The Well Rounded Geek

cluvfy and user equivalence

2009-11-24T15:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-05-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Can you create a detailed summary report?

How to scare off a customer

2008-04-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-12-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-17T09:52:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-11-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

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

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.
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.
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.

MySQL Windows Install

2007-10-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

I recently agreed to do some PHP/MySQL
development and since I don't have a proper test environment setup at home, I
thought it might be a good idea to make a quick walkthrough on how to set one
up. Today's post will focus on installing MySQL 5.0 on a Windows XP
machine. Please note: this is only intended for someone who doesn't have
any MySQL knowledge, but wants to start playing around with it.

Step 1: Get your software

Since MySQL is an open source project, there are numerous
places for you to download the software. The most popular is most likely
www.mysql.com which is run by a company called MySQL AB. You can download
a copy of the DBMS (Database Management Software) from this link:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html

Download the copy of MySQL 5.0 for windows that comes with Setup.exe, this will
give you the easiest install.

Step 2: Begin the install

Using whatever unzipping software you have laying around (WinZip, WinRAR,
Ultimate Zip, etc.), unzip the download and double-click on setup.exe

Step 3: Next, Next, Next....

Click Next at the Welcome Screen and next again to select the typical
install and next once more to start the install. The typical install gives
you everything, but some developer tools such as C libraries and some example
scripts. You may have to click next through some advertisements for the
enterprise edition of MySQL, then take the option to configure your database.

Step 4: Configuration

I'm now going to recommend going the detailed route, this will ensure that
MySQL uses the least amount of memory on your machine which most likely has many
other apps on it. Make sure that Detailed Configuration is selected and
click Next. Select Developer Machine and click next again, click next
until you see a window with a checkbox that says Include bin directory in
Windows PATH, check that box and click next. Enter a password you'll
remember into the two text boxes and click next, then execute.

Step 5: Okay, now what?

You can access the MySQL interface by either going to:

Start -> All Programs -> MySQL -> MySQL Server 5.0 -> MySQL Command Line Client, or
Go to your command line (Start -> Run and type in cmd and press enter) and type in mysql -h localhost -u root -p

Once you enter your password you should have a prompt like mysql>

You can create your first database by using the command create database database_name where database_name is any name you see fit for your first database. Now just type use database_name and starting writing SQL statements till you can't stand the excitement anymore.

Facebook can save your friendships

2007-09-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

Many of my friends as of late have been commenting on how facebook has stopped to peak their interest and I have to agree with them. I do, however, think that this type of social networking software is incredibly important and here's why.....

I'm fortunate to have a number of fantastic friends in my life. Unfortunately the majority of my friends live in other cities which are anywhere from 45 minutes to 6 hours away. This is not an uncommon scenario for people in their mid-twenties. All of your friends are now out of school and starting their lives where ever they happen to find work.

My girlfriend and I try to use the summer to go out and visit as many of our friends as the number of weekends will allow us to and during this visiting I have noticed a common pattern. The first night normally consists of catching up, but not as much as you'd think. The conversation of "what's new?" normally dries up in an hour or two. "How can this be?" you think to yourself, "I haven't seen this person in ages, there must be more to talk about". The conversation naturally drifts to other topics and the weekend goes on. In my experience in this matter, I've noticed the things that I want to know about come out over the next day or two, the little things. Let's face it, it's in those little things where true friendship lives, not the "How's the PH.D going?" or "How's the new band working out?", but in the "Well exactly how many cats DID she have?" and the "Wasn't this pizza box on the counter the last time I was here?" and, unfortunately, these are the kind of things you miss in long distance friendships. Unless you are one of those types who e-mails their friends at least twice a week, which I will admit I am definitely not. I know I know I feel awful, feel free to tell me what a horrible person I am in the form of a strongly worded comment.

This is where the magic of facebook comes into play. Every day I can log in and get the summarized version of all my friends lives. I can leave the pizza box message on a picture, I can ask about a friends status being set to "How many f@#ing cats does a girl need?".

