Tom Kyte a false idol?

Umm, I'm realy confused by this Gog-like worship of Tom Kyte.

To me, "Tom Kyte" is the name of a product, a figurehead for a huge corporate marketing machine, and it strikes me a ludicrous that a group of intelligent people would not be aware of this.

Some folks feel that "Tom Kyte" is just another Oracle marketing tool, and no more real than Santa Claus.

As I see it, the real credit goes to an entire staff of real DBAs (and the Oracle development staff) who crank-out material with his name on it. As a VP, he has dozens of people to produce the voluminous examples on his web site.

One need to look no farther than his web site. During the week he spent at OracleWorld, hundreds of lines of answers were provided on his web site. No way he wrote all that at the same time he attended the conference.

It's easy to be right when you have the resources of a multi-billion dollar company behind you. I was also suprised to find that Kyte is not "worshipped" by everyone, and there are those who say that he is arrogant, snitty and insulting. I've been told that he sometimes refers to questions as "stupid" on his asktom web site, and openly insults people at public appearances.

Personally, I admire Steve Adams and Jonathan Lewis (and even Connor and HJR) far more, because they are self-made and have gained their reputations without the benefit of full-page ads in Oracle Magazine, etc.

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I like the self-made experts. . . . Received on Fri Sep 12 2003 - 22:34:27 CDT