Database Security, Audit, Privacy and Support Blog

I just read a story from IDG News about a recent raid and arrest at a television station in Nigeria. The operation, led by STRAP - Strategic Action Against Piracy – included a raid and search of two offices under suspicion of copyright infringement. STRAP arrested 8 people, including the managing director of the company!

We thought fines from the BSA were bad – these guys are serious! Not in compliance with an Oracle license – go directly to jail, do not pass go – do not collect $200!

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

There's a new Postgres site in town: PostgresRocks. You can download Postgres here but the best feature is that documentation for a bunch of common Postgres support tools is available on the documentation page. The doc

In the News This Week

·      InformationWeek The licensing policy for Windows Vista lets customers downgrade it …
Referring to Microsoft licensing policies that allow customers who purchase an operating system to legally install predecessor versions on their PCs.

·      BBC News Microsoft grants XP new lifeline
It comes as Dell, HP and Lenovo exploit loopholes in Microsoft’s licensing terms to keep putting XP on machines.

·      Infostor magazine The new case for open source data protection
Users familiar with commercial backup software licensing will also be pleased not only with the acquisition costs of Amanda Enterprise….

·      ComputerWorld Ontario school board’s IT staff gains 2000 hours
“Because they’re being streamed and you have real-time monitoring, you can really fine-tune your software licensing and it is easy to dispose of …

As a part of their Genuine Software Initiative, Microsoft has designed a new method of activation for volume license customers. All editions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 now require activation.

Under this new requirement, there are two types of volume activation 2.0 options for license enrollment:

Key Management Service: a local activation service that is hosted locally in the customer’s environment and managed by the customer/IT department.

Multiple Activation Key: a one-time activation with Microsoft’s hosted activation services. There are a predetermined number of allowed activations dependent upon the volume license agreement that the customer has. Note: Each activation counts towards the predetermined activation limit.

It is possible to use a combination of activation methods within a single enterprise based on the multiple layers within the organization and the network infrastructure. Just be aware of how licensing is counted for each of the activation options.

Today's post is one of the most important in the history of database blogging: the 100th entry of Log Buffer! Ok, maybe it's not that important but it's still a big deal. Once a week for 100 weeks is a life time in web years. If it was a dog, why it would be like, I don't know, 15 years old? I think I might name my next dog log buffer. But with an underscore.

Of course, the 1

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Oracle has a social community called Oracle Mix. Not only is it a social site, you get to talk to Oracle and help Oracle make decisions. Membership to mix is free and is tied to your OTN ID.

Oracle has opened up a few sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and is allowing Mix users to vote on

What would you think if you said “something not unambiguously positive about Oracle WebCenter” on the official Oracle Wiki, only to have all the negativity in your comment edited out?

This is exactly what happened to Stan Vesterli, who made the criticism part of a (failed) experiment. The Denmark-based Oracle professional wanted to see if the Wiki could actually be a place where pro/con discussions about Oracle tools could take place.

Instead, he was “flamed by an Oracle product manager, and any trace of negativity (was) edited out of one of his pages,” Vesterli wrote.

He has not revealed what it was that he actually wrote on the Wiki.

I took a look at the Wiki’s Rules of Conduct, and under the “Create appropriate content” subcategory is the statement:

“Do not use the Oracle Wiki as a platform for political or personal views/opinions, personal publishing projects, or shameless self-promotion (get a blog for that).”

Yes, maybe what he posted was somewhat of a “personal opinion,” (or was it, if based on a weakness that could be proven?). But doesn’t that somewhat defeat the purpose of the Wiki in the first place?

This CMS blogger points out that in the end, Wiki owners have the last say, even if others don’t agree with their moderation tactics. As the customer, we have to be aware of their right to keep damaging information away from competitors.

Which prompts the question: What’s the point? If Oracle’s editing out anything that’s “not unambiguously positive,” is the Wiki a useful source of information? How much credence do you give it? Is it a Wiki or just more product marketing from Oracle?

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

This book, Physical Database Design, is sub-titled "The Database Professional's Guide To Exploiting Indexes, Views, Storage, and More". Not only is it a wordy sub-title, it's a deep read. This book is not a beginner's book. If you are an experienced database professional, I pretty mu

Ever since Vista’s launch, there has been a great swell of protest and resistance, from both enterprise IT to the average consumer, to installation of the operating system.

The good news is that many computer manufacturers: Dell, HP and Lenovo have found a licensing loophole that allows Windows XP to be used as the operating system. Under the Windows Vista licensing terms, XP is provided free under the terms of a downgrade license for select versions of the operating system. In many cases, the XP license option can be kept until 2009 with a possible extension to 2010. By then, the next Microsoft OS will be launched.

Today, Microsoft trotted out Steve Ballmer to talk about his unique proposition for Windows based users if you don’t like Vista, you can downgrade to Windows XP. Microsoft has already extended Windows XP installations for select low cost desktops past the June 30 expiration date for the OS.

My take, Microsoft needs to spur Vista sales whether they purchase this and downgrade or not, it doesn’t matter to old Stevie boy. Disgruntled IT heads from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies have already committed to bypass Vista deployment and wait for the next OS.

