In the past five years or so, I have worked a lot with RMS Flat Files (VMS), Foxpro, MS Access, SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, mSQL, and PostgreSQL. I am not an RDBMS expert (that's Bill - he's worked here for 20 years) but I have formed a couple opinions.
If you've never worked with Oracle, you should step up to the plate. While most web site you'll design won't use half the bells and whistles, if you do they make all the difference in the world.
SQL is a 4th Generation Language (4GL), but Oracle Enterprise Edition also comes with PL/SQL, a procedural 3rd Generation Language (3GL). Now you're not only asking the db for the data, but you're telling it how to do it. And let me tell you something - it's FAST! They also have ProC, ProJava, and ProCOBOL 3GL engines.
Oracle has amazing point in time recovery, which has saved my ass more than once. While Postgres (and even SQL Server) have some transactional support, Oracle gives you complete Point in Time recovery through Rollback (before image) and Archive Log (after image). This is a must if you're running a big eCommerce site or a mission critial database of any kind.
The big database support a lot more tuning as well. Oracle has two SQL Analyizers - the newer Cost Based and the older Rule Based. To keep the Cost Based Analyzer running smoothly, one needs to reanalyze the tables after significant changes in the data. Oracle supports additional types of indexes based on the distribution of data being indexed:
SELECT * FROM TABLE_PEOPLE
WHERE SEX = 'M';
Well, if table_people represents all the people in the US, it's going to be around 50/50. If table_people contains members of the US Army, it's going to be over 90% Male. Based on those distributions you can decide what kind of index to use.
You also get transportable tablespaces, partitioned tablespaces (for those 1 billion row tables you have), packages, objects, and nested tables (tables within tables). If your database is in Oracle, if it's designed well, and you make proper use of all the features inside, you will see a huge difference. But that represents a large development effort, even for a small project.
But most people are designing a web site with a dozen or so database tables, and then what's the point? A couple stored procedures, a view, stick to mSQL or Postgres - they light and fast. They'll even give SQL Server and IIS/ASP a huge run for their money (SQL Server is really bloted, but still a lot better than it's grandfather, Sybase).
I ran into this at work last year. We let people submit to us as DOC/WPD/PS (PS usually come from LaTeX) and we convert them all into PDF. There is an Acrobat reader for Win32/MacOS/Linux/Solaris etc etc. It has served us very well, as there is already a cross platform suite of tools available, and it allows for embedding graphics with text (which was a huge concern for us).
I have the six *real* Dune books in first edition hardcover, soft cover, Spanish, and French. I have read them each book no less than 6 times. I own and have read the Dune Encyclopedia a couple times (though don't consider it Cannon). I own the two prequels. I've read HA twice and HH once. While they were...interesting to read, they had their problems, and I don't consider them Cannon either, I feel Kevin Anderson's stink negates Brian Herbert's birthright. I consider myself a fan of the Dune universe, but I am far from an expert.
I have been excited about the Miniseries for months. While I have seen the Lynch movie a dozen or so times, I despise it. There are some that praise it, some that take it for what it is, and some that even think it was true to the book. I think that it is none of the above. My friends have been asking me for weeks what I'm going to do if it rains at the end of the Sci Fi Miniseries.
(I don't think that the people at Sci Fi want to find that out).
If you read the CNN article
(http://www.cnn.com/2000/CAREER/trends/11/30/dun e/ index.html), you hear over and over how true they are trying to be to the books. I challenge that statement. In screenplay, some changes will need to be made to keep the viewer "in the loop", but in 6 hours far less adaptation should be needed than Lynch required.
The look of the series is interesting, but I have some problems with it. As I make statements here, please feel free to correct me if I make a mistake (Except spelling: give me a break I'm at work and pissed off as I write this). The Atreides uniforms are supposed to be black with red hawk crests on them. Herbert describes these over and over again. Why are they a sort of khaki? You could claim, like the US Military, there is more than one uniform, but wouldn't Paul be wearing the "dress" Atreides uniform when he went to meet Moiham? That doesn't look black folks.
And as some have posted, Alec Newman is a brat. I know he knew nothing of Dune before filming, but how could John Harrison have missed this? Paul was a boy trying to find himself, not a spoiled rich brat trying to get his way. The scene in the
beginning, with Newman in his room in the palace was a nice look. Very Renaissance, with rose petals in the finger bowls.
