Recently, I re-entered the Oracle community as a speaker, and I won’t lie, I felt some anxiety. I’d been away from the Oracle keynote stage for a while, focusing on building solutions, working in spaces that welcomed me, and doing what so many long-term women in tech have had to do: protect our energy, guard our sanity, and rebuild when too many small harms have added up. So, when I was asked to keynote not one, but several Oracle events, I was humbled. These weren’t just recycled talks-they were opportunities to create something meaningful. I don’t do canned keynotes. I…
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Few things frustrate travelers more than lost baggage, and United Airlines certainly tested my patience last week. There were plenty of chances for them to shine in customer service, but their online platform and mobile app ended up being prime examples of what not to do—for both customers and their own service representatives. Background I was flying back to Portland from Austin on Friday, during record cold temperatures across the Southwest. Overhead storage in the cabin was packed with travelers’ winter gear—despite requests to wait until all passengers had boarded—which left me, one of the first in group #3, without…
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I just finished an interview with a friend for a blog post where he was surprised how differently I was viewed in the Oracle community, (a multi-platform DBA who wasn’t very loyal to Oracle like she should be) vs. the Microsoft community, (that odd Oracle girl.) The truth is, I’ve always enjoyed database technology and few know that my first database (MSSQL 6.5) as well as my first book was in Microsoft SQL Server (Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices). I’m not platform centric at all, work mostly in Oracle, SQL Server/Azure SQL and MySQL, but I’m just CUSTOMER centric. Azure…
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It’s not uncommon for different recommended practices to arise in technical sizing and optimization practices. For many, it’s a compromise between most optimal data and ease of access vs. impact on production environments, which is no different from what we face when sizing Oracle on Azure. As we know it’s important to lift and shift the workload vs. moving the hardware, we must have as simple way to perform this task. The question comes up repeatedly as to our preferred method of working with a one-week Automatic Workload Repository, (AWR) report to do so. This post will be focused on…
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It was brought to my ADHD attention, that one of our community members is leaving after she was made to feel unwelcome by some who, (IMHO) have insecurities so deep, that they have nothing else better to do than do harm to others. Correcting others on preferred pronouns or even more challenging, transitioning is something I can’t imagine the difficulty around. I’ve only had the experiences as a parent of a gay son and one gender non-identifying child- the unintentional and intentional cruelty of others was impactful enough. I had more than one occasion of a child returning home, embarrassed…
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I don’t talk too much about my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, (ADHD) brain outside of the occasional squirrel joke and more often view it as a super power, but when it is a challenge, I think it’s important to share what we go through. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know it is one. ADHD and Autism For those that aren’t aware, I was diagnosed with ADHD/on the spectrum for autism back in 2004-2005. Its not that I wasn’t before this, I just grew up in a very rural area. I fully demonstrated traditional traits for a kid…
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So I transitioned in the last years from having a development lab, to VMs, to the cloud and now, tired of slow WiFi, been happily using Docker for most of my demos. As of January, the latest upgrade to Windows 10, aka patch version 109, has been like a bad cat fight. For anyone else using Docker on Windows, it’s very likely that the error “MobyLinuxVM failed to start worker process” is a bane of your existence. After exhausting the standard attempt to uninstall whatever patches were applied by Microsoft, and post researching a solution, you’d discover its more of a…
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Somehow I’ve made it a pastime of pointing out how many times women are passed up for recognition while men are promoted around them. Its not that the men were identified as better or worse than women, but just about how heavily we scrutinize and limit women while everyone else passes them by. Now I’m going to ask the Oracle folks to not take this personally, but hopefully take it as a call to arms, but I know how we love to shoot the messenger. Hopefully you already know that I will have no qualms about deleting abusive or threatening…
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I planned on finishing up and publishing a different post today, but after a number of conversations with DBAs in the community, this topic took precedence. Yesterday the above announcement came out with the Oracle earnings call, along with the following: “In a couple of weeks, we will announce the world’s first fully autonomous database cloud service,” said Oracle Chairman and CTO, Larry Ellison. “Based on machine learning, the latest version of Oracle is a totally automated “self-driving” system that does not require human beings to manage or tune the database. Using AI to eliminate most sources of human error…
