Tim Hall

As far as the story goes, Doomsday is one of the most derivative films I’ve ever seen. The whole plague thing is very reminiscent of 28 Days Later, with a few scenes robbed from Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Rhona Mitra’s character (Eden Sinclair) was very much like Selene (Kate Beckinsale) in Underworld, with a bit of Milla Jovovich thrown in for good measure. Some of the story seemed inspired by Escape from New York and at one point I thought I was watching Mad Max II.

Probably the worst thing about the film was the product placement. If you watch the film you’ll know what I mean!

So that all sounds pretty damning, but I actually enjoyed the film. Rhona Mitra played the strong female lead really well and is soon to play Sonia in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the prequel to Underworld. Adrian Lester (from Hustle) was also pretty cool. Bob Hoskins is a legend. Several of the cast members of Dog Soldiers were present, which was cool. There are some nice scenes of Scotland, without going over the top in a Lord of the Rings style.

Maybe this film will appeal more to a British audience, due to the familiar cast and very British expletives, but it’s nice to see the writer/director Neil Marshall hasn’t gone all Hollywood and has stuck to his roots. I’m sure it would be more lucrative for him to do a Hollywood blockbuster or some Romantic Comedy drivel, but for now he hasn’t been seduced by the dark side…

Cheers

Tim…

Just released an article on Table Compression Enhancements in 11g.

Cheers

Tim…

Iron Man is the best superhero film I’ve seen in ages. It’s got some iconic scenes, some funny bits and some real actors. I can’t wait for the sequel (or is that SQL?).

Cheers

Tim…

After yet another post by someone whose database has crashed without running in archivelog mode and without having multiplexed redo logs, it makes me think it’s about time Oracle changed the default installation to include both these things.

Over the last few versions, Oracle have consistently made the database easier to install and use, but they still leave these gaping holes. Yes, archivelog mode is set if you choose to setup backups during the installation, but there’s nothing to stop you defaulting this setting even when backups are not initiated during the installation.

I realise some people will react by saying it’s up to the DBA to make this decision, but there are obviously lots of people out there that either don’t understand the issue, or don’t even know about it. It would seem sensible to me that Oracle install the product in the safest mode possible. Afterall, it’s no problem backing them out if you don’t need them.

I for one would rather have people complaining about disks filled with archived redo logs, than having unrecoverable databases.

Rant over.

Cheers

Tim…

I’m a big fan of the Oracle documentation, but sometimes things go astray. A recent question by Aman Sharm about SQL sharing critera highlighted this…

In the 8iR3 manual, the decision process for finding matching SQL is listed as:

1. The text string of an issued statement is hashed. If the hash value is the same as a hash value for an existing SQL statement in the shared pool, then Oracle proceeds to Step 2.
2. The text string of the issued statement, including case, blanks, and comments, is compared to all existing SQL statements that were identified in Step 1.

In the 9iR1 manual it was rewritten to include all the steps for identifying the match in a single bullet point:

1. The text of the statement issued is compared to existing statements in the shared pool.

   The text of the statement is hashed. If there is no matching hash value, then the SQL statement does not currently exist in the shared pool, and a hard parse is performed.

   If there is a matching hash value for an existing SQL statement in the shared pool, then Oracle compares the text of the matched statement to the text of the statement hashed to see if they are identical.

So the first line is like a summary of the whole bullet point, which is then expanded.

In the 9iR2 manual, this was reverted back to individual bullet points, but the author/editor must have assumed the initial summary line was a separate point, so a new step was introduced into the documentation of the process:

1. The text of the statement issued is compared to existing statements in the shared pool.
2. The text of the statement is hashed. If there is no matching hash value, then the SQL statement does not currently exist in the shared pool, and a hard parse is performed.
3. If there is a matching hash value for an existing SQL statement in the shared pool, then Oracle compares the text of the matched statement to the text of the statement hashed to see if they are identical.

And this is the way it stayed from 9iR2 to 11gR1.

