RE: Patch 9.2.07 for Linux

Usually I don't reply to Mladen's rants, because I can't do anything about them. :) This time, however, he took my name in vain so maybe I should see if I can use some of those skills that those of us that are parents need to use to deal with teenagers to calm him down. ;)

Firstly, let me make it clear that I don't believe there is anyone on this list, either using an Oracle employee ID like I do or using a private email address, that can comment officially from the corporation perspective on emails such as this. I know of a few Oracle employees on this list, and I'm sure that there are others that I don't know of, who monitor the list purely and simply to provide technical input and help out where they can. That's all I can do, and it's all any of us can do. There are official channels for making comments like the ones Mladen has, and getting responses on them. This list is clearly not one of them.

Having said that, I'm certainly not saying that Mladen shouldn't make comments like this here. One of the real benefits I've always seen in a list such as this is finding out from other users what sorts of problems they're facing, and how they worked around those problems. It is a totally legitimate tool for problem solving in the wider Oracle community.

Coming back to why I haven't been responding to many emails on this list, it stems from two main causes. Firstly, as Nuno already commented I've been dealing with a health issue. I damaged my back (again) in late March, which finally resulted in a second round of back surgery at the end of July. During the intervening period, it's been difficult to even keep up with my real job let alone looking at emails. Secondly, at about the same time, I moved into a new role at Oracle, working in RAC development. Since I had to suddenly learn a lot of stuff that I hadn't needed to know in detail in my previous role, all the brain cells I have for Oracle work are now totally full with 10.2 RAC. Anything earlier than that has fallen off the LRU end of the BCBC (brain cell buffer chain). Once you guys catch up with me and start using 10.2 in anger, I might be able to help out more. ;)  

Pete  

"Controlling developers is like herding cats." Kevin Loney, Oracle DBA Handbook  

"Oh no, it's not. It's much harder than that!" Bruce Pihlamae, long-term Oracle DBA

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Mladen Gogala Sent: Tuesday, 23 August 2005 1:39 PM
To: oracle-l
Subject: Patch 9.2.07 for Linux

I have just been hit by the bug 3083560 which will be fixed in Oracle 9.2.0.7, if Oracle support is to be believed (and frequently, it is not). There was also a debate about the qualities of Linux, despite its apparent shortcomings (no streams, no reliable printing - CUPS is a joke, tuning kernel is a black art, not supported by books similar to the Adrian Cockroft's, variables like like freelim, freegoal, borrowlim and growlim don't exist and many other little things that I am reluctant to start explaining to Linux aficionados) in which I mentioned the qualities of Linux. I don't know who's fooling who, but Oracle is using Linux users as free beta testers. Support sucks. I received a confidential email in June, informing me that 9.2.0.7 for Linux is "packaged and almost ready to ship". The person who wrote that email, a member of this list, lied shamelessly. Patch was released for Solaris and Windows, both 32-bit, and for no other platform. The patchset was released on 7/21/05. What is the deal with the other platforms? Is Oracle Corp. development too incompetent to synchronize important patchsets? Do they need us to do some QA? WTF is going on? I am really ticked off now that I've been awaken for the n-th time because of the wondrous software quality of Oracle 9.2. Does anybody really know when Oracle plans to release this patchset? What will it take to persuade them? The quality of the software recently produced by the Oracle Corp. is beneath contempt, probably as a result of outsourcing to Elbonia. There used to be Oracle person which participated in this list, Peter Sharman, but he is not participating for a very long time. There are also few members of this list which participate as private persons, under various nicknames. Is there anybody from Oracle to address this outrage and tell us about the plans for making Oracle 9.2 as reliable as beta version of 7.3 used to be? Such haughty and condescending behavior used to be practiced by DEC. One of the companies that I used to work for switched to PostgresSQL (Wang Trading). At the time, I thought that Oracle is worth sticking with. Now, I am no longer that convinced. I believe its the time to start learning MySQL. Oracle will inevitably go down if it continues behaving like this. The mighty have fallen before. It seems to stimulate evolution. What Oracle needs is a dose of intelligent design.

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Mladen Gogala
http://www.mgogala.com

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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Wed Aug 24 2005 - 19:28:39 CDT