Feature request on sqldeveloper

My feature request on sqldeveloper seems to be getting some votes http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=42626:39:3668166922413636::NO::P39_ID:461

although i later found out how to convert case via accelerators let's see if the request gets accepted the one request that has been accepted of creating connection groups is going to be real useful

Jonathan Lewis explains...

..what can happen if one starts using scripts from the internet w/o enough qulaity check.
Read his article :http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/kiddy_scripts.html

I got RTFM'ed

I got RTFM'ed when today i requested for select access on V$ objects in the development enviroment.

Tried all means to convince my dba but he would'nt budge and asked me to read documentation on v$sql .

I have given up for now......no point in banging my head on the ancient mind-block wall.....

Code Name God

Read this book recently by Dr Mani Bhaumik , i am fond of autobiographies and this one with details about Dr Bhaumik's spiritual quest is intriguing his directions on how to start on the path of meditation are precise and coming from his own experience offer advice as a mentor to anyone who is a beginner in meditation techniques.

Impact of SOA on Data Warehousing

Was reading a white-paper from OAGIS on the concept of business integration software ; this led me to think about the possible impacts on data warehousing in terms of integration , federation and what Lou Agosta referred to as the Virtual Data Warehouse ( i believe this was in a article on dmreview.com)
Dan Linstedt has a very clear thoughts on this and in his article featured in Terdata Magazine he makes certain crucial observations "

• Can your organization agree on the services that you need-for customers, for partners, for your internal organizations?
• Can you agree on what parts of those services require access to data that is or should be stored in your enterprise data warehouse?
• As for active data warehouses, can you agree on what key business events should cause the enterprise data warehouse to kick off an automated business workflow? "

He contends that SOA will make it easier and faster to develop decision support applications.
I concur with his thoughts but at the same time one must look at the fact SOA is a concept and at the core of which lies the fact of standard definitions , processes , systems. I believe that these kind of enterprise-wide integration efforts will only be successful when sufficient time , effort , money , active senior management support is available to get a solid foundation of common definitions and DW architects will have to be fight a lonely battle for quite sometime and be the change-drivers in organizations.

French law could affect the music-download industry

"France is pushing through a law that would force Apple Computer Inc to open its iTunes online music store and enable consumers to download songs onto devices other than the computer maker's popular iPod player."

This is great news for people who find the iPod a tad expensive...

Nurturing your business assets

Michael Meltzer makes a significant point that most marketing organizations miss when using technology to establish a dialog with their customers that of : "customers are not just targets but your business assets that you need to nurture.." Bravo ! I hope Marketing people lift their head out of the CURARE -pit to read this ( "The cross-sell, up-sell, retention, acquisition, reactivation and experience (CURARE) approach" )

Read the full article here

The Marketing Funnel

Jim Lenskold in his article on darwinmag mentions a key point on marketing ROI and that of "influencing prospective customers all the way through the buyers’ funnel, where in the funnel do they fail to progress, and what are the strengths and weaknesses in the core strategy?"
Reading this along with Seth Godins concept of flipping the funnel is the way to got for CMO's who wish to grow the market share

Skill Set?

Tom Kyte on skill sets for the future IT professional:
"
The most important skill set?

o commonsense
o flexibility
o willingness to change
o excitement about learning new things
o not being afraid to say "what I did 5 years ago bears no resemblance to what I
do today and hopefully none to what I do one year from"
o good communication skills
"

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

Writen by: John Lennon

my oracle dba...

my oracle dba wants me to generate a explain plan for the insert statement of a job that i wanted his help in tuning..Dont know if i should laugh or cry.........

Free Health Education Library

Dr Malpani runs a free-online health education library
Worth a visit for collection at the reading room ..

Stupid Movie Physics

I came across this great site which dissects in detail gimmicks used in movies from a physics point of view.
The articles on Flaming Cars and Cigarettes as Lighters are really great and explain in detail why the stuff shown cannot actually happen .......

Ethics in business intelligence

Richard Hackathorn's recent article on TD magazine on ethics in BI has a interesting perspective on a hypothetical scenario where the person's actions though legal are unethical ,as shown on the quadrant diagram in the article.
I believe in these situations even if the corporations have policies , penalties etc it is the individuals actions that could lead the corporation into messy situations . So in addition to the excellent steps that are mentioned at the end of the article , Employee education should also be made mandatory on these issues.A mandatory training on the lines of Environment and Safety that is essential for employees working in the manufacturing industry a training on Ethics is essential for "Knowledge workers".....

Learn quantum theory from the master

Cornell university has posted 3 lectures by Prof. Hans Bethe on Quantum theory.
It's a great set of audio,video clips a must visit for anyone remotely interested in physics.

US Supreme Court ruling on File sharing

http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?ID=221
The court has ruled that file sharing services are liable for copyright infringement , would be interesting to see how the ruling affects the so called slow-down of CD/DVD sales...

Pitfalls of the Fixed Price Model

A recent post on the Dizwell Blog
directed me to the site of Pythian , where i came across this white paper on the flaws of the FP model by Steve Pickard
I could'nt agree more with the findings detailed in the paper , especially( #3 )the one on Increased Risk , it is the whole "business model" of a FP vendor captured perfectly..

Steve Jobs at Stanford

Rashmi Bansal's recent post on her blog
provided me the link Steve Job's recent speech at Stanford Univ. This is really inspiring stuff.Worth reading.

Blue Notes Radio

I hit the Blue Notes Radio using the Stumbleupon plugin of firefox and now am hooked to the station
Check it out yourself : http://www.bluenote.com/radio.asp

ETL on unstructured data

Informatica is going to bundle Itemfield technologies with their Power Center platform
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1030259

Wonder when i will get to test-drive this stuff , support for unstructured data adds a whole new dimension to Power Center platform....