Oracle Magazine–Winter 1993

The lead articles in the first Oracle Magazine of 1993 (winter) were about how the Oracle database was being used in the Toronto Stock Exchange and in the Municipio de Panama of Panama City.

Other articles of interest included

• Cary Millsap on the Optimal Flexible Architecture. Was this Cary’s first article in Oracle Magazine ? OFA provided a set of guidelines on how to install Oracle so that performance is not affected as your database environment grows. Cary gives 3 basic rules for creating and ODA compliant Oracle database (the full set is in the article).
1. Establish and orderly operating system directory structure in which any database file can be stored on any disk resources (applicable to operating systems with hierarchical directory structures only).
2. Separate groups of segments with different behavior into different tablespaces.
3. Maximize database reliability and performance by separating database components across disk resources
• There was 2 articles that looked at OODBMS. Oracle made their first purchase of an OODBMS company in 1994 and were trying to release their first OODBMS product in 1995. This never happened and their reverted to integrating some OODBMS features into the database instead.
• Oracle Glue is released. This product has gone through a number of name changes since. What is it called now ?
• There was a couple of articles discussing using UNIX or ALPHA server machines, when VLDBs were considered extremely large at 32GB. I remember there was one Bank who had the largest database in Ireland in 1993 and it was 4GB. I wonder what it is now.
• Business Object announces the release of their DOS and Windows end user data access tool for relational database tool.
• There was a number of adverts from companies providing tools and support for converting your Oracle Forms Version 2 to Forms 3

 

Click on the image above to view the PDF of the table of contents page.

My Oracle Magazine Collection can be found here.

Oracle Magazine-Fall 1992

I’ve been collecting Oracle Magazine for almost 20 years now. I have almost the entire collection, but I’m still missing some of the editions. Some people have donated some of the editions I was missing. But I still missing some.  Can you help me ? Check out my Oracle Magazine Collection.

Every 2 to 3 weeks I intend to write a blog post on each of the Oracle Magazines that I have, starting with the earliest edition that is from Fall 1992.

The main theme of the Fall 1992 edition was about the new Oracle 7 Database. I didn’t get using an Oracle 7 Database until mid-1994.There are a few customer case studies of Oracle 7 implementations. In the article Migrating to Oracle 7, they list some of the new feature. The following is an extract from the new features section.

Standard Oracle 7 provides the functionality and performance to tackle most mission critical applications:

- Multithreaded server
- Shared SQL
- Cost Based optimiser
- Row level locking
- Declarative integrity
- Role based security
- 100% ANSI/ISO standard SQL
- Enhanced national language support

The procedural option for Oracle 7 provides additional capabilities that enhance the database server in the application environment:

- Stored Procedures and Functions
- Procedure packages
- Database Triggers
- Lock manager package
- Database alerts

The distributed option for Oracle 7 makes a physically distributed database appear as a single, logical database. Features of this option include:

- Distributed updates
- TP monitor (XA) interface
- Transparent two-phase commit
- Remote procedure calls
- Table replication (snapshots)
- Oracle Mail Interface

Another article that stands out is by Richard Barker (do you remember his?) who was responsible for the CASE*Method and Oracle’s CASE Tools.

There was several articles on the new Oracle Forms 3 and Oracle Menu 5. Talking about some of the new features like List of Values (LOVs), pop-up Field editor and Pop-up Pages.

There also also the first articles on using Oracle a Microsoft Windows environment. Oh how I remember the frequent blue screens when developing and compiling my forms and in particular my report, with does early releases on Windows.

 

The editorial staff of Oracle Magazine have kindly given me permission to make a PDF of the front cover and the table of contents available for each edition. To get this PDF click on the above image or follow this link to see what Oracle Magazine used to look like 20 years ago.

My next blog post on Oracle Magazine, will look at the Winter 1993 edition.

If you have any of the editions that I’m missing from my collection and you would like to donate then, then drop me an email and we can arrange delivery.  You wont see any of them on eBay, I promise.

New additions to my Oracle Magazine Collection

I put out a call a few months ago looking for help in completing my Oracle Magazine collection. I also had a letter in the Nov/Dec 2011 edition of Oracle Magazine looking for help.

The following people contacted me in December offering to send me some of my missing editions.

Lisa Dobson - Oracle DBA at Durham University and Vice President of UKOUG
Debra Lilley - President of UKOUG
Christian Antognini - Trivadis AG, Switzerland
Dan Vlamis - Vlamis Software Solutions, MO, USA

Many thanks for your donations.

It seems that people don’t keep their Oracle Magazines!

I’m now just missing a very small number of editions since 1992.  Can anyone else help ?

Does anyone have any Oracle Magazines from before 1992 ?

The following table gives the current collection (printed editions). The grey boxes are the editions that I’m still missing, and keep an eye on my Oracle Magazine page for updates.

I’m an Oracle ACE

At 5:20pm today (Friday 2nd December), I received an email from the Oracle ACE program.  I had been nominated for the award of Oracle ACE.

“You have been chosen based on your significant contribution and activity in the Oracle technical community.  Like your fellow Oracle ACEs, you have demonstrated a proficiency in Oracle technology as well as a willingness to share your knowledge and experiences with the community.”

I am so honoured, considering the experts from around the world that are members of the Oracle ACE program.