Oracle has done it again.

No, it hasn’t announced another “mystery facility,” dodged questions about the success of 11g once more (that we know of) or released another community-based tool for its users.

It’s making another acquisition — this time acquiring AdminServer, a provider of insurance policy administration software that will work in conjunction with Oracle’s existing insurance-related products. The deal has the potential to make Oracle a direct competitor with companies in the insurance market, including SunGuard and its current applications rival SAP.

“This acquisition is likely to shake up the status quo in the sleepy insurance software segment, and could possibly spark a fresh wave of mergers and acquisitions,” Madan Sheina, an analyst at Ovum, wrote in a research note.

Sheina also said that “this is the first time that a leading enterprise software maker has bought a specialist insurance software firm in order to strengthen its position.”

According to Information Week, AdminServer’s employees will merge with Oracle to form a “global business unit within Oracle focusing on the insurance industry.” They will offer software for managing multiple insurance product lines, rather than the commonly used legacy policy administration applications.

Financial details of the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the month, have not been disclosed. But Oracle did release this document, which explains everything from business rationale to product strategy to customer and partner benefits.

Although it’s been overshadowed by larger deals such as the BEA purchase, most seem to think this is a strategic and well thought-out acquisition.  What do you think? Does this have the ability to put Oracle as a frontrunner in the insurance market?

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Looks like I have a new boss. Actually, it looks like my boss's boss has a new boss. ;-)

I'd like to personally welcome Ed Boyajian to EnterpriseDB. Looks like he has quite a bit of experience with OSS and monetizing software solutions. He's been an executive at <a href="http://www.redhat.com/

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

The datastore in Postgres (which is what Advanced Server is based on) is quite a bit different than the way Oracle stores data. Gone are the usual logical storage components. Data blocks, extents and segments just don't exist in a Postgres database. Actually, segments do exist when a table gets bigger than 1GB but that's a story for a different entry.

Postgres stores data as f

This isn't related to my blogging. I use Zoundry Raven for blogging and am very happy with it. I am asking about HTML editors for a regular web site that I am working on.

I used Arachnophilia for a long time as my HTML editor. It's a robust editor, but it really is that, an editor. It's starting to feel a bit long in the tooth for me. I've decided to move on to a more CSS oriented WYSIWYG

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Sun just announced MySQL Workbench, a new database design tool for MySQL developers and DBAs. I'm a data modeling tool junkie. I like to play with any I can get my hands on. I've used almost every modeling tool that's been built. My all time favorite is probably <a href="ht

Our very own Eliot Arlo Colon, President of Miro Consulting, was interviewed last week by Linda Tucci of SearchCIO on Oracle licensing issues.  On the interview, Eliot talked about how to get the most out of your next Oracle licensing contract.  The interview is available online via podcast.

Listen to Eliot’s interview… http://media.techtarget.com/audioCast/CIO/mirotuccifinal.mp3  If you want to hear more about what Miro has to say about software licensing, Eliot and I will be doing a live webinar on June 25 starting at 1 p.m. EST (10 a.m. PST).  To register, go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/755300775.

Though Named User Oracle licensing isn’t available to new contracts anymore, companies still maintain and renew their Named User Oracle license agreements.

Named User Plus Licensing….means you pay per named user, NOT concurrent user.  Named User licensing limited the number of authorized Oracle individuals on a specified computer.

Oracle licensing models for Named User Plus require you to adhere to the following Oracle user minimums:

·         Oracle Database SE ONE: 5 Named User Plus licenses

·         Oracle Database SE: 5 Named User Plus licenses 

·         Oracle Database Enterprise Edition: 25 Named User Plus licenses per CPU

·         Oracle Application Server SE ONE: 5 Named User Plus licenses

·         All other Oracle Application Server products: 10 Named User Plus licenses per CPU

EnterpriseDB News at Blogspot

Chris Keene, the CEO for Wavemaker just blogged that combining Wavemaker and EnterpriseDB just got easier. Wavemaker has a new version that has out of the box support for both Postgres and EnterpriseDB.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about <a href="http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/oracle/guide/archives/wavemaker-training-day-1-2

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Q&A about RAC and Grid with the RAC Experts

I recently got the opportunity to sit down and talk to two RAC gurus and learn what RAC is and how it relates to Oracle's Grid technology. Listen to

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

According to an article at Computerworld, Yahoo is running a 2 PB (not GB, not TB, PB - Petabyte) database that processes 24 billion events a day. Let's put that in perspective. 24 billion events is 24,

In the News This Week

•   Network World Customers frustrated over Microsoft virtualization licensing
     There is no way to circumvent Microsoft licensing policies on virtual servers

•   CNN Microsoft, Czech Republic Sign Pact On Licensing And Supply
     The agreement is aimed at simplifying the enterprise software licensing process over a period of 3 to 5 years.

•   Computing Schools set to go open source
     UK schools are replacing the software licensing framework of Microsoft and other software vendors by going to open source. 

