December 29, 2009
The decade that started with the Y2K is finally ending this week. it has been an interesting decade for me with my move from Pakistan to the US in 2001. This decade has brought towards a lot of technological advances including Blogging, tweeting, Qiking/Ustreaming, Boxee and Xbox .
Being an Oracle DBA. Oracle has changed in this decade from 9.2 to Oracle 10 and the promise of a self fixing database. Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and the potential power sharing with the SAN folks. Self tuning Databases in the form of the STA (Sql Tuning Advisor) . Oracle has worked hard toward getting a viable monitoring product that now challenges all the incumbents in the form of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control. Active Dataguard was built to solve the challenges of Logical Dataguard while offloading backups from the primary systems.
This is also the decade where Oracle decided to make more money from its customers with the concept of a pack. AWR & ADDM which were replacement for Statspack are now the Diagnostic Pack. STA is now part of Tuning Pack. and to blackout a database in Grid Control you need to purchase a diagnostic pack.
The end of the decade also brought forward My Oracle Support (and the demise of our beloved metalink) and 11.2 and Oracle’s Ambition to create a global problem management database that would proactively inform customers of problems based on other people that already had that problem . Oracle had been trying to push OCM for a while now and Larry Demoed the next version of Grid Control at OOW2009 that had this built in.
This decade had brought forward war and promise of change . This Decade brought forward the Iphone , wich for me was the biggest technological feat. Today i am addicted to the iphone even though i was never a Mac fan, My next hardware purchase will probably entail a Mac.
I’ve had the opportunity to work on great new technology and meet and tweet with a great many friends and people that are far more knowledgable than myself. Which is why in ending my new years resolution is to keep myself in technology and keep pusing myself in newer technologies.
What are your resolutions and what was the defining moment / feature in Oracle for you this decade.
Happy New Year to all and Please enjoy JibJab’s Year in review
December 29, 2009
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I was really baffled today when on moving to a newer laptop i was unable to install Self Test Software for 10g that i have had for a number of years . I have liked some of the content and have used it for reference when needed. Today when i transferred stuff to my new laptop i was unable to activate a product that i paid for .
The customer Service rep politely pointed me to the software license agreement that apparently i had accepted in 2006 when i bought the product.
The License agreement states
“The term of this Agreement begins upon installation of this Software and shall terminate 3 years from the date of purchase. STS reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if you violate any provision of this Agreement. If the Agreement is terminated for any reason, you agree immediately to return to STS all copies of this Software and all accompanying items. ”
SO even though i own a piece i dont own it because it was only given to me for 3 years. While i agree to most people Oracle 10g test questions might not be valid after 3 years but i feel that i should own a product and have the right to use it if i paid for it . The Company can desupport the product but it should be on the discretion of the customer as to when he stops using it.
Just a Buyer Beware rant on software licensing agreements.
