Fun with SQL - My Birthday

This year is kind of fun, my birthday is on November 12th (next Tuesday, if you want to send gifts). That means it will fall on 11/12/13. Even better perhaps, katezilla's birthday is December 13th. 12/13/14. What does this have to do with SQL?

Someone mentioned to me last night that this wouldn't happen again for 990 years. I was thinking, "wow, I'm super special now (along with the other 1/365 * 6 billion people)!" Or am I? I had to do the math. Since date math is hard, and math is hard, and I'm good at neither, SQL to the rescue.

select 
  to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'mm' ) ) month_of,
  to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'dd' ) ) day_of,
  to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'yy' ) ) year_of,
  sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ) actual
from dual
  connect by level <= 100000

(In case you were wondering, 100,000 days is just shy of 274 years. 273.972602739726027397260273972602739726 to be more precise.)

That query gives me this:

MONTH_OF DAY_OF YEAR_OF ACTUAL   
-------- ------ ------- ----------
11       06     13      2013/11/06 
11       07     13      2013/11/07 
11       08     13      2013/11/08 
11       09     13      2013/11/09 
11       10     13      2013/11/10 
11       11     13      2013/11/11 
...

So how can I figure out where DAY_OF is equal to MONTH_OF + 1 and YEAR_OF is equal to DAY_OF + 1? In my head, I thought it would be far more complicated, but it's not.

select *
from
(
  select 
    to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'mm' ) ) month_of,
    to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'dd' ) ) day_of,
    to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'yy' ) ) year_of,
    sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ) actual
  from dual
    connect by level <= 100000
)
where month_of + 1 = day_of
  and day_of + 1 = year_of
order by actual asc

Which gives me:

MONTH_OF DAY_OF YEAR_OF ACTUAL   
-------- ------ ------- ----------
11       12     13      2013/11/12 
12       13     14      2014/12/13 
01       02     03      2103/01/02 
02       03     04      2104/02/03 
03       04     05      2105/03/04 
04       05     06      2106/04/05 
05       06     07      2107/05/06 
...

OK, so it looks closer to 100 years, not 990. Let's subtract. LAG to the rescue.

select
  actual,
  lag( actual, 1 ) over ( partition by 1 order by 2 ) previous_actual,
  actual - ( lag( actual, 1 ) over ( partition by 1 order by 2 ) ) time_between
from
(
  select 
    to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'mm' ) ) month_of,
    to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'dd' ) ) day_of,
    to_number( to_char( sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ), 'yy' ) ) year_of,
    sysdate + ( rownum - 1 ) actual
  from dual
    connect by level <= 100000
)
where month_of + 1 = day_of
  and day_of + 1 = year_of
order by actual asc

Which gives me:

ACTUAL     PREVIOUS_ACTUAL TIME_BETWEEN
---------- --------------- ------------
2013/11/12                              
2014/12/13                          396 
2103/01/02                        32161 
2104/02/03                          397 
2105/03/04                          395 
2106/04/05                          397 
2107/05/06                          396 
2108/06/07                          398 
2109/07/08                          396 
2110/08/09                          397 
2111/09/10                          397 
2112/10/11                          397 
2113/11/12                          397 
2114/12/13                          396 
2203/01/02                        32161

So, it looks like every 88 years it occurs and is followed by 11 consecutive years of matching numbers. The next time 11/12/13 and 12/13/14 will appear is in 2113 and 2114. Yay for SQL!

On Work/Life Balance

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, had this to say via his new book, Find the Next Steve Jobs.

(It’s been said that many people in high tech cannot balance their personal and work lives. Here’s another way to look at it: Their jobs are so interesting that it’s difficult to figure out what is work and what is play. Creative projects produce this kind of excitement.)

I've struggled with the work/balance thing. I'm better now than I was a year ago, but it takes a lot of work. That quote definitely illustrates one aspect of how it could get so out of balance...I thoroughly enjoy what I do.

Random Idea #1

(800)

I'd like to start posting my random (rambling?) ideas here in short form more often. Here's idea #1.

