How to Compose New Gmail Messages in Full Screen (instead of the tiny compose box of new Gmail)

April 9, 2013 by 10 Comments

I’m writing this (unusual) post as I am a long time Gmail user and recently I’ve seen plenty of people & articles complain about the Gmail’s new compose window (the one that shows up as a small hovering window in the bottom right of your screen):

gmail_new_compose3

The top google hits so far only return tips to disable the new editor completely, but I want to use the new one, just in a bigger window! There is a very easy workaround for that – and there’s no need to switch back to the old compose mode at all!

If you are using your mouse, then just:

  1. Hold down SHIFT key when clicking the Compose button to get a stand-alone new window for composing a message.
  2. Hold down CTRL (on Windows) or Command (on Mac OSX) key to get a full-screen new browser tab for composing a message.

Examples 1 & 2 below:

gmail_new_window_composegmail_full_screen_compose

If you use Gmail keyboard shortcuts for productivity (they’re awesome!), then you can just:

  1. Press “c” for the new (small) compose box
  2. Press SHIFT-C (capital “C”) for the stand-alone new window for composing a message
  3. Press D for a full screen new browser tab for composing a message

Note that you can view the Gmail shortcuts reference, if this feature is enabled, just by pressing the ? (question mark) key:
gmail_vim_navigation_keys
So, there’s no need to switch back to the old compose mode completely, just remember SHIFT, CTRL and the “D” keys :)

Filed Under: Productivity

Snapper v4.02 and the Snapper launch party video

February 18, 2013 by 3 Comments

I have fixed most of the bugs that showed up during the Snapper launch party session and uploaded the new version (v4.02) of Snapper here:

I have also uploaded the launch party hacking session video to enkitec.tv:

I have not updated the snapper documentation yet, but here are the main improvements:

  1. RAC support (query remote instance’s sessions performance data via GV$)
  2. Manually taken “before” and “after” snapshot support. No need to use DBMS_LOCK to sleep for a certain number of seconds between snapshots
  3. Useful averages in the right side of the output (e.g. average bytes sent/received per roundtrip etc). I will keep adding new averages over the coming weeks.

RAC support

I have kept the syntax backwards-compatible, so when you run Snapper like this …

@snapper ash 5 1 user=tanel

… it will still query only local instance’s sessions.

But if you want to measure all tanel’s sessions in let’s say instance #2 only, you can just add @2 to the session filter condition:

@snapper ash 5 1 user=tanel@2

Or if you want all instances then use @*:

@snapper ash 5 1 user=tanel@*

If you want to measure a single session with sid 1234 in instance #2, you can do it in two ways:

@snapper ash 5 1 1234@2

Or use the inst_id,sid tuple syntax:

@snapper ash 5 1 (2,1234)

Note that the brackets are important, as otherwise snapper thinks that you want to measure SID 2 and SID 1234 in the local instance. You can pass multiple inst_id,SID tuples to the snapper though:

@snapper ash 5 1 (2,1234),(4,5678),(3,999)

Snapper still supports the qc= syntax too, to list all sessions started by a PX query coordinator session:

@snapper ash 5 1 qc=1234@*

Note that the qc= syntax is a bit broken/inconsistent right now – what the qc=1234@* means right now is that Snapper looks up the SID 1234 from every instance and lists slave sessions from all instances. If you use qc=1234@2 for example, then Snapper would only look for QC in the instance #2 and any slaves that are also in instance #2 (but with inter-instance parallelism you may have slaves in other instances too). I will fix it in a near-future version.

I will write about the other major features in separate blog entries, but if you want to learn about it now, then grab a beer (or coffe) and watch the latest enkitec.tv show (it’s a bit over 2 hours :-))

P.S. Snapper 4 is still beta! Some queries (like the qc=) one may take a while to run, running dynamic queries with subqueries against GV$ views efficiently is tricky business. This is why I have kept the old snapper v3 (which is more stable and pretty efficient) in the standard (old) snapper address.

Update: If you want to see what Snapper is capable of (it’s about the old version 3), check this document about using Snapper for Oracle performance measurement.

