My Book Has Been Printed

Well, it's taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan 2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is available. I'm glad I didn't wait for the movie. ;-)

It's kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning out to be a good year. I'll have some additional news in the near future.

Anyway, the book looks good. I've already found a few typos and grammar errors just skimming around. I like the font and the pages look really crisp. All in all, I have to say I am very happy that the book is out.

Check out some photos:





I think I want to give a couple away. Maybe some kind of contest for the blog readers. Any ideas of something fair? I am willing to pay shipping for a couple but that would only be here in the US. Overseas shipping gets expensive.

LewisC

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Hotsos Profiler Extension for SQL Developer

Hotsos has released its Profiler extension for SQL Developer. The extension is free but you must have a license for the profiler for the extension to do you any good.

The profiler works almost like the Explain Plan tool in SQL Developer. Enter the text you want to profile, press a key and then view the output.

You do need access to the trace files that are generated. The page linked above had instructions on how to enable access and what permissions you need.

A neat feature is that you can save profiling sessions for historical access. That can be a life saver if you are trying to tune and are trying out different approaches. Instead of keeping your own backups, use the history. You can also share that history so that all of you developers have the same baseline. Nice.

Hotsos also provides a discussion group for questions relating to the extension. If you are a Hotsos profiler user, you should check out this extension.

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CUNY Chooses Oracle

City University of New York (CUNY) has standardized on PeopleSoft Financials, Human Capital and Campus Solutions. Of course, all of this will be running on Oracle 11g and, eventually, Fusion.

"We chose Oracle to provide the highest quality service and advanced solutions to accommodate our institutions' various sizes and non-traditional programs," said Brian Cohen, CUNY's chief information officer and co-project leader for CUNY FIRST. "We chose Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions 9.0 for the new capabilities this version offered and look forward to leveraging it to transform our student information system."

CUNY selected Oracle due to the functionality and scalability of its applications - vital factors considering CUNY's unique composition of senior and community colleges and other programs and institutions - and the number of PeopleSoft implementations within higher education institutions in the U.S. Oracle's application solutions and database will enable CUNY to implement a single database instance for the entire university in a true multi-institution configuration.

"We chose Oracle to provide the highest quality service and advanced solutions to accommodate our institutions' various sizes and non-traditional programs," said Brian Cohen, CUNY's chief information officer and co-project leader for CUNY FIRST. "We chose Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions 9.0 for the new capabilities this version offered and look forward to leveraging it to transform our student information system."

CUNY selected Oracle due to the functionality and scalability of its applications - vital factors considering CUNY's unique composition of senior and community colleges and other programs and institutions - and the number of PeopleSoft implementations within higher education institutions in the U.S. Oracle's application solutions and database will enable CUNY to implement a single database instance for the entire university in a true multi-institution configuration.

Ron Spalter, deputy chief operating officer and co-project Leader for CUNY FIRST stated, "It was significant to us that Oracle offered CUNY the Oracle Insight program, which we refined to focus on a high profile area for CUNY students - financial aid. We are working with Oracle to frame, analyze and resolve a number of outstanding opportunities in this area."

The City University of New York is the nation's largest urban public university. CUNY comprises 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, the Graduate School and University Center, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the CUNY School of Law at Queens College, the CUNY School of Professional Studies and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education. The University serves more than 231,000 degree-credit students and 230,000 adult, continuing, and professional education students. College Now, the University's academic enrichment program for 32,500 high school students, is offered at CUNY campuses and more than 300 high schools throughout the five boroughs of the City of New York.

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Oracle's Letter to Bea

Oracle tried to buy Bea, Bea slapped them down, Oracle responds:

October 12, 2007
Board of Directors
BEA Systems, Inc.
2315 North First Street
San Jose, CA 95131

Dear Members of the Board of Directors:
As discussed with your management team, Oracle remains available to discuss and complete a transaction quickly and efficiently.

We believe that it is important to clarify the sequence of activities that have transpired over the past few days. Upon receipt of Bill Klein's letter dated October 11, I contacted him to address any process concerns. Bill and I agreed on an accelerated process that would be, by anyone's standard, "short in duration" and not "open-ended" and that would permit BEA to not "divulge competitively sensitive information."

BEA's management agreed to meet this morning at 10:00am Pacific time to commence a process intended to result in the execution of definitive agreements before the open of business on Monday, October 15. Unfortunately, BEA cancelled the meeting late last night and declined our invitations to reschedule. In my subsequent discussions with Bill earlier today, I asked whether there was any process that BEA would prefer to follow to move towards a friendly transaction and was told that BEA had no such process in mind.

We are available to proceed immediately with a process that would lead to a friendly transaction. In the meantime, we remain committed to our proposed price of $17.00 per share, provided that the BEA Board and management team do not institute any measures which reduce the value of the company or shift value from BEA's shareholders to the management team. Our proposed price is a substantial premium to an already-inflated stock price that reflected speculation of the potential sale of BEA and represents a more than 40% premium to BEA's stock price before the appearance of activist shareholders in mid-August of this year.

Sincerely,
ORACLE CORPORATION
Charles Phillips
President

oracle bea