Since the employer is unlikely to spontaneously spring for the big raise, just be a really good nerd, and automate everything you possibly can.
When I started at my current job it was a meat-grinder. Maintain a hoard of databases on different platforms, with a herd of whiney users, using outdated tools. Nothing was automated, I was frantic from morning till evening just trying to fend off disaster. However, a few years later there's layers of neat scripts doing all the leg work, compiling all the minutia into daily and weekly summaries (with lots of boss-pleasing charts), and I usually know about problems before they happen. Oh, and I have a little bit of time to surf slashdot during the day. Master the box, but don't tell the boss!
Oh, you can't add them willy nilly. You'll have to buy the $29.95 expanded memory chip and the $52.99 "biometric calibration kit" before your kids can shoot the thing!
This is just what I need for all my servers. I can put the hostname on the first stick and the root password on the second stick! No more post-it's stuck to the panel door!;-)
OK, you caught me. I wasn't intentionally trolling, but I do believe I've overstated my case. Mea maxima culpa (slaps hand).
You point out, correctly, that Oracle can do a number of things that open source databases can't. I don't want to engage in a feature flame war, but IMHO, most of the unique features offered by Oracle are only needed by a few high-end enterprise systems. My point was that the open source databases are "good enough" for most uses, not that they were superior. And, playing devil's advocate, several of the open source databases offer functions and features not found in Oracle. Also, I've been VERY impressed with how much enterprise functionality is built into thre most recenct releases PostgreSQL, and I'm told that other open-source databases are following a similar course. The gap is not as wide as it once was.
Regarding costs, I'll have to do some homework, since I do remember them trumpeting price reductions, and they have moved away from the dreaded "power units". The Oracle licence at my firm is negotiated by our contracts department and I'm not privy to all the details. However, I can tell you that while we have not significantly expanded our scope of operations, our licensing fees have risen steeply over the past two years. If the database is cheaper, then service contracts or some other component of the TCO must have risen dramatically (or our contracts people are lying, which may also be possible!).
The OAS version 2 (which shipped with 9i) is still using an apache server at the core. It is, however, much easer to configure than the old one. We haven't tried deploying the 10g version (too many old legacy apps!), so I have no personal knowledge of it. Here's hoping!
Last I understood it, Oracle isn't really losing marketshare -- it's more of a number fudge. All the reports point to DB2 being the culprit, but in reality IBM just brands DB2 to mean "any relational database we sell", even if there are 3 different code bases (mainframe, AS/400, and UDB). SQL Server is in somewhat of a holding pattern until Yukon.
Great information Stu, Thanks!
IF you honestly believe this, you really will be disappointed. Yes, OSS databases will be a force to reckon with. Yes, they will eat Oracle's lunch in many ways. Some day. Not this day. And when they are competitive (I guess around 2007 timeframe), it will take YEARS for inertia and risk to pan out. You won't see a sizable marketshare impact on the big 3 until perhaps 2009-2010
I hope you're right, since right now Oracle is my bread and butter. For the big firms, I suspect you are correct - crud, we're still trying to port applications from Cobol and Fortran around here, and we actually have a couple of Paradox-based apps!
Smaller firms, however, tend to be more agile, and more responsive to the the bottom line. I do a bit of moonlighting, and have recently helped several small firms (doctor's offices, real estate firms) move from Oracle to open-source alternatives. This has probably unduly influenced my opinion. Thanks again for the excellent counterpoint/reality check!
(muttering to self) The sky is not falling. The sky is not falling . . .
I work as an Oracle DBA for a large government contractor. I have the usual claims for competence - experience, lots of big installations, mainframes and clusters, certifation etc. I expect Oracle to implode in the next few years. My crystal ball isn't always accurate but here's a few things to think about.
Oracle is big, bad, and powerful -- fair enough. It's reputation is well deserved. It's also not a single application, but a conglomeration of applications, all of which need to be pursuaded to work together. Since the various limbs of the beast are developed by different branches of Oracle, they mature and are released at various times. Patches come out on an irregular schedule, and my overwrite previous patches, reintroducing old bugs or new incompatabilites. Trying to verify that version x of component a will play with version y of component b in environment c is enough to make one daffy. Babysitting this monster is time-consuming, and time is money. Trying to maintain more than a trivial deployment without tech support is (intentionally, I believe) a fools game. Draconian licensing terms and restrictions combined with the above factors make Oracle EXTREMELY expensive. The local branch of my company (200 employees) drops a tidy quarter-million into Oracle's coffers every year, and we get huge discounts.
I also maintain a few PostgreSQL databases. They're not quite as capable as the Oracle systems, but they can do at least 90% of what oracle can. They're much easier to configure and maintain, and offer very competitive performance. If we weren't backing oracle to the hilt due to manegerial fiat, they'd do nicely for the vast majority of our systems.
Other companies are leaving Oracle (and other big commercial companies) to lower their operational costs. As the open-source databases improve, a ever-shrinking group of companies are stranded on "big-$-database island" for technical reasons.
Oracle has people to pay and a bottom line to watch. As their market-share begins to shrink, how can they protect revenues? Hint: Look at their business strategy over the past few years. Here's the highlights:
Try to improve the product. They're trying, but I'm not going to comment on what I think of the most recent efforts.
Raise prices. Generates more revenue, but it's also fueling a race to jump ship.
Unbundle products, and create "new" must-have applications, each licensed seperately. This is like going into/usr/bin and distributing each tool individually, for a few bucks each (maybe with a few added switches to that you can claim "new and improved". No thanks, I'll write my own.