On to the meeting with Moiham. WTF was that? Every time Herbert writes about the BG they walk into a room in their long, flowing, BLACK abba robes. If Harrison wanted to whore them up with those big hats, more power to him, but the robes are supposed to be black. There was nothing I liked about this Moiham, which will work well at the end when I hate her so much I want her dead.
The Gom Jabbar scene was fine, except if I didn't know better I'd think that those were fish tanks and not the oceans of Caladan on the wall. One thing I'll give Lynch, he beat the water thing into us.
So we take a trip to Kaitain, where we meet Shaddam and Irulan. I would like to point out there are now two movie adaptations of Dune, and I don't like either Shaddam in the least. Could someone please read the book and capture this
character? Talk about missing the mark. Meanwhile, Irulan is doing Ballet or Prana-Bindu or something, but this scene doesn't do much for me.
And the blasted Harkonnens. This is a Baron Harkonnen I could get to love. He's fat, bipolar, scheming, and a raving homosexual. Perfect. Feyd and Rabban are also pretty well captured. This Feyd is much more believable than Sting was in
the part. The look of Geidi-Prime is magnificent...better than Lynch's. Piter though, all wrong. The Lynch movie had Piter down to a T, but this Piter sucks, and then he's dead. A shame.
The Guild Highliner - beautiful. Much better than Lynch's. CGI really does it for me here. Thufir scolds snotty Alec to not endanger the Atreides shipping privileges. The Navigator though, I'm not sure about yet. There has to be a happy medium
between an Orange Vagina and a Monarch Butterfly. Herbert describes them as being once human, with flippers where limbs once were, and this one has wings. As for the act of folding space, same scene, 16 years and more money later. Again, the
CGI did it for me here.
So we're on Caladan. I have to say, I love the look Harrison has come up with for the palace that was once Count Fenrig's. The fountain for guests to wash their hands, the grandiose appearance, I really liked the look and feel of it. Can we discuss the garden for a minute? Jessica is supposed to discover the garden, and the message from the Lady Fenrig, another BG. Don't let the garden just be there, and don't bring it up without the message. Do it right or don't do it. Also, I will give Harrison credit for making Arakkis feel livable in the cities, something Lynch failed at. People live here, work here, trade here, and Harrison got that.
So who was the wench in Paul's room when the Hunter Seeker attacked? Hi - not true to the book. Even Lynch got that right. And I can't make up my mind if I like this Stilgar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Stilgar spits in the book, didn't Duncan explain the custom, not Paul (like in the Lynch movie)? Why is the brat talking? SHUT UP! You know, Paul bothers me because I hate Kyle MacLachlan, so Alec has an advantage. The part is all wrong, but it's obvious that Alec is a good actor.::SIGH::
On to the infamous banquet. Again, Harrison has the look, and all is going well until Irulan walks in. (SO MAD RIGHT NOW...) Why is Irulan here? I challenge this miniseries to make a bigger mistake than this (oh, and not getting the character of Paul right). Paul and her don't meet before he takes her as his war bride at the end of Dune. They have nothing in common, and she ends up plotting his death in Messiah, which Harrison is already working on a screenplay for. Someone may have actually found a way to create a pithy ending without rain. I like the conversation with Gurney and Paul, makes the characters a little more real. And then the house guards get is a pissing contest with the Sauddakar before leaving. Dumb. Boo, hiss.
Now, Yuegh is a minor character, so Lynch made an effort to make him noticed, what with him being Judas and all. Funny thing, as many times as I've read and watched Dune, and I knew what was going on, I was like "Where's Yuegh" because I didn't know who was playing him. I think we saw him once for two seconds in the holo lesson. He needed a little more air time...something. The Sauddakar don't look like Chlorine breathing trash bags (yeah!!!) but the fight was missing something.
Oh well, I guess it was ok.
And Duncan didn't die in the Palace. THANK YOU! They got the sequence of events right. I hope they obligated this guy to play Duncan in all 6 miniseries =)
So, at the end of 2 hours, I guess I can give this a C+. It's a good try, and they're trying to stay true to Herbert, but where they took artistic license they messed up big. I'm trying to keep an open mind. We'll see how the rest goes.
