Microsoft Office 12

Ever since Microsoft has released Windows Vista you may have seen that IT Gurus have un-leashed hell on Microsoft. I did the same. The reasons are quite understandable and clear for now and even Microsoft has realized it and now they have started talking about Windows 7. It is said that 90%of people or organizations that upgraded their desktops to Vista have now downgraded to XP again. Personally I am also not a fan of XP as well because in itself it is nothing as well. It is just a replica of Windows 2000 with some graphical enhancements. However I have a great deal of liking for Windows 2000. Windows XP however has the usability advantage over Vista and that is why it is still there. With Vista Microsoft also released its new Office suite (12) namely as Microsoft Office 2007.

So you are guessing it wrong, because today I am not to bash at Microsoft. Because MS Office is one of those things that I think Microsoft is really good at. Although this new release is really expensive in terms of memory and CPU usage but that's what the software's are tend to be with their new releases. I am using this office suite on Windows XP now days and did not found its interface all that difficult. Mainly I use Word, Excel and Outlook. I really don't have much time to discover its new features but one thing is there and that is with its new interface I found to be a real fun working on it. Outlook really looks amazing. As for as Excel is concerned well the thing I liked about it is listing of almost all the formulas in a separate tab. Also it has intelligence features that it provides while you type a formula. It reminds me of VS.Net which is simply awesome. And the last thing that I like the most is the ability to do blogging right from Microsoft Word. When you click on New it gives you two options of whether you want to create a Word document or a Blog Post. Well with powerful as the Word is in terms of editing I can make my blog posting much easier and much good looking.

Ora-Dim Utility

Oradim is an Oracle utility that is used to manage Oracle instance. It can be used to create, edit and delete an instance. Its typical use is when you had to manually create the instance for any reason. Among the reasons is when instance gets corrupted or when you are recovering your database after a media failure. For example if you want to create an instance then open the command prompt and issue the following command.

C:\oradim –new –sid crimson –syspwd oracle

The above command will create an instance named as crimson and the password for its sys account will be oracle. Now if you want to delete an instance then issue the following command.

C:\oradim –delete –sid crimson

This command will delete the instance. I was quite used to with these commands but here is something new that I discovered a few days earlier. Oradim can be used not only to start Oracle instance but also to start the database service at operating system well. The problem that I was facing was that I had Oracle 10g installed at home for playing. Normally I turned its services off and whenever required I turn them on. Every now and then I had to go to MMC and do the specific job. That is quite hectic, isn't it? So I searched and then devised a script that will do all the stuff for me with just a single click. It looks like this:

rem Start Listener

lsnrctl start

rem Start Oracle Database

oradim -startup -sid orcl -syspwd oracle -starttype srvc, inst

rem Start EM

set ORACLE_SID=ORCL

emctl start dbconsole

This script is for Windows. It first starts the Listener and then uses Oradim to start the database service and database itself. The parameter –starttype will define what to start. In this case both will get started. (srvc=service, inst=Instance)

Now if want to shutdown all these things then here it is:

rem Stop Oracle Database

oradim -shutdown -sid orcl -syspwd oracle -shuttype srvc, inst -shutmode i

rem Stop Listener

lsnrctl stop

rem Stop EM

set ORACLE_SID=ORCL

emctl stop dbconsole

For further options just type Oradim in command prompt provided that you have Oracle installed.

Oracle on Windows

Oracle and Microsoft are considered to be bitter rivals. Both are leading the software market of the world so the rivalry is understandable. But as the matter of fact both are forced to consolidate each other by their business needs. Just the hint of it, is the growing intentions of Oracle to support more and more .Net platform and Microsoft is doing vice versa as well. In this post I am not going to discuss their business policies about each other rather I will try to explain the specific Oracle architecture on Windows. Although Oracle is platform independent and most of the management tools of it run similar on every platform but of course there are differences as well. It is so because every operating system has its own way of handling resources and applications. Furthermore process and memory management are different as well.

Unlike Linux which is process based, Windows is thread based. In Windows process is not the work horse rather it is just a container to hold threads. Threads are created by the process that contains those threads. It then uses those threads for the real work. So when Oracle gets started a process initiates and then it creates the threads for the real work. So the different background processes that Oracle uses like PMON, SMON, DBWR etc are treated as threads by Windows. So you will not be able to see these processes in Task Manager, the same thing is possible in Linux. In Task Manager you will only see one process and mainly it will be named as Oracle.exe. This process will create individual threads for the working.