Control the entire client life-cycle. Oops, I mean facilitate. Oracle has released a plethora of products (designer, developer, OAS etc.) to assist the developer, dba, application manager etc. This is like dealing crack. The apps, individually, aren't too bad (except for OAS, which basically wraps layers of nastiness around Apache to render it impossible to configure/maintain). The real problem is, once you take your first hit, it becomes virtually impossible to use standard tools to deploy, maintain, or version your app. For just a few dollars more, you can acutally use the app you've spent six months developing.
The business model centeres around squeezing more and more money from a shrinking pool of customers. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to recommend Oracle to any of my clients. Smart managers see the trap of vendor-dependance, and insist on open standards. Large database vendors have a vested interest in trying to `extend and extinguish` those standards, as Oracle is doing.
I predict that, very soon, pointy-haired-bosses of companies that CAN move to open source will do so 'en masse. The software is stable and mature, all that's missing is corporate mindshare. As that happens, the only recourse the big vendors have is to squeeze huge amounts of cash from the handful of companies who really do depend on the few features not freely available -- an unstable and possibly fatal arrangement for all parties.
So, I'm working with oracle today, but looking for a good opportunity to jump ship.
No, by the logic I outlined. If my son left his bike in the yard, and it were stolen, I should be able to charge the crook with simple theft, not breaking and entering, burglary, and depraved indifference. Furthermore, I'd probably talk with my son about the wisdom of leaving the bike out.
The problem with the "anti-hacker" laws is that they heap penalties on top of actions that were already illegal. The guy in the story was a jerk, but punish him for (attempted) theft, and intent to defraud (or whatever statute covers such things), but don't add a random bunch of years to the sentence because a computer was involved. That was the point I was trying to make.
Oh yeah? Well I went out this weekend, and bought the ulimate badge of geekdom - Sharpies in 24 glorious colors. Now my disks will not only be properly labeled (in COLOR!), but my artistic skills will improve. Fear my Leet Stick-Figures and block printing!!!
I think a more appropriate analogy for an unsecured wireless network would be somebody who chooses to store all their belongings in an unfenced yard.
If all of your stuff is scattered all over the lawn and easily available to every passer-by, you should expect some of it to dissappear. Yes, it's still theft, but you contributed to that theft through gross negligence, and your homeowner's insurance shouldn't have to to pony up for replacements!
This case is like the above, except that the guy got caught trying to steal the stereo left laying on the lawn, and now he's being charged with burglary and breaking and entering. Attempted theft I'd agree with, but the rest of this is bogus.
As a DBA I have lots of big files to play with. On an average day I archive nearly a terabyte.
I think I'll fire up a cron to encrypt them and send them to our off-site archives as email attachments (after all, I have to send that data anyway). If everyone would contribute a terabyte or so every day, they'd have lots of fun storing it. I'm glad I don't on their disk farm!
I implement database security for a large company, and work closely with the system adminstrators. We have, per corporate policy, implemented the usual stuff: regular password changes, alphabet-soup requirements, no shared passwords. Highly secure systems also use two or even three factor authentication. We also do password-cracking semi-continously, looking for weak passwords. It was nazi-land.
Predictably, passwords were scrawled on post-it's and under keyboards. It had become a mess, and the users were frustrated. In open disobedience to corporate policies, we've allowed shared passwords*(nobody can remember 75 passwords!), and relaxed the password change interval. Users are happier, and I see fewer post-its on the monitor.
If corporate would listen to us, we'd relax things further. One thing we have done, that works well, is to monitor the devil out of logins. If you're going to hack a password, you'd better guess it correctly the first few times, or the security goons will be heading for your cubicle with a pink slip in hand. An agressive anti-hacking policy and monitoring seems, to me at least, to be a better solution.
*Actually, we can't officially allow shared accounts, but we can break the scripts that check for such things!
I like the way you think. A lone voice of reason has sounded amid the cachophony of stupidity. Unfortunately for both of use, well reasoned arguments are passed over in favor of well-padded wallets at the legislative table.
If I understand your argument, you're saying that no sane parent would expose their children to the nasty, dirty, underbelly of our world because they would embrace it and become part of it once it was known to them. Therefore, I'm either naive, insane, or a poser (though I'm not sure what would mean in this context).
My point, in the original post, was one of responsibility. I know the world has a number of unsavory, undesirable, dangerous and just plain evil things in it. I've traveled fairly extensivly, and lived in third-world nations, large cities etc. And, no, I don't want to expose my children to everything that's out there. However, sooner or later they'll be living in the middle of it. Life is about choices. While you can't choose everything in life (after all, I'm still not rich!), you generally get to choose what you watch, what you read, who your friends are, and whom you marry.
There is an old aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he". Thought leads to action. This was drilled into me during years of martial arts, as well as religious instruction. By making these small decisions, you form your character. Anyway, without throwing too much philosophy into the pot, I believe that a person can choose who they want to be, rather then automatically becoming the lowest common denominator of the influences around them. I hope to teach my children to choose those things which enoble and uplift, to seek the good.
I shelter them when they are very young, I try to be actively involved in their lives. As they get older (my son is 17), I let them make more of their own decisions, and only intervene if I think a choice is likely to be dangerous. My son will soon be completely on his own, and I hope I have taught him to make good decisions, because I'm sending into a world full of everything imaginable, both good and bad. He has to choose which of those things he will embrace. I hope that, by exposing him to more and more of the "real world" over the past 17 years, and letting him make his own decisions as he's grown in wisdom and maturity, that he will be prepared to meet life without any oversight, and choose the better part.
So, am I a poser? I hope not. I'm really a parent. I love my family, and would like them to find as much happiness in this life as they can. I believe the choice is theirs to make.
we don't want sexually-explicit shows Since several people have commented on it, this was actually a typo, I intended to say "we don't watch sexually-explicit shows". For those who claim that I'm some suppressing my children's free will by censoring this material from their viewing experience, I offer the following explanation.
First, parenting involves making decisions for children, at the very least limiting their freedoms to protect them from physical dangers. I also believe that it's my job to teach them ethics and morality, to the best of my ability, rather than allowing them to develop whatever sense of propriety evolves naturally. Yes, I want them to question my teachings, I may be wrong, but I'd like to protect them from things that would limit their freedom to choose until they are mature enough to make good, informed decisions.
On the morality thing. I'm a prude, but here's my reasoning. You may disagree with it, and you're welcome to. I believe that few things in this world are as special, as edifying, as meaningful as a physical relationship with someone you love. I treasure my wife, and hope my children see the genuine affection I feel for her. When one decides to engage in sexual intercourse, however, you aren't just pushing a few biological pleasure centers, you're potentially bringing a child into the world. With that comes tremendous responsibility, and a certain amount of sacrifice. Even if you believe that birth control is safe and 100% effective, any psychologist will tell that sex evokes very powerful emotions (only psycopaths can have trulyunemotional sex).
So, when you should you engage in an activity that has profound emotional impact and potentially life-long consequences? As a casual experimentation in eighth grade? I believe it should be saved until you have already established a loving relationship with an adult, and have made the commitment we call "marrige".
Laugh if you want, but my wife and I were both virgins when we married, and have been monogomous since. No unwanted children, no guilt, no STD's - it works for me. If my children choose another path, that's their perogative, after they leave my home. While they're fighting the burdens of peer pressure and raging hormones, and thinking with minds that are not as mature as their bodies, I will do what I can to keep them safe from the problems that sexual relations can bring. Not because I believe sex is evil, but because I want them to have healthy, loving relationships rather than shallow, juvinile flings.
Flame away. You don't have to agree with me, but remember, I'm not trying to change you, I'm trying to help my children, and doing the best I know how.
I'm a parent of three children. No, really, a parent, not just a sperm-donor or an unlucky paternal unit paying for a youthful fling. Guess whose job it is to insure that my little darlings choose appropriate viewing material? MINE. It's my job to know where they're at. It's my job to know who their friends are. It my responsibility to insure that their reading material and leisure activities don't teach them values I find objectionable. These are my responsibilites, and I guard them with a vengence.
For the record, I am a moral conservative, and a strongly religious man. However, I RESENT that other groups are trying to do my job. I don't need somone to censor the internet and filter my TV for me. How can I teach my children the importance of making choices if the choices are already made? If all that's available is G-rated pablum, where is the victory of a choice well made? Life is about choices, and I would like to able to use the low-risk, limited consequence items like TV, internet and music to teach good decision-making skills.
I'm also trying to teach my children something about personal responsibility, moral courage, and tolerance for others. Religious nuts throughout history have tried to enforce their particular morals on the remainder of humanity, usually with tragic consequences. I would like my children to realize that, while we don't want sexually-explicit shows, we don't have any moral imperitive to force others to conform to our standards.
So, for the children, please quit doing my job. Fill the airwaves with every variety of material, leave the internet alone. I will teach my children, and if I will teach them to choose the good, and ignore that which does not enlighten. I am, after all, a parent.
It seems like this topic comes up every few months in one form or another. The self-taught guys claim a degree is a useless relic signifying nothing. The paper-toting crowd proclaims (unsurprisingly) that they by-gosh didn't waste four years of their lives for nothing, and a degree is an essential commodity for real computer work. Then we flame each other for 300 posts and move on.
In my opinion it depends entirely upon the type of job you're looking for. The computer field is rather messily divided between techies and intellectuals. It's a bit of an open system, with people migrating in both directions, and considerable overlap, which disguises the fact there there are, in fact, two camps.
Degree or no, fine school or barely adequate, you're going to start life as a techie. Welcome to the help desk, cubeville, or low-end development. Your geek-badge and a love of white-collar slavery is your passport to this world. And thus begins the journey. . .
You will gain experience, confidence and skill, and begin to be promoted. You will (hopefully) gain a reputation in your chosen fields, and garner the laurals of a job well done. You begin to plan a career path. Somewhere around Sr. programmer (substitute DBA, Network Admin. or Sys Admin as appropriate) something unexpected happens.
You see, at the upper end of "applied technical knowlege" there is a fork in the upward path. The broad road leads to middle management, and God help the poor souls who venture there. The narrow path leads to "think tank" positions.
It's true, most large companies have one or more senior geeks doing funded research, planning strategy, or generally dispensing wisdom on demand. They really do exist, but you don't see them because they live in the nice office building in corporate headquarters not in the programming shack.
Here's the important bit. These guys are hired for their brains, and to join the club you need to have the sort of broad-based understanding the almost inevitably comes from a top-notch college education. A B.S. gets a distainful sniff, but the doors gape wide for the ivy-league Ph.D's, and may open for an M.S from a solid school with a bit of persistance.
