Let me start this note with a small confession. There are technical books on my book shelve that I read (some of them twice) and/or refer to almost on a daily basis. There is also a (growing) stack of unread books that is likely to be read in the near future (right now, Pro Oracle SQL and Python Algorithms being on the top of the stack), but there is also a book, that will never be read from cover to cover. Title of this book is “An Introduction to Database Systems, 8 edition” by C. J. Date. Hat off to any and every one of you who read this book from cover to cover. Moreover, if you was enjoying reading it and you’re looking for a job in Slovenia, please, drop me a line.
Now, that I relieved my soul, I would like to invite you to attend Chris’s Date two day seminar that will take place in Ljubljana on 23-24 May 2011. Seminar is more than reasonably priced (394€ for early bird registration for non-SIOUG members) and it’s something you should not miss — and please, bring a copy of the book, I’m sure Mr. Date will not object signing it, no matter how worn it is (hmm…I think I have an idea how my copy of the book can get a worn look in a short period of time — I believe I found a new toy for my baby girl ;-).

Today I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the news on my favorite public forum that Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is a free product.
In the time when I feel that system analysis is a bad word among youngsters, something that only old school mastodons still practice and preach (or at least they’re trying to), came Oracle announcement that Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is available for free, quite a drop from 3000$ per named user price. I’m sure they were trying hard to sell the (overpriced!) product, but they simply could not make a significant sell figures. Golden times when Oracle Designer ruled the scene are over.
I truly hope that Oracle decision is correlated more to the economic downturn than the fact that nowadays system analysis is often neglected phase in the project, so one would expect smaller demand for the modeling tool such as SQL Developer Data Modeler.
I’m sure this is not a good news for Quest – while Toad Data Modeler is reasonably priced, it doesn’t run on Linux and this is becoming a major issue for me. I’m sure we’ll immediately freeze additional Toad Data Modeler purchases of new licenses and investigate the possibility to migrate to Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler.

We’ll see if economic downturn has any impact on attendance of fifteen conference organized by SIOUG! I hope not. SIOUG 2010 conference, two and a half day event hosted in my beloved Portorož is approaching and once again, I was questioning myself if is it worth spending more than a day or two on the conference. Despite my initial pessimism, I put together itinerary that justify a bit my discomfort with the conference venue. Here it is:

Monday, September 27

Christian Antognini, “Join techniques”
Boris Oblak, “Vodenje revizijskih sledi brez posegov v aplikacije”
Kantamestarit Oy,”Dude, where’s my database?”
Randolf Geist“Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting – Live Session”*
[*Although Graham Wood session on Exadata is tempting too.]

Tuesday, September 28

Uroš Mesojedec, “Java 2010 – pogled v prihodnost”
Jože Senegačnik,”Pravilna uporaba SQL ukazov v PL/SQL kodi”
Peter Robson,”CTRL-Z in SQL*Plus – Infinite Rollback!”
Piet de Visser,”Still using Ratios”
Graham Wood,”DB Time-based Oracle Performance Tuning: Theory and Practice”
Jože Senegačnik,”Kako lahko z definiranjem “constraintov” pohitrimo izvajanje aplikacij?”
Andrej Žabkar,”Virtualizacija z OracleVMjem – razgrnimo tenčico”

Wednesday, September 29

Grant Ronald,”The Fusion Development Platform”
Gregor Malenšek,”Kaj pa prehod na Forms & Reports 11g?”
Darko Golec,”Workspace Manager za potrebe časovnih baz”
Robert Korošec,”Oracle DataWall – nadaljevanje Oracle *Vault strategije”
Jure Kajzer,”Oracle za spletkarje”
Lovro Vreš,”Kdo dostopa do moje baze”
Denis Đukić,”Varnostno preverjanje Oracle podatkovnih baz”

If I’ll learn something worth posting, I’ll do it in the comment section.

My Hero was nagging me to update the firmware for a past few days. At first, I didn’t bother to read the message with firmware version details, so I was surprised when I finally gave up yesterday night and checked the HTC web site for firmware details – OTA (over The Air) firmware is available that will upgrade Hero from Android 1.5 to Android 2.1.
Honestly, I expected that 1.6 would be the last supported Android release for Hero. Thanks HTC!

I searched the net for reports that could indicate possible troubles related to 2.1 upgrade, other then “…upgrade will wipe out all your data and settings…“, which is false for OTA based upgrade, couldn’t find anything else.

Just in case some little green ones pop up, I backuped all my data on SD card, then I switched on WiFi connection on Hero and downloaded 80MB update from HTC (depending on your data plan download alone can cost you a small fortune — so don’t do it over 3G on a beach – especially not in Croatia;-), use some free WiFi spot. Fortunately HTC will warn you about that before you start downloading.). The hole process of downloading and installing 2.1 took approximately 30 minutes – make sure your battery is charged!

Everything went smooth with OTA upgrade, way easier then the last time when I upgraded HTC ROM from a PC.

Here are some sample screenshots taken from my Hero 2.1:

1) Firmware version after upgrade

2) New Power Widget (at the top) that I like

3) Settings with icons – I don’t like them, pure text based menu was fine

4) I like the way we can trace down battery usage…

5) Market face lift — unnecessary…

6) I do like the new quick navigation (press Home key when your are already at Home, or even better use “zoom-out” touch on any of the seven main screens)

Two days ago I was attending annual, one day conference, dedicated to virtualization with VMWare products.
More or less all presenters were using vendor provided slides, often the same or very similar (boring). Only a handful prepared their own presentation. In my opinion the highlight of the day was gentlemen from SRC d.o.o, who illustrated very well the paradox of various (failed) predictions from Gartner, Forrester Research and similar bunch of companies who’re “predicting” the future with “statistical observations”, with a joke about predicting the winter.

Here is my translation of the joke from Slovenian to English (with my interpretation):

It’s autumn and time to prepare for the winter in a small North American Indian village.
Local Indians are visiting their shaman to get some advice about the coming winter.

Indians: “Hau shaman, can you tell us how chilly this winter will be?”

Shaman: “Hau my people! Better prepare the firewood for the winter, because long and chilly winter is ahead of us.”

Indians: “Are you sure about that?”

Shaman: “Of course I’m sure, I’m not your shaman for nothing!?#%?… But, I’m willing to seek further confirmation with our Manitou. Please come back in a week or two.”

Indians: “Ok, chief, we’ll start to prepare the firewood immediately, see you next week.”

As soon as Indians left the shaman tent, he called his white man friend, meteorologist in the nearby city.

Shaman: “Hi Bill, long time no see, we shall meet and smoke a pipe or two. By the way, can you help me with the weather forecast for this winter?”

Bill: “Sure chief, what do you want to know?”

Shaman: “What’ll winter be this year?”

Bill: “Ughh.hmm…I think it’ll be long and chilly winter.”

Shaman: “You think or do you know?”

Bill: “Well, I don’t have all data at hand, but I can do some additional research, just for you, my friend. Please call me in a week or two.”

Shaman: “Thanks Bill!”

Weeks goes by, Indians preparing the firewood started complaining; hard work in the wood hurt their backs, they started to wonder if the winter will really be as cold as shaman predicted.

Shaman sensed the tension in the village, furiously picked his iPhone and quickly dialed meteorologist.

Shaman: “Hau Bill, what’s up? Did you get your forecast data for this winter?”

Bill: “Good news chief, I can firmly confirm that the winter will indeed be long and harsh. For several weeks we observed how Indians are madly chopping down the trees, they must be preparing for harsh winter…”

Shaman: “What the @$%&#$%”

Disclaimer: any resemblance to real life reports from various IT researchers is a pure coincidence.