RE: From ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L?

It seems to be a 2 step process.

Expand beyond Oracle (boo, I say!)

Go where others already live and participate (Twitter) – Yes! Getting folks to want to do email might be a toughie. And the web interface we have here is…quaint.

But I hang out here for the excellent discussions, and the content brings me back every day. TECHNICAL content, that is.

Twitter wouldn’t be ideal for a lot of the content here. And I’m not a big fan of slack. Just a more ‘modern’ message board say from the 90’s would be an improvement. Threaded message display, search, HTML…

From: Zahir Mohideen <zahir.dba_at_gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 11:42 AM
To: tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com
Cc: ORACLE-L <oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Subject: Re: From ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L?

Tim - 

it is a great idea to expand oracle_l to database_l .  

My question is , if we were to expand ,  are we restricting the discussions to RDBMS only or include NOSQL dbs as well. 

Usually , we ( I am also in SQL server side ) communicate in Twitter with #sqlhelp tag .

• Zahir 

Zahir Mohideen
HYPERLINK "https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__mfzahirdba.blogspot.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=RoP1YumCXCgaWHvlZYR8PZh8Bv7qIrMUB65eapI_JnE&r=N2hWu5HFsaIjmMkjQbnlokJ7uinNZMgPVk8rqPT9esM&m=D3wmFetKQo6XTHwCZCCRPSCfHi8L24k3lls1pplj2eU&s=oU1C4M5PW8rGHJbqfI3xcBdx73HnclUJm68bvio92Eg&e="http://mfzahirdba.blogspot.com/

Nothing so GREAT was achieved without enthusiasm

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:56 AM, Tim Gorman <HYPERLINK "mailto:tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com"tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com> wrote:

>> So, of course, I ask Oracle people about it.  :)

This thread is a good argument for expanding ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L.

There is a vibrant technical community in SQL Server and it is long past time that these communities cross-pollinated better.

As this thread shows, it isn't that one or the other DBMS is better, but they can be different in subtle ways which can trip up even the most experienced of us.

And, as this thread shows, many of us are tasked with administering both DBMS packages, in addition to PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I'm proud to cite my wife, HYPERLINK "https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__dbakevlar.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=RoP1YumCXCgaWHvlZYR8PZh8Bv7qIrMUB65eapI_JnE&r=N2hWu5HFsaIjmMkjQbnlokJ7uinNZMgPVk8rqPT9esM&m=D3wmFetKQo6XTHwCZCCRPSCfHi8L24k3lls1pplj2eU&s=VWiePUVQqQtgM2QrhsF1o7MKGsnLWfGk3TJaHuqsIto&e="Kellyn, as an example of this breed of renaissance geek, as she is currently president of both the HYPERLINK "https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__rmoug.org&d=DwMFaQ&c=RoP1YumCXCgaWHvlZYR8PZh8Bv7qIrMUB65eapI_JnE&r=N2hWu5HFsaIjmMkjQbnlokJ7uinNZMgPVk8rqPT9esM&m=D3wmFetKQo6XTHwCZCCRPSCfHi8L24k3lls1pplj2eU&s=aQ1bcQDueIBrxkjdPEraWUQMzlVqUQilJMn0jJresTs&e="Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group and of the HYPERLINK "https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__denversql.org&d=DwMFaQ&c=RoP1YumCXCgaWHvlZYR8PZh8Bv7qIrMUB65eapI_JnE&r=N2hWu5HFsaIjmMkjQbnlokJ7uinNZMgPVk8rqPT9esM&m=D3wmFetKQo6XTHwCZCCRPSCfHi8L24k3lls1pplj2eU&s=31h_49ieSiS-suj8nh1HcC4BX3qaGvtoUJ8ZSoKjMs4&e="Denver SQL Server users group, and she is likely soon to become the first person in the world to achieve both Oracle ACE Director (now alumnae) and Microsoft MVP recognition.

One noticeable difference between the two communities is age.  On average, Kellyn and I find attendees at SQL Server users group events to be about 10 years younger than Oracle users group events, based on unscientific eyeball observation.  Also, the SQL Server users group community has a much larger percentage of women attendees and speakers (i.e. about 40% for SQL to about 20% for Oracle).

As a result, while the ORACLE-L list has been yakking along happily here on email for the past 20 years, the SQL Server community has been largely conversing on Twitter.  Both communities blog at about the same rate and volume (in my opinion), and both communities seem to use LinkedIn to the same degree (in my opinion).  So, the biggest difference in online communication style seems to be email vs tweets.

So, if we were to go through the effort of changing from ORACLE-L to DATABASE-L (leaving aliases from ORACLE-L to point to DATABASE-L so folks can still find us), we would find adoption by the SQL Server community to be slow, because they would have a struggle paying attention to, and responding to, a high-volume email list.  There are undoubtedly good ways to integrate email and Twitter, and I'm sure they can be quite seamless, but the first question is:  what do y'all think?

How do you personally feel about discussing and learning about SQL Server as well as Oracle?  Would it enhance your prospects?

On 3/15/18 07:23, Rich J wrote:

On 2018/03/15 07:34, Jeff Smith wrote:

Brent is a friend and an ex-coworker. He wanted to share the background of this customer's scenario, in case it would help you with yours.

I let Brent know some folks were having...fun...with his take on autocommit.

Jeff

Heh heh heh, I can only imagine. The difference on optimistic vs pessimistic concurrency nailed it though - the default combo of optimistic & implicit transactions makes sense in Oracle, and the default of pessimistic and automatic transactions makes sense in SQL Server. It's when you change only one of those two settings that you're screwed.

The blog post stemmed from an app that had been written by SQL Server people, and then an Oracle guy came in and made a few changes. He switched to implicit transactions without understanding that everybody was doing single-line inserts/updates all over the place in code, not bothering to set transactions. He didn't understand the impact of what he was doing. (Not an Oracle jab by any means - the guy was well-meaning but just not prepared.)

We got called in because performance went straight into the toilet. Even worse, rollbacks were rolling back completely unrelated transactions, and nobody knew why, hahaha.

Ah, that context adds a lot to the assertion.  I still disagree that autocommit is a good practice for applications, whether it's Oracle or SQL Server, but I understand where Brent's coming from.

And my intent wasn't to have "fun", but a sanity check for myself.  IT changes constantly outside of my narrow focus, and as I've been following Brent's blog for years, that entry offers an opinion that is completely backwards of my understanding of how any modern RDBMS should work.

So, of course, I ask Oracle people about it.  :)

Thanks all for the sanity check!
Rich

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