cluvfy and user equivalence

Oh how I've been looking forward to this week.

Why you ask?

This week I'm setting up my first Oracle RAC instance. SQUEEEE

New policies at work dictate that we start phasing out any non-Windows servers so I was given two new Windows Server 2008 machines to utilize.


I was hoping to use Oracle 11.2 since the new ASM features seem leaps and bounds better than 11.1, but 11.2 isn't out yet for Windows so I'm sticking with 11.1.0.7 for now.

Like any responsible DBA type looking at a new technology, I spent some solid time with the documentation. The Cluster Verification Utility immediately grabbed my attention as something that will be essential for me and I loved that I could use it at different phases of the setup to constantly reassure myself that everything was golden.

My first major stumbling block occurred when I tested for user equivalence in my two nodes:

runcluvfy.bat comp admprv -o user_equiv -n node_list -verbose

This kept telling me that it was failing on the opposite node, but the existing one was fine.

Numerous searches came up with the same two reasons for this:
1) Your user doesn't have admin rights on the server
2) Your user doesn't have the same password on both servers

Well I found a third reason today:
3) Your user isn't part of the ORA_DBA group

While Oracle's documentation does specify at some point to create this group, but it also mentions that on Windows, the OUI will do this for you, so I assumed that it wasn't necessary. Totally my fault, I assumed.

CVU success !!!!

Quote Of The Week

Can you create a detailed summary report?

How to scare off a customer

I walked into a auto repair shop today to get a tire leak fixed.   While waiting in the lobby I overheard the following conversation between a customer and a service representative:


Service Rep:  Okay, have you dealt with us before sir?  Would you be in our system?

Customer: I have, but it's been a while.

Service Rep:  How long are we talking?  There's a new computer system so you might not be in here anymore.

Customer:  I'm not sure how long it's been.  I'm sure Dennis set me up in there though.

Service Rep:  Well it wouldn't have been Dennis, he doesn't have access to set people up.

Customer:  Oh, well then he must have told someone to do it for him.

Service Rep:  HEY DENNIS DOESN'T TELL ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING, HE'S A NOBODY AROUND HERE AND PEOPLE IN THIS TOWN NEED TO START LEARNING THAT!!

(At this point my Hot Rod Monthly from 1997 that I found on my chair became far less interesting than events unfolding before me)

Customer:  Calm down buddy, I didn't mean anything by it.


And this was when the customer promptly left.  I'm not sure why this elderly gentleman needed to be held accountable for the internal squabbles of the shop or why everyone in the lobby needed to feel as awkward as a 15-year old boy who just discovered that his mom knows how to check browser history, but it was definitely more entertaining than I expected my tire repair experience to be.

My 2008 Goals

I've had a few issues this year making my list of goals. My main problem stems from separating goals from tasks. It's so easy to put down something like "paint the deck" or "fix the eaves trough", but these aren't really goals are they? They are tasks. A goal is something you aspire to, something that will permanently make your life or someone else's life better. Tasks are small manageable to-do's that help you achieve those goals

So here are my goals for 2008:

Become Financially Secure

• Start a savings account and deposit into it from every pay cheque.
• Establish and emergency fund that can either take care of a major house problem or support us for 3 months.
• Start an investment portfolio.

Work More Effectively

This will most likely involve waking up earlier (5-ish) and work my second job in the morning instead of at night when I'm less creative and motivated. This will also free up my nights for more time to put into my PMI certification.

Become More Handy Around The House

There are numerous projects to do around the house for 2008 and most of them will require I learn more about: carpentry, gardening and electrical.

Where I find my productivity

Being productive is very important to me, always has been. If I don't have a good list of accomplishments by the end of my day, I start to feel anxious and angry. Two emotions that don't suit me very well. I attribute this mentality to my parents, two people who are obsessively neat (not a bad vice to have) and are borderline workaholics. Although I've had a couple people in my life who have tried to convince me that these are bad attitude to have, they've never been all that successful. But I digress, this post isn't about why I am the way I am, it's about how I 'trick' myself into being my most productive.


The Importance of Planning

By far the most important thing for me is to plan my day. Without a plan, I'm about as useful as half a screwdriver. But is one plan enough for me? Goodness no. I will, at the very least, have two plans for my day. One will be my work day plan and one for my evening.

Schedule It!!!

A simple to-do list is not enough to keep me motivated. So as I create my to-do list for the day then, I assign a time value to each item. It's important to be as fair and firm as possible in this matter. You want to make sure you give yourself about a 10%-15% buffer, but not too big of a buffer, else Parkinson's Law takes over. By doing this, you can determine how much you should be able to do in a day.

So now you've got a shiny new to-do list with a reasonable time estimate. Time to schedule. Just like booking meetings in a day, I place my to-do items in a calendar. Order is extremely important. I put the least desired task first thing in the morning, when I have the most ambition. The most interesting tasks go at the end day. Whatever tasks are left, I'll schedule in order of descending time required.


Rewards


Rewarding myself is very important as well. For instance, if I schedule a very undesirable task in my day, I'll always put something fun or interesting right after it. Obviously, this reward will vary from person to person. I doubt you find learning about the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer as interesting as I do.


Conclusion

You may have noticed a pattern in what I've written. Everything revolves around my personality. Making yourself as productive as possible means knowing who you are and working with that. This is not for the faint of heart. It requires paying attention to how you behave under specific conditions over long periods of time. This may take months to get right, but if you can manage it, you'll find yourself getting more done than ever and even have more time for the things you enjoy.

What is a well rounded geek?

Short answer: a technologically versatile individual.

Long answer:

A well-rounded geek (WRG) is someone who who is not focused on any one technology, thus leaving them to be proficient in a multitude of types of projects. They are generally interested in every area of computing from circuit design to programming to graphic design.

These types of geeks are best suited for administration roles in SMB's (small to medium businesses) since these organizations typically run lean I.T. departments in which staff need to wear many hats to keep things running smoothly. You will, however, see WRG's in large organizations, but they tend not to last very long due to boredom unless there is lots of space to more around.

Levels of social skills seem to vary greatly in this group. Some well-rounded geeks prefer to work alone in the basement and would rather do everything themselves, while others crave a team-based environment and the ability to help others with their skill set.

Book Review - The Web Wizard's Guide to PHP

I recently finished a programming book that I was quite happy with. This may actually be the first time I've ever been really happy with a technology book. I've been content with many a book before, but never really happy with one.

There are a few reasons why I liked this one so much

1. It seems to be written for someone who already knows how to program and wants to add PHP to their knowledge base. Thus, it skips over the 5 page explanation of what a variable is, something that you find in many programming books because they all assume you've never programmed before.
   
2. It's short. With less than 200 pages and a smaller page size than your average book, you could easily finish this book in a weekend if you had to learn PHP in a pinch.
3. Full colour pages. Vain? Maybe. Trivial? Hardly. We are talking about a book on programming, there are bound to be some dry parts here people and those colour pages may just get you through that.

Now, I'd be a horrible critic if I didn't point out some bad parts of this book. The part I found the most frustrating about this book is the code descriptions. Each code example is followed by a bulleted description of the key lines in the example. The problem is that many descriptions are repeated over and over throughout the examples. There's a good chance that I can recognize the database connection string after the first twenty times I see it.

On the whole, however, I found this book an easy read that got down to business and showed the things I wanted it to. It didn't get into the crazy advanced functionality, but I don't think anyone would expect a book this size to do so.