Whenever I write in English, I’m using my second language. Therefore I’m used to write carefully by being aware I never will really do it right … But recently I got two curious feedbacks about making me really wondering about.

Yesterday a fellow wrote me an email with the wishes: Could you quickly send me the sqlstatements for creating two database links between the following Oracle Databases?! Hey! Every stupid nerd could get this syntax in seconds by querying Google for it.

Knowing this I made effort figuring out about why he could have trouble creating these connections and found out about missing TNSNAMES.ORA definitions and created them for him. Being carefully I even created one database link myself successfully and finally wrote back  …. I did blablabla and tested it myself with success. Use the following generic syntax and replace the keywords with appropriate values.

His answer was … I perfectly know the syntax, but have trouble with these two database links now …. Didn’t I wrote I’ve prepared it all?!
Honestly?? Is it me or just him too lazy to read?

The other feedback was as curious as well …. A few days before I’ve wrote about Teamviewer here and passed on a similar info a list. Menioning it’s free for personal usage, within my next line I wrote about it’s handy to check things on a customer PC or MAC from remote! Why does someone then implicitly think I would suggest using this tool in a commercial environment without paying for it first?!

Honestly …. the German Language is much more exact about such things! Is it me, my English or perhaps the language itself?  Or hey my friend! Does it may just need you … thinking one or two more seconds about my lines?

Whatever others to tell me three days of conference is tiring. Travelling to such an event is not to compare with some vacation trip anyway and the first or two night sleeping in a hotel is anyway somewhat less relaxing for me.

This years DOAG was even a conference of a style I personally think about as some intermediate one as for there is no real new major release announced as coming soon. So I personally think about most of the speeches I’ve heard as another "remake" of companies which do now think they’ve got the glue about.

But for me it as a good feedback about which new feature … announce a year ago as "brand new" … has really set and is accepted by the market.

And another big point for me is that I’m able to renew and as often possible and very appreciated – extend – my contacts to Oracle folks. You know each other, exchange again a few idea and information and in case there is a needs, you have a contact or number to call and ask.

This year the social aspect of the conference was big and I really had the feeling to meet a lot of interesting folks besides all the official and scheduled program.

But now …. yes, and I’m not feeling ashamed to share …. it’s about time to head home again.

This year I managed to attend to the DOAG again after missing it last year. It’s the yearly congress of the German Oracle Users Group and it is a great feeling diving into community again. Seeing a lot of folks again and renewing old relations is quiet a good and important thing for sure.

Even the speaches I’ve followed so far seems to deal and contain not really a lot of new and exciting stuff learing about how other people do their job is always interesting at the end.

As for the conference is at Nürnberg it is even possible to visit the famous Christmas Market here and I guess it was a really good thing to directly convince my presentation partner about heading there together this evening.

Thanks good my personal speech is on wednesday first and therefore I can’t get in trouble in case it get late as I assume ….

Today I got and answered an Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) user survey.

They said they take my feedback very seriously (am I now important?!) and it will be used to help them to determine how best to invest in these products and the processes that support them …..  I hope it will!

To be honest I made a lot of different experiences using Oracle RAC and I’m happy about them looking for feedback. Not every experience was good I made and especially with one installation I had a lot of trouble last year before I headed of in my (then urgent needed) longer vacation.

But on the other hand nobody is perfect and with a look on those great variety of platforms and ports they do support someone I easily able to understand that the one or other issue will occur sooner or later.

And it is not only the product quality and stability defining the overall quality at all. Also the offered manufacturer support and the access to their Knowledge database  (in that case called Metalink)  are important factors for a generell success.

In this specific case I even made the acquaintanceship with an extraordinary friendly and supportive lady working for Oracle Egypt being responsible for my TAR – working together with me for several weeks trying to solve my issue – I’m still in contact today.

Last questions was (as usual for sure): Would you like to participate in future? Yes for sure, I would!!

Today my day is filled up with lots of interesting and pleasant things so far. An really appreciated change after to a serious of more or less dragging weeks dealing with all kind of trouble recently.

It started already this morning with me getting an interesting request from oversea, continued with the good news that some difficult job I more or less only supervised and monitored (but being responsible for) completed successfully, went on with an urgent incoming problem – later on turned out into basically some actual product changes without really forcing trouble, into so far finally a phone call I got from some Oracle Consultant friendly pointing me to a new Oracle BI Publisher Community Site.

It must now be a little bit about a year when a developer contacted me about this product, which I later on installed for him. Surprisingly this installation turned out into some real success story! Mostly for the reason that my decision about using a Apache Tomcat environment instead of joining into the mainstream of installations using the standard OC4J cartridge turned out as the right one. Today we have nearly two hands full of different and for sure successful, nice and neat separated projects (different project admins with different rights concepts) running on a single box never making any trouble at all.

But back to that community pages …. sure I’m a man, but it would have to be someone different than me, not directly recognizing the BIP girl link on that community pages!

Now I know all the 8 secrets about a 29 years old American Lady living at Albany, NY …. and thanks god I was able to resist directly posting back at her blog!

ps: now feeling curious about how this day will go on ….. more exciting things to come?