I'd like to do a presentation with Cary Millsap while playing catch. I'd ask questions about instrumentation and stuff and he'd opine while trying to catch my knuckle-ball.

This would achieve 3 objects:
1. Presenting (with Mr. Millsap)
2. Playing catch
3. Playing catch indoors (technically this would be Mr. Millsap's completed objective).

Etiquette

No technical stuff here today...let's call it a focus on the soft skills.

Been pondering this one for some time now. I wanted to add some of it to a recent post, but ultimately left it out.

How to Take Compliments
I've struggled with this one myself at times. Someone says something very nice to me and I'll hem and haw. It feels...embarrassing. Maybe I don't really deserve it? Am I conceited to accept this? Etc.

I try to accept the compliment, when given now, with grace. "Thank you, I appreciate that." instead of deflecting the attention away (from myself, as I'm wont to do).

Here's 8 easy steps...

1. Understand what deflecting a compliment is really about
2. Think about taking a compliment as an exercise in being assertive
3. See accepting a compliment as a compliment in itself
4. Decide how you'd like to take the compliment
5. Smile
6. If you suspect that the sincerity of the compliment is questionable or the compliment is confusing, you might want to open up an opportunity to explore it
7. Return a compliment later
8. Give credit where credit is due - I like this one. I usually have a lot of help at work and I try to make sure that others are included, if not by the complimentor then at least by me. I'm sure it has something to do with playing a lot of team sports growing up too.

How to Say You're Sorry
I dislike but-monkeys. What is a but-monkey? Someone who says something like, "I am sorry for what I did, but..." - the ellipsis could be something like, "you brought this on yourself" or "you did x, y and z." This isn't an apology. Say you are sorry and don't make excuses, period. I have become good at apologizing. I'm not sure that's a good thing as it implies I've made a lot of mistakes. Well, guess what? I have made mistakes in my life. Whether I realize it immediately or some time in the future, I do my best to accept responsibility and apologize.

The most common cause of failure in an apology--or an apology altogether avoided--is the offender's pride. It's a fear of shame. To apologize, you have to acknowledge that you made a mistake. You have to admit that you failed to live up to values like sensitivity, thoughtfulness, faithfulness, fairness, and honesty. This is an admission that our own self-concept, our story about ourself, is flawed. To honestly admit what you did and show regret may stir a profound experience of shame, a public exposure of weakness. Such an admission is especially difficult to bear when there was some degree of intention behind the wrongdoing.

I had one more but it seems to have escaped me at the moment.

Random Thoughts: #22

I haven't written much lately, six months in fact. Just trying to get my life in order...priorities.

Strangely, traffic to the site has increased during that time. I would think that any post during this period would slightly increase traffic. Nope. Opposite effect.

I like traffic (only child, I need attention), but it's not why I do any of this. If that were the case, I wouldn't post at midnight on Saturday. Anyway, amusing.

Here's a random video for you: Larry Smith - Why you will fail to have a great career



I have this really strange fascination with this one, Cheap Flights with subtitles



Finally this one which I have watched every other day (it seems) for the past 4 months: Jeb Corliss " Grinding The Crack"



If you made it this far. I'm sorry.

OBIEE: The repository variable, %S has no value definition

Version: 11.1.1.5
OS: OEL 5

First of all, it's a Session variable, not a repository variable. Whatever.

So I had created a PIPELINED function to serve as the source of a table. From the analysis side, we wanted to use a presentation variable to set a session variable that was referenced in the table source.

Here's the SQL for the Stored Proc call:

SELECT *
FROM TABLE( get_key_value_pairs( 4 ) )

I hardcoded 4 in there just to see how it worked. BTW, Gerard Nico describes the process here.

I then created a session variable along with the init block.

SELECT 5 FROM dual

which would populate the P_LIMIT session variable. Nothing terribly fancy.

I then ran a simple report based off of the new table source (with the hardcoded value):



Cool, now let's swap out the hardcoded value with the reference to the session variable.