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There was a great post by Noel Yuhanna on how he deems the number of DBAs required in a database environment by size and number of databases. This challenge has created a situation where data platforms are searching for ways to remove this roadblock and eliminate the skills needed to manage the database tier. I’ve been a DBA for almost 2 decades now, (“officially” as my beginning date with an official title and my years experience differ by a couple years…) When I started, we commonly used import and export features to move data from one data source to another.…
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I’ve been asked what it takes to be a successful evangelist and realizing that what makes one successful at it, is often like holding sand in your hands- no matter how tightly you hold your fists, it’s difficult to contain the grains. The term evangelist is one that either receives very positive or very negative responses. I’m not a fan of the term, but no matter if you use this term or call them advocates, representative, influencer- it doesn’t matter, they are essential to the business, product or technology that they become the voice for. Those that I view as…
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I love working in tech. I can honestly say that nothing gives me greater satisfaction than working on a technical challenge or having a brilliant conversation about technology with peers. Other days I feel like a broken record having the same conversations with the women in technology around me, facing a lack of diversity and the consistent exclusion in tech. Until this changes, the beatings will continue and my expression may often look similar to Alan Rickman’s below: “Rants are good for the soul and even better for the world. Some times, some things just need to be said.” Delphix has done an…
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How many times have you had a developer come to you and say, “I just did a bad thing in the database. Can you recover from what I just did?” With Delphix virtualization, we make this pretty easy to address from the user interface with a simple slider to recover from a PIT before the catastrophic mistake, but today, we’ll discuss how to do this from the command line 1.Log into the Delphix engine as an admin user. ssh delphix_admin@<yourengine> delphix > timeflow delphix timeflow > ls 2. Depending on the platform that you’re using, (in our example, we’ll use…
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I was surprised on April 20th when I awoke to find a 1.3G OS update on my Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge+. I’d never experienced any issues with an update before, so I quickly connected my phone to the WiFi and let it download then upgrade my phone, anxiously awaiting what new Android features awaited me. It Broke I proceeded through my day, but was concerned as battery usage was higher than usual and I suffered email failures from Gmail and a few tweets didn’t go through. I consider myself quite familiar with mobile phone trouble shooting and promptly performed the…
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Since the introduction of Enterprise Manager 12c, folks have been asking for a list of best practices. I know a lot of you have been waiting for this post! 1.Use previously deployed, older hardware for your Enterprise Manager deployment on 13c. Enterprise Manager is a simple, single service system. There is no need for adequate resources and ability to scale. In fact, I’ll soon be posting on my blog about building an EM13c on a Raspberry Pi 3. 2. Please feel free to add new schemas, objects and ETL’s to the Oracle Management Repository, (OMR.) This database doesn’t have enough…
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I chose to work for Oracle because I wanted to immerse myself in the Oracle Enterprise Manager product. It was the right place for me. It didn’t matter that I had a background as a multi-platform DBA or that I my skill set was deeply involved in optimization of complex, large databases. I knew it was right for me and I trust my instincts. Due to research and the opportunities preesented to me, I have a great career, great peers and wonderful bosses. It was the right choice for me and I ignored a number of people who would have…
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I am a long time supporter of Samsung products- I’ve always had Samsung phones, (currently a Note 3 owner…) Samsung TVs, monitors and even have a Samsung microwave and refrigerator. I love Samsung products and this has included my tablets, recently deciding to upgrade my Samsung Note 10.1, (original) for a Samsung Note Pro 12.2. I have nothing against Apple/Mac products. I think they are great, but I’m a long time user of Windows, (it really does what I need…) and I have always loved Android OS. When it came to the Samsung Note Pro 12.2, I found the size…
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It’s been such a long time since I posted anything on my blog. I had this post, last save time was on Dec. 13th, which is ironic considering the subject and what ended up happening that day. I’m going to ramble a bit, but there is a message here folks… 🙂 I’ve always been a strong believer of the old Hebrew saying, “Fall down seven times, get up eight”. I’ve lived by it, which most who know me well enough, realize that it’s not just part of my DBA methodology, it’s also an integral part of my life. When I…