Custom domain and oracle dba from Nexus 7

About a month I decided to change the title of this blog from "Imran's Oracle blog" to "the amazing oracle". It wasn't just a name change but rather the idea change behind this blog. As I have another space of mine where I can share non oracle stuff so I decided this to make something purely oracle related. The new name voiced out from no where when I got rman duplication work like a charm on very first attempt.

Most pleasant thing about it was there was no such domain as yet. So I jumped on it and here it is finally this blog is going in a new direction with its own new name. The platform will still be blogger and I have no plans of changing it in near future. 

Also, I bought Nexus 7 about a month ago. I also recently moved from Windows to Linux and when I got WiFi working on it, I thought to access Linux shell from Nexus 7. After all it requires is a ssh client like Putty. 

I searched and found many ssh client for Nexus 7 and installed ConnectBot. Everything worked so smoothly and within 15 mins I was accessing linux shell from Nexus 7 while laying in my bed. 

When you can access linux shell, you can do just about anything with linux. So I jumped straight to SQL*PLUS and started to play with oracle.  Even took a backup of database using rman. :)

Blog, blog and blog!!!

I started this blog with a lot of passion. I was a student at that time and mindset was completely different than I have today. In course of three years I realized that even passion has its own limits and corporate world is much different than what we expect. Here is a bit techy example to explain my journey. :) I learned and believed that Oracle RDBMS is an almost perfect software that is ever written. Even the masterpieces like Linux Kernel suffer from dead locks but Oracle RDBMS does not. To this point I still believe in this theory but what I learned after when I came in real world business was even more surprising. Oracle may be the perfect software but that does not mean it won't have any problems. After all there are situations in real world where Oracle RDBMS is dependent on Softwares like Windows operating system.

When I started blogging my world was hardly anything more than Oracle and Blogger. So the hurdles were minimum. As time went along and money became a more prominent factor in dictating the road that I need to follow, things changed. When I learned the hard truth that the Golden era of web when every blog and website can make money was over; this passion of mine suffered more because I required to look after other things more than blogging because from there my livelihood was coming.

Although I never quite blogging permanently but the thing that suffered the most was this blog of my own where I started all. My blogging range expanded from Oracle to include Cricket, general tech, Smart Phones, tablets, Social Media and of course I also blogged a lot about my new found love i.e. iPhone; but that was on some of my close friend's websites. 

This is my third coming back to myself and I hope that I can keep up with it. But the plan is more realistic this time and the goal is simple for now i.e. blog two to three times per week and mostly on Weekends. 

Firefox out Chrome in

I used and I loved Firefox for almost six years. Much of the time I did not even considered anything else but then Chrome came in. The first thing that got my attention was that it is from Google but then I was unable to leave my Firefox. I continued to use Firefox despite the fact that the Chrome was just too much appealing.

It ended last week and finally I have switched to Chrome. It's lighter, more attractive and even now it looks like that people behind Firefox has admitted the fact that Yes Chrome is better. If you are wondering what I am trying to say then just download the beta version of Firefox 4. You will be surprised if you are a fan of Firefox that actually they have copied the interface of Chrome. Same goes for IE 9 beta. I think I have found a new love.

This pretty much makes this prediction of mine true!!!

Oracle EBS – An Introduction

Oracle E-business Suite is a software package that lets an organization manage the key business processes. The better way to understand it is to imagine the world without it.

Automation is the key. Companies tend to automate processes to save time, money and other resources. Usually in a world without Oracle EBS or any other ERP software for that matter, there will be department specific applications where every department would have built its own application using some technology. So in one organization there would have been tens of different applications quite possibly built in different platforms. And there is also possibility that all those applications may store same data independently thus resulting in data duplication. For example the employee information is something that most departments in an organization need. Now here is a software package, mind you one software package that does this all. That removes all those applications numbered in tens and storing same data independently without any integration. And even if there is an effort of integration which is a must have for any company that will be cumbersome. And managing all those applications with proper integration can be a nightmare with heavy budget.

