"Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday."writes Stephen Shankland [http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5220881.html]for CNET News.com. "In October, the company finished the Linux transition for the 5,

"Oraclerecently announced on its Web site [http://www.oracle.com/education/certification/index.html?dba9i_linux.html] that it is launching a new Linux certification: Managing Oracle9i on Linux. Oracle describes the title as the "first" specialty for those holding its Oracle Certified Professional Database Administrators (OCP

"Tuning problematic SQL statements is neither rocket science nor magic. All relational databases generate an execution plan for the submitted SQL. This execution plan then tells Oracle how to retrieve the data, or, how to perform the data-related tasks. The better you understand how to interpret these explain plans,

Julian Ford [[email protected]] passed on a link to an article by Michael J. Radwin on Buildng Data Warehouses With mySQL [http://www.radwin.org/michael/blog/2003/07/building_data_warehouses_w.html]. The article refers to a presentation by John Ashenfelter [http://www.ashenfelter.com/] who&

If anyone's interested, Peter Odds and I have set up an Oracle OLAP mailing list as an additional resource for developers working with the OLAP Option. The list homepage is athttp://www.rittman.net/lists/olap where you can subscribe, change subscription options or view the list archives.

"Our previous article in this series,

There's a good article currently running over at Oracle-base.com [http://www.oracle-base.com] detailing the performance tuning enhancements in Oracle Database 10g [http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/PerformanceTuningEnhancements10g.php]. It's a fairly detailed document and covers the following areas; * Automatic Performance Diagnostic and Tuning

Andy Todd [http://www.halfcooked.com/mt] points out a useful guide to installing Oracle Database 10g on Debian [http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/Oracle_10g.shtml]. According to the guide, "We go through, step-by-step, the process of installing Oracle 10g Release 1 (10.1.0.2) Enterprise/

"JOLAP, XML/A, JDBC, OLE- DB, ODBC, MDAPI, DCOM, CORBA, J2EE, and even dear old MOM is in there somewhere. It sounds like alphabet soup or the refrain of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" (E-I-E-I-O...) in terms of the jumble of acronyms that represent the plethora of

It was actually published last August, but Oracle have made available an document entitled "OFA/OSA to EPB Migration Roadmap [http://www.oracle.com/applications/cpm/EPBMigration_Aug03.pdf]" which sets out the migration path for Oracle Financial Analyzer and Oracle Sales Analyzer customers to the forthcoming Enterprise

"So you've deployed your first dimensional data mart. Fortunately, the business loves it and is clamoring for more! They want to query and analyze integrated data from additional enterprise data sources. For some of you, this demand is a dream come true. For others, it may be

"One of the latest trends is for systems to have more and more CPUs inside a single server. Using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) servers, it is not uncommon for an Oracle server to have 8, 16, or 32 CPUs, along with many gigabytes of RAM for the Oracle SGA regions.

I've been working away on client sites over the last few weeks, and because of this I've not really had any spare time for writing articles or answering questions. Apologies if you've sent me a question and you've not heard back, and

"Oracle has introduced significant management automation features in its flagship database product and has described the new Oracle Database 10g release as "the self-managing database." Given that achievement and direction, I thought it would make sense to talk about how to write one's PL/SQL

"Many companies make a concerted effort in selecting their appropriate BI toolset for their organization. However, once they have selected a specific vendor tool, they spend comparatively little time determining their appropriate licensing approach. Hidden just beneath the surface of the seemingly obvious licensing alternative are some key factors

"When an Oracle database suddenly becomes unavailable, the immediate reaction is to do something -- right now! -- to solve the problem, which sometimes makes the problem worse. This article discusses some examples of when it's really best to stop and think before proceeding" writesJim Czuprynski

Quick tip from Tom Kyte on appending the date to an Export filename [http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:612348047].

"Versions 8i and 9i of Oracle have altered the facts behind several common beliefs of DBAs. Find out why these five cherished beliefs about working with the database may no longer be true and how the changes enhance your options." writes Bob Watkins [http://techrepublic.com.com/5171-22-1031068.

"Before you can identify problem SQL in your database, you have to ask the question of what is bad SQL. What criteria do you use when you begin the hunt for problem SQL in your critical systems? Understand that even the seasoned experts disagree on what constitutes efficient and

Much of my work involves designing and reviewing dimensional data models, and an interesting issue that often comes up is how to deal with data items such as invoice number, order number and so on, that are not strictly facts - you're not going to want to add

Niall Litchfield has started a site [http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com/] on working with the Oracle database. I met Niall at the last UKOUG conference and he seems like an all-round nice guy;check it out [http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com/] when you get a chance.

More news on the Oracle 9i 9.2.0.5 patchset, and it's suitability for Oracle OLAP users. Anthony Waite confirms in an OTN OLAP Forum posting [http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jsp?forum=16&thread=237886&tstart=0&trange=15] that the 9.

"Larry Ellison, CEO of Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle, and Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of hardware giant Dell, joined forces during a conference call with journalists and analysts Tuesday to announce that Dell will offer Oracle's Standard Edition One database prepackaged on Dell PowerEdge 2600 or

Arup Nanda gives us the lowdown [http://otn.oracle.com/pub/articles/10gdba/week7_10gdba.html] on the Oracle 10g 10.1 release of SQL*Plus. And the good news? "Contrary to some widespread rumors, the COPY command is still available, although it will be obsolete in a future

Even if you have done a superb job in installing and configuring Oracle9iAS, if the system is not always available or if the performance is poor, then you need to start looking at tuning and optimising your 9iAS instance. Being complex, an Oracle9iAS environment has a huge amount of tuning