This is something our parents never had, the ability to keep in touch in a more meaningful way with all of those friendships we never want to lose.

Things I need in my Quick Launch Bar

2007-09-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

If you aren't familiar with the Quick Launch bar in Windows, it's definitely time to meet him. It's a section on your task bar (you know the one at the bottom of your screen with the infamous Start on it). This part of that bar holds small icons that you can use to quickly access your favourite programs. Most of the time this little friend is either over-utilized and is full of icons for things you never actually click on (such as QuickTime or RealPlayer) or it is under-utilized on not even active on your bar. If you wish to activate your Quick Launch bar, just right-click on the task bar and select Toolbars, then click on Quick Launch (if it isn't already checked off).

Now it's time to add some programs. To add programs to it, just drag them from the spot where you normally get to them onto the Quick Launch bar. Some programs that I highly recommend are:

Calculator - how many times have you searched through your computer for this program?
Notepad or Wordpad - always useful.
Paint - another staple.
Firefox or Internet Explorer - or both if you are testing your website designs.
You mail program - if you don't use a webmail service like gmail

You may also see in your Quick Launch a blue square icon. This is a great tool, it will instantly minimize all the programs you have open. Great for all you power multi-taskers

Oracle - Default Date Format

2007-09-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Oracle databases maintain a default date format. This format is automatically used when utilizing SQL functions such as to_date() and to_char() without specifying the optional format parameter or when simply referencing a date in a query.

Example:

By default, the query: select sysdate from dual;

will give a result that looks like 10-Nov-07

You can change the default date format for your session by issuing the command:

alter session set NLS_DATE_FORMAT = 'format string'

where the format string is any representation you can come up with. Some of the more common items are:

Mon - first 3 letters of the month with the first letter capitalized
Month - full name of the month with the first letter capitalized
DD - two digit number of day
Day - full name of the day with the first letter capitalized
YYYY - four digit year
YY - last two digits of year

You can also use any delimiters you wish. Example: select to_char(sysdate, 'Month DD, YYYY') from dual;
would yield:

November 10, 2007

Note: using alter session will only change this parameter for your session, once you exit the session the format is set back to what is was when you logged in.

Nike+ Sport iMix

2007-09-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

As a fan of all things Apple, I naturally have an iPod and use it everywhere. With an amazing piece of technology and the super aggressive marketing campaign how could you not love these things? Heck, there's a commercial with those enticing Caribbean rhythms and happy-go-lucky dancing silhouettes on the television as I type this out. Hmmm, I COULD use another iPod...

The great thing about having a digital media player is the new world that it opens up. A world of videos, smart playlists, podcasts and constantly feeling ripped off because the next model came out two weeks after you bought yours, awaits you.

One of my favourite things I can now do with my iPod is the Nike+ Sport iMix. Thanks to the wonder of cross-corporate marketing, the good people at Nike and Apple have teamed up to sell us a product that makes working out with our iPods easier. The iMix is essentially an album you can purchase through iTunes. This album comes with a mixed group of about 10 songs and an extra track that consists of all the songs stringed together with a professional trainer speaking over top them. The trainer gives you instructions geared towards helping you increase an athletic ability.

I'm sure a pro has no use for such a purchase, but as an amateur runner I found it quite useful. I highly recommend Increase your speed 1, it has a great mix of songs and I actually saw results within a couple weeks. The trainer makes an appearance about twice a song and gives some basic instruction that, when all brought together, gives a solid 40 minute workout. I find that the workout is much easier on a treadmill instead of the track, but it definitely works in either scenario.

Some of the lineups on the other iMix's didn't look all that appealing to me, but there's definitely enough variety there to keep me busy for a while.

vi - Part 4: Accepting your mistakes

2007-09-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

Not many people in this world of ours are perfect and it's probably safe to say that you aren't one of them. I would have seen you at the meetings. Since you aren't perfect, you make mistakes and typing mistakes are as common as messed up orders at a McDonald's drive-thru. Fortunately, computer types have known this since program one and thus we have the editor in text editor.

