Vive la diference!

And I'm not talking about the one between Mars and Venus!

Some of the regular readers will no doubt recall my comments regarding the MOS introduction.

Yes, dang right they were strong words! We pay Oracle YEARLY in excess of 6 figures in maintenance fees.
A large chunk of which is for our access to Metalink/MOS/whatever.
The last thing I need when that is unusable for a long period is some idiot giving everyone lip that it's "our fault" for "not doing what they asked us to do".

Particularly when we did precisely what they asked us to, months in advance, and got exactly the same problems as everyone else!

So: what is the "diference"?

As many of you know I am a bit of an amateur photographer. One of the overseas suppliers I use for my gear is KEH. Today, I received the email below from them. I'll let it stand here without any further comments or parallels to Oracle's attitudes.

Total sum amount I've spent with KEH? Probably less than $2K. Not bad consideration and customer respect for such an amount, eh?

Here it is. I couldn't possibly make the difference more striking:

You're receiving this email because of your relationship with KEH.com. Please confirm your continued interest in receiving email from us.

You may unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive our emails.

KEH.com

Dear NUNO, We want to thank you for your patronage and patience during our website rollout.

NEW WEBSITE As you may know, KEH.com rolled out a new website nearly two weeks ago. While we anticipate this site to be a great improvement over our old website, we still have some challenges to overcome. As with many new websites, we are experiencing some growing pains and are working to remove several issues within the site, primarily regarding our "search" function as well as our checkout pages. Specialists are working around the clock to correct these issues and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. As an alternative to the web, you may also call 770-333-4200 to place an order via phone.

Our ultimate goal at KEH.com is to exceed your expectations at every level, however, we feel it equally important to keep you honestly informed. Sincerely, Todd Murphy General Manager KEH.com

And on that note, on to nicer things...

For the folks who join us at the Sydney Oracle Meetup, at this Friday's meeting I'll be talking about SANs and Oracle from the perspective of what we learned in the last year of extensive SAN reconfiguration and tuning.


The format of my talk will be along the lines of:

• Quick intro to SAN technology
• Quick intro to SAN makers and the one we use
• SAN configuration and performance considerations for Oracle databases
• Replication and its use for DR/standby of Oracle databases - and others!
  
• Concern areas, "gotchas" and other traps
• Discussion period

I'm hoping to restrict my presentation to around 1 hour so that Yury Velikanov can continue his excellent talk on RMAN. We'll play it by ear, depending on attendance and level of interest.


For those who are not familiar: our meetings are extremelly informal. Rather than the previous model of "a guru talks and everyone listens", we now encourage active participation of the members both in questions and provision of additional information.


The only thing we do not allow is disruption with personal attacks or insinuations! We are all learning there: no one is "better" or entitled to impose on others. You're encouraged to join us this Friday, it should be interesting.


Besides: joining the group is free and we have pizza and beer, courtesy of the great folks at Pythian!

;)

Catchyalata, folks!

Quite frankly warticki, you should apologize!

(edited to remove stronger words, no need for that and I apologize to my readers)

Here we go. I already expected this...

A perfect example of the low-life, unprofessional, kind of people that populate Oracle Support nowadays.

chris - if that is indeed your name:

1- With the exception of a lonely voice, there has not been ONE SINGLE POSITIVE user community comment about the utter disaster that was the Oracle MOS migration.

2- It's Oracle who performed and managed that migration. Not your "vocal clueless".

3- The "vocal clueless" happen to be your PAYING Oracle CUSTOMERS. If nothing else, that should deserve a little bit more professional courtesy than your silly post.

4-The "vocal clueless" hold singly and severaly a lot more responsibility and have a lot more single and collective knowledge of Oracle-the-company and Oracle-the-RDBMS than your kind will ever amass in a lifetime of similar, childish, "kewl" posts.


In a nutshell: your intervention with your blog post perfectly demonstrates and proves better than anything else the community could point out, the complete and utter lack of ANY professional respect and courtesy that some have brought to Oracle-the-company.


Oh, and just in case you opt to use some nonsense "dba1.0" comment: I have been using the new interface for months now, as requested by Oracle support. It was working fine - although not very useful - until this past weekend.

By the way, have you "geniuses" figured out yet how to allow your users to change their registered email? You know: folks sometimes change email and they might want to continue to use their interface without going through the pains of registering a totally new user - and losing their current customisations and bookmarks!


Hint: you need to use synthetic keys in your db design, as opposed to natural ones. Google it up. Familiar with the concept of "db design"? One would hope so...


It is high time people like you - and there are a lot of them now in Oracle - got called on your totaly unprofesional attitude and your complete lack of respect for your clients.


I really hope you lose your job as a result of that silly post, because quite frankly: that is precisely what you richly deserve!


But knowing full well the totally irresponsible attitude of Oracle Support's middle management, I fully expect you to be at the receiving end of the "ace of the year" or some other equally irrelevant "professional" award.


Which speaks volumes for the kind of respect those "awards" richly deserve from the user community at large. And what true professionals think of them.


I lost count of the number of direct emails I received mentioning replies sent as a result of your post, which you didn't have the courage to put up.


Well consider this my reply, because I'll never again read or use any blog remotely associated with the likes of you.



In summary, and I'm sure others will chip-in in the following days: you have been unprofessional and disrespectful and you did a total disservice to the company you work for.

(/edited to remove stronger words, no need for that and I apologize to my readers)










