Run like Hell

Aug 30, 2012

Review at amazon: Oracle Database XE 11gR2 Jump Start Guide

This week i read Oracle Database XE 11gR2 Jump Start Guide:

After some postings about Oracle 11 XE like

about the features and installation, reading this book was the next step to see, what is special with XE in contrast to other Oracle editions.
Packtlib says at their overview:

Install and uninstall Oracle Database XE on Windows and Linux environment

Set up local and remote database connections and resize Oracle SGA

Install SQL Developer, access table data, modify table data,
understand transaction control statements and most commonly used SQL
functions

Create and manage database objects like tables, indexes, constraints, views, sequences, and synonyms

Develop PL/SQL stored subprograms

Create rich and responsive applications using Oracle Application Express

Understand Oracle logical and physical components such as SGA, PGA, Tablespaces, and Flash Recovery Area

Move data between different Oracle Database XE versions

Upgrade Oracle Database Express Edition to other Oracle Database Editions

Protect and recover your database

Tune the database for optimal performance

This topics are all covered in the book, but most of them just at beginners level. For readers which want to start with Oracle databases especially Express Edition this book is a rich source of SQL snippets and basic administration commands. Only the chapter, which describes the different editions, is helpful for database administrators.
So i gave 4 stars at my review at amazon, because for developers, which do not work each day with Oracle databases or want to start a program and need a free database, this book is an excellent jump start. Database administrators should stay with the official documentation (but they have to read much more than the 125 pages of this book ;-)

Jul 16, 2012

Googleearth on Ubuntu: ./googleearth: 43: ./googleearth-bin: not found

Today i tried to install Google Earth on an Ubuntu laptop. I downloaded the software via http://www.google.de/earth/ and installed the debian package via:

sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb

But then i tried to start the application i got:

$ google-earth
/usr/bin/google-earth: 43: ./googleearth-bin: not found

Grrrrrr.... /usr/bin/google-earth is a link to /opt/google/earth/free/googleearth
Hmmm.... /opt/google/earth/free/googleearth is a shell script which tries to call ./googleearth-bin
googleearth-bin exists in /opt/google/earth/free and the right for execution is set....
But what is that at the upper status bar:

I clicked on the "No entry" sign and the package manager opens:

And choosing attributes i got:

So let's try to install lsb-core:

$ sudo apt-get install lsb-core
Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut
Status-Informationen einlesen... Fertig
Probieren Sie »apt-get -f install«, um dies zu korrigieren:
Die folgenden Pakete haben nicht-erfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
lsb-core: Hängt ab: lsb-invalid-mta soll aber nicht installiert werden oder
                       mail-transport-agent
            Hängt ab: m4 soll aber nicht installiert werden

Ok. Follow the instuctions:

$ sudo apt-get -f install
Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut
Status-Informationen einlesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeiten werden korrigiert... Fertig
Die folgenden zusätzlichen Pakete werden installiert:
alien bsd-mailx librpm0 librpmbuild0 librpmio0 lsb-core lsb-invalid-mta m4 ncurses-term pax rpm rpm-common rpm2cpio
Vorgeschlagene Pakete:
lsb-rpm lintian lsb elfutils rpm-i18n
Die folgenden NEUEN Pakete werden installiert:
alien bsd-mailx librpm0 librpmbuild0 librpmio0 lsb-core lsb-invalid-mta m4 ncurses-term pax rpm rpm-common rpm2cpio
0 aktualisiert, 13 neu installiert, 0 zu entfernen und 41 nicht aktualisiert.
1 nicht vollständig installiert oder entfernt.
Es müssen 5.491kB an Archiven heruntergeladen werden.
...

And voila:

google-earth

Jul 11, 2012

Oracle Metalink: from Flash to HTML5

Four years ago i wrote about the new oracle support online portal which replaced metalink. Now Oracle announced again a new support portal which replaces the flash based application with a html5 site.
Here are some screenshots of both versions:

old (flash)	new (html5)
	.not available yet

Let's hope, that Oracle reimplemented the search algorithm, that one can find now really helpful information there.
The rollout will happen on Friday July 13, 2012 starting at 9:00 PM Pacific Time and 5 hours outage are planned. Here the schedule provided by Oracle: