Setting-up Oracle

Setting-up Oracle (at least under Windows) is the most horrible feature I’ve ever seen in my life. Why is it so bad? How can a company that can afford to buy Sun make such crappy software?

Okay. I realize that Oracle’s databases are some of, if not, the best in the world. But it absurd what you have to go through to install the client and everything else you need just to work with one. At work, like a lot of companies, we use Oracle, of course, but not only do we use it, we use like 4 different versions of it. So that means I have to have, at least for now, two different versions of Oracle client installed on my work PC.

For all of you who have never had to do this, each version of the client, assuming you do a complete install is roughly 900MB a pop. Each install requires a different “home” directory and each creates it’s own set of registry keys (we use Windows XP of course). So far so good I guess, except for the size, except that the installers never work. For example, if you need version 7 along with a later version, you have to install version 7 first or it ruin your other clients.

So today, after realizing I had magically gained somewhere upward of 5 different homes and only two functioning clients (9.0.4 and 10.0.1) I decided to blow it all away and start fresh. It seemed like perfect timing as well since we’re upgrading our main DB to 10g which meant my default client, 9.0.4, wouldn’t work anymore.

So after doing all of that, which ended up being very painful because Oracle really buries itself in your registry, I installed both clients. Naturally, after installing my new 10g client along with 9.04 (I still need it for other databases) I naturally encountered errors. Logging in through various means I encountered the following two errors: ORA – 12222 and ORA – 12538. So after about an hour going through Google trying to find the answer I finally figured it out buried deep in a forum post the guy with the problem totally ignored.

The first install apparently setup two ORACLE_HOME environment variables, one for the User and one for the System. After deleting both, both errors went away.

All of that and Toad for Oracle, latest version, still crashes on me on a regular basis.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Programmer’s Pinky

I don’t have carpel tunnel *knock on wood* but I have discovered something else. Programmer’s pinky. I was formally trained how to type. As I assume most people are these days who attend school. But like most people, I assume, my typing isn’t perfect. I don’t hit all the keys with the right fingers. My form isn’t perfect I suppose but I still manage a respectable 70 wpm last time I checked, so I’m not really worried about it. On the same hand though the other day I was converting some SQL files from our old database to out new one and I was using ctl + c, ctl + v, ctl + x, etc. so much that my pinky was actually sore the next day. The problem stems alot from the fact that I always use my left pinky for the Ctrl key no matter which side of keyboard the other key is on. I guess that’s one habit I’m going to have to retrain myself on.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Entity Managment

I was looking through the internets the other day and it occurred to me that there is no open source software out there devoted to this. What is entity management? Well, it’s simply keeping track of what you own, what you lease out, what you rent, and what you sell. Power companies have to lease out land a lot of times because they don’t necessarily own the land the power poles are on. Obviously gas companies are in a very similar situation. Even companies you don’t expect to need such software might. Large banks for example might lease the land the bank on. I know a local car wash doesn’t actually own the lot the wash is on, just the car wash itself. Why doesn’t this software exist? My guess is simply because it’s boring. Who would want to and why? It’s like writing medical records software or something. How boring is that?

But in light of this, I’ve decided to give it a go. Why not? Screw it, I can code. I can write software as crappy as anyone else on the internets. In fact, I’ve already come with a basic database layout using MySQL. To be quite honest though I’m not a fan of MySQL thus far and I might find myself quickly switching to Postgre. I think the SQL i’ve written thus far will probably easily work in either, it’s not exactly complicated stuff at this point.

I haven’t published any code or even given this potential project a name yet, but I might later. What is it they say, “release early, release often.”

Enjoy Penguins!

Coding in Open Source

Do you ever want to contribute to a project or even start or your own? Obviously you do. Why else would you be reading a blog devoted to Linux. Given that then do you even find yourself with absolutely zero passion left because the task is so daunting, or the program you would to contribute to has tens of thousands of lines of code? Yeah… that’s totally me on regular basis. Can I code? Yeah. I can make programs do all kinds of neat things. Do I really want to spend weeks figuring out your code? No. Do I want to spend weeks just writing back end “boiler” code to start my own project? No. Sort of makes you hate programming doesn’t it?