SOUG: Stewart Bryson

Tonight we welcomed Mr. Stewart Bryson [blog|twitter|RittmanMead] into the fold.

(Small side note: I met Mr. Bryson in person at COLLABORATE this year. For some strange reason, I had pictured him as this late fifties dude. Turns out he's (slightly) younger than me).

First off though, I walked in and there seemed to be a buzz in the air along with a few new faces (for me anyway, I can't attend regularly due to travel). Was this buzz all about Mr. Bryson. It seemed so.

Mr. Bryson has been working with RittmanMead (you might know one of the founders, Mark Rittman, Oracle's Person of the Year) since the beginning of last year and he's heading up the RittmanMead America division.

Anyway, off to the presentation. The title of the presentation was OLTP DBA’s Guide to Delivering a Dimensional Model. Many willing DBAs in the crowd wanting to hear his take on the matter. He certainly didn't disappoint. I started to realize it was getting dark in the room when I finally looked at my clock, a few minutes after 8. I believe Mr. Bryson began around 6:30, maybe a little later. That was the fastest hour and a half. Usually by then I am bored out of my mind and ready for beer with whomever will join me.

Now I was mad because it was going to get cut short. I'm pretty sure everyone else would have been willing to stay another hour or so as well.

Here's the presentation if you are interested. For more RittmanMead papers and presentations go here.

It took well over an hour for Mr. Bryson to finally make his escape. He stuck around to answer lots of questions and make fun of me...wait, that was someone else...or was it? No matter.

If you get a chance to see Mr. Bryson speak, take it. He knows his sh...err...stuff.

NULL

OBIEE: Gotcha #2

This one bit me hard today and it shouldn't have. I should have followed my instincts...instead I trusted the tool. ID10T.

So here we go.

We use the Filters in the Security tool which can apply predicates based on the Group.

First, open up the Security Manager



You should see this


Then click on Permissions


I then, like an ID10T used the Expression Builder to build my predicate. This was a BETWEEN, so I went to Operators and found the BETWEEN and double clicked on it. Can you see what it did?


How about now?


That's right, it says "Upper Bound" first followed by "Lower Bound"

I knew that wasn't right...but I went with it anyway.

After the "mistake", I verified in SQL.

SQL>EXEC :C := 20;

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.


         C
----------
        20

SQL>SELECT * FROM DUAL WHERE :C BETWEEN 40 AND 10;

no rows selected

Elapsed: 00:00:00.18
SQL>SELECT * FROM DUAL WHERE :C BETWEEN 10 AND 40;

D
-
X

1 row selected.

Live and learn I guess. I'll never trust that thing again. One more reason to dislike GUIs.

NULL In Psychology

This morning we participated in a planning session for Kate's future.

They are trying to label her with "Intellectual Disability." Of course we pushed back on the issue, we know Kate is smart.

The school psychologist said she tested Kate twice for IQ and the results of those tests indicate that the label does fit. Asking questions about this, apparently Kate didn't really participate in these tests. We know she has behavioral "problems" which means she's just stubborn, probably like her mother, because I am most definitely not stubborn.

She's currently receiving Occupational, Speech and Behavioral therapies, in school and privately.

Anyway, the psychologist went on to suggest that Kate's IQ was at or around 70. We both balked.

So if Kate didn't truly participate (i.e. cooperate), how in the hell can she have a score? It sounds like NULL, or unknown, to me.

The psychologist then dropped the big bomb, "Kate's IQ is 70."

...

...

Really? How do you get that if she didn't participate (cooperate)? How can the absence of value be a value?

I'm usually the first to accept Kate's shortcomings...I hope that she will live a perfectly normal life such as you and I, but I am not oblivious to the fact that she may need help. What I will not accept is the unproven fact that she is "Intellectually Disabled."

Just needed to get this off my chest. Pardon the intrusion...go about your day now.