Oracle EBS does this all. Manages all parts of business processes, stores data only once and makes it available to all other applications with an integration that stands out. But it is software package not just single software which it looks and behaves like. There are many applications (GL, AP, Absence, Expense etc) that are bundled into product families (Financials, HRMS, CRM etc). And this fact adds more beauty to it. This modular nature of EBS allows you to implement parts of EBS rather than whole package at once. For example it is perfectly OK if you just want to implement Financials and nothing else. And as business and need grows you can add more product families to it without any hassle and without worrying about integration issues between existing and newly implemented modules.

What’s in the Name!!! Oracle

It is quite a debatable topic of what is meant by an Oracle DBA/Architect when he utters the word Oracle. It's a question that is one of the earlier confusions of a novice when he enters in Oracle world and also it's a question that creates a rift in the mind of some seasoned Oracle practitioners as well.

According to Greek Mythology Apollo was termed as the God of fine arts and reflections. To help his followers in the matters of public relations and others Apollo used to speak at its temple. Apollo chose an older woman to convey his messages to common people. The name of that woman was Pythia and she spoke through meaningless cries which were only understood by priests. Those meaningless cries were called Oracle. So every time a person needs any advice from Apollo he would go to the temple and asked for Oracle. The word Oracle means "thing of wisdom".

In modern era Oracle was the name of a project of CIA in early 70s. That project vanished pretty soon and today Oracle is something else. Inspired from Codd's twelve rules for relational model for databases Larry Ellison suggested IBM to build a DBMS that uses those twelve rules. Upon IBM's refusal Larry Ellison and Bob Miner decide to quit their jobs in IBM and work for their own. They hired a room and started to build a DBMS that used relational model of databases. They build their first version in 1980 but did not commercialize it. In 1982 the second version came and they decide to name it Oracle. Today that product is the most popular and most reliable DBMS to ever exist.

It is still amongst the most amazing things in computer world that with all the rapid progress in the software and hardware industry, after almost forty years the basic elements in database design are still Tables, Columns and Rows. It's not because of lack of innovation in database area, it's only because of the fact that those ideas from E.F. Codd were so strong that there never has been a better alternative to that. And the only person to realize the potential of these concepts in late 70s was Larry Ellison.

Now back to the question what's meant by Oracle in today's world? There are three entities that are termed as Oracle and they are Oracle Corporation (Name of the company that Larry Ellison and Bob Miner started in 1978, at that time it was known as Relational Software Inc. Named to Oracle in 1983 and is the second largest software company in the world today.), Oracle Database (The physical set of files that makes storage and retrieval of data possible) and Oracle Server (The RDBMS, the software written in C Language that retrieves and manipulates the data stored in Oracle Database). As you can see that each one of these three entities has their own unique name i.e. Oracle Corporation, Oracle Database and Oracle Server. But for ease and for sometimes for style people rarely use the complete name of all three entities and simply say Oracle. The context on which the name is pronounced determines what is meant by Oracle.

Chrome, Firefox 3.5 and IE 8

I am not a web master, not even an ordinary web developer. But as an IT professional I really have deep interest in browser market. As of any writing these lines are not final words but just what I think about these products.
Chrome is relatively new in market as compared to the two others but you can’t ignore it because of one single reason and that is “it is from Google”. My personal experience with it is simply exciting. I am impressed the same way as I was when I first used Gmail. The most amazing thing about it is how light it is in use. Whether it is starting up, closing, tab switching and whatever; it is extremely light in use. I am saying this because I have Firefox on the same hardware as I have this and in certain matters like startup it is much better than Firefox. The interface is really beautiful and easy to use with minimum amount of menus and buttons which give you the maximum area of your screen for the actual website. Even the status bar only appears when it is needed, once the website is completely open it becomes transparent.
Firefox has been my personal choice for the past two years and if I am not wrong it holds the maximum market share as well. The biggest advantage that Firefox had over the others is the large members of Mozilla community backing it up and the biggest add ones collection which can change your browsing experience into much more than just surfing. Experts say that Firefox 3.5 has not come up to the expectations but still I think it has got better than ever. The speed and memory consumption has definitely improved.
When I first started using computer I was really of the point of view that internet means Internet Explorer. To use internet you must have IE. And this continued for a long time until one day I saw Opera. But I think the credit here is not for IE rather it goes to Windows. Windows is leading OS in desktop market and most people use IE just because they are used to it not because of some personal liking or disliking. I never liked IE until its most recent version 8. With light tab switching, In-private browsing, paragraph bookmarks, compatibility view, and being not as heavy as IE 7; IE 8 does carry a lot of weight. It is also the first version of IE that is built according to W3C standards. So a website designed for W3C HTML will run perfectly in IE 8; no separate development required.
So what’s my take? I have profound love for Firefox but ever since I have installed Chrome (a few days back) I have not used Firefox. Have I found a new love when it comes to internet browsing? It’s a question that I can’t answer right now. Only time will tell that whether I am switching to Chrome or staying with Firefox or may be both.

