The “Who Ya Gonna Call” edition of Log Buffer, a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs.

July 28, 2006 – By Bill “Shrek” Thater

The “Something strange in the neighborhood” feeling happens to all of us at one time or another. When it does we all have people we go to for answers. This week I thought I’d wander through some of the places I go to look for the latest information and to get questions answered.

One of the first places I go is to AskTom and so does Robert Vollman. And as he points out in his AskTom post sometimes the questions and answers there are just funny.

And that leads to how to ask questions. Let’s not follow the example that Tom Kyte himself points out in Shine up that crystal ball shall we?;-)

If it’s security that’s the issue, I go visit Pete Finnigan’s blog where we find such gems as Blackhat Las Vegas 2006 and unwrapping PL/SQL. And hot off the press 07/27/2006: “How to bypass the protection implemented by DBMS_ASSERT” looks like SOL injection rears it’s ugly head again. Always a good read even if you’re not having security issues. Maybe especially if you’re not having them.

For more mind-stretching stuff I go visit Mark Rittman for things like Partition Exchange Loading using OWB10gR2.

I sometime go straight to the source and check Oracle Blogs where we find a whole bunch of stuff by Oracle employees like Allison Holloway’s post on her new PHP and Oracle book.

If it’s more general stuff you’re looking for like Monitoring Index Usage you can go visit Doug Burns. Just watch out for the monkeys.;-)

If MySQL is your platform of choice, and performance is suffering [I hate it when that happens.;-)] go visit MySQL Performance Blog to find such things as Extended EXPLAIN or MySQL EXPLAIN limits and errors.

If Postgres is more to your liking try Celebrity Deathmatch: Postgres vs. PostgreSQL or maybe Postgres compatible table names for MediaWiki. And you can always check the weekly news at PostgreSQL Weekly News – July 23 2006

Visiting my friend Niall Litchfield always produces some interesting coments like Listing RMAN backups and the importance of syntax.

And for those of you using SQL Server check with Brian Kelley for things like New SQL Server 2005 Books Online download available.

Another good source of information are the blogs at DBAZine.com where you’ll find people like Chris Foot with musings on being a DBA: The Non-Technical Art of Being a Successful DBA.

Archive Log

The no longer newbie Lisa Dobson [ as she points out in Happy Birthday Newbies Blog post] still has a lot of good information in her blog. like this blast from the past Studying for the OCA/OCP Exams – Hints and Tips that includes excellent advice for those of you taking the exams.

Finally, as a full disclaimer, most of the people mentioned here are friends of mine. Yup I am that lucky.;-)

Next week be sure to visit Doug Burns for Log buffer #4.

So as we say here in Texas “Y’all come back soon now, hear?”

the training was great, so much stuff my brain iches.  lost of things that we can use here to help things along.  if i get to implement them that is.

if you get a chance to go to one of his presentations, DO NOT pass it up.

She and her family are in my heart and thoughts.

lots and lots of stuff, much of which i can use to help my developer’s along.  and maybe some changes i can make in the database “black box” to help both our third party stuff and our in-house stuff run better.

i’ll be sitting up late tonight going over all the stuff ilearned and how to use it.

so far, nice hotel good food, good scotch.

my very own electronic leash.;-) which is strange since we don’t do on call, at least in the normal sense. i guess they just can’t stand not to be able to jerk my chain whenever they want.;-)