What this means for the DBA is to understand that when you start Oracle Database service from MMC then it does not mean that Oracle Database gets started. Although it is necessary to start the service but this does not guarantee the startup of Oracle Database. Normally when the Oracle service is on automatic start then it does both the tasks. But when you had to manually start then first you start the Oracle service and then issue startup command from SQL*PLUS while logging as sys. The first will create the Oracle process and startup command will start your instance (Oracle Background processes (individual threads on Windows) and Shared Global Area).

Google, the King!

Well the title of the post is huge statement especially when you talk about something as dynamic as web is. But I think and I believe that this is huge as well as it is true. Whatever Google has done in the web technologies, it has done it well and better then its competitors. Its search engine is known to the people who are not even aware of web even. And mail from Google better known as Gmail, well it simply rocks. Before Gmail I used Yahoo mail. With all due respect I found Gmail a much better option. With unlimited capacity, mail attachment of 20 MB, Ajax enabled interface, it is simply fun to use. Although similar type of options are available in other mail providers but they started it after Gmail took the initiative. That; is what makes it great.

Although my overall experience with Gmail is good enough but initially there were three simple things that made me fan of it. Those are the ability to use “.” in login name, its interface and the quickness with which it transfers large files. This last task really frustrated me when I was using Yahoo. It took hell of time to attach files and many times it just stopped giving an error message. The same thing happens with Gmail as well but not frequently. Further more and more web sites are using Google account for authentication so it adds a little more value to your Gmail account. And last but not least is iGoogle. It has some really wonderful gadgets. They will keep you updated on almost anything. It’s my homepage by the way.

The way Google has got to the top is amazing and the way it is staying up there is even more amazing and alarming for its competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft etc.

Read Carefully

Frequently it happens that while reading we ignore many things. Many times it just works but we should know what we are ignoring. A couple of weeks ago I had an interview for the post of Oracle DBA. I was really excited and was pretty much confident. In the session the person who was interviewing me asked the question that what is Instance Recovery and when and why it is done. In explaining my answer I said that when the changes of a committed transaction left uncommitted due to power failure or whatever then on next startup the SMON background process does the Instance Recovery and applies the changes of the committed transactions. The very next question was then what does the commit do?

He further explained the question that when you issue the commit command and you get reply of commit completed, then why the changes are not saved for the transaction. The question confused me at first but after a couple of minutes I figured out that commit only forces the writing of redo logs back to redo log files. It does not force the DBWR to write back to database files. So it ensures the data consistency without actually writing to the data files.

The point is that I have come through this concept multiple times but just not thinking about it caused confusion in my mind, although temporarily. Just early this morning I read it again and remembered the confusion that I encountered. So the tip of the day is to read, read, and read carefully.

OTN V/S MSDN

Normally I hate to say anything against Oracle. Well you may be guessing that I am against OTN. That’s exactly the case. The reason is its confusing documentation. I have found some really good things about Oracle from OTN but overall my experience with it is not at all pleasant. The things that can be explained very simply are written in an extremely difficult way. You will find bulk and massive amount of information but still you won’t be able to figure what exactly it is trying to say. However the equally good are Oracle Press Books. I have limited access to them but they are simply great. If you are interested in any Oracle Technology and you have got Oracle Press Book on that Technology then believe me you really need nothing else. But they don’t come for free.

Microsoft has always remained under series criticism and pretty much rightly so but here I will tell you two things what I love about the biggest giant of software industry. The things are named as Microsoft .Net and MSDN. Its not because of I hate Java but it is really true that C# .Net and VB.Net are amongst the very best languages of modern application development. And when you have the tool like MS Visual Studio then as a developer you are in heaven.

The other good thing is the documentation of MSDN. It is simply amazing. It rocks. You don’t even need Internet if you have it installed on your PC. Comparing MSDN and OTN is of no use as my words are saying everything. There are a lot of good things about OTN but the thing I am talking about is really confusing i.e. documentation. Oracle should try to simplify things rather then complicating. OTN can only help if you are well aware of the technicalities of under mention technology and you have to figure out some ordinary problems you face while working. I have never find it good enough to learn something from scratch.