I’ve raised a bug against the documentation, so it should get corrected now.

Cheers

Tim…

If you are reading this it means my blog has been upgraded to the latest release of WordPress (2.5.1).

Cheers

Tim…

I was standing in HMV the other day, trying to convince myself not to buy a Nintendo WII with WII Fit and SuperMario Kart, when I noticed the film Sky Blue was being sold for £5. I’d been toying with the idea of buying this for some time, but a reduction of $15 pounds forced my hand.

Like many of the Japanese Anime, this Korean Anime is set in a post apocalyptic (pollution not war) future. You can read more about the story here.

It’s like a grittier version of AppleSeed, with equally good visuals. If you like the genre, give it a try…

Cheers

Tim…

I went to see Street Kings at the weekend. In summary, good cops, bad cops and cops that don’t know if they are good or bad.

Keanu Reeves is OK. Forest Whitaker if very over the top, with a few scenes of frantic head wobbling. Not sure what to make of him.

It was OK, but it didn’t exactly change my life. There’s nothing in the film that warrants a big screen viewing, so you might be just as well waiting for the DVD rental.

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve just posted an article on SecureFiles in Oracle 11g. It looks like Oracle have done a pretty good job of improving LOBs in 11g. Depending on the LOB contents, and provided you can cope with the processing overhead, you can certainly save some serious space using the compression and deduplication options. Anyone who’s used Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) will recognize the encryption options.

I can’t see the old-style (BasicFile) LOBs lasting very long now this is in place.

Cheers

Tim…

My quest to read the Discworld series continues:

Lords and Ladies - This book starts where Witches Abroad finished. This time the witches have to prevent elves returning to the Discworld. Love, marriage, death and elves. What more could you want.

Men at Arms - I keep reading these books and saying, “This one is my favorite!”, only to read the next and have it become my new favorite, but Mean at Arms is a classic!

Cheers

Tim…

I spent yesterday looking at the Tablespace Encryption feature in Oracle 11g. If you’ve used the Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) feature in 10g release 2, you’ll see this is more of the same. The difference here is eveything in the tablespace is encrypted, rather than having to decide on a column-by-column basis. Just create the appropriate tablespace and Bob’s your uncle!

You may notice the article conveniently side-steps the Hardware Security Modules related functionality. I don’t have one so I can’t test it out.

For most of the stuff I work on, encrypting all the columns in a table is overkill, but I guess there are some areas where this is a big priority. It’s good to know it’s there in case you ever need it.

Cheers

Tim…

There’s some good stuff out on the net today:

• Tom is back and talking about the level of skills in the IT industry. I think we all share his pain.
• Mary Ann Davidson has a great piece on security. This links in nicely with what Tom was saying, in so far as it relates to skills with the IT industry, albeit from a security standpoint.
• Continuing the security theme, Pete Finnigan made some comments on my recent article on fine grained network access controls. I still get a kick out of being mentioned by famous bloggers, even if it is an attempt to keep me on the straight and narrow. Thanks for the heads-up Pete.
• Jake from Oracle AppsLab has a piece on the move back to the desktop. I find myself having conversations on this subject so often these days.
• Finally, David Aldridge is trying to add fuel to a fire.

Sorry to everyone I didn’t mention.

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve spent the last few weeks in discussion with Vodafone about what I believe is a scandalous bill for roaming data charges. Vodafone agreed to reduce the bill by 25%, but this still represents daylight robbery.

Fast forward a few weeks and the BBC’s Watchdog program highlighted several cases similar to mine, where people had been charged ridiculous sums of money for trivial amounts of data transfer. All the people mentioned in that program had their bills reduced by 100%.

Vodafone should apply the same discount to all people in the same circumstances, not make a big deal about a couple of high profile cases then exploit the rest of us.

I would like to take this opportunity to pass on a few bits of advise for anyone dealing with Vodafone, or any other mobile phone network for that matter.