Since I don't do a lot of front-end stuff, this post at Siebel Essentials has been my bible.

I locate what I am trying to do in the matrix:

VALUEOF("NQ_SESSION.P_LIMIT")

Like a big jerk, I have to add spaces to it, you know, for readability. My SQL looks like this:

SELECT *
FROM TABLE( get_key_value_pairs( VALUEOF( "NQ_SESSION.P_LIMIT" ) ) )

OK, let's try without the quotes ("):

SELECT *
FROM TABLE( get_key_value_pairs( VALUEOF( NQ_SESSION.P_LIMIT ) ) )

Same thing.



Let's gid rid of the spaces (I've had issues with spaces before, but I can't seem to find the post).

SELECT *
FROM TABLE( get_key_value_pairs( VALUEOF(NQ_SESSION.P_LIMIT) ) )

Voilá!

Fun. I have noticed that certain areas of the RPD treat spaces slightly differently. If I ever find the other post, I'll link it up here.

Lesson? Be careful with your space.

The Value of Reflection

I'm not talking about meta-programming, I'm talking about taking time removed from a situation (work in this case) to consider what you have done, what you have learned and what you want to do.

I was struck by this last night, this morning really, in a discussion with a stalker...I mean friend over IM.

I was describing something I wanted to do in the RPD (OBIEE) and his reponse was, WTF are you thinking? (nicely, of course).

It was then that I realized that I had not taken the time to reflect on my last 2 years.

There are a number of reasons for this.
1. I've been really busy (a good thing)
2. I've been working from home.

Being busy is a no-brainer. Most of us go through periods where we work a lot, that's me. I'm thankful for that, especially in light of my time just before this run started. Things were...not so settled. I've also got a family to support and a daughter who requires more (time, attention and money) than the average child.

During the time when life wasn't so stable, I was full of rants and opinions about how things should be. It's because I had a lot of free time to think.

Working from home is different as I am learning. I've been home (from work) for over 8 months now. I spend all my time in front of the computer. I rarely just sit around.

Sitting in front of the computer all day long occupies my mind and prevents me from reflecting. Perhaps it is distraction? As Jake mentions in that article:

even worse with unread counts, the most heinous weapon in the psychological warfare armory an app can use to ruin your productivity.

Or maybe I just haven't learned yet to step away for a little while. A few weeks ago, I was spending my lunch hour on the bike, I felt great but even better, I allowed myself to step away for a mere hour. Verboten!

So I'm going to take some time in the next couple of weeks to step away; "it's OK Chet, the world will not fall apart while you are away."

Hopefully it will give me the needed time to reflect on what I have done...

The Nerd Defense

Really couldn't pass this one up. Friend and co-worker, Erica Baer [@skibaer] who has a Ph.D. in some sort of crazy thing (and she's not even 30!) sent me a link to Eyeglasses and Mock Juror Decisions...I'm pretty sure her Ph.D. is in something related to psychology (which is good for me, free counseling) and the selection of jurors. Wait, it's Forensic Psychology, LinkedIn told me so. Sadly, much of my charm is wasted on her, she sees right through it. Oh well.

So the link...had a great picture:



There are like 4 elements that apply to me there:
1. Nerd
2. Justice
3. Bald
4. Rollie Fingers-esque mustache
5. Glasses

Ok, 5, I can count, but you knew that.

Random Thought: #19

Nickelodeon
I am lucky enough to get to watch The Fresh Beat Band every single day on Nickelodeon. It's one of katezilla's faves, after Dora the Explorer and Diego.

Anyway, one of the actors, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, is obviously very talented. She has an operatic (sp -10?) voice which overpowers her colleagues on the show. Doubtful it is intentional, she's just that much better.

Using the Google Machine, she's had a fairly impressive career. What I can't figure out, is how she ended up on this show. Nick does a good job at putting together shows with talented people (whether you agree with their...umm...whatever) who seem to be fairly normal (save Britney Spears sister, but that should be obvious now (and holy schnikeys, I know that...OMG...WTF???)).

