I’m upstairs in bed. Just having a lazy Sunday morning, there’s no rush to get up but I do feel the need for some liquid refreshment. An English man and his tea. But, then again, just lying here is so very relaxing.

B points out that the tea isn’t just going to make itself. I note that this isn’t entirely true. According to quantum theory, it is possible for elementary particles to be at opposite ends of the universe from one moment to the next. One can, therefore, conclude that, while unlikely, it is within the realms of possibility that a mug of steaming, hot tea could materialise out of no-where onto my bed-side table.

This has been doing the rounds, but I still think it’s amusing.

Norwegians plumb in beer-dispensing kitchen sink | The Register

Having said that, if a strange brown liquid came out of my taps I’m not sure that my first instinct would be to drink it. Mind, Norwegian beer prices — about ?5 a pint last time I was there — probably skew your thinking somewhat!

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

Most sites have a Frequently Asked Questions section and I don’t want to feel left out. So far no-one has actually asked any questions, so I am just guessing.

How are you?

I find that I annoy myself by saying “I’m good” when asked that question. I’m just not convinced it’s actually valid English. I got into the habit when I found that many Americans stare at you blankly if you answer any other way.

Credit where it’s due

I am unable to criticise a suite of products the size and complexity of Oracle on my own. There are a number of people that need to me mentioned. Remind me if I missed you out!

People

Thanks to Anna Brabants who nearly created the term ‘Oracle Comedy Errors’ and certainly did an almost continuous stream of abuse (not all of it at Oracle).

And thanks to the rest of the project team, who invariable love Oracle products as much as I do.

Working eight hours a day with a product, you notice not only bugs, but other strange bits and pieces too. This is the page for them.

• One mis-spelling of ‘Oracle’ looks remarkably like ‘Roach.’ Surely not just a coincidence.
• Mis-typing ‘ORACLE_SID’ often looks like ‘ORACLE_SOD’ which is only one word short of what you usually think when you’ve done this.

Fair’s fair, any application the size and complexity of Oracle Applications will have some bugs. But applications seems to do far better than most.

This section refers to the server size of Applications Comedy Errors. There’s another page for the client side.

• To install a new application module, it seems that you have to add the original version you have plus all patches. Not just for your new module, but for all of them. (People that implement Application’s are not expected to make mistakes.)
• The recommended sizes for your database extents are useful. However, if you follow the advice, some parts of the system won’t actually install.
• Oracle helpfully supply a program that goes through the thousands of files that it installs and checks that they’re the right ones. We’ve found at least a dozen files that it claims shouldn’t be there but in fact should be.
• After applying a patch, the shell script that starts the Concurrent Managers just vanished.
• One of the bugs that we found was because Oracle had ‘forgotten’ to port a number of forms from one environment to the one we were using. The word ‘forgotten,’ despite being inverted commas, is the actual word used by Oracle support.

Oracle Data Browser

Oracle Data Browser, part of the Discover 2000 suite, is one of the least amusing applications that Oracle supply. Not because it’s bad, but because it almost works…

• Windows 95 has a ‘full screen drag’ feature (freely download-able from Microsoft‘s web site). If you load Data Browser you don’t. It suddenly stops working.
• Now this is supposed to be a feature, but I’m not convinced. The word ‘Browser’ seems to indicate that it’s a read-only product. In fact a version comes with it that isn’t.

Oracle Data Query

Welcome to the Oracle Comedy Errors Page!

This page is dedicated to all those frustrating hours that you have to spend fiddling about with Oracle just to get it working as it says it does on the box.

These are just things that have happened to me and the projects that I have been involved in. To make a really complete Oracle Comedy Errors Page we need your input.

For those that have already contributed, there is always this page. It also catalogues the projects and Oracle software that I’ve used to build up this list.

Oracle, the company, was founded back in the late seventies as a company that produced an SQL database. Its entire reputation has been built on this product and it is, therefore, no surprise that it is very good.

That’s not to say that there have been no problems…

• To perform dodgy ‘system’ operations on a database, you need access to a user called ‘internal.’ In theory, you need to be in the UNIX ‘dba’ group to be able to connect. That is unless you belong to rather a lot of groups, in which case it doesn’t seem to work. (We’ve not actually called this through, so there may be a simple explanation.) (7.1)
• When creating a new database, you have to run a file called ‘catalog.sql’ to finish the job. At the end of this file is the following message: ‘THIS IS THE END OF THIS FILE – IF I AM NOT HERE THEN RCS HAS TRUNCATED FILE‘ (7.3)
• I’m not entirely sure that this counts, but an installation program that requires more resources than that product that it’s installing demands at least an honorable mention. (8i)