The self-taught crowd will howl and cry that it's not fair. They can program as well or better than their pedigreed peers, they have probably built an open-source terminal emulator, and they've labored in the same trenches, side by side for years. However, in reality, very few people teach themselves calculus, computer theory, materials science, economics (and don't forget ettiquite) with the level of rigor demanded by these positions. This is where the four, six or eight years of studying that "useless theory" becomes useful, even necessary.
I'm a self-taught techie with several certifications, facing this division. I'm 40 years old, and a Sr. DBA for a large firm, making a good salary -- end of the techie line. I've been courted for managment positions, which I don't want. I've got three B.S. and one M.S. degrees in various sciences, all from good schools, but no C.S. degree.
Over the past two years I've taken several C.S. classes from a good school - algorithm analysis, advanced data structures, automata, etc. I'll probably get an M.S in a few years, and maybe a Ph.D. after that, but more importantly, I'm learning all the little details that differentiate a computer scientist from a competent techie. There IS a differance, after all.
You are correct that traditional encyclopedia are at least as succeptible to political bias as Wikipedia. The multi-national origins of Wikipedia's editors admittedly helps to balance any rampant nationalism. My concern, which I articulated poorly, is that as culture and politics change, a medium as fluid as Wikipedia makes it easy to re-write old articles to reflect changing views.
Traditional encyclopedia provide the proverbial "paper trail" by virtue of material durability, and (hypothetically) are further protected by the academic integrity of the scholars who maintain them. I can't help feeling that Wikipedia is more succeptable to the tyranny of the masses and the whims of political fashion. While wikipedia does permit the dedicated user to track all modifications, this ability is seldom employed by the casual user.
That is a problem. However, an encyclopedia article doesn't just have to be correct; it must also be readable to someone with no experience in the field. Admittedly, that's not possible with some subjects, but it's more possible and more important that you may think.
Citing sources may help. Also try leaving a note on the talk page discussing the issues, instead of pseudonoymsly changing things and expecting people to recognize your authority.
Point well taken. I confess to being a relative Wikipedia neophyte, and too lazy to take the time to work the system to best advantage.
Robert McHenry has raised, in my opinion, a valid and cogent criticism. We're all rabid fans of open-source and open process here, and Wikipedia in unquestionably useful and popular. I use it and enjoy it. However, there is a fundamental problem with the system, the proverbial bug in the ointment. The character of our community is measured by how we responed when such a flaw is pointed out, as Mr. McHenery has so eloquently done.
We revile Microsoft and others for failing to correct problems identifed by outside sources. The numerous comments calling "just edit it" or "facts are always in dispute" are hypocritical and self-serving.
My areas of expertise are quite narrow, but I have taken time to edit a couple of articles in those areas, contribuiting, to the best of my ability, my knowledge to the broader community. Some of those articles have been subsequently edited by people with a "Freshman-Level" background and understanding, and brought to a palatable, easily understood, and lamentably incorrect state. Editing by the masses produces a product palatable to the masses. Truth, however, should not be hostage to the whim and inclinations of an uneducated majority.
It has been said that, "The victor writes the history books." A lamentable truth. Will Wikipedia accuratly report the "War on Terror", for example, or will it be sanitized to reflect the political expediencies of the times, and altered as needed to fit the shifting political waters of the future? Is it a factual document or a populist, revisionist history?
I like Wickpedia, but I think that there needs to be some verification of qualifications and community-building in individual topic areas. I know next-to-nothing about European history. Should my opinion even be considered on those topics? On the other hand, I have advanced degrees in Biogeochemistry, so why am I casually overwritten? It's an honest criticism, and failure to address it leaves Wikipedia an interesting, useful, but fundamentally (potentially fatally) flawed, project.
Is it possible that Bush will appoint a more conservative replacement for Ashcroft?
No, Ashcroft is moving to the bereau of weights and measures to serve as the standard of "Absolute Conservative". As such, it is impossible to appoint a more conservative replacement.
Doubtless, Bush will attempt to redefine the "Absolute Conservative" standard when selecting Ashcroft's replacement, but experts agree that he's likely to appoint a "Facist Extremist" by mistake.
Based on what is known about the Cretaceous climate and modern tropical honeybees, Kozisek estimates that any post-impact winter event could not have dropped temperatures more than 4 to 13 degrees F (2-7C) without wiping out the bees. Current nuclear winter theories from the Chicxulub impact estimate drops of 13 to 22 degrees F (7-12C) - too cold for tropical honeybees.
obviously, the temperature dropped by EXACTLY 13 F (7 C), the upper range of the bee's tolerance and the lower limit of current models. Where's the conflict? Do I win a nobel prize?
I agree with the sentiment that mass-marketed music has declined dramatically in quality in recent years. However, the cloud has a silver lining that is becoming rapidly more apparent. As commercial music becomes increasingly unpalatable, niche markets for creative local groups become available.
We are experiencing a Renaissance of locally-produced music, from street performers to small bands. Music is no longer the exclusive domain of a handful of mega-conglomerates, but is being taken back and revitalized on the micro scale. Seattle/Portland (near me) support a thriving community of small indepenent musicans producing truly excellent music. It's like the 60's all over again. Not so much "new" sounds, but new takes on the folk/rock/celtic traditions and a resurgence of interest in vocals and acoustic instrumentation rather than synthesized, reprocessed top-40. Complex, muti-layered arrangements that depend on real musicians, not 20 year old pinups with digitally-enhanced vocals supporting their silicon-enhanced figures.
Personnally, I'm excited by the trend, and am actively building a large and varied CD collection with very little help from the RIAA.