•   BCS Software piracy falls
     The BSA commented that, despite the drop in trends, there was still an ‘unacceptable’ level of British organisations flouting software licensing regulations

•   Crain’s Manchester Business Eleven firms investigated in software crackdown

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

An ITToolbox user recently asked a question on the EnterpriseDB discussion group, Oracle equilant UTL_I18N.STRING_TO_RAW IN ENTERPRISEDB.

Basic

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 is in my favorite city, New Orleans, from June 15-19. I won't be getting there until either late Saturday or some time Sunday. Once again, I'm driving with my family. Once I'm there, I have plenty of extra-curricular activities planned (like visiting my mom, going to the aquarium and zoo, taking the boys on the st

The BSA, together with IDC, put out their annual piracy survey this week concluding that some software piracy has fallen across the globe but the worldwide rate has risen three points to 38%.   According to John Gantz at IDC “By the end of 2007, there were more than 1 billion PCs installed around the world, and close to half had pirated, unlicensed software on them.”

Losses jumped from $8 billion to $48 billion for software companies – the BSA is determined to decrease non-compliance of software licensing to deliver billions in economic growth in the software sector. What does this mean for you? Make sure your software licenses are in compliance, stay on top of them and be ready for the possibility of an audit at any time – proper software asset management is the key.

You can find the complete press release at the source with interesting stats on software piracy around the globe.

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

This ain't no Flickr! Every blogger needs a place to host screen shots. Flickr is the best place for photos (IMHO) but they ask that all the images you post be photos (not that they're rabid about that). But now there's SCRNSHOTS.com. Unlimited screen shot uploads. You can tag them for easy searching. The photo b

Microsoft is having a hard time with complaints across the board about its software licensing and interoperability practices – most recently with a complaint forwarded to the EC from a UK education group called Becta. The EC has been engaged since January in investigating interoperability issues surrounding Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document formats for Office 2007. The majority of complaints filed is about the software licensing agreements (SLAs).

Becta is recommending that the UK educational community not use Office 2007, recommending that users save files in the older formats until Microsoft is ODF compliant. Microsoft has stated that they are working with Becta to resolve the issues raised in the complaint. The Internet IT Blog has some additional reporting on the BECTA Suit.

The company is already facing antitrust issues with the EU, with a $1.3 billion fine.

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

By request, this entry will discuss some issues surrounding DML triggers. Triggers are a nifty feature. When you need them, they are very useful. They can also make maintenance and debugging an absolute nightmare.

API vs Trigger Approaches

I am an API style program

There has never been a discussion of retirement of a successor named to Larry Ellison, but blogger Tom Foremski is predicting that at the very least it would be a former Oracle employee and he points specifically to Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com – he also predicts that Oracle would then acquire Salesforce.com.

Benioff spent 13 years with Oracle prior to founding Salesforce.com and the rumor mill can’t get enough on the topic of Ellison’s retirement, although sources inside the company claim it isn’t something that they can even bring up or plan for. Ellison leaves some big shoes to fill, should he choose to leave anytime soon. Both Benioff and Ellison have enjoyed continued success and -only time will tell what the shakeout will be if/when Ellison steps down.

What do you think?

Vauhini Vara asked a tough question in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Business Technology blog: What’s in Oracle’s mystery “facility” in Utah? 

The mystery facility in question is a new “Global Information Technology facility” that Oracle recently announced it would be building in West Jordan, Utah. The 200,000 square foot building is expected to have about 100 employees, whose wages will be well above the Salt Lake County average.

So that they could “do a favor for prospective job applicants looking for more information,” the WSJ attempted to inquire about the specifics of the facility. More specifically, they asked, what exactly is it?

While almost all signs point to the facility being a data center–including being cited as such in numerous other articles– the Oracle spokeswoman in question declined to confirm this, Vara says.

Of course, this now leaves the answer up to the imagination, as seen by the extraterrestrial staring down those who read the WSJ blog entry. Here is one reader response when asked for speculation about what is planned for this “facility:”

“It could be the world’s largest testing tank for an America’s Cup yacht, crewed by a select group of sister-wives; the real secret is the use of extraterrestrial technology to be able to harness the solar wind as an aid to propulsion.”

That’s a good guess–but can you come up with anything better?

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Have you heard of Plaxo? I've been a member for a while though I'm not a heavy user. Plaxo is sort of a social networking address book. It's a decent little site.

Have you heard of Comcast? They're sort of the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=comcast+evil&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en

According to Oracle licensing rules, multi-core processors are to be counted as a single CPU in Standard Edition products.  However for the Enterprise edition, the Oracle licensing rule is different…each core will be counted as a separately, but with pricing discounts. 

Recently, on a Pythian Group blog, Mark Brinsmead smartly pointed out that recent changes to Oracles licensing rules for the Standard Edition may result in higher pricing.  He rightly pointed out that “When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, a processor is counted equivalent to a socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.” New definitions have been added in Oracle’s software licensing agreements.  Oracle licensing can be confusing and very complex.  Matching up intellectual property – which essentially is written in legal language – to real-world IT and business needs can really make your head spin.