Gavin's Blog

I know it's been ages, and a few people would have thought that I'd given up, but no...

Thanks to those posting comments so far, it's been interesting to get different perspectives and opinions, Roxane, it's never too late to try something new. If you have a passion for something, then chase after it. Otherwise you'll end up regretting it later.. And Charles, I'll keep posting if you keep reading... And maybe post a few more comments on the way...


Alrighty, on with the study.

Hang on, before I get to it, I should explain where I've been. I know it looked like I'd dropped of the side of the earth, which is close but not quite. As I've mentioned before, I work for Oracle Consulting, which allows me to see some interesting clients with all sorts of weird and wonderful setups. Well, I now find myself sitting 1/2 way round the world from where I left you, implementing some absolutely awesome stuff. I'm not sure how much I can talk about, with Oracle's confidentiality clauses etc, but part of the implementation, is the one and only 10g RAC database sitting on ASM.

What better way to prepare for OCM than to go through a few implementations!

This got me thinking, it would be pretty tough wanting to do this OCM thingy if I was working with older versions of the DB everyday. Not being able to use 10gDB in anger would mean a heap more theoretical study, which is fine coz that'll never go astray, but we need hands on, nitty gritty stuff here, if I'm gonna do this OCM 2 day prac exam, I gotta be ready.

If you're planning to go through OCM, you're obviously a DBA already, but are you using 10g? If not, start banging down a few management doors!! "We don't care if it doesn't make business sense to upgrade now, WE WANT  ENVIRONMENTS TO LEARN ON!!"

might work?

If you are on older versions, what are they? Surely nobody's on 7.3.4 or 8.x 8i still... Don't get me wrong, they were great, I cut my teeth on them, but....

Anyway..... honestly. I'm gonna start the study soon.

Actually, I'll start a new entry for that, this one's pretty long as it is. You wanna get your money's worth after all...

OK, so, study time, what have I learnt in this fancy new environment I'm in (see previous post...), and what do I need to learn.... hmmm, maybe go over what I know first...

Lets look at the 10g Exam details again, remembering I'm studying for 10g OCP before tackling OCM. So I'll buzz over that in a day or so, knock off the exam for OCP, finish up studying for OCM and get fully Gurufied by August...

OK, now back to reality. 10gOCP.

I'd already looked at the privileged connection options, now lets look at the "General High Availability Technology", which I think sounds weird, coz it's a fuzzy type of HA, it's highly available technology because you don't have to stop people working because of other people stuffing up... Which I spose makes it available... ok.

Now's when I bring out my secret weapon... the wiki.

I've been working with some new people over here, (obviosly, since I'm 10,000km's away from anyone I know...), and one consultant here, showed me his wiki, sounds rude I know but bare with me here... (crickey, another rude pun.;-)

I'm sure you know what a wiki is by now, if not, google it and you'll get 667 million responses, (just a bit of info about it...) I never liked the idea, I thought it was just another internet fad. But here was a website sitting on his local machine that he used as his knowlege repository.. I'd ask him a question, and he'd say, "I remember something about that..." and jump to his... what would you call it, his brain overflow?

I thought "how cool is that", I mean, my brain's full as it is, and here I am trying to cram more in like a sucker...

So I've just downloaded and installed (bashed and bruised as I am) this wiki site.
Now, as I go through this research, I'll be putting the relevant
links and notes in my wiki, coz you and I both know this research thing
will not be a quick process. (If people are interested, I'll post some screen shots later as the wiki becomes populated...)

I've even got a subversion repository in there, so now when I go to client sites, I can keep an eye on the critical conf files and what's changed... pretty cool. (TANGENT, get back on track Gavin...)

Alright, so next entry in my wiki, (it looks cool too, I call it "TheFridgeDoor", coz I'm going to keep my running list of things to do on it...like my fridge...tangent...I'm just a little excited about it...)

Ok, time to tick things off.

General High Availability Technology
    Explain the Oracle Flashback feature
    Describe Resumable Space Allocation

Now we're cooking on gas...

Just on a side note, I'm Australian, therefore I say Australian things, I've realised (being in a non-english speaking country) that people can get confused by Australian colloquialisms.. If you're reading these blogs and have no idea what I just said, let me know ;-)