I have the same question. I use HSQL fairly extensively for just the sort of tasks they are recommending Derby for. For those not familiar with HSQL, it's a very small, extremely fast database written in Java. It lacks many of the features of the big boys, but it's bang-up at what it does.
For large projects I use Oracle or PostgreSQL, but HSQL is ideal for inclusion with programs that need a database distributed with the program. It's easy to use, easy to add to a java program, and works like a charm. Frankly, I don't think it's attracted the attention it deserves.
I don't know about Derby. It's definately worth taking a look at, but in my opionion it would have to be pretty spectacular to displace HSQL.
I agree. We're rapidly approaching the point at which risk-aversion is king, and any action whatsoever opens up multiple opportunities for lawsuits. In such a society, it becomes impossible to invent, produce or innovate, which leads to trade deficits, unemployment and general malaise of spirit. The only ones making money in America are the lawyers and the big businesses who own an army of them.
One wonders that all of these digital toys can be used in Europe without a wave of bloody deaths caused by SUV-driving soccer-moms trying to browse the Opra website in traffic. Is their tort system better? Is the traffic slower? Or could it be that, having sent their lower-class criminals, drunks and flotsom to America, they are simply smarter than we are? Hmmmm. . .
I agree. Sometimes it's even more bizzare. The other day I went looking for the sound-track to "Top Gun". Yes, it's ancient, but so am I, and it has some great driving music. Anyway, my local music store had the CD for $17.50. Curious, I went over a couple of racks to the DVD section. There was a widescreen edition version of the full movie with all the extras for $12.00. Why is the music worth more than the movie? I agree with Z-MaxX -- I smell a skunk!
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When I started at my current job it was a meat-grinder. Maintain a hoard of databases on different platforms, with a herd of whiney users, using outdated tools. Nothing was automated, I was frantic from morning till evening just trying to fend off disaster. However, a few years later there's layers of neat scripts doing all the leg work, compiling all the minutia into daily and weekly summaries (with lots of boss-pleasing charts), and I usually know about problems before they happen. Oh, and I have a little bit of time to surf slashdot during the day. Master the box, but don't tell the boss!
Oh, you can't add them willy nilly. You'll have to buy the $29.95 expanded memory chip and the $52.99 "biometric calibration kit" before your kids can shoot the thing!
This is just what I need for all my servers. I can put the hostname on the first stick and the root password on the second stick! No more post-it's stuck to the panel door! ;-)
OK, you caught me. I wasn't intentionally trolling, but I do believe I've overstated my case. Mea maxima culpa (slaps hand).
You point out, correctly, that Oracle can do a number of things that open source databases can't. I don't want to engage in a feature flame war, but IMHO, most of the unique features offered by Oracle are only needed by a few high-end enterprise systems. My point was that the open source databases are "good enough" for most uses, not that they were superior. And, playing devil's advocate, several of the open source databases offer functions and features not found in Oracle. Also, I've been VERY impressed with how much enterprise functionality is built into thre most recenct releases PostgreSQL, and I'm told that other open-source databases are following a similar course. The gap is not as wide as it once was.
Regarding costs, I'll have to do some homework, since I do remember them trumpeting price reductions, and they have moved away from the dreaded "power units". The Oracle licence at my firm is negotiated by our contracts department and I'm not privy to all the details. However, I can tell you that while we have not significantly expanded our scope of operations, our licensing fees have risen steeply over the past two years. If the database is cheaper, then service contracts or some other component of the TCO must have risen dramatically (or our contracts people are lying, which may also be possible!).
The OAS version 2 (which shipped with 9i) is still using an apache server at the core. It is, however, much easer to configure than the old one. We haven't tried deploying the 10g version (too many old legacy apps!), so I have no personal knowledge of it. Here's hoping!
Last I understood it, Oracle isn't really losing marketshare -- it's more of a number fudge. All the reports point to DB2 being the culprit, but in reality IBM just brands DB2 to mean "any relational database we sell", even if there are 3 different code bases (mainframe, AS/400, and UDB). SQL Server is in somewhat of a holding pattern until Yukon.
Great information Stu, Thanks!
IF you honestly believe this, you really will be disappointed. Yes, OSS databases will be a force to reckon with. Yes, they will eat Oracle's lunch in many ways. Some day. Not this day. And when they are competitive (I guess around 2007 timeframe), it will take YEARS for inertia and risk to pan out. You won't see a sizable marketshare impact on the big 3 until perhaps 2009-2010
I hope you're right, since right now Oracle is my bread and butter. For the big firms, I suspect you are correct - crud, we're still trying to port applications from Cobol and Fortran around here, and we actually have a couple of Paradox-based apps!
Smaller firms, however, tend to be more agile, and more responsive to the the bottom line. I do a bit of moonlighting, and have recently helped several small firms (doctor's offices, real estate firms) move from Oracle to open-source alternatives. This has probably unduly influenced my opinion. Thanks again for the excellent counterpoint/reality check!
(muttering to self) The sky is not falling. The sky is not falling . . .
Oracle is big, bad, and powerful -- fair enough. It's reputation is well deserved. It's also not a single application, but a conglomeration of applications, all of which need to be pursuaded to work together. Since the various limbs of the beast are developed by different branches of Oracle, they mature and are released at various times. Patches come out on an irregular schedule, and my overwrite previous patches, reintroducing old bugs or new incompatabilites. Trying to verify that version x of component a will play with version y of component b in environment c is enough to make one daffy. Babysitting this monster is time-consuming, and time is money. Trying to maintain more than a trivial deployment without tech support is (intentionally, I believe) a fools game. Draconian licensing terms and restrictions combined with the above factors make Oracle EXTREMELY expensive. The local branch of my company (200 employees) drops a tidy quarter-million into Oracle's coffers every year, and we get huge discounts.