Lets start out the usual way and open up vi and type a few lines of text. Throw in some mistakes to fix as well and go back to command mode.

Deleting Text

vi gives us a few options for removing text from our document. As you might have already guessed the x key is our workhorse in this scenario. I will compare the lowercase x key to del (delete from the right of the cursor) and a capital X to backspace (delete from the left of the cursor). A capital D will delete from the cursor position to the end of the line and a double lower case d (dd) will delete the current line. With all of these commands, we can type a number before them to perform the operation a number of times.

Undoing

Just like any good text editor, we also have the ability to undo the previous action(s) we have just performed. The u command will undo the previous action and a capital U will undo any changes made to the current line.

Excel - Deleting Empty Rows

2007-09-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

How to delete those pesky empty rows in Excel

If you are even an occasional user of excel you have probably experienced a situation like this: You copy and paste something from a website or other source into an excel workbook, but when you do, you're left with a bunch of empty rows in between you're actual data.

There are actually two different approaches you could use if you wanted to delete the empty rows:

Sort your sheet
Use the Go To menu option and wow your friends

Sort Your Sheet

Simply highlight ALL your data and click on Data -> Sort, select the appropriate column and click OK. This will automatically move the empty spaces to the bottom of your sheet. Presto!!! This method does create problems, however, if you want to keep the data in it's original order.

Go To

The Go To command is a nifty little feature that can select an item(s) based on criteria that you specify. Simply select the column that contains the mix of empty and data cells by clicking on it's corresponding letter, click on Edit -> Go To... then press the 'Special' button, select the blanks option and click OK. You should see all the empty cells selected. Now click on Edit -> Delete.

Congratulations, you just saved yourself hours of selecting and deleting empty rows. Pat yourself on the back and go home early.

Oracle - Counting the rows of a table

2007-09-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

Most people use the oracle count function in the following way to count the number of rows in a table:

select count(*) from my_table;

While this does technically work, on larger tables it can be grossly inefficient to perform this query. It should also be noted that using the count() function on a single column can also be inaccurate because Oracle aggregate functions (avg, mean, max, min, count, etc.) will ignore null values. For example, the query:

select count(name) from my_table;

will return only the number of rows that have a value for name. Which may be what you want. If, however, you are looking to count the number of rows in a table you will need to supply a column that is specified as not null or a primary key. If your table doesn't have either of these constraints you can use:

select count(rowid) from my_table;

The rowid keyword is an internally used unique identifier that Oracle uses for each row.

vi - Part 3: Navigating like a pro

2007-09-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

Last Time we looked at how to navigate within the vi environment. Today we'll learn some more ways of navigating the screen. You may wonder why we need any more choices for moving the cursor. Seriously, we already have a ton of options right? Wrong! Most of the commands we played with in Part 2 were concerned with moving the cursor to a specified position and entering insert mode. What if I don't want to enter insert mode yet? What if I want to move to a location I can't see on the screen? What if I can sort of describe where I want to go, but not explicitly? Today's episode will answer these questions and more...

By now you shouldn't have any troubles getting into vi, so go ahead and open a session. While you are at it, type in a few lines of text as well to practice on.

Nice Moves

Make sure you are in command mode and try moving the cursor around like in Part 2. Now try typing a number and using a movement key. You should move that number of spaces in the direction you specified. You can also move to the end of the line by typing the dollar sign ($), or move to the beginning of the line by using zero (0). You could also use the caret (^) to move to the first non-space character in the line. If you know the column (position from the left) you need to be in, type that number followed by the pipe (|) symbol.