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In the past five years or so, I have worked a lot with RMS Flat Files (VMS), Foxpro, MS Access, SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, mSQL, and PostgreSQL. I am not an RDBMS expert (that's Bill - he's worked here for 20 years) but I have formed a couple opinions.
If you've never worked with Oracle, you should step up to the plate. While most web site you'll design won't use half the bells and whistles, if you do they make all the difference in the world. SQL is a 4th Generation Language (4GL), but Oracle Enterprise Edition also comes with PL/SQL, a procedural 3rd Generation Language (3GL). Now you're not only asking the db for the data, but you're telling it how to do it. And let me tell you something - it's FAST! They also have ProC, ProJava, and ProCOBOL 3GL engines.
Oracle has amazing point in time recovery, which has saved my ass more than once. While Postgres (and even SQL Server) have some transactional support, Oracle gives you complete Point in Time recovery through Rollback (before image) and Archive Log (after image). This is a must if you're running a big eCommerce site or a mission critial database of any kind.
The big database support a lot more tuning as well. Oracle has two SQL Analyizers - the newer Cost Based and the older Rule Based. To keep the Cost Based Analyzer running smoothly, one needs to reanalyze the tables after significant changes in the data. Oracle supports additional types of indexes based on the distribution of data being indexed:
SELECT * FROM TABLE_PEOPLE WHERE SEX = 'M';
Well, if table_people represents all the people in the US, it's going to be around 50/50. If table_people contains members of the US Army, it's going to be over 90% Male. Based on those distributions you can decide what kind of index to use.
You also get transportable tablespaces, partitioned tablespaces (for those 1 billion row tables you have), packages, objects, and nested tables (tables within tables). If your database is in Oracle, if it's designed well, and you make proper use of all the features inside, you will see a huge difference. But that represents a large development effort, even for a small project.
But most people are designing a web site with a dozen or so database tables, and then what's the point? A couple stored procedures, a view, stick to mSQL or Postgres - they light and fast. They'll even give SQL Server and IIS/ASP a huge run for their money (SQL Server is really bloted, but still a lot better than it's grandfather, Sybase).
fooguy?
I ran into this at work last year. We let people submit to us as DOC/WPD/PS (PS usually come from LaTeX) and we convert them all into PDF. There is an Acrobat reader for Win32/MacOS/Linux/Solaris etc etc. It has served us very well, as there is already a cross platform suite of tools available, and it allows for embedding graphics with text (which was a huge concern for us).
Some quick info on me:
n e/ index.html), you hear over and over how true they are trying to be to the books. I challenge that statement. In screenplay, some changes will need to be made to keep the viewer "in the loop", but in 6 hours far less adaptation should be needed than Lynch required.
::SIGH::
I have the six *real* Dune books in first edition hardcover, soft cover, Spanish, and French. I have read them each book no less than 6 times. I own and have read the Dune Encyclopedia a couple times (though don't consider it Cannon). I own the two prequels. I've read HA twice and HH once. While they were...interesting to read, they had their problems, and I don't consider them Cannon either, I feel Kevin Anderson's stink negates Brian Herbert's birthright. I consider myself a fan of the Dune universe, but I am far from an expert.
I have been excited about the Miniseries for months. While I have seen the Lynch movie a dozen or so times, I despise it. There are some that praise it, some that take it for what it is, and some that even think it was true to the book. I think that it is none of the above. My friends have been asking me for weeks what I'm going to do if it rains at the end of the Sci Fi Miniseries.
(I don't think that the people at Sci Fi want to find that out).
If you read the CNN article
(http://www.cnn.com/2000/CAREER/trends/11/30/du
The look of the series is interesting, but I have some problems with it. As I make statements here, please feel free to correct me if I make a mistake (Except spelling: give me a break I'm at work and pissed off as I write this). The Atreides uniforms are supposed to be black with red hawk crests on them. Herbert describes these over and over again. Why are they a sort of khaki? You could claim, like the US Military, there is more than one uniform, but wouldn't Paul be wearing the "dress" Atreides uniform when he went to meet Moiham? That doesn't look black folks.
And as some have posted, Alec Newman is a brat. I know he knew nothing of Dune before filming, but how could John Harrison have missed this? Paul was a boy trying to find himself, not a spoiled rich brat trying to get his way. The scene in the
beginning, with Newman in his room in the palace was a nice look. Very Renaissance, with rose petals in the finger bowls.
