Author Archive
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Freeing Up Space Unused by Oracle
Oracle tablespaces can be set to auto-extend, but not to auto-contract. As a result, one can end up with a 10GB datafile that only has 10MB of stuff in it. Enterprise Manager Console and various other tools make shrinking a datafile a point-and-click operation, but remember what I said about tools? Here [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Oracle, SQL by Mike
Monday, December 3rd, 2007
Tools Abstract Us From Basic Skills
I love tools. Anything that’s easy-to-use and streamlines the process is welcome. The problem is that many people rely so much on tools that they lose (or fail to learn) the skills that are required when those tools aren’t present. The most prevalent example that I’ve seen is SQL.
When I’m interviewing job [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Interviews, SQL by Mike
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Trigger Words and Bullet Points in Functional Specs
When working on a new functional area, there is usually (hopefully?) a period of time during development where the functional specification is in a usable form, even if the software is not in testable state. The spec might have a high level description of the functionality to be implemented, and some sample screenshots of [...]