Is it a good career move for her? Does she do it because she cares about the kids? Sadly, I ponder these things.

Percentages
How would you store a percentage? Would you store it as 40, 50 or 60? Or .4, .5 and .6? I opt for the latter. Why? Well, it's a decimal, it's a fraction of 1, right? If you store it as a whole number, what happens in 3 years after you are gone and the new person doesn't know? It's not obvious, is it?

OBIEE
I ran into an OBIEE project for a single business model that consisted of 2 separate design patterns, horizontal, and vertical fragmentation. That was fun. It was supposed to be easy, but it was not. I'd like to re-live that one soon. Maybe.

Follow Friday

I know this is a Twitter tradition and I know it is just a tad early, but here is my version of Follow Friday.

First up, Enrique Aviles. I met Mr. Aviles at Tanel Põder's visit back in January in Tampa. We had corresponded a bit prior via Twitter. For the longest time, I read his Twitter handle as "Evil Les 94," I hope that's not me projecting. Super nice guy and apparently has some fun horror stories he promises to share.



Next up, Don Seiler. Don and I have been verbal sparring partners on Twitter for a couple of years now. We appear to have a similar sense of humor, smart-ass. That might be a company-wide trait at Pythian, I seem to encounter a lot of smart-asses from that particular organization. :)



Finally, Lisa Dobson. My first introduction to Mrs. Dobson was through Tom Kyte's blog a few years ago. Since I can't seem to find the exact post that I think I remember, I link to this one where Mr. Kyte talks about introducing her at her presentation for Newbie DBAs.

Now, I'm not one to spread rumors, so don't mention this to anyone, but rumor has it, she "bitch slapped" Tom Kyte at some past event. This is wholly unsubstantiated, so don't hold me to it.



You may see a trend in my Follow Friday suggestions, you may not. If you do, go here, all proceeds go to katezilla (well, technically, to us, her parents, to offset her costs. Though she is a girl and girls are supposed to cost more...). :p

Funny Story #1

If you've ever met me, I love to tell stories. In fact, I think the whole point of our existence is to tell stories. Many of them cannot be shared in a public forum, most are best told over beers.

As I was getting my son settled for bed this evening, a Bio on Animal House was on. Perhaps this isn't really my story, but who cares?

I "played" baseball at the University of Florida from 1992 through 1993 (JUCO prior to that). Our announcer/PA dude was a local radio personality, can't remember (or find) his name. He played all the usual baseball songs:

- Centerfield by John Fogerty
- Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen
- Take Me Out To The Ballgame by Jack Norworth

So on and so forth.

He also had a little fun. One of the pieces he did depended on a very specific situation. Going into the bottom of the 9th (which meant we were losing) in a close game (usually a run or 2). He would play the scene from Animal House, the one were Bluto (John Belushi) gives his speech on rally the troops.

Bluto: Hey! What's all this laying around stuff? Why are you all still laying around here for?
Stork: What the hell are we supposed to do, ya moron? We're all expelled. There's nothing to fight for anymore.
D-Day: [to Bluto] Let it go. War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: What? Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: [to Boon] Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard of something to say]
Bluto: The tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!

Here's the video as well...

I'm pretty sure the curse words were removed, but it was funny and definitely got the crowd fired up.

Where's Waldo?

The oraclenerd edition.

I think this is the longest stint I have gone without posting since I started, almost 3 weeks now.

It's not that I don't have anything to say...you know better than that. I've actually been super busy.

I've been in Chicago (Rosemont actually) for the past 2 weeks and will be there for the next 4. This follows 8 weeks at home. I guess it all evens out in the end. The client has been awesome in regards to my travel, knowing our situation with Kate, and I'm very appreciative of this...but it's crunch time and I probably should be on-site.

I did 90% of the metadata work, bringing in a colleague late in the game to help offload some of the work. This also means I am at the center of just about every question about the data. I've had a lot of help, especially from some new team members (client side) who came from the DW world. Their research and knowledge of the systems has helped me out tremendously.

Just about any work I do I do at night, when it's quiet. In the office, I am rarely at my desk...which is another reason I have been so quiet here and on Twitter. I do have a cool new phone, the HTC Incredible, but I've hardly learned how to use that thing yet. After lunch on Wednesday...well, actually, during lunch on Wednesday, I was on a conference call on APEX and SSO (yes, outside my current job duties, but I love APEX so want to see it successful) walking back to the office. That led me to hitting up David Peake, the Principal Product Manager for APEX (who lives just 1.5 hours from Chicago) who then pointed me towards Anton Nielsen of C2Consulting for his knowledge in implementing SSO with APEX. I finally passed on Anton's name to the client as I didn't want to be a bottleneck.

The next 3 hours I found myself in meetings or at someone's desk answering questions. I finally sat down at 4. It's fun interacting, but exhausting.

Oh, and the client has definitely learned that they shouldn't let me out of my cage too often. After 8 weeks at home, I was a chatterbox.

Anyway, the initial deployment is on Monday and we will be rolling out fixes shortly after that. Not the ideal of course, but it is what it is.

Hopefully soon, I'll be able to post something informative or at least somewhat interesting. I did finish up my NQQuery.log parser, I just haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet.

OBIEE: Gotcha #1

When generating SQL for testing, make sure you set the database to the database you will be running against.

I found this out the fun way, of course, by going through, grabbing the SQL from the logs, and then modifying said SQL to run against Oracle. I should have paid attention to that "Check Consistency" warning.



I spent an hour or so "fixing" the SQL, removing stuff like the following:

fn ifnull
{ curly brackets }
d '2004-04-10'
ts '2004-04-10 13:44:39'

mostly small stuff, but annoying none-the-less. Strangely (to me anyway), this was the SQL submitted to an Oracle database...without errors. I'm guessing that somewhere, either in OBI or in the driver itself, the SQL is rewritten.

After I realized what had happened, I went back into the RPD and updated the database properties.



It was ODBC basic



I changed it to Oracle 10R2/11g



I tried the Consistency Check again and still received the warning. Opened up the database properties again and selected the Features tab



Then selected "Revert to Defaults"



Run the Consistency Checker again and voila!



So don't waste your time like I did. Make sure you use the Consistency Check Manager and make sure your database defaults match.

Thomas Roach: Oracle's Latest Acquisition

In Dan Norris fashion, I am announcing the acquisition of Thomas Roach by Oracle Corporation.

I've had the please of knowing Mr. Roach since before moving to Tampa as he was the President of the local users group, Suncoast Oracle Users Group (SOUG). He's also helped me out numerous times in both an advisory role and...well, just getting stuff done for me.

A few weeks ago I got to help him by letting him rehearse his MAA presentation on me. That apparently sealed the deal for him. Oracle Corporation flirted with acquiring him late 2008, but didn't pull the cord.

I've been teasing him the last few weeks about anouncing him as the Tom Kyte successor, as he'll be working in the Public Sector group that Mr. Kyte worked for a few years back. He said he didn't want the "Rittman Effect" so I am playing nice.

Mr. Roach is a great guy and this position (whether Mr. Kyte's old job or not) is very well earned. Congratulations Mr. Roach. Perhaps you can help out Mr. Kyte with his small niche site...since you share the same name.

COLLABORATE: So Many Problems

Just a detailed list of FAILs on my part. Maybe some WINs too.

1. Left cell phone charger at home. Consequently borrowed one from a nice hotel staffer (even if she looks over every 2 minutes to make sure I haven't absconded with it).
2. Tried to record all of Charles Phillips presentation on camera. Battery died. Charger left in room.
3. Unable to get a decent wifi (I keep typing "wife" there for some reason, like wifeless...) connection anywhere. You'd think they would be abundant in a city like this (or I would have thought them abundant). No go.
4. Organizers are working diligently to add wireless access recently adding it to Level II. The official wireless SSID is COLLABORATE. Use others at your own peril.
5. My room, while decent in appearance, sucks. Holes in the sheets. Bathroom lights don't work. Cables strewn (including ethernet) behind television. I would name the hotel but fear the negative attention would bring La Cosa Nostra into my world. :)
6. I am apparently an Oracle employee. At least that's what my badge says.