I also maintain a few PostgreSQL databases. They're not quite as capable as the Oracle systems, but they can do at least 90% of what oracle can. They're much easier to configure and maintain, and offer very competitive performance. If we weren't backing oracle to the hilt due to manegerial fiat, they'd do nicely for the vast majority of our systems.
Other companies are leaving Oracle (and other big commercial companies) to lower their operational costs. As the open-source databases improve, a ever-shrinking group of companies are stranded on "big-$-database island" for technical reasons.
Oracle has people to pay and a bottom line to watch. As their market-share begins to shrink, how can they protect revenues? Hint: Look at their business strategy over the past few years. Here's the highlights:
- Try to improve the product. They're trying, but I'm not going to comment on what I think of the most recent efforts.
- Raise prices. Generates more revenue, but it's also fueling a race to jump ship.
- Unbundle products, and create "new" must-have applications, each licensed seperately. This is like going into
/usr/bin and distributing each tool individually, for a few bucks each (maybe with a few added switches to that you can claim "new and improved". No thanks, I'll write my own.
- Control the entire client life-cycle. Oops, I mean facilitate. Oracle has released a plethora of products (designer, developer, OAS etc.) to assist the developer, dba, application manager etc. This is like dealing crack. The apps, individually, aren't too bad (except for OAS, which basically wraps layers of nastiness around Apache to render it impossible to configure/maintain). The real problem is, once you take your first hit, it becomes virtually impossible to use standard tools to deploy, maintain, or version your app. For just a few dollars more, you can acutally use the app you've spent six months developing.
The business model centeres around squeezing more and more money from a shrinking pool of customers. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to recommend Oracle to any of my clients. Smart managers see the trap of vendor-dependance, and insist on open standards. Large database vendors have a vested interest in trying to `extend and extinguish` those standards, as Oracle is doing.I predict that, very soon, pointy-haired-bosses of companies that CAN move to open source will do so 'en masse. The software is stable and mature, all that's missing is corporate mindshare. As that happens, the only recourse the big vendors have is to squeeze huge amounts of cash from the handful of companies who really do depend on the few features not freely available -- an unstable and possibly fatal arrangement for all parties.
So, I'm working with oracle today, but looking for a good opportunity to jump ship.
No, by the logic I outlined. If my son left his bike in the yard, and it were stolen, I should be able to charge the crook with simple theft, not breaking and entering, burglary, and depraved indifference. Furthermore, I'd probably talk with my son about the wisdom of leaving the bike out. The problem with the "anti-hacker" laws is that they heap penalties on top of actions that were already illegal. The guy in the story was a jerk, but punish him for (attempted) theft, and intent to defraud (or whatever statute covers such things), but don't add a random bunch of years to the sentence because a computer was involved. That was the point I was trying to make.
Oh yeah? Well I went out this weekend, and bought the ulimate badge of geekdom - Sharpies in 24 glorious colors. Now my disks will not only be properly labeled (in COLOR!), but my artistic skills will improve. Fear my Leet Stick-Figures and block printing!!!
Hooray, a well-reasoned post. Sir, I applaud you!
If all of your stuff is scattered all over the lawn and easily available to every passer-by, you should expect some of it to dissappear. Yes, it's still theft, but you contributed to that theft through gross negligence, and your homeowner's insurance shouldn't have to to pony up for replacements!
This case is like the above, except that the guy got caught trying to steal the stereo left laying on the lawn, and now he's being charged with burglary and breaking and entering. Attempted theft I'd agree with, but the rest of this is bogus.
I think I'll fire up a cron to encrypt them and send them to our off-site archives as email attachments (after all, I have to send that data anyway). If everyone would contribute a terabyte or so every day, they'd have lots of fun storing it. I'm glad I don't on their disk farm!
Predictably, passwords were scrawled on post-it's and under keyboards. It had become a mess, and the users were frustrated. In open disobedience to corporate policies, we've allowed shared passwords*(nobody can remember 75 passwords!), and relaxed the password change interval. Users are happier, and I see fewer post-its on the monitor.
If corporate would listen to us, we'd relax things further. One thing we have done, that works well, is to monitor the devil out of logins. If you're going to hack a password, you'd better guess it correctly the first few times, or the security goons will be heading for your cubicle with a pink slip in hand. An agressive anti-hacking policy and monitoring seems, to me at least, to be a better solution.
*Actually, we can't officially allow shared accounts, but we can break the scripts that check for such things!
I like the way you think. A lone voice of reason has sounded amid the cachophony of stupidity. Unfortunately for both of use, well reasoned arguments are passed over in favor of well-padded wallets at the legislative table.
My point, in the original post, was one of responsibility. I know the world has a number of unsavory, undesirable, dangerous and just plain evil things in it. I've traveled fairly extensivly, and lived in third-world nations, large cities etc. And, no, I don't want to expose my children to everything that's out there. However, sooner or later they'll be living in the middle of it. Life is about choices. While you can't choose everything in life (after all, I'm still not rich!), you generally get to choose what you watch, what you read, who your friends are, and whom you marry.