Filed Under: Oracle, Productivity

A tip for lazy Oracle users – type less with ANSI DATE and TIMESTAMP SQL syntax

December 29, 2012 by 32 Comments

I am lazy, therefore if I can type less, I will type less.

Often people are surprised to see that Oracle supports the ANSI DATE and TIMESTAMP syntax in the SQL code, which allows me to shorten the lengthy TO_DATE( …. , ‘YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS’) syntax a bit. You can just type this if you want to compare some field to a date (day precision):

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dba_objects WHERE created > DATE'2012-12-01';

  COUNT(*)
----------
         0

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dba_objects WHERE created > DATE'2012-01-01';

  COUNT(*)
----------
       804

This way you can always use the standard date format regardless of any NLS settings that may say otherwise.

Note that in above example, the date 2012-01-01 means 2012-01-01 00:00:00 really, so any objects created on that date from 00:00:01 onwards would be included in the results. If you want timestamp precision, then you can use the TIMESTAMP keyword:

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dba_objects WHERE created > TIMESTAMP'2012-01-01 08:12:34';

  COUNT(*)
----------
       805

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dba_objects WHERE created > TIMESTAMP'2012-01-01 08:12:34.000000000';

  COUNT(*)
----------
       805

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dba_objects WHERE created > TIMESTAMP'2012-01-01 08:12:34.000000000 -08:00';

  COUNT(*)
----------
       805

I think this syntax works since Oracle 9i as this is where ANSI-SQL syntax was introduced into Oracle.

You can use this syntax also in some other situations, like the FLASHBACK TO TIMESTAMP and SELECT … AS OF TIMESTAMP clauses of a statement:

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t AS OF TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP'2012-12-29 20:00:10 +03:00';

  COUNT(*)
----------
     25237

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t AS OF TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP'2012-12-29 20:01:00 +03:00';

  COUNT(*)
----------
         1

SQL> ALTER TABLE t ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;

Table altered.

SQL> FLASHBACK TABLE t TO TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP'2012-12-29 20:00:00 +03:00';

Flashback complete.

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t;

  COUNT(*)
----------
     25237

Note the double “TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP …” above. This is not a typo, the first TIMESTAMP tells you want to flash back by specifying a human timestamp as opposed to Oracle transactional timestamp in which case you would have used the “SCN” keyword. And the second TIMESTAMP is the ANSI timestamp specifier (you could use the good old TO_DATE() syntax there).

Enjoy saving time every time you type a SQL command with date&time logic in it (those of you who didn’t know about this feature, you can buy me beer when we meet).

Happy new year! :)

Update: Sayan Malakshinov has added an interesting piece of information into the comments section – that there’s also an undocumented TIME keyword available. Let’s do a quick test:


SQL> SELECT TIME'12:34:56.000000' a FROM dual;

A
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
12.34.56.000000000 PM

This returns only the time-of-day component apparently, but no day, month, year info.

Let’s try to create a table to see what datatype we’ll end up with then:

SQL> CREATE TABLE t AS SELECT TIME'12:34:56.000000' a FROM dual;
CREATE TABLE t AS SELECT TIME'12:34:56.000000' a FROM dual
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00902: invalid datatype

Error!
Sayan mentioned an event 10407 in the comment, which allowed the table to be created. Let’s check the oraus.msg file and see what it’s about:

10407, 00000, "enable datetime TIME datatype creation"
// *Cause:
// *Action:  set this event to enable datetime datatype creation
// *Comment: This event is set when the user wants to create
//           a datetime datatype column.  The compatible=8.1.0.0.0 parameter
//           must also be set.

Let’s use this event:

SQL> ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS '10407 trace name context forever, level 1';

Session altered.

SQL> CREATE TABLE t AS SELECT TIME'12:34:56.000000' a FROM dual;

Table created.

Ok it’s possible now (but undocumented + unsupported too).

So after disabling the event and dropping the table I tried a few more variations with casting the TIME datatype to something else:

SQL> CREATE TABLE t AS SELECT CAST(TIME'12:34:56.000000' AS DATE) a FROM dual;
CREATE TABLE t AS SELECT CAST(TIME'12:34:56.000000' AS DATE) a FROM dual
                              *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected NUMBER got TIME

Ok, can’t convert it to DATE. Let’s try TIMESTAMP:

SQL> CREATE TABLE t AS SELECT CAST(TIME'12:34:56.000000' AS TIMESTAMP) a FROM dual;

Table created.