On to the meeting with Moiham. WTF was that? Every time Herbert writes about the BG they walk into a room in their long, flowing, BLACK abba robes. If Harrison wanted to whore them up with those big hats, more power to him, but the robes are supposed to be black. There was nothing I liked about this Moiham, which will work well at the end when I hate her so much I want her dead.
The Gom Jabbar scene was fine, except if I didn't know better I'd think that those were fish tanks and not the oceans of Caladan on the wall. One thing I'll give Lynch, he beat the water thing into us.
So we take a trip to Kaitain, where we meet Shaddam and Irulan. I would like to point out there are now two movie adaptations of Dune, and I don't like either Shaddam in the least. Could someone please read the book and capture this
character? Talk about missing the mark. Meanwhile, Irulan is doing Ballet or Prana-Bindu or something, but this scene doesn't do much for me.
And the blasted Harkonnens. This is a Baron Harkonnen I could get to love. He's fat, bipolar, scheming, and a raving homosexual. Perfect. Feyd and Rabban are also pretty well captured. This Feyd is much more believable than Sting was in
the part. The look of Geidi-Prime is magnificent...better than Lynch's. Piter though, all wrong. The Lynch movie had Piter down to a T, but this Piter sucks, and then he's dead. A shame.
The Guild Highliner - beautiful. Much better than Lynch's. CGI really does it for me here. Thufir scolds snotty Alec to not endanger the Atreides shipping privileges. The Navigator though, I'm not sure about yet. There has to be a happy medium
between an Orange Vagina and a Monarch Butterfly. Herbert describes them as being once human, with flippers where limbs once were, and this one has wings. As for the act of folding space, same scene, 16 years and more money later. Again, the
CGI did it for me here.
So we're on Caladan. I have to say, I love the look Harrison has come up with for the palace that was once Count Fenrig's. The fountain for guests to wash their hands, the grandiose appearance, I really liked the look and feel of it. Can we discuss the garden for a minute? Jessica is supposed to discover the garden, and the message from the Lady Fenrig, another BG. Don't let the garden just be there, and don't bring it up without the message. Do it right or don't do it. Also, I will give Harrison credit for making Arakkis feel livable in the cities, something Lynch failed at. People live here, work here, trade here, and Harrison got that.
So who was the wench in Paul's room when the Hunter Seeker attacked? Hi - not true to the book. Even Lynch got that right. And I can't make up my mind if I like this Stilgar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Stilgar spits in the book, didn't Duncan explain the custom, not Paul (like in the Lynch movie)? Why is the brat talking? SHUT UP! You know, Paul bothers me because I hate Kyle MacLachlan, so Alec has an advantage. The part is all wrong, but it's obvious that Alec is a good actor.
On to the infamous banquet. Again, Harrison has the look, and all is going well until Irulan walks in. (SO MAD RIGHT NOW...) Why is Irulan here? I challenge this miniseries to make a bigger mistake than this (oh, and not getting the character of Paul right). Paul and her don't meet before he takes her as his war bride at the end of Dune. They have nothing in common, and she ends up plotting his death in Messiah, which Harrison is already working on a screenplay for. Someone may have actually found a way to create a pithy ending without rain. I like the conversation with Gurney and Paul, makes the characters a little more real. And then the house guards get is a pissing contest with the Sauddakar before leaving. Dumb. Boo, hiss.
Now, Yuegh is a minor character, so Lynch made an effort to make him noticed, what with him being Judas and all. Funny thing, as many times as I've read and watched Dune, and I knew what was going on, I was like "Where's Yuegh" because I didn't know who was playing him. I think we saw him once for two seconds in the holo lesson. He needed a little more air time...something. The Sauddakar don't look like Chlorine breathing trash bags (yeah!!!) but the fight was missing something.
Oh well, I guess it was ok.
And Duncan didn't die in the Palace. THANK YOU! They got the sequence of events right. I hope they obligated this guy to play Duncan in all 6 miniseries =)
So, at the end of 2 hours, I guess I can give this a C+. It's a good try, and they're trying to stay true to Herbert, but where they took artistic license they messed up big. I'm trying to keep an open mind. We'll see how the rest goes.