7. They still don't know what to do with me. I am on the press lists of course...but I think they're still trying to figure out how to handle me.
8. Did an interview with Billy Cripe and gave a shout out to my Ash friends...I'm pretty sure I looked and sounded stupid, but what can you do?
9. Oracle ACE Dinner was cool. I'm never one to turn down free food...but I thought I had my limit of beers at the OAUG event last night. Ooops.
10. Woke up at 7:15. Love that I'm still on EST.
11. While looking for a phone charger at 7:20, saw people stumbling around from last night. Very amusing. Hopefully I'll get pictures tomorrow. I do remember what that was like, but those memories are fading.

March Madness

No, it's not about basketball. I can't seem to get into this year, despite all the upsets (from what I hear).

This month, oraclenerd passed the 10,000 visitor mark...that's just amazing to me. Thank you.

Almost hit 16,000 page views as well. 10 shy if you're curious. Again, awesome.

Like last month, I'm posting the top 10 list based on views for March.

Page	Views
Learning OBIEE	763
EBS Install Guide - Part 1 by John Piwowar	573
DBMS_CRYPTO: Example	381
The Case for the Bit Bucket by Michael Cohen	352
APEX: Install 3.2.1 on 11gR2	331
EBS Install Guide - Part 2	330
OBIEE: How to Migrate Your RPD	238
ORA-08177 can't serialize access for this transaction	236
OBIEE: Install on OEL 5.4	225
BULK COLLECT and FORALL	222
EBS Install Guide - Part 3	210

On a related note, John cracked the top 10, all time, in pages viewed on oraclenerd. His post has been up for just under 4 months and I've been at this for almost 31 months. Maybe if I had John post more often I could actually make (more) money here. As it stands, I owe him about $0.53 USD.

If you want to take a crack at John, I'm still accepting guest posts. Had 2 this month, both on the database as a bucket meme. Michael O'Neill had extended comments in Everything is a Bit Bucket and Michael Cohen took the other side...as usual.

Random Things: Volume #18

1Z0-052
Some have noticed that I have been posting my exam topics notes. I have multiple reasons for this.

1. Any search I have performed on the test returns a bunch of brain dumps, cheat sheets and of course some legitimate books and guides. I'm more concerned that all those brain dumps and cheat sheets proliferate. As I go along, putting my notes here, updating the main page with the link to the new subject, I get higher and higher in the search results. Last check had me in the top 30. I won't stop many from taking the easy route, but hopefully those that are wavering, can see that it is possible to do this with a little hard work.
2. See #1

I thought I had more, but that turned out to be everything. Far too many people (anything more than 0 is too many) take the easy route and give many of us who actually care a bad name.

1Z0-052 Studying
Speaking of the testing...I'm about halfway through gathering notes. I'm tackling the ones I know fairly well first. As I find new information on previous topics, I go back and update that main page. I'm hoping to take the test sometime after I return from COLLABORATE.

NoSQL
Some NoSQL articles keep rolling in...

I Can't Wait for NoSQL to Die by Ted Dziuba

My Thoughts on NoSQL by Eric Florenzano

Social Media Kills the Database by Bradford Stephens

NoSQL vs. RDBMS: Let the flames begin! by Joe Stump

Not Everyone Using noSQL is a Rails-Lovin’ Ass-Clown by m3mnoch (h/t Mr. Cohen)

ID10T
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about DBA_TABLES vs DBA_OBJECTS. Basically, I had just created an object and couldn't find reference to it...well, I figured it out. I had created a locally named table, DBA_OBJECTS while doing some stuff with OBIEE...which of course took preference over the DBA_OBJECTS view...and made me a complete id10t.