There is an old aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he". Thought leads to action. This was drilled into me during years of martial arts, as well as religious instruction. By making these small decisions, you form your character. Anyway, without throwing too much philosophy into the pot, I believe that a person can choose who they want to be, rather then automatically becoming the lowest common denominator of the influences around them. I hope to teach my children to choose those things which enoble and uplift, to seek the good.
I shelter them when they are very young, I try to be actively involved in their lives. As they get older (my son is 17), I let them make more of their own decisions, and only intervene if I think a choice is likely to be dangerous. My son will soon be completely on his own, and I hope I have taught him to make good decisions, because I'm sending into a world full of everything imaginable, both good and bad. He has to choose which of those things he will embrace. I hope that, by exposing him to more and more of the "real world" over the past 17 years, and letting him make his own decisions as he's grown in wisdom and maturity, that he will be prepared to meet life without any oversight, and choose the better part.
So, am I a poser? I hope not. I'm really a parent. I love my family, and would like them to find as much happiness in this life as they can. I believe the choice is theirs to make.
Since several people have commented on it, this was actually a typo, I intended to say "we don't watch sexually-explicit shows". For those who claim that I'm some suppressing my children's free will by censoring this material from their viewing experience, I offer the following explanation.
First, parenting involves making decisions for children, at the very least limiting their freedoms to protect them from physical dangers. I also believe that it's my job to teach them ethics and morality, to the best of my ability, rather than allowing them to develop whatever sense of propriety evolves naturally. Yes, I want them to question my teachings, I may be wrong, but I'd like to protect them from things that would limit their freedom to choose until they are mature enough to make good, informed decisions.
On the morality thing. I'm a prude, but here's my reasoning. You may disagree with it, and you're welcome to. I believe that few things in this world are as special, as edifying, as meaningful as a physical relationship with someone you love. I treasure my wife, and hope my children see the genuine affection I feel for her. When one decides to engage in sexual intercourse, however, you aren't just pushing a few biological pleasure centers, you're potentially bringing a child into the world. With that comes tremendous responsibility, and a certain amount of sacrifice. Even if you believe that birth control is safe and 100% effective, any psychologist will tell that sex evokes very powerful emotions (only psycopaths can have trulyunemotional sex).
So, when you should you engage in an activity that has profound emotional impact and potentially life-long consequences? As a casual experimentation in eighth grade? I believe it should be saved until you have already established a loving relationship with an adult, and have made the commitment we call "marrige".
Laugh if you want, but my wife and I were both virgins when we married, and have been monogomous since. No unwanted children, no guilt, no STD's - it works for me. If my children choose another path, that's their perogative, after they leave my home. While they're fighting the burdens of peer pressure and raging hormones, and thinking with minds that are not as mature as their bodies, I will do what I can to keep them safe from the problems that sexual relations can bring. Not because I believe sex is evil, but because I want them to have healthy, loving relationships rather than shallow, juvinile flings.
Flame away. You don't have to agree with me, but remember, I'm not trying to change you, I'm trying to help my children, and doing the best I know how.
For the record, I am a moral conservative, and a strongly religious man. However, I RESENT that other groups are trying to do my job. I don't need somone to censor the internet and filter my TV for me. How can I teach my children the importance of making choices if the choices are already made? If all that's available is G-rated pablum, where is the victory of a choice well made? Life is about choices, and I would like to able to use the low-risk, limited consequence items like TV, internet and music to teach good decision-making skills.
I'm also trying to teach my children something about personal responsibility, moral courage, and tolerance for others. Religious nuts throughout history have tried to enforce their particular morals on the remainder of humanity, usually with tragic consequences. I would like my children to realize that, while we don't want sexually-explicit shows, we don't have any moral imperitive to force others to conform to our standards.
So, for the children, please quit doing my job. Fill the airwaves with every variety of material, leave the internet alone. I will teach my children, and if I will teach them to choose the good, and ignore that which does not enlighten. I am, after all, a parent.
In my opinion it depends entirely upon the type of job you're looking for. The computer field is rather messily divided between techies and intellectuals. It's a bit of an open system, with people migrating in both directions, and considerable overlap, which disguises the fact there there are, in fact, two camps.
Degree or no, fine school or barely adequate, you're going to start life as a techie. Welcome to the help desk, cubeville, or low-end development. Your geek-badge and a love of white-collar slavery is your passport to this world. And thus begins the journey. . .
You will gain experience, confidence and skill, and begin to be promoted. You will (hopefully) gain a reputation in your chosen fields, and garner the laurals of a job well done. You begin to plan a career path. Somewhere around Sr. programmer (substitute DBA, Network Admin. or Sys Admin as appropriate) something unexpected happens.
You see, at the upper end of "applied technical knowlege" there is a fork in the upward path. The broad road leads to middle management, and God help the poor souls who venture there. The narrow path leads to "think tank" positions.
It's true, most large companies have one or more senior geeks doing funded research, planning strategy, or generally dispensing wisdom on demand. They really do exist, but you don't see them because they live in the nice office building in corporate headquarters not in the programming shack.
Here's the important bit. These guys are hired for their brains, and to join the club you need to have the sort of broad-based understanding the almost inevitably comes from a top-notch college education. A B.S. gets a distainful sniff, but the doors gape wide for the ivy-league Ph.D's, and may open for an M.S from a solid school with a bit of persistance.
The self-taught crowd will howl and cry that it's not fair. They can program as well or better than their pedigreed peers, they have probably built an open-source terminal emulator, and they've labored in the same trenches, side by side for years. However, in reality, very few people teach themselves calculus, computer theory, materials science, economics (and don't forget ettiquite) with the level of rigor demanded by these positions. This is where the four, six or eight years of studying that "useless theory" becomes useful, even necessary.