SQL> @desc t
           Name                            Null?    Type
           ------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
    1      A                                        TIMESTAMP(6)


SQL> SELECT * FROM t;

A
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
29-DEC-12 12.34.56.000000 PM

Converting to TIMESTAMP worked – looks like the current DATE is chosen as the date component for the result.

Hmm, I wonder if we can somehow concatenate a date component and a time component together?


SQL> SELECT TRUNC(sysdate - 100) + TIME'15:00:00' FROM dual;
SELECT TRUNC(sysdate - 100) + TIME'15:00:00' FROM dual
                            *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-30087: Adding two datetime values is not allowed

Well, apparently not.

Anyway, my flight departs in 40 minutes, so got to get moving. Thanks Sayan for the TIME addition – it’s good to learn new stuff (every day ;-)

Filed Under: Oracle, Productivity

MOATS: The Mother of All Tuning Scripts!

March 29, 2011 by 56 Comments

People talk about the Oracle SQL Developer 3 being out, which is cool, but I have something even cooler for you today ;-)

I finally figured out how to convert my screen-recordings to uploadable videos, so that the text wouldn’t get unreadable and blurry.

So, here’s the first video, about a tool called MOATS, which we have built together with fellow OakTable Network member and a PL/SQL wizard Adrian Billington (of oracle-developer.net).

Here’s the video, it’s under 3 minutes long. Play the video in full screen for best results (and if it’s too slow loading, change it to lower resolution from HD mode):

Check it out and if you like MOATS, you can download it from Adrian’s website site (current version 1.05) and make sure you read the README.txt file in the zip!

Also thanks to Randolf Geist for finding and fixing some bugs in our alpha code… Note that MOATS is still kind of beta right now…

P.S. I will post my ORA-4031 and shared pool hacking video real soon now, too! :-)

P.P.S. Have you already figured out how it works?! ;-)

Update: Now you can suggest new features and improvement requests here:

Filed Under: Cool stuff, Oracle, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

An index of my TPT scripts

March 24, 2011 by 8 Comments

A lot of people have asked me whether there’s some sort of index or “table of contents” of my TPT scripts (there’s over 500 scripts in the tpt_public.zip file – http://tech.e2sn.com/oracle-scripts-and-tools )

I have planned to create such index for years, but never got to it. I probably never will :) So a good way to extract the descriptions of some scripts is this (run the command in the directory where you extracted my scripts to):

Note: the single and double-quotes may get messed up when the browser tries to be smart and replace them with nicer looking characters (which Unix doesn’t recognize then). When copying & pasting this command, make sure that the single & double-quotes are the regular ones Unix shell can accept):

