February 23, 2009 marks the 2nd anniversary of the Structured Data blog. Looking back, I guess I forgot to have a first anniversary, but oh well, I guess I’ll celebrate twice as much this year to make up for it. The past two years have been fun and I’ve enjoyed sharing my experiences and interacting with the readers of this blog. I do wish I had a bit more time to commit to writing but I guess it is what it is. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I’d rather focus on quality than quantity. The past year has been a fun, but busy one, especially with the launch of Oracle Exadata and the HP Oracle Database Machine. I think the rest of 2009 will continue to be a busy and exciting one and I hope to have several more Exadata posts.
The Past Year
Looking back over the past year the top visited blog posts have been:
- Choosing An Optimal Stats Gathering Strategy
- Troubleshooting Bad Execution Plans
- Top Ways How Not To Scale Your Data Warehouse
I’m glad to see the first two of those have been frequently visited because I think they cover topics that are extremely helpful in dealing with the root causes of bad execution plans, a problem that many DBAs face. Contrary to what some “experts” would like to have you believe, there are no silver bullets or magic involved with query plan tuning. It all comes down to understanding how things work and I hope that those posts give you insight into exactly that.
I’ve been meaning to circle back and expand more on #3 ever since I read this comment from Tom Kyte’s blog. Hopefully I will finish up that up in the next few weeks.
The Next Year
One of the main reasons that I started this blog was to share my work experiences with the Oracle community in hopes to explain and help DBAs use the Oracle database software optimally as well as to assist in troubleshooting common, but often difficult issues. In conjunction with my modus operandi, I’d like to offer up the Topic Suggestions page. Feel free to use this page to suggest topics that you would like to have further explained or would like discussion of.
Thanks to all of you who have read and contributed to this blog and may the next year be a great one.
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I’ve decided it was time for a new look for Structured Data so I’ve updated the theme. I think I have looked at enough posts and all looks well but if you find something that appears odd, unreadable or otherwise, do let me know by posting a comment on this thread and include the link to the problematic post.
One of the main reasons I chose this theme was for the java script that allows links back to a comment that one has replied to as well as the option to quote previous comments as well. On the down side the Trackbacks are hidden by default and one has to choose either Trackbacks or Comments to be viewed. I may modify this as time permits. Time came sooner than I had originally anticipated.
Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts, especially if you think this version of the site lacks something the previous version had.
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I usually stick to the technical stuff but today is strictly about entertainment. One has to laugh when a company (Tesco) is involved in two press releases in two days with two different database vendors and the press releases are a bit conflicting. I’d say this appears to be a case of open mouth, insert foot.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show…
On September 9, 2008 Netezza put out a press release entitled “Netezza Bags Tesco“. In this press release Marcel Borlin, Programme Manager at Tesco states:
“We currently have around 25 heavy analytical users running large queries on Netezza. They are analysing transactional discrepancies across millions of items and item movements every day, right through the supply chain; from stores to distribution centres. The specific application is designed to find wastage such as stolen, destroyed, out-of-date or lost items. It is an important function, as it affects the financial position of the Company. Yet, on the Teradata platform we had to allocate time slots for running these analyses, or the system would grind to a halt.”
On September 11, 2008 Tesco put out a press release entitled “Tesco Reconfirms Commitment to Teradata“. In this press release Marcel Borlin, Programme Manager at Tesco states:
“Tesco is satisfied with the consistently high performance delivered by Teradata and particularly its proven ability to run a mixed workload of management information and complex analytics. As part of our ongoing programme to evaluate different technologies and architectures, we have deployed some analytical users on a small Netezza system which has been reported in the press recently. This implementation does not reflect any dissatisfaction with Teradata. Tesco continues to add new applications to the Teradata EDW which has now grown to 60 terabytes. The EDW is providing Management Information Systems for Commercial Reporting, Supply Chain and Stores as well as Tescolink thereby providing information to 8000 people across more than 2000 suppliers.”
I’ll keep my comments at this: I surely would not want to be Marcel Borlin.
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Up until this point the only public information sharing I have done has been via the Real-World Performance Round-table discussions at Oracle OpenWorld and, most recently, at the NoCOUG Winter Conference. Going forward I would like to use this blog as an additional channel for discussions with the Oracle user community.
Just a bit of background on me… I’ve been a member of the Real World Performance Group at Oracle since 2004 and I have worn the DBA and Systems/Storage Admin hats prior to that. My role in the Real-World Performance Group is that of a database performance engineer. I have been concentrating on data warehousing and spend most of my time doing data warehouse benchmarks for customers that have varied in size from 1TB to more than 70TB. I’ve also worked on OLTP benchmarks as well as performance related escalations.
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