The Oracle ACE Award is issued by the Oracle Corporation and the award is made to people who are know for their strong credentials in the Oracle community as enthusiasts, advocates and technical knowledge.

ODM PL/SQL API 11.2 New Features

The PL/SQL API interface for Oracle Data Miner has had a number of new features. These are listed below along with the new API features added with the 11.1 release.

• Support for Native Transactional Data with Association Rules: you can build association rule models without first transforming the transactional data.
• SVM class weights specified with CLAS_WEIGHTS_TABLE_NAME: including the GLM class weights
• FORCE argument to DROP_MODEL: you can now force a drop model operation even if a serious system error has interrupted the model build process
• GET_MODEL_DETAILS_SVM has a new REVERSE_COEF parameter: you can obtain the transformed attribute coefficients used internally by an SVM model by setting the new REVERSE_COEF parameter to 1

11.1g API New Features

• Mining Model schema objects: previous releases, DM models were implemented as a collection of tables and metadata within the DMSYS schema. in 11.1 models are implemented as data dictionary objects in the SYS schema. A new set of DD views present DM models and their properties
• Automatic and Embedded Data Preparation: previously data preparation was the responsibility of the user. Now it can be automated
• Scoping of Nested Data: supports nested data types for both categorical and numerical data. Most algorithms require multi-record case data to the presented as columns of nested rows, each containing an attribute name/value pair. ODM processes each nested row as a separate attribute.
• Standardised Handling of Sparse Data & Missing Values: standardised across all algorithms.
• Generalised Linear Models: has a new algorithm and supports classification (logistic regression) and regression (linear regression)
• New SQL Data Mining Function: PREDICTION_BOUNDS has been introduced for Generalised Linear Models. This returns the confidence bounds on predicted values (regression models) or predicted probabilities (classification)
• Enhanced Support for Cost-Sensitive Decision Making: can be added or removed using DATA_MINING.ADD_COST_MATRIX and DBMS_DATA_MINING_REMOVE_COST_MATRIX.

Oak Table Event in Dec 2011

This year the Annual UKOUG event will be in Birmingham (again) from the 5th to 7th December.

This year there is a slight difference to the usual schedule. On Sunday 4th December there is an Oak Table event, with two parallel tracks. It has all the well known experts presenting at this event.

If I had the time turner from Harry Potter, I would be able to go to all the sessions.

Presenters include Morgens Norgaard, Johnathan Lewis, Frits Hoogland, Martin Widlake, Christian Antognini, Connor McDonald, James Morle and Wolfgang Breitling.

This is an impressive line up and hopefully the UKOUG will run a similar event in 2012.

Check out of the full agenda at

http://2011.ukoug.org/personalisedagenda

This is one event that I would love to go to but unfortunately I wont be able to make it.  I’ll be attending the Annual UKOUG conference alright, and I have already booked my airline tickets. But there are no flights from Dublin that will get me to Birmingham on time. I would need to fly to Birmingham on the Saturday, involving another hotel night and another night away from the family.

The best I’m hoping for is to get to the ICC in time for the Panel Session on Performance and High Availability. 

Depending on weather and travel delays I might even miss this last session.  If I do, I can always meet up with everyone in the pub on the Sunday evening for a chat.

Maybe next year.

OBIEE VirtualBox VM Available

I have a few Updates since I posted the blog on 14th Sept
1. The OBIEE VMS are now available on the Virtural Box Pre-Built VM webpage, as of 15th Sept. Thanks to @oraclenerd for requesting this
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/developer-vms-192663.html
2. Thanks to @rnm1978 for pointing out that the OBIEE VM is very resource intensive. The min. spec. given is not really enough. You really need more than 4GB for this VM to run.
3. The SampleApp that the OBIEE VM contains also has some examples of how Oracle Data Miner can be used in an application

I’ve recently come across an VM of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, which has the sample application already build and ready for you to use.

The VM files are available at the following link for download.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html

There are 2 files that you need to download to create the VM in VirtualBox. These are the VB Image key File (.ovf) and the VB Image Disk Files (.vmdk). The second file is ~25G, so it a while to download!

There is also a VB Image-Deployment Guide.

If you already have OBIEE installed and you don’t want to setup the VM, the setup files and data files are also available.

My Oracle Magazine Collection

Over the past couple of days I have been doing a bit of a reorganisation of my book case in my home office. On one of the shelves I keep my Oracle Magazine.  My collection dates back to 1992. I began my working career as a graduate consultant with Oracle in Ireland. At that stage Oracle Magazine seemed to be published every 4 to 6 months, but around 1995 it moved to being published every 2 months.
I though that I had a full collection of Oracle Magazine from 1993 onwards, but the table below shows that I have a number of missing editions. Perhaps these gaps are due to my good nature of lending them to other people, or maybe I just lost them somewhere.
What I’m looking to do is to complete my collection. If you have one of the missing editions, can you let me know. Assuming that you don’t mind parting with it, we can arrange postal.

Looking back over the previous editions, it is interesting to see some of the topics that were discussed. Typically they were a couple years before they became commonly used.
An idea for Oracle Magazine is to have a new column that looks back at an article on a particular technique/technology/tool and reflects on how things have changed (or not) since the article was written.