$ grep -i Purpose: *.sql | awk -F: ‘{ printf(“%20s %-50s\n”, $1, $3) }’
            bhla.sql      Report which blocks are in buffer cache, protected by a cache
         bufprof.sql      Display buffer gets done by a session and their reason
            calc.sql      Basic calculator and dec/hex converter       
        channels.sql      Report KSR channel message counts by channel endpoints
        curheaps.sql      Show main cursor data block heap sizes and their contents
             dba.sql      Convert Data Block Address (a 6 byte hex number) to file#, block#
             ddl.sql      Extracts DDL statements for specified objects
              df.sql  Show Oracle tablespace free space in Unix df style
        diag_sid.sql      Display current Session Wait info            
        diag_sid.sql      An easy to use Oracle session-level performance snapshot utility
           disco.sql      Generates commands for disconnecting selected sessions
     getplusparm.sql      get sqlplus parameter value (such linesize, pagesize, sqlcode,
            grpn.sql      Quick group by query for aggregating Numeric columns
            hash.sql      Show the hash value, SQL_ID and child number of previously
             i2h.sql      Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting Seminar demo script
              im.sql      Display In-Memory Undo (IMU) buffer usage    
            init.sql Initializes sqlplus variables for 156 character terminal
       kglbroken.sql                                                   
       kglbroken.sql      Report broken kgl locks for an object this can be used for 
            kill.sql      Generates commands for killing selected sessions
              la.sql      Show which latch occupies a given memory address and its stats
     lastchanged.sql      Detect when a datablock in table was last changed
       latchprof.sql      Perform high-frequency sampling on V$LATCHHOLDER
   latchprof_old.sql      Perform high-frequency sampling on V$LATCHHOLDER
      latchprofx.sql      Perform high-frequency sampling on V$LATCHHOLDER
              lh.sql      Show latch holding SIDs and latch details from V$LATCHHOLDER
             lhp.sql      Perform high-frequency sampling on V$LATCHHOLDER
            lhpx.sql      Perform high-frequency sampling on V$LATCHHOLDER
     lotshparses.sql      Generate Lots of hard parses and shared pool activity 
    lotshparses2.sql      Generate Lots of hard parses and shared pool activity 
        lotslios.sql      Generate Lots of Logical IOs for testing purposes
        lotspios.sql      Generate Lots of Physical IOs for testing purposes
     lotssparses.sql      Generate Lots of soft parses and library cache/mutex activity 
    lotssparses2.sql      Generate Lots of soft parses and library cache/mutex activity 
       mutexprof.sql      Display KGX mutex sleep history from v$mutex_sleep_history
       nonshared.sql      Print reasons for non-shared child cursors from v$sql_shared_cursor
      nonshared2.sql      Show the reasons why more child cursors were created instead of
      ostackprof.sql      Take target process stack samples and show an execution profile
            pmem.sql      Show process memory usage breakdown – lookup by process SPID
     pmem_detail.sql      Show process memory usage breakdown details – lookup by process SPID
        prefetch.sql      Show KCB layer prefetch                      
          pvalid.sql      Show valid parameter values from V$PARAMETER_VALID_VALUES
        rowcache.sql      Show parent rowcache entries mathcing an object name
              rs.sql      Display available Redo Strands               
               s.sql      Display current Session Wait and SQL_ID info (10g+)
          sample.sql      Sample any V$ view or X$ table and display aggregated results
      sampleaddr.sql      High-frequency sampling of contents of a SGA memory address
             ses.sql      Display Session statistics for given sessions, filter by
            ses2.sql      Display Session statistics for given sessions, filter by
        sgastatx.sql      Show shared pool stats by sub-pool from X$KSMSS
            smem.sql      Show process memory usage breakdown – lookup by session ID
     smem_detail.sql      Show process memory usage breakdown details – lookup by session ID
         snapper.sql      An easy to use Oracle session-level performance snapshot utility
     snapper3.15.sql      An easy to use Oracle session-level performance snapshot utility
      snapper_v1.sql      An easy to use Oracle session-level performance snapshot utility
      snapper_v2.sql      An easy to use Oracle session-level performance snapshot utility
            stat.sql      Execute SQL statement in script argument and report basic
              sw.sql      Display current Session Wait info            
             sw2.sql      Display current Session Wait info            
             swg.sql      Display given Session Wait info grouped by state and event
             swo.sql      Display current Session Wait info            
          topsql.sql      Show TOP SQL ordered by user-provided criteria
            usql.sql      Show another session’s SQL directly from library cache
           usqlx.sql      Show another session’s SQL directly from library cache
        waitprof.sql      Sample V$SESSION_WAIT at high frequency and show resulting 
              xb.sql      Explain a SQL statements execution plan with execution 
            xde2.sql      Describe X$ tables, column offsets and report indexed fixed table
              xm.sql      Explain a SQL statements execution plan directly from library cache
             xma.sql      Explain a SQL statements execution plan directly from library cache
            xmai.sql      Explain a SQL statements execution plan with execution 
             xms.sql      Explain your last SQL statements execution plan with execution 
            xmsh.sql      Explain a SQL statements execution plan with execution 
            xmsi.sql      Explain a SQL statements execution plan with execution

 

Filed Under: Oracle, Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

Flexible Sqlplus command line history with RLWRAP

May 7, 2010 by 11 Comments

At Hotsos Symposium Training Day I used rlwrap with sqlplus – which gives nice command line editing and history capabilities for tools like sqlplus. Additionally I pre-generated commonly used Oracle keywords, data dictionary view and package names into rlwrap wordfile, so I got nice tab-completion too. Sqlplus sucks much less with rlwrap ;-)

It’s relatively easy to install rlwrap on Unix (there are rlwrap RPMs out there, Solaris freeware packages and I installed it on Mac via macports.org). Just google around…

You can have rlwrap on Windows too – As rlwrap has been coded for Unix flavors, then on Windows you need to run it on a Unix library environment emulator – like Cygwin.

