Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Analytic functions

A life history of unforgettable moments of clarity:

1983: Jesus
1994: Special relativity
2011: Analytic functions

I've known for a long time that I really should make use of analytic database functions. I think I've RTFMed a half-dozen times over the years, sometimes fumbling through an example or two, but never really getting them. Tom Kyte's appearance at the Dayton-Oracle User Group finally made it clear to me.

Fortunately, (a different delivery of) Tom's talk was recorded. Go, watch it! You don't have to live without analytic functions one more day!

In my case, I'd been tormented by questions about "the most recent record where..." in a MySQL database; the complex classic SQL queries I was using performed horribly in MySQL. MySQL doesn't have analytic functions, so I converted the reporting database to PostgreSQL. It paid off enormously; analytic functions cut several queries from multiple days to a few minutes. I am a Believer.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

KACE M300

We interrupt this blog with a message from my sponsor.

One of the cool things about working at KACE is helping make a product that people genuinely need and want. The job of keeping up with an organization's computers, networks, software, licenses, patches, security exposure, etc. is growing to near hopelessness for IT pros without good tools. KACE appliances are effective, affordable, and simple for medium and larger enterprises.

Small operations have different standards of what's "affordable" and "simple", though - so today KACE introduces the M300, a systems management appliance cheap and simple enough for virtually anybody.

I've only had a tiny, peripheral role in bringing out the M300, but it still feels really good. Better systems management is something the world truly needs - too many human souls pour way too many hours into the scutwork part of IT. I hope the M300 can get a lot more people get free from that.

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Tom Kyte in Dayton

Tom Kyte of asktom.oracle.com is coming to Dayton on July 14!

This is crazy-big for Dayton. Tom is one of the most amazing Oracle experts out there, with an immense knowledge of Oracle and a gift for getting straight to the heart of questions and problems; you really need to see him in action.

Thanks so much to Vicki Blommel for bringing this huge win to Dayton - when I was leading the Dayton Oracle User Group, I never even dreamed of bringing somebody this big to town.