Internet Explorer-8

When it comes to Internet browsing Mozilla Firefox is the dominant force. Mostly because almost every new feature usually first appears in Firefox and then in others. It has some amazing features and add-ones that simply rock. Your browsing experience gets a whole new turn and you feel much more fun and joy. Usually these features seem to be more prominent in office rather than at home because you are much busier in office. I was, I am and will always be a great fan of Firefox because it's a love lost for me. My IT department says that you can only use Microsoft products on your PC because they are safe. Highly arguable point especially when it comes to choosing between Firefox and IE. When they first time removed Firefox I got annoyed and felt like in no man's land. I missed a lot of things among which the most important was off-course tabs. To get tabs I downloaded Internet Explorer 7 and installed it and uninstalled it after three hours. I don't know what extra features it provides but it simply fails in providing the most basic service I.e. Fast Browsing. It can't even handle Oracle Applications that run through JInitiator. I am not a fan of Java but all I know is that it has no problems with IE-6 but I tried all the things that I knew but failed to make it run on IE-7. Where is Internet Explorer-8 (topic)?

For two months I used IE-6 without any liking and disliking until one day I saw Internet Explorer-8 beta download on Microsoft website. It must be tabbed so I just jumped to it. After using it for a little while I came to realize that it has same problem while running JInitiator. For my amazement and pleasure there was a solution for the problem. The name of the solution is Compatibility View. To understand it first we need to know that what Microsoft was doing before IE-8 and what they have changed in IE-8.

The biggest complain about IE for many years was, it is not adherent to the W3C standards. So the websites designed according to W3C standards displayed shabby in IE and websites were need to designed separately for IE to target the audience that use Microsoft and IE. Starting from IE-8 Microsoft has finally changed the scheme of things; IE-8 is completely adherent to the W3C standards. Done, but what about the websites that were designed specifically for IE? Those websites will run OK on prior releases of IE but will not run properly on IE-8. This is where Compatibility View comes into play. You can turn on Compatibility View for a website that does not display well on IE-8 and IE-8 will display the website to its best using Compatibility View. You had to do this only once and after that IE-8 will recognize it automatically. So that's it I turned on Compatibility View for JInitiator websites and now they work fine until I try to close them; they never get close gracefully and you had to use Task Manager's kill process weapon. Can't figure out why this is happening.

Another very interesting feature of IE-8 is Suggested Sites. Turn Suggested Sites on to get a list of websites that are related to your current browsing session. Another one is that you can bookmark a page as well as individual paragraphs and lines inside a page. Another one is tab colors. The related tabs (a tab opened from a link in another tab) are colored same. It helps a lot in tab tracking. I think these features are new and others will be following it soon. Furthermore IE-8 now saves a session for you if you accidently lost the session due to power outage and gives you the option of reopening it next you start IE (similar to one in Firefox). And last but not in any mean least is that it is light in use while you are switching between tabs unlike its predecessor i.e. IE-7.

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.

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.

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.

Cricket! A Love Lost

Since my childhood I used to love cricket. I used to watch it and I used to play as well. That love is long lost. If I had to figure out then it would be the World Cup ’99 that made me allergic of it. The cricket of Pakistan now a day is shameful. We have not an even a single world class player. Take a look at our team and you will have no desire to sit in front of your TV watching your heroes mugging around. Gone are the days when we had players like Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saeed Anwar, Aamer Sohail etc who used to win matches for us. I even have some strange feelings while talking about cricket of Pakistan right now.

Bad time comes on everything. It’s not at all shameful but I think this is not simply a bad time for Pakistani cricket. When you had a president who does not know heck about cricket then what else you can expect. The problems are in wide range and the most basic of them all is that we in Pakistan have undeserving people at the top in each and every field of life and PCB is no exception. PCB has never done anything useful for the cricket. They mishandled each and every issue. The recent issue regarding Shoaib Akhtar is one prime example of that. Don’t even think for a second that I am a fan of this so called cricketer. I think the problem with him is that he made a wrong decision when he decided to be a cricketer. He should have been a model or an actor but who knows what he had done there.

This may seem a bit harsh especially considering the fact that we have cleaned sweep a series. I will not mention the team because it will generate another conspiracy. May be we should invite Holland or Zimbabwe again and then again Bangladesh so Shoaib Malik could have an unbreakable winning streak as a captain.

Microsoft’s .Net

Since the beginning of this year I am closely attached to .Net platform. I feel that I will be selfish if I do not talk about this revolutionary application development IDE. Well I am not a very good .Net developer and neither I can be in this short amount of time. I am just going to discuss what I feel about it in my little experience. Well in very simple words I would like to say that I like it. And I really appreciate it and love developing in it. All the promising things that you find in Microsoft documentation like ease of development, CLR features and language independence are there.
I have been mostly tightened to VB.Net. The language is great in itself especially with the introduction of Object Oriented Programming. Whether it is pure object oriented or not is an issue that is very daunting in itself but it really has some very sound OOPs implementations which I think are a lot better then its counter part Java or at least they are really simple to use as compared to Java. Another significant enhancement from previous version of VB is the introduction of proper Exception Handling methods. The old “On error resume next” was simply pathetic but that at least made Windows 98 to run despite everything that happen with it internally.
If you are a .Net developer then I would like you to share your thoughts and correct me.

Free Books

Following is a link to a very useful site of free books on almost all topics relating to computers. It also provides links to other sites of of free books.

Click Here to Follow!

Problem during installation and configuration of oracle on Windows Server 2003

Normally Security is considered to be an unknown word in Windows environment. And it is true. Because if you are a Windows user then you know that up till Windows 2000 there is no built in firewall. Quite frankly I am not a system administrator and do not know what is precisely needed to be a secure operating system. But I have lots of experiences relating Oracle on Windows and I have found that most of the time those sayings seem to be true. Except for one day when I tried to install Oracle database 10g release 1 on Windows server 2003.
Before that day I was quite used to install and configure most of the Oracle products on Windows XP. The first mishap which was frustrating me for over 6 or 7 months was not been able to find a right CD of Windows server 2003 (thanks to piracy). When I got one from one of my class fellows (for which I am really thankful to him) because it was not only a right CD but also was a purchased version. I installed it and went straight to Oracle. For my first surprise the installation stopped for reasons I was unable to understand. When I read the documentation service pack 1 was required. So I consulted the same friend of mine again and got it. Installed it and then inserted the Oracle CD again.During the installation of Oracle Windows firewall throws some exceptions. If you block them or unblock them it really does not matter if you are using Windows XP but it does if you are using Windows server 2003. Even simply turning firewall on can cause problems on Oracle side of things? I got this lesson after two or three failed installations and you probably know that uninstalling Oracle is much more difficult then installing. So keep firewall off.
After that Oracle got installed and up and running. I took a long breath and then putted Oracle developer suite CD in and started its installation. It got installed within no time. When I run the form for demo it stuck. When you are using Oracle developer suite 10g the forms will run in browser and first time it will ask for the installation of JInitiator (an Oracle utility to run java applets). But there was no such thing. The browser opened and stuck every time I tried to run the form.I tried my level best to fix the problem but to no avail. I checked the firewall which was off, I tried to start the listener on different ports but to no avail, everything else was just fine enough except the browser gets stuck. Just playing around tired and exhausted I opened the internet options. Turned the browser security level to low and then run the form. It worked. I jumped with joy and wondered that is it the operating system whose name starts with ‘W’.