• Do not deal with the regular call center. Go straight for the cancellations department and start your conversation with the phrase, “I want to cancel my contract.” As soon as you do this you will speak to someone who can actually make a decision. Invariably they will offer you something to keep you on your contract. This may be a bill adjustment or a new phone etc. I’m not saying you will get the perfect answer, but it’s a start.
• Write emails to every consumer show, ombudsman and regulatory body you can. Someone like Watchdog may pick up your case and shame the company into doing the right thing. I’m convinced if I had written to Watchdog one month earlier I would have had my bill reduced to nothing. As it is I’m Billy Anonymous and Vodafone are happy to ignore me.
• Be as big a pain in the butt as you can. They are exploiting you. The least you can do is give them a hard time about it.
• Vote with your wallet. Once this whole affair is over I will never put money into Vodafone’s pockets again.

I’m sure all networks are guilty of this sort of behavior, but I can only speak about my experience of Vodafone. After 10+ years of being a satisfied Vodafone customer, I can safely say I think they’ve now dropped off the bottom of my customer satisfaction chart!

Hell hath no fury like a Tim scorned.

Cheers

Tim…

I went to see Never Back Down on Saturday evening. The trailer looked like an episode of “The O.C.” or “One Tree Hill” with some fighting in, so I was expecting it to be really bad. On looking at the cast list, it turns out some of the cast have appeared in episodes of those shows, I wasn’t too far off the money.

The story is essentially just a remake of the Karate Kid movie, using Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) rather than Karate. Just like the Karate Kid movie, there wasn’t a great deal of martial arts in this film.

If you like vacuous shows like the O.C and On Tree Hill you will probably love this. If you go expecting to see a martial arts film you will be very disappointed. There were a few moments of interest, but for the most part it was well worth missing.

The trailer for Iron Man looks fantastic. Almost worth the cinema trip to see this trailer.

Cheers

Tim…

Continuing my OCP 11g upgrade campaign, I’ve been looking at Fine-Grained Access to Network Services in Oracle Database 11g Release 1.

This represents a pretty major security improvement for Oracle 11g. In previous versions the all-or-nothing security associated with database callouts was a little ham-fisted to say the least.

On the down side, I think it will confuse a few people when they are upgrading existing databases, but it’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind.

Cheers

Tim…

Yesterday was so confusing. The obvious April fools day jokes were fine, but I found myself starting to doubt everything. Towards the end of the day I started to just mark posts as read because I couldn’t be bothered to try and decide if they were fictitious or not. If any one said anything really important yesterday and was expecting me to read it, I’m really sorry, but I probably missed it.

I sound like a right grumpy old sod now.

Cheers

Tim…

I’ll be in Estonia on the 3rd & 4th of June doing a PL/SQL seminar. I’m guessing the details will be available here in the next day or two.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. If I get any more dates I’m printing a “World Tour” T shirt.

There’s been a lot of fuss about WordPress 2.5 over the last few weeks, most of which seems to be negative press about bad design of the adminstration pages.

Well, it’s finally here, and if you are reading this then the upgrade of my blogs have been successful.

I can’t say I really like the new administration pages much myself, but the blogs look the same and seem to work fine so I guess I can’t complain.

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve been playing around with Native Oracle XML DB Web Services in Oracle 11g Release 1 for a while and I’ve finally decided to release the article.

One of the reasons it’s been on the back burner for some time is I’ve been having trouble with the anonymous access configuration. I’ve still not got this sorted, but I decided to open it up and leave that section as a work in progress. I’ll keep looking at it and update that section if I get a satisfactory solution.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I received the following quote on Metalink from the “Global Technical Lead XML Database”:

“Anonymous access to web services is not possible. Direct PL/SQL access without authentication would be a massive security hole.”

I’ve got a bunch of half-finished aticles at the moment, but I’ve finally been able to close something off at last:

SQL Plan Management in Oracle Database 11g Release 1

Hopefully, I’ll get a couple of other things sorted soon.

Cheers

Tim…