Re: the IN club: Oracle "unpublished" information

  • From: Nigel Thomas <nigel_cl_thomas@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: sacrophyte@xxxxxxxxx, oracle-l <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:23:05 -0700 (PDT)

Charles

a) you want to know how it works? buy Jonathan Lewis's CBO book (and wait for 
parts 2, 3 etc). Invest some time in following his method (ie Robert the Bruce 
- try, try and try again); Jonathan gives you some tasty fish, but also the 
outline of a rod so you can feed yourself. That's what I'd do if I had some 
free time (I don't - but that's my problem, not Oracle's)
 
b) "Is there any recourse to gently nudge Oracle Development "? As a former 
Oracle (UK) employee - including time in CASE and Apps development - I very 
much doubt it - at least as far as support goes. 

Your curiosity doesn't (in itself) pay the rent on Redwood Shores. Sometimes 
algorithms which seemed like a good idea just aren't. Sometimes there are bugs. 
Sometimes there are unintended effects in cases which the designers/developers 
didn't anticipate; perhaps data volumes are an order of magnitude or two bigger 
than they expected. Shit happens. 
 
Probably people like Wolfgang Breitling, Jonathan Lewis, Cary Millsap and 
others (my former colleague Dave Ensor springs to mind - I'm sorry I can't get 
to Miracle Scotland in May to meet up again) do the best job of nudging by 
publicising well researched and more or less non-judgemental "observations". 
Oracle developers - several of whom lurk or even respond on this list - do have 
some pride, you know! Point out a problem and they'll see an opportunity for 
improvement; maybe not in the next release, but eventually.

The channels are there - but they are informal/personal. The Support call 
centre is simply not designed to do what you want.You can meet Redwood movers 
and shakers like Graham Wood (another ex-Oracle UK guy big in Oracle server 
performance) and K Gopalakrishnan - author of Oracle Wait Interface) on this 
list and at conferences like RMOUG, Miracle and Hotsos. That's the way to learn 
and influence, I think.

So keep on ferreting about, and good luck! 

Regards Nigel

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