Vertical line movement is just as easy. Type a number followed by the hyphen (-) to move that many lines up or type a number and the plus sign (+) to move that number of spaces down. Typing a number followed by G will move you to that number line in the file. A number followed by H will move the cursor to that number of lines downward from the top of screen (not to be confused with the top of the file). Alternatively, you can type a number and L to move that many lines up from the bottom of the screen. M will move the cursor to the vertical middle of the screen.

Type f and a character to move to the next occurrence of that character. A capital F and a character will move to the previous occurrence of that character

Move with Grammar

In addition to moving by character units, you could also move by grammatical units. By this I mean that you can move forward or backward by words or sentences. To move forward or backward a word press w or b respectively. It is important to note that a word in this case is a grouping of alphabetic characters. If your words contain special characters like an apostrophe, then you'll want to use the uppercase versions of W and B to move forward or backward a word. Just like above you could also type a number before the w or b to move that number of words at a time. E and e will perform the same function as W and w only instead of moving the cursor to the front of the word, it will move to the end of the word.

Just like moving by words we can also move by sentences or paragraphs. A number followed by ) or } will move forward that number of sentences or paragraphs respectively. Conversely, a number followed by a ( or { will move backward that number of sentences or paragraphs respectively.

That seems like a good place to take a break. Next time we will do some basic editing of a text file.
While in command mode press :q! to quit vi without saving anything.

vi - Part 2: Navigating the white void

2007-09-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Last time we looked at what vi is and how to get into it, today we will create a text file within vi and do some very simple editing.

First of all, lets start by opening the vi environment from your terminal. To do this type:

vi

You may remember that we are currently in command mode. We'll need to enter insert mode in order to type out our text file. To do this type:

i

There are a number of ways to enter insert mode:

i	Insert text before cursor
I	Insert text at the beginning of the line
a	Append text at the end of the cursor
A	Append text at the end of the line
o	Open a new line after the current line
O	Open a new line before the current line

These various modes can be very useful depending on the type of text file you are editing.

Now that you are in insert mode, lets enter some text. Type a few lines of random text into your document, then to switch back to command mode by pressing the Esc (escape) button.

When in command mode, we can move the cursor in two different ways:

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard, or if not available on your particular platform...
Use h (left), j (down), k (up), l (right)

Now try using the command mode to move the cursor around and play with the commands in the chart above to enter insert mode and add some new text to your document.

I think I'll let you play around with that for now. Stay tuned, next time I'll discuss navigating vi like a pro.

vi - Part 1: Introduction

2007-09-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever used any variant of UNIX before, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of vi (pronounced v eye, not 6). vi is short for visual because vi is a visual text editor.

Like UNIX itself, vi is ugly, intimidating and (once you get acquainted) your best-friend. It is convenient, robust, uber-efficient and not at all user friendly.

If you are only used to text editors like Notepad or edit, vi will be a bit of a mind-shift for you because it uses written commands instead of your fancy mousy click click. Now I know what you're thinking: “Wait a gosh darn second here!!!! How can I enter written commands in a program designed to edit text?”. Good question. The answer is that vi uses two modes of operation. While in command mode, you enter commands to operate on the text file (copy/paste, search, delete, etc). In insert mode, you enter the text you wish to appear in your file. We’ll get into how to operate in these modes in the next article.

Why should I bother to learn vi?

It, or a clone of some kind, is found in virtually every UNIX/Linux variant out there (everything from AIX to Zenwalk)
It is virtually identical in all it’s platform incarnations. Remember that whole “Teach a man to fish” thing?
Once you learn vi, you’ll be editing files from the command line faster than you ever thought possible.
You’ll finally get the joke on your sys admin’s t-shirt that says “I just can’t :q! you”

Starting vi

There are a few ways for you to enter the vi environment:

type vi
type vi filename (this will start vi and automatically open a file of your choice)
type vi -R filename (this will open your file in vi’s Read-Only mode.)
type view filename (same effect as vi -R)

vi... Reader, Reader this is vi

pretty plain huh? we’ll make a text file next time, I just wanted you to see it.