Dave Herring and Michael Paddock have both written an article about how to get rlwrap & sqlplus running on Windows, check out the articles here. It’s worth reading both as they have different additions…

So, if you want command line history, search and tab completion for sqlplus on Unix flavors or Windows, check these articles out!

http://daveherringsdbablog.blogspot.com/2010/03/sqlplus-command-history-with-cygwin.html

http://blog.enkitec.com/2010/04/29/using-sqlplus-with-rlwrap-on-ms-windows/

Filed Under: Cool stuff, Oracle, Productivity Tagged With: ,

Sometimes things are easy (Part 1): How to fix wrapped execution plan text?

January 18, 2010 by 1 Comment

What you see below is a common problem. Someone sends you (or posts to a forum) a wide execution plan, which is unreadable because of wrapped lines. For example, this one below:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------

| Id  | Operation                   | Name                    | E-Rows |  OMem |
 1Mem | Used-Mem |

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------

|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |                         |        |       |
 |          |

|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE             |                         |      1 |       |
 |          |

|*  2 |   HASH JOIN                 |                         |     13 |  1102K|
 1102K|  355K (0)|

|*  3 |    HASH JOIN                |                         |     13 |   988K|
 988K|  367K (0)|

|*  4 |     HASH JOIN               |                         |     13 |   921K|
 921K|  621K (0)|

|*  5 |      HASH JOIN OUTER        |                         |     13 |   836K|
 836K| 1224K (0)|

|*  6 |       HASH JOIN             |                         |     13 |   821K|
 821K|  501K (0)|

|*  7 |        HASH JOIN            |                         |     13 |  1102K|
 1102K|  501K (0)|

|   8 |         MERGE JOIN CARTESIAN|                         |      1 |       |
 |          |

|*  9 |          TABLE ACCESS FULL  | PROFILE$                |      1 |       |
 |          |

|  10 |          BUFFER SORT        |                         |      1 | 73728 |
 73728 |          |

|* 11 |           TABLE ACCESS FULL | PROFILE$                |      1 |       |
 |          |

|* 12 |         TABLE ACCESS FULL   | USER$                   |     36 |       |
 |          |

|  13 |        TABLE ACCESS FULL    | PROFNAME$               |      1 |       |
 |          |

|* 14 |       TABLE ACCESS FULL     | RESOURCE_GROUP_MAPPING$ |      1 |       |
 |          |

|  15 |      TABLE ACCESS FULL      | TS$                     |      7 |       |
 |          |

|  16 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL       | TS$                     |      7 |       |
 |          |

|  17 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL        | USER_ASTATUS_MAP        |      9 |       |
 |          |

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------

So now you either try to manually edit and fix the execution plan text so you could read it or ask the developer to send the execution plan again. Both approaches take time.

Well, sometimes things are easy – in this particular case I saved the above into a file called /tmp/x and ran the following command:

