The debugger requires application designer to be run in three tier mode, i.e. it should connect to the application server workstation listener rather than to the database itself.

We found that to achieve this we had to do the following:

On the application server, run psadmin, and administer the domain where the debugger is to be switched on. As of tools 8.57 this is done by choosing the following options from the menu. Note that the domain will be shut down once the configure option is chosen.

Secrets and the Problem with Build Servers

I am not totally sure I understand this, so let’s see if I do when I write it down.

I decided that gitlab needs to stop accessing hosts using keys from the gitlab runner, because this means:

1. Everything on gitlab runner can access every VM
2. If the gitlab runner moves, nothing can access any VM

So 1 is too open, and 2 just doesn’t work. While I could configure a gitlab runner per environment, it also strikes me that the secrets are in the ansible build directory and shouldn’t be. We need a better approach.

What is automation

A colleague asked me if I could give them an overview of automation. It is something we do sometimes without thinking too much about it.

Think about Lean Enterprise. It is all about making things more efficient.

A concrete example

Technical staff like me can apply this principle to what we do daily. Here is a simple example of what might have to be done to deploy an imaginary application.

Oracle puts effort into selling at HEUG, which makes sense because we are all users of Oracle software. It is interesting to know what is out there, but the likelihood is we will never get to use most of it. Also, Oracle pushes cloud which I find quite depressing because I don’t know where I fit in to the new cloud paradigm.

I made notes from a couple of these sessions, which are quite short, so I will combine them here.

Is the cloud my friend?

I am concerned about the cloud. As a DBA I believe the idea is to replace most of what I do with a cloud provider. So if I want to keep working, should I work for a cloud provider, or change what I do? In the mean time I am also trying to ensure I can deliver a better service than the cloud providers using similar technologies in a way that is more responsive to the needs of my customers. So it is interesting to learn the experiences of Jo Ellen Dinucci, Associate VP, Finance and Administration - Boise State University during their journey to the cloud.

Session Celebrating 10 years of failure, because you won’t succeed from the start.

Sarah Kobus, University of Amsterdam

I thought this looked interesting, not least because I have recently realised that getting everything perfect all the time is not a realistic or desirable goal. As if to demonstrate the truth of what she was saying, her co-presenter was ill, so Sarah had to present the session alone!

How good are we at learning from failures?

Everyone encounters failure. As an illustration Sarah spoke about replacing their Student Information System. The core issue encountered was not investing enough in changing the business processes to work well with the new system.

I went to HEUG EMEA 2019 last week at the University of Amsterdam. I enjoyed it. It was good to meet some other people who work in education and use Oracle technologies. I haven’t been to HEUG before. The HEUG was smaller and I feel more friendly than the UKOUG. There were fewer exhibitors, and they seemed less desperate to sell, and happier to just have a chat about the conference and travel, which actually makes them more approachable, but I am not sure they sold any more!

This is a post which was sitting in my drafts since the start of last year, but it still seems useful to me.

It’s been a while since I have had a file that was deleted. What course to take depends on context - what do you want to achieve? In this case I wanted to remove the tablespace. I offlined all the files in the tablespace and deleted it. It is pretty easy really. The other thing I could have done is recovered the datafiles from the redo logs. Maybe I should try that another time.