family tragedy has the effect of reuniting Jack with his brother Tom, the judge. It turns out Tom is not as squeaky clean has he appears and needs Jack’s help for something less than legal. As you can probably guess by now, it all turns sinister and mystical…

I’ve definitely become desensitized to the darkness now. Every time a new character is introduced, pretty much my first thought is, “I wonder how they will die?” It’s a bit like watching Star Trek and knowing the security officer (in the red top) you’ve never seen before is the one that’s going to eat lead/laser…

Cheers

Tim…

Infernal… was first posted on May 16, 2012 at 9:02 am.
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Finally, a Good Starting Point for Why Software is Hard

Jake — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:14:29 +0000

After a hectic month or so, I’m finally getting around to reading.

I’ve been meaning to share this thoughtful piece from Scott Porad, CTO of Cheezburger (squee!), that does an excellent job encapsulating some reasons why software is so difficult.

His main points, or rather, those made by his friend are:

1. Software is entirely hand-made, and compounding this, software is distributed at very large scale. Looking back through history, machine-made goods have always replaced hand-made goods to account for large scale distribution. Software isn’t there, yet.

2. Software production lacks standards. Think about software projects, and you’ll find a variety of methods, e.g. waterfall, agile. However, even within an established method for running a software project, there is variance from team to team, even within the same company.

3. Everyone has an opinion on how long a project should take, an anomaly for producing goods that require high levels of experience and skill from the people doing the work. Project estimation is hard.

Scott’s second point about standards is similar to one that nags me, titles. Software uses titles like engineer and architect, but these jobs don’t require the same levels of certification and training that their namesakes do.

So, while it makes sense to use titles that mirror physical construction, this isn’t really a fair comparison.

I’ve noodled the reasons behind why software is both difficult and misunderstood for years, and this is the best encapsulation I’ve read to date. Even so, I’d add a few other points.

4. Everyone uses software, at home, at work, on the go, and software usually requires substantial learning investment. This tends to make everyone feel like an expert, and it tends to trivialize the effort required to produce this or that small tweak.

This is a scaling problem for producers of software, e.g. every time Facebook makes a chance, revolt ensues. It’s exceptionally difficult to make changes to software because of the investment in relearning. Plus, software is highly emotional to the end user, making the effect of changes impossible to estimate.

5. Software relies on hardware, which is an older, more mature production model. Therefore, hardware tends to advance more quickly than software can keep up, and replacements cannot be assumed. So, when software is produced, it must account for old hardware and new hardware, which compounds the all other problems.

I’m sure there are other points too. This is a good starting point, and I’m interested to know your thoughts, given that most of you are close to the problem.

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

UKOUG 2012…

Thomas Kyte — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:15:27 +0000

The call for papers for the UKOUG 2012 conference ends in less than three short weeks! If you were planning on going to the conference (and even if not) - you should consider submitting a paper.

I've been a long time supporter of all of the user groups and their conferences and I can attest to the quality of the UKOUG event. The conference is chock full of technical talks with hundreds of sessions to choose from. There is something for everyone there.

If you've never presented before, don't let that deter you from submitting a paper. No one knows the anxiety that public speaking can bring better than I - I've written about it before. You'll find the conference to be an entirely different experience on the other side of the podium. In addition to the experience of presenting, the networking and exposure that comes with being a speaker won't hurt you at all. Whether you are a DBA or developer - having good public speaking skills is a necessity today - and using the conference as a way to build those skills is a great way to start.

Additionally - what you have to say is important and relevant to the user community as a whole. A good conference needs a lot of speakers, from many diverse disciplines, with diverse backgrounds - the more speakers the merrier. Don't think you don't have anything to offer - everyone does. And don't feel that your topic wouldn't be interesting to someone else - it will be. There are a lot of people out there trying to do some of the same things you've done and they'd love to hear how you did it.

That is one of the things about user groups I really like - they bring together a lot of people doing similar things - but in a different way. You'll learn something new - and they will too.

The UKOUG is one of the larger and well run conferences out there - don't be afraid to talk. Challenge yourself to get up there and just do it. You won't be sorry (ok, maybe in the minutes leading up to it you will be - but you'll get over that :) )

Hope to see you there - and don't chicken out!

Oracle Database Appliance as a Consolidation Platform

Marc Fielding — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:16 +0000

I had a chance to talk to several Oracle Database Appliance users at the annual Collaborate 2012 conference last month in Las Vegas. And a common theme in this discussions, as well as discussions with Pythian clients, is an interest in using the ODA as a large-scale consolidation platform. ODA offers all the benefits of [...]

My First Experience Running SLOB – Status Update 2 (first results)

Yury Velikanov — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:57:52 +0000

I think the results we got so far may surprise you. At lease those doesn’t seems to be the results +Alex Gorbachev and +Kevin Closson expected to see. You can find the first related blog post over here. It will give you the necessary context for further reading. Just to recap: +Kevin Closson says “Orion may [...]