Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Ubuntu plus SQL Developer

I'm not going to initiate endless, historical discussion about the superiority of the operating systems; I'm just stating the fact that my personal number one here is Ubuntu and the rest of its family, e.g. Mint.

I can make an analogical statement about databases. My personal number one here is Oracle DB and no matter how tolerant I am, I will always interpret DB solutions through the Oracle DB perspective.

So, after such a short introduction here, I have my final, personal, yet simple operational environment of the system: Ubuntu + Oracle DB.

Before going inside the Oracle DB, I recommend expanding standard DB user interface with a more powerful command-line tool called: “GQLPlus”. The difference between GQLPlus and SQL*Plus is command-line editing and history, plus table-name and column-name completion. But before installing GQLPlus, a piece of information. It crashes quite often in my environment so, before you get angry with me for this tool recommendation, you could try a free of charge Oracle Sql Developer tool. According to its java-based engine, the tool is not the performance leader but according to its economical efficiency, it is still worth using.

The SQL Developer installation may be a little bit tricky (java home etc.) so for more instructions about smooth installation on Ubuntu see here: "Oracle SQL Developer on Ubuntu".

Monday, December 6, 2010

Autumn and Winter

Autumn and Winter – probably the best seasons for change or for doing something meaningful with our thoughts.
So, short look at myself, and what can we see apart from big eyes and cheap poker face? :)
We see the doubt: "To write or not to write?"
An alternative answer is: Maybe this is the time called: "share your brain".
The next question: Would it be painful?
An alternative answer is: What about procedure called: "once per week"?
Okay. Let it be the truth.
At first I will start from some "snapshot from my past".
The story began from the name "the3time.com" and then, after a nice start, it stopped, and I think it will not go on.
Shortly speaking, I did that small Oracle Apex service for one of my colleagues and we had some hope that this small business would go life and we would be able to create something profitable on our own.
The start was good, clients were interested, they even liked the Apex system, but the most important was that they did not like to make orders, or, in other words, they did not vote with their money, they did not order any service.
Maybe it is good for wild animals but it was not good for our small business :)

As always we can find many excuses to feel better about our failures. This, however does not matter. The final result does not change at all: "the project has not succeeded, we failed". The good thing for Apex technology was that the business had failed but not the technology ;)

My private short resume from the3time, or in other words, the lesson learned from this project: it is very hard to have regular work (to work five days for 8 hours) and having returned home to do powerful new business project with the same power.
You can create the system during your free evening time but this time is to short to create the trust of your clients.