Note: each tilde (~) represents a unused line

to quit vi type :q!
get the shirt now?
If you’ve entered some keys to explore vi and can’t seem to get out, try pressing Esc a couple times first.

So that’s your intro to vi. Stay tuned, next time we’ll type stuff!!!!!!!

PHP - LDAP over SSL

2007-04-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

I recently had a great deal of difficulty authorizing users over a PHP site using LDAP with SSL.

The server would connect when not using SSL, but as soon as I added the port 636 to the ldap_connect() function as the second argument (ldap_connect("server1", 636)) I would get an error 81 Can't connect to ldap server.

After exhaustive research I tried using ldap_connect("ldaps://server1") and low and behold it connected perfectly.

If you are having similar problems, you may want to try above. If this also doesn't work, try changing your hostname to IP address, but keep the ldaps://

OpenOffice - Getting Spellcheck to work properly.

2007-04-15T05:08:00.000-07:00

You may find that when you initially try OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) that the SpellCheck feature doesn't work properly. This is because the necessary dictionaries were not installed. You can install them by:

Open OpenOffice Writer
Open the file in your OpenOffice directory /share/dict/ooo/DicOOo
Click on the button that says 'Start DicOOo'
Follow the wizard to download the appropriate dictionaries.

Note: OpenOffice recommends only downloading the bare minimum number of dictionaries for performance reasons.

A Brief UNIX shell comparison

2007-04-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was first learning UNIX (Solaris being my first in case anyone was wondering). One of the things I found confusing was the concept of shells and the variety of them that the UNIX world offered.

Most people who use UNIX will be perfectly content to use whatever shell is set as their default environment and never venture into anything else. For the rest of us I will list some of the more popular shells in alphabetical order (so as to not show favourtism and a brief description of each.

ASH - A fully functional shell with a very small footprint, used in systems where resources are at a premium.

BASH - Bourne Again Shell. A more robust version of the Bourne Shell.

Bourne Shell - The original UNIX shell. Still widely used and most likely is on your system somewhere.

CSH - C Shell. A shell which more closely resembles the C programming language.

KSH - Korn Shell. Similar to the Bourne shells. Very good scripting support.

TCSH - TENEX C Shell. A slightly more robust CSH.

ZSH - Z shell. A more modern Bourne variant. Almost endless options.

What is PHP?

2007-04-08T07:20:00.000-07:00

I was asked this question recently and thought I would post my answer. After all, if you are a geek that isn't into the web side of things you might have no idea, but would appreciate a brief description.

PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Processor and it is primarily used as a server side scripting language akin to ASP (Active Server Pages) or JSP (Java Server Pages). A server side scripting language allows someone to create a dynamic web page. Traditionally, web pages were/are created using static HTML. Server side scripting languages allow you to create a program that creates HTML on the fly, normally based on user input or back-end database queries.

PHP also allows you create stand-alone applications via a command line interface. PHP can be used through either IIS or Apache web servers and can be installed on a multitude of operating systems.

PHP is a pivotal part of the LAMP architecture as well. LAMP stands for (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) and refers to a set of free software that, when combined, gives a complete, enterprise worthy web server.

Being fortunate enough to know how to program in all three of the languages mentioned (ASP, JSP and PHP) I can say that PHP is my language of choice, both for it's ease of use and good learning curve. That being said, I have also found PHP to be the hardest of the three to install and properly configure.

Hard Lessons - Disconecting A Serial Terminal From A Sun Server

2007-04-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to recently get a brand new Sunfire v890 server. Oh how excited I was to see what this baby could do. I had to wait, unfortunately, until we could make space in our server room for it. Then the day finally came where I could power it on for the first time.

