Re: How do I set ORACLE_SID in windows NT environment

From: Mark Bole <makbo_at_pacbell.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:33:29 GMT
Message-ID: <JUnvd.33574$zx1.11998@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>

Howard J. Rogers wrote:

> hpuxrac wrote:
>

>> snip
>>> informed of this.  My advice was, in my opinion, helpful, and is
>>
>> Man oh man i guess we have far different ideas on what being helpful
>> is.

>
>
> It's a funny thing, but there seems to be a number of posts lately that
> equate kindness and helpfulness, or politeness and helpfulness. No-one
> ever seems to point out that honesty can be helpful, even when it is
> honesty to a painful degree.
>

[...]
> HJR
>
>

Maybe because those who value getting the computer to do what is needed in the most direct and efficient way already understand this, and don't need to point it out? Having been criticized myself with the comment "it's not what you say, it's the way you say it", I often wonder why it   isn't the other way around: "it's not what you heard, but the way you chose to hear it".

To echo Joel's comment in that other thread about Sybrand, it's frustrating that there is a well-entrenched camp of "feel-gooders" who think that the same skills that make for a successful massage therapist can translate to a successful system or network administrator. (Note: I am making a general statement, not type-casting any specific individual responders to this thread).

I actually had the experience of being told by a "senior" co-worker (brother-in-law of the company co-founder), who spent two years (!) in a fruitless effort to design and implement a robust database batch process -- which I and another co-worker then had to spend two months successfully re-creating from the ground up -- that it was just "my way" of doing things, not necessarily a better way. This same person eventually almost got me fired, not for any personal attacks, but simply because I documented every one of his many technical mistakes that I had to fix, and he somehow thought that was unprofessional.

Of course I understand about organizational politics -- hey, I was a boss for ten years myself, and considered it part of my job to motivate and get the most from the "feel-gooders" I inherited or had foisted upon me, even at the expense of some sub-optimal technical solutions. But that's what a boss is paid for -- not Usenet posters.

Having said that, the lessons learned from this specific post, beyond those in the "FAQ - how to get an answer", are:

1. don't confer a "guru" title upon yourself -- calling yourself 'sexystud' in the personals may be OK, but not here.
2. If you have a simple question, just ask it - don't provide a lot of extraneous information trying to show that you are an old hand at this, as it will probably backfire.
3. If someone says "I am basically a Unix person", it doesn't necessarily mean they are not an Oracle person. Corollary -- anyone who is a "Unix person" should have little problem figuring out basic things in Windows. I would have to agree that anyone who says they need help setting a Windows environment variable is probably not very knowledgeable about either Windows or Unix, certainly not at the DBA level. And this is clearly a RTFM question.
4. the marketplace is not efficient - lots of people get hired to do DBA jobs in place of more qualified people, perhaps because the customer is one who values kindness or politeness over helpfulness.

-Mark Bole Received on Mon Dec 13 2004 - 15:33:29 CST