General Administration

March 24, 2013 As I type this blog article I am in the middle of reading a second book on the topic of Windows Server 2008 R2.  I bought the books several months ago, possibly even a year or two ago, and just had not found the time to invest in reading yet another dry […]

February 14, 2013 A couple of days ago I noticed that an interesting set of search keywords were used to access this blog.  The search keywords: What does it mean when a select statement in Oracle is using 100% cpu I had two thoughts when I first saw that set of search keywords: Well Done! […]

November 25, 2012 (Modified December 7, 2012) Compatibility problems?  Visual Basic 6.0, released in 1998, is not officially compatible with Windows 8 Pro 64 bit… or Windows 7, or Windows Vista.  But I still like the language a lot for its simplicity, rapid development, and significant pre-existing code base within my company.  Of course, Oracle […]

October 22, 2012 Lately, I have been busy with a couple of items that are not completely Oracle Database specific.  I tried experimenting with high definition 1080p security cameras.  After wasting an unacceptable amount of money to purchase two Y-Cam Wireless High Definition 1080p video cameras (model YCBLHD6), and spending in excess of 38 hours fighting with the cameras [...]

September 17, 2012 Sometimes humor is a good recipe for undo.  A mid-50s man was driving down the road, riding a purple mule, when he saw a house with a new window.  Uninvited, the man decided to take a closer look using an obvious tool of choice, a tire iron (YPDNTI).  Elapsed time, roughly 60 seconds.  [...]

September 3, 2012 (Back to the Previous Post in the Series) In the previous article in this series, a question was posed regarding how many SQL statements would be required to generate the following report, which displays in Microsoft Excel: A significant number of items regarding the report require explanation: Employee IDs and employee names [...]

September 2, 2012 (Back to the Previous Post in the Series) (Forward to the Next Post in the Series) Over the course of the last six months I developed several efficiency reports for the machining facility where I work, measuring the average time required to complete a customer’s part compared to the engineering standard “target” run [...]

August 26, 2012 (Forward to the Next Post in the Series) As those of you who have read this blog’s About page probably know, my day to day job responsibilities involve a lot of activities that are not specific to Oracle Database performance tuning, or even remotely Oracle DBA type activities.  Those extra acttivites are part of what [...]

April 26, 2012 Last week I posted a popular article that questioned the effectiveness of showing a job candidate a raw 10046 trace file that was captured at level 12, asking the job candidate to evaluate whether or not the SQL statement in the 10046 trace is efficient.  Many of the commenters suggested that the [...]

April 18, 2012 I saw an interesting thread on the OTN forums this morning that forced me to stop and think about several items.  The thread contains a question posed during a recent job interview – one of the best questions that I have seen (dare I say, better than one I might have crafted myself).  [...]