$ cat /tmp/x | awk '{ printf "%s", $0 ; if (NR % 3 == 0) print } END { print }'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                   | Name                    | E-Rows |  OMem | 1Mem | Used-Mem |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |                         |        |       | |          |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE             |                         |      1 |       | |          |
|*  2 |   HASH JOIN                 |                         |     13 |  1102K| 1102K|  355K (0)|
|*  3 |    HASH JOIN                |                         |     13 |   988K| 988K|  367K (0)|
|*  4 |     HASH JOIN               |                         |     13 |   921K| 921K|  621K (0)|
|*  5 |      HASH JOIN OUTER        |                         |     13 |   836K| 836K| 1224K (0)|
|*  6 |       HASH JOIN             |                         |     13 |   821K| 821K|  501K (0)|
|*  7 |        HASH JOIN            |                         |     13 |  1102K| 1102K|  501K (0)|
|   8 |         MERGE JOIN CARTESIAN|                         |      1 |       | |          |
|*  9 |          TABLE ACCESS FULL  | PROFILE$                |      1 |       | |          |
|  10 |          BUFFER SORT        |                         |      1 | 73728 | 73728 |          |
|* 11 |           TABLE ACCESS FULL | PROFILE$                |      1 |       | |          |
|* 12 |         TABLE ACCESS FULL   | USER$                   |     36 |       | |          |
|  13 |        TABLE ACCESS FULL    | PROFNAME$               |      1 |       | |          |
|* 14 |       TABLE ACCESS FULL     | RESOURCE_GROUP_MAPPING$ |      1 |       | |          |
|  15 |      TABLE ACCESS FULL      | TS$                     |      7 |       | |          |
|  16 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL       | TS$                     |      7 |       | |          |
|  17 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL        | USER_ASTATUS_MAP        |      9 |       | |          |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All I did here was that I stripped out line feeds from all lines except every 3rd line (which is the real end of the original line).

Note that if your linesize is very wide (and trimspool/trimout settings are ON) then this script would need some adjustment…

I’m sure this trivial approach doesn’t work in all situations, but with this article I wanted to illustrate that sometimes things which seem hard can be made much easier with a little scripting knowledge. If you are thinking which technology you should learn next – then better check out a Perl, Python or some shell+AWK book :)

By the way, if you want real flexibility displaying your execution plans (from library cache), then check this out:

http://blog.tanelpoder.com/2009/05/26/scripts-for-showing-execution-plans-via-plain-sql-and-also-in-oracle-9i/

Filed Under: Oracle, Productivity Tagged With: , ,

Measuring what matters

December 22, 2009 by 2 Comments

Cary Millsap’s recent post prompted me to write down some of the related thoughts in my head.

Here are few of my mantras for systematic troubleshooting and performance tuning, which have materialized in my head over the years of work:

  • Picking the right starting point to troubleshooting and performance tuning is the most important decision in that process.
  • Pick the wrong starting point and you end up going in circles.
  • The scope of your performance data needs to match the scope of your problem, otherwise you end up going in circles.
  • If you don’t measure what matters, you may end up fixing what doesn’t matter.
  • If you’re not systematic in your troubleshooting, you may get lucky, but you don’t want to be dependent on luck! Moreover, you wont’t need to be lucky if you are systematic in your work!
  • Performance tuning is overrated. Fixing fundamental design and coding flaws via changing a magic configuration parameter is a dream just like is getting slim and healthy via eating magic diet pills bought from TV shop.
  • Your response times are too long for only two reasons:
  1. You are doing too much work
  2. You are waiting for too much

…both of the above things can be measured in Oracle…

  • There’s no such thing as slow database or slow system. How can it be slow independently, without anyone experiencing this slowness?
    • If users say that a database is slow, they must be experiencing that somehow! The only way to experience database slowness is via a connection to it, in which case you’ll have a session (to measure).
    • If a monitoring system says that a database is slow, then it must be running and measuring response time of some task just like users do, otherwise it can not reliably say something is slow.
  • Performance is about one thing and one thing only – time. And time is measured in seconds, not in CPU utilization, number of physical IOs or looks of an execution plan.

Here’s a link to a Cary Millsap’s awesome post, read it!

Filed Under: Oracle, Productivity Tagged With: , ,

What’s a good way to learn some Oracle internals every day?

October 26, 2009 by 13 Comments

Sometimes when an attendee describes me some totally weird problem during a seminar, I am immediately able to answer something like “Hey this looks like a bug related to this Oracle configuration and can be influenced by xyz”.

And then people ask me “How the hell do you know all this stuff?”

Well, I haven’t been bitten by all of these bugs myself, but I have been doing something for many years, almost every day… reading my email!

Oh, and additionally I have configured Metalink to send me daily updates about new/updated notes, forum articles and… bug descriptions!

The last part is very important. Bug descriptions tell you something about new bugs found (and old bugs rediscovered) and sometimes their details tell you an interesting piece or two about Oracle internals related to them.

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