Other
I have a friend, who has made appearances here (not as a guest author) who completed his, like, 47th interview with Oracle this week. He was offered the job and is, I imagine, in the process of negotiation. The position was fairly high profile held by one of the best in the field previously. I'll announce (i.e. brag for him) when the process is complete.

Of course I had about 30 different things I wanted to talk about...but that was at 3 this morning trying to fall asleep. I should have written them down. I'm sure they'll be remembered over the next couple days.

Random Things: Volume#17

If you ever wondered where Volume #15 went, so do I. I seemed to have skipped it. Apparently I can't set the DEFAULT property of my surrogate key equal to a sequence.nextval just yet.

Database as a Bit Bucket
Some of you may recall last weeks article titled, The Case for the Bit Bucket. In that regard, I found a couple of good articles (hat tip Gary) worth reading by Dennis Forbes:
Getting Real about NoSQL and the SQL-Isn't-Scalable Lie
Getting Real about NoSQL and the SQL Performance Lie

One of those examines Diggs recent move to Cassandra.

Consulting
I'm in week 11 of 12 of my first full-time consulting gig. I could do without all the travel, but it has been fun. I miss the family of course, but a job is a job. Consulting itself I enjoy because you (mostly) get to stay out of the politics and just perform a specific task. I've even been able to expand that a little helping out with some APEX debugging.

Miscellaneous
I recently moved over to the Google Custom Domain from FTP publishing. It was something I kept putting off (FTP is being turned off) but finally took the plunge. The one thing I really like about it, no more waiting for the posts to publish. Their instantly available.

I have been storing images at Picasa for the last year or so, so image links (at least those that fell in that time period) didn't break. I was storing as much as possible on either Picasa, Google Docs or Google Code. I did have to put all css inline, until today, when I figured out how to reference it in Google Docs.

The only other annoyance was the path for labels changed. It was www.oraclenerd.com/labels/tag.html and now it is www.oraclenerd.com/search/labels/tag.html

If you do see something is broken, let me know and I'll fix it as soon as possible.

Oracle OpenWorld
The deadline passed to submit your paper(s). I decided not to submit my "presentation" How to Use Social Media to Increase Productivity. I'm not sure why either. I will still try to attend as a blogger however...and do plan on having the ability to go this year. My employer has already offered to pick up travel for COLLABORATE 10 in Las Vegas...so one way or another.

February Top 10

As the name implies, it's the Top 10 for this past month. Probably the biggest reason I am doing this is the EBS Install series has become a runaway success. I've never had something become so popular so quickly...which of course tells me I'm no good and John Piwowar is the best ever. :)

John deserves quite a bit of recognition so the more I can provide, the better.

Title	Pageviews	Unique Pageviews
EBS Install Guide - Part I	541	394
Learn Oracle Business Intelligency (OBIEE)	444	337
EBS Install Guide - Part 2	347	262
DBMS_CRYPTO: Example	339	295
APEX: Install 3.2.1 on 11gR2	263	225
EBS Install Guide - Part 3	253	202
OBIEE Posts	243	215
OBIEE: How to Migrate Your rpd	234	183
BULK COLLECT and FORALL	187	166

Random Things: Volume#16

EBS Challenge
John Piwowar wrote the first part of the EBS Installation Guide back in December, since then, it's become a runaway success. I hadn't realized how so until recently when I was looking at Google Analytics and it came it at number 19, for all time. Now it's up to 13 and with the addition of it to the front page, it should only go up faster.



I've never had a post that was this popular so I thought it fitting that John should get the recognition that he deserves. If you decide to take part and then write it up, let me know and I'll link you up to The EBS Challengepage. I think there are 4 people that have completed it so far. I'll even give you space here if you don't have your own blog.

Travel
Got the best color car ever this week.



OBI EE
For some reason my original, Learning Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) post, has been near the top of the charts for multiple search phrases.So I did what any sane person would do, I updated it with some new information. Not really sure if it's new, but it's got more. If people are finding it, I might as well update it as often as possible.