Virtually there
November 21st, 2007 by Peter Scott
I have a couple of days between assignments so I am spending a little time doing research. Ultimately, there is a piece to write on Oracle 11g OLAP, and some course notes on aspects of data warehousing. But do this sort of thing I need to get myself set up with a database (Enterprise Edition – I will need partitions, OLAP and all of the other VLDB bells and whistles) for self-education purposes; in my old job I had a small database running under Widows set up on my laptop and access to several Unix style databases (Solaris, AIX, HP) so could simply knock up a simple test to show me what happens and learn about getting the syntax right. But now I have an Apple MacBook Pro and no Windows or Unix (I do know that OS-X is a Unix, but that’s beside the point) to run Oracle on.
Step up VMWare Fusion – I have relatively rapidly built a Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 64-Bit VM guest OS to run on my Apple, cloned it as my base build, mastered how to change the name of the screen header for the VM machine so that I know which VM I am running and proceeded to install 11g database software and a small test database. This is great fun as before this week I had not touched Linux (let alone gnome) – true I could speak Solaris, Dynix and AIX, and it is so long since anyone allowed me a root password. So, now I have two linux servers, an empty one that I can base subsequent builds on and a working 11g database.
I suppose the next thing is to build a Windows VM for the stuff that needs Microsoft Windows (OBI SE-ONE, for example) – but why is Windows so expensive to license? If I do go with the clean ‘gold-build’ VM and clone it before adding the minimal software required for the purpose in hand I will need to watch out how I clone the machine – or else VMWare will change the MAC address of my virtual network adaptor and break the license key
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Aha – tried to slip in a new theme while no-one was looking, eh ? :-)
I do like the clean, minimalist B&W design although it’s a slight shock that the lovely blue mountain scape and your tag line has disappeared.
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Well spotted – I wondered if anyone would notice :-)
Whenever wordpress.com publish a new theme I give it a go, at least in the privacy of my own home, and the better looking one; or those that do appear to break any formatting get a public airing.
Nice as the mountain view was (the latest on the blog was a panorama of four shots taken looking towards the Eiger, the one before that was a view from Skala in Norway), the mountains aren’t that connected to the topics I might blog about…
I might revert when I grow dischuffed with the serifs.