I'm a self-taught techie with several certifications, facing this division. I'm 40 years old, and a Sr. DBA for a large firm, making a good salary -- end of the techie line. I've been courted for managment positions, which I don't want. I've got three B.S. and one M.S. degrees in various sciences, all from good schools, but no C.S. degree.
Over the past two years I've taken several C.S. classes from a good school - algorithm analysis, advanced data structures, automata, etc. I'll probably get an M.S in a few years, and maybe a Ph.D. after that, but more importantly, I'm learning all the little details that differentiate a computer scientist from a competent techie. There IS a differance, after all.
Traditional encyclopedia provide the proverbial "paper trail" by virtue of material durability, and (hypothetically) are further protected by the academic integrity of the scholars who maintain them. I can't help feeling that Wikipedia is more succeptable to the tyranny of the masses and the whims of political fashion. While wikipedia does permit the dedicated user to track all modifications, this ability is seldom employed by the casual user.
That is a problem. However, an encyclopedia article doesn't just have to be correct; it must also be readable to someone with no experience in the field. Admittedly, that's not possible with some subjects, but it's more possible and more important that you may think.
Citing sources may help. Also try leaving a note on the talk page discussing the issues, instead of pseudonoymsly changing things and expecting people to recognize your authority. Point well taken. I confess to being a relative Wikipedia neophyte, and too lazy to take the time to work the system to best advantage.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply 8^)
We revile Microsoft and others for failing to correct problems identifed by outside sources. The numerous comments calling "just edit it" or "facts are always in dispute" are hypocritical and self-serving.
My areas of expertise are quite narrow, but I have taken time to edit a couple of articles in those areas, contribuiting, to the best of my ability, my knowledge to the broader community. Some of those articles have been subsequently edited by people with a "Freshman-Level" background and understanding, and brought to a palatable, easily understood, and lamentably incorrect state. Editing by the masses produces a product palatable to the masses. Truth, however, should not be hostage to the whim and inclinations of an uneducated majority.
It has been said that, "The victor writes the history books." A lamentable truth. Will Wikipedia accuratly report the "War on Terror", for example, or will it be sanitized to reflect the political expediencies of the times, and altered as needed to fit the shifting political waters of the future? Is it a factual document or a populist, revisionist history?
I like Wickpedia, but I think that there needs to be some verification of qualifications and community-building in individual topic areas. I know next-to-nothing about European history. Should my opinion even be considered on those topics? On the other hand, I have advanced degrees in Biogeochemistry, so why am I casually overwritten? It's an honest criticism, and failure to address it leaves Wikipedia an interesting, useful, but fundamentally (potentially fatally) flawed, project.
No, Ashcroft is moving to the bereau of weights and measures to serve as the standard of "Absolute Conservative". As such, it is impossible to appoint a more conservative replacement.
Doubtless, Bush will attempt to redefine the "Absolute Conservative" standard when selecting Ashcroft's replacement, but experts agree that he's likely to appoint a "Facist Extremist" by mistake.
Based on what is known about the Cretaceous climate and modern tropical honeybees, Kozisek estimates that any post-impact winter event could not have dropped temperatures more than 4 to 13 degrees F (2-7C) without wiping out the bees. Current nuclear winter theories from the Chicxulub impact estimate drops of 13 to 22 degrees F (7-12C) - too cold for tropical honeybees. obviously, the temperature dropped by EXACTLY 13 F (7 C), the upper range of the bee's tolerance and the lower limit of current models. Where's the conflict? Do I win a nobel prize?
We are experiencing a Renaissance of locally-produced music, from street performers to small bands. Music is no longer the exclusive domain of a handful of mega-conglomerates, but is being taken back and revitalized on the micro scale. Seattle/Portland (near me) support a thriving community of small indepenent musicans producing truly excellent music. It's like the 60's all over again. Not so much "new" sounds, but new takes on the folk/rock/celtic traditions and a resurgence of interest in vocals and acoustic instrumentation rather than synthesized, reprocessed top-40. Complex, muti-layered arrangements that depend on real musicians, not 20 year old pinups with digitally-enhanced vocals supporting their silicon-enhanced figures.
Personnally, I'm excited by the trend, and am actively building a large and varied CD collection with very little help from the RIAA.
For large projects I use Oracle or PostgreSQL, but HSQL is ideal for inclusion with programs that need a database distributed with the program. It's easy to use, easy to add to a java program, and works like a charm. Frankly, I don't think it's attracted the attention it deserves.
I don't know about Derby. It's definately worth taking a look at, but in my opionion it would have to be pretty spectacular to displace HSQL.
One wonders that all of these digital toys can be used in Europe without a wave of bloody deaths caused by SUV-driving soccer-moms trying to browse the Opra website in traffic. Is their tort system better? Is the traffic slower? Or could it be that, having sent their lower-class criminals, drunks and flotsom to America, they are simply smarter than we are? Hmmmm. . .
Um, well at least we can read Slashdot at work as well as you youngsters!
I agree. Sometimes it's even more bizzare. The other day I went looking for the sound-track to "Top Gun". Yes, it's ancient, but so am I, and it has some great driving music. Anyway, my local music store had the CD for $17.50. Curious, I went over a couple of racks to the DVD section. There was a widescreen edition version of the full movie with all the extras for $12.00. Why is the music worth more than the movie? I agree with Z-MaxX -- I smell a skunk!