I loved my job at Quest Software. I loved the people, the technology, and usually our customers! I got paid to talk and think and write. But that chapter of my life closed last week. There were so many friends and close acquaintances I made over the last decade that it was impossible for me to reach out to all of them. So I hope if you are reading this now, you’ll know how grateful…
It’s still me! That dude that spends a lot of time talking technology, databases, software, and the occasional bad joke. I screwed up. @BrentO told me 2 years ago that it’s better to use your real name on Twitter. And I didn’t listen to him. So now I get to take my medicine and go switch everything over to my new account – ThatJeffSmith. It’s not a coincidence that my new Twitter handle matches the…
A Toad user posed this question today: Is there a way to move a (marked) TABLE mytable123 from Tablespace AAA and Schema BBB to another Tablespace USERS and Schema MYSCH? Let’s tackle the 2nd and easiest part first! Moving a table or partition to a new tablespace is pretty straightforward: ALTER TABLE table_name MOVE TABLESPACE tablespace_name; The ALTER TABLE MOVE clause is documented and diagrammed in the Oracle Docs. However, the user ALSO wants to…
Two quick apologies – 1)This post may ramble a bit more than usual, and B)It’s not my intent to insult or degrade any of the folks I help online. This blog serves as my conscience and my therapist, and I’m not in the mood to cover technical topics today. First off, you may wonder what I mean by ‘user.’ Surely that is synonymous with the term ‘customer?’ You might be surprised how many people actually…
Toad used to just be a simple freeware software program. Oracle developers could download it and use it in a matter of a few minutes. Today, it’s an entire brand at Quest Software – and does everything from Oracle to Apache Hadoop and surely isn’t limited to just developers anymore. This week my friend and co-worker Steven launched a new contest where Toad users can compete for prizes and money by taking a series of…
I love Lisa Barone. She helps me understand things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So when she posted today an article called ’10 Things EVERYONE Should Know about SEO In 2011′, I read it right away. Please take a second now to read it, as I’m going to help you fix problem #7. 7. [Click Here] is never suitable anchor text Ok, so we should never use the words ‘Click Here’ to anchor tags, like…
I’ve overheard the SQL Server folks talking about the challenges of support applications where the NOLOCK (or is it NO_LOCK?) hint has been deployed to make transactions and queries go faster. This probably causes more problems than it solves, and rather trying to rehash what I’ve heard second hand, I suggest you go listen to a MSFT MCM talk about it. Brent Ozar PLF co-founder Kenda Little does an excellent overview on it here. That…
Sit back and relax as I take you through one of my favorite Toad features: Data Compare. In less than five minutes see how to: Set your data comparison target and source Configure which columns to compare Use WHERE clause filters to limit data compared View the results Synchronize the data (optional)
I’ve been blogging in one form or another for about 5 years. Since I published that first story, I’ve spent more than a little bit of time waiting for comments to start flooding in. And they haven’t really flooded in. If I compare my posts to folks that I follow (Mark Schaefer and Brent Ozar), my 6 comments looks puny to their 337. I have a pretty good idea why a blog post may or…
It’s one of the most iconic scenes in American film – Roy Schneider’s character is chumming the water and sees the shark they are hunting. The massive size of the fish causes him to comment, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” It’s shark week, and I was struggling with inspiration for blog posts, so apologies if this metaphor is stretched beyond your imagination. When Oracle (and SQL Server) need to do some expensive math operations,…