Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive
You've probably heard both sides of this argument: throw hardware at performance problems, no no, improve the code. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror comes down on the "more hardware" side in this...
View ArticleOracle PeopleSoft hosted docs
Just in time for the new year! The Oracle PeopleSoft group now have their docs on Oracle.com in HTML format, hooked up to a Tahiti search:Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Hosted PeopleBooks
View ArticleYou've Got to Fight for Your Invoker's Rights
This post is about a PL/SQL feature that doesn't get enough respect, "invoker's rights".First off, what's its real name? Depending on the source, you'll see the feature name spelled "invoker's rights",...
View ArticleComic-Based Communication
These days, there are as many styles of documentation as there are of programming. Structured docs (waterfall model), topic-based writing (object-oriented development), less formal styles based around...
View ArticleDeconstructing the iPod Shuffle UI
The new buttonless iPod Shuffle, which moves all the controls onto the headphone cord, is taken to task in this article:The new iPod shuffle: Button, button, who's got the button?Now, I'm a recent...
View ArticleWhen Backwards Compatibility Goes Too Far
I couldn't help but notice this new article, about holdovers from the earliest days of DOS and even CP/M still showing up in Windows-based development:Zombie Operating Systems and ASP.NET...
View ArticleThe Humble PL/SQL Exception (Part 1) - The Disappearing RETURN
Exception handling in PL/SQL is a big subject, with a lot of nuances. Still, you have to start somewhere. Let's take one simple use case for exceptions, and see if it leads to some thoughts about best...
View ArticleThe Humble PL/SQL Exception (Part 1a) - The Structure of Stored Subprograms
As I said in my previous post, The Humble PL/SQL Exception (Part 1) - The Disappearing RETURN, there are a lot of nuances surrounding exception handling. That post attracted some comments that I...
View Articlevi, Still Relevant
I thought this was a good summary of why vi (or more accurately vim) is still a good choice for editing today:Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?One trick I learned from this article that I...
View ArticleThe Humble PL/SQL Dot
Like many other languages, PL/SQL has its own "dot notation". If we assume that most people can intuit or easily look up things like the syntax for '''IF/THEN/ELSIF''', that means that first-timer...
View ArticleDeconstructing "Everything is UNIX"
From Linux magazine, an article by Jeremy Zawodny: Everything is UNIX.For me, this is an example of the "Miller meme" from Repo Man. "Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly...
View ArticleTen Years Gone
I've been pretty quiet lately, because I'm in a transitional period. After 10 years on documentation for Oracle Database and other enterprise server products, I'm switching to the InnoDB group that...
View ArticleSnow Leopard upgrade
I finally upgraded the main iMac to Snow Leopard. For the first time ever, an upgrade actually resulted in more free space, an extra 6 GB worth. The main features that I notice are fairly minor -- the...
View ArticleMore on Single-Action UIs
In my post Deconstructing the iPod Shuffle UI, I talked a bit about the notion of a limited UI where you really only do one thing -- in that case, click the button on the headphones.Every now and then,...
View ArticleSeparate docs for MySQL Connectors
The MySQL documentation section has always had this Topic Guides page containing links to the docs for the various MySQL Connectors -- the official database drivers for various languages and...
View ArticleError Handling: Or, How to Start an Argument Among Programmers
Lately I see a lot of discussions come up about error handling. For example: Dr. Dobbs "The Scourge of Error Handling" covering mainly C-descended languages; this blog post stemming from OTN...
View ArticleNew Job for John
Hello readers of my infrequent blog posts! I have started a new job, working on documentation for Cloudera, specifically for the Impala project, which is bringing fast interactive SQL to the Hadoop...
View ArticleDocumentation for Cloudera Impala 1.0
The Cloudera docs have been undergoing some reorganization lately. That applies double to the Impala documentation, which moved from beta to GA status and has been restructured at the same time. For...
View ArticleMy history with Big Data
Before I joined Cloudera, I hadn't had much formal experience with Big Data. But I had crossed paths with one of its major use cases before, so I found it easy to pick up the mindset. My previous big...
View ArticleImpala Doc Reorg - January 2014
When Impala started, many of the early adopters were experts in HiveQL, so the Impala documentation assumed some familiarity with Hive SQL syntax and behavior. The Impala SQL reference info was...
View ArticleImpala docs now included in CDH 5 library
With the release of CDH 5.0.0 and Impala 1.3.0, now for the first time the Impala docs are embedded alongside the CDH Installation Guide, Security Guide, and other CDH docs. This integration makes it...
View ArticleUpdate to "Getting Started with Impala" in the Pipeline
Sometime soon, there will be an update to the first edition of the "Getting Started with Impala" book from O'Reilly. It'll have about 30 new pages covering new features such as analytic functions,...
View ArticleNew navigation feature in Cloudera docs: Categories
If you've visited the Cloudera documentation lately, you might have noticed some new links down at the bottom of each page. The doc team implemented a system of Wiki-style categories, covering various...
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