Blog Aggregator - Amardeep Sidhu

In Spotting Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Frank Mash writes about a specific person who is spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about MySQL.
Now, this always gets me, especially with MySQL. For how long will MySQL be the bastard stepchild of the database world? Because really, it’s been a full-fledged DBMS for at least 5 […]

Tom Kyte and Pete Finnigan are both well known for talking about the need to use bind variables and the dangers of SQL Injection. This cartoon must have been written just for them.

Someone sent me an email a little while ago about a problem they were having with two databases that were using different execution plans for the same query. 
But the two databases were believed to be identical, and the optimizer was running rule-based in both cases, so it shouldn’t have been possible to get different execution […]

First, the press takes an issue and hypes it up to a point where regular Joe’s are rushing out to draw their money out of a successful bank for fear of it collapsing. Next, they start running stories about how low consumer confidence is one of the major factors affecting the economy at the moment.
Does […]

Thought I might begin by mentioning a lovely little story by Billy Verreynne in this OTN Forum Thread.
Basically a scientist is doing research on the behaviour of flies. He notes when he opens the jar lid of a trapped fly and claps his hands, the fly takes off and flies away. One day, he decides to pull the wings […]

How to verify if tape on HP-UX dds drive:

I am working in a very large distributed environment where we are deploying new Integrity rx6600, rx7640 and rx8640 servers running HP-UX 11i v2 (23). My company has 20 sites spread all over US and i am doing installations remotely on these new Itanium servers. There are few local site administrators assisting me in installations and I am asking them to run weekly ignite tapes, very often they come to me to check on how they can find dds tape drive and device address on Integrity servers running HP-UX. I made some notes for them and posting it right here.

1. How to locate device address for the dds tape on Integrity HP-UX servers:

Connect to HP-UX servers and as root run ioscan to display all tape drive connected to server:

This HP-UX server is connected to 3 tape devices two of them are clearly listed as Ultrium tape drives and top tape drive with Description C5683A is the “dds tape drive”. Device address for the dds tape drive is /dev/rmt/0m and if you want to use the tape device with no rewind then you should use device address as /dev/rmt/0mn

2. Check the status of dds tape drive on HP-UX server:

If you are working remotely on the HP-UX server and want to make sure if there is tape in the dds tape drive then run following commands:

If you don’t see anything in front of the Status field that indicates that currently there is no tape in the dds tape drive. Next as local site administrator o insert the dds tape in the dds tape drive, once dds tape is in run the command again

In status it show tape is in but write protected, make sure to turn write protection on.

I was asked this question recently, and I thought it was a great little tidbit of knowledge to pass along. The short answer is “no”. The slightly longer answer was written up by Jan Kneschke when dealing with a forum post about proxy + connection pooling.
From http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?146,169265,169700
The clear-text password is _never_ transfered in […]

In addition to Oracle Mix, Oracle Wiki and Oracle Community, OAUG will be launching yet another Oracle related social network called the Knowledge Factory.

The Knowledge Factory will provide a platform for users to exchange ideas, experiences, and expertise within the Oracle Applications member community. It will feature user profiles with pictures and biographies, blogs, forums […]

At this year’s MySQL Conference & Expo, taking place in Santa Clara, California in mid-April, I’m giving two sessions:

Best Practices for Database Administrators
Database Security Using White-Hat Google Hacking

You can see more info about me here, including descriptions of the workshops.
I look forward to seeing many of you there. Make sure you say […]