As you may, or may not, know Sun servers don't come with video cards out of the box and we had scheduled a rep to come down and install it for us. I am more than capable of this feat, but had not intention of taking the responsibility for it or possibly losing a warranty becuase it wasn't installed by a certified Sun installer. Nevertheless I wanted to see what it could do so I unplugged a laptop we were using as a serial terminal in an older v880 that we never put a video card in. That's where I learned the hard lesson.

NEVER UNPLUG A SERIAL TERMINAL FROM A RUNNING SUN SERVER

What could go wrong, I'm only unplugging a serial cable, I thought to myself. That's akin to disconnecting a vga cable right? WRONG. This apparently will make the server go down into single user mode. You won't be able to ping, telnet or do anything else with the server until it is plugged back in. Fortunately, this all occured at the end of the day and no one really seemed to notice.

Oracle SQLplus Copy Command - a DBA's best friend

2007-04-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

Time and time again the copy command in SQL*Plus has proven itself to me. You can accomplish so much with such a very simple syntax. I've used it to copy/rename tables before I try something crazy, move tables from production to test or vice versa and rebuild the contents of a table without worrying if the operation will, at some point, drop the table and recreate it, thus losing all the permissions I've given to it. These are but a few of the many versatile uses of the copy command.

They syntax for the command is as follows:

COPY FROM [source database] TO [target database] [ACTION] [table name] USING [select statement]

Source Database - The database or sid you wish to retrieve information from (pretty self explanatory I know, but I figured I'd put it in there for good measure), you will also need to include the security credentials (ex. scott/tiger@orcl)
Target Database - The database or sid you will be putting information into (I know, I know....)

Action - The operation to be performed:
CREATE - create a new table

INSERT - put the rows from the select statement into the target database, if it exists.

APPEND - put the rows from the select statement into the target database, if it doesn't exist, create it as well.

REPLACE - drop the table and recreate it using the select statement

Table Name - Name of the table that the operation will affect, this is located in your target database
Select Statement - This statement is used to populate your specified table, the select statement is run against your source database.

NOTE: If you are only doing an operation within one database (ex. creating a backup table) then you don't need to specify the TO [target database] portion.

Lesson Learned: Don't try to use the copy command from an oracle 9 client when copying between two 10g databases, Oracle doesn't like that for some reason.

Once you've got the syntax down, you'll wonder how you did without it.

Microsoft Access - Fuzzy Text Search And An Empty Prompt Box

2007-04-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting dilemma....

Problem 1:

You've got a user that wants to run a report in Access and be prompted for a value to search on. Unfortunately, the thing that they are searching on is a really long string and they only want to type in part of it either due to laziness or forgetfulness.

Solution:

Create a query that the report will be based on. In the query designer type in the criteria for that column something like:

Like '*' + [Your Prompt Here] + '*'

This will look for your string inside the entire block of text.

Problem 2:

You would also like for the user to be able to just click OK on the prompt and get all of the results returned. For some reason Microsoft is thinking backwards on this one and a blank result returns no rows. Seriously, who wants to run a report with no results returned?

Solution:

In the OR section of the same row you were editing in your query designer, add the text:

[Your Same Prompt Here] is null

Now your query should perform all the functions you were looking for.

Check back tomorrow for another helpful hint from The Well Rounded Geek

Welcome!!!!!

2007-04-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to The Well Rounded Geek.

A blog dedicated to all of the completely random tasks that I.T. workers are expected to know/perform/excel in on a minute by minute basis. Obviously it is impossible for us to know off the top of our heads all of the, ever expanding, areas of I.T. but hopefully this blog will help you solve those pesky problems that can take hours to solve on your own.

This blog will touch on every area of I.T. imaginable (Hardware, Networking, Operating Systems, Databases, Applications, Business Intelligence, Project Management and Programming to name but a few). What would a well rounded geek blog be, however, if we also didn't touch on the fun things we do as well (Gadgets, Gaming and, quite frankly, anything else we feel like discussing).

So check back daily or subscribe to the RSS feeds because you never know when you might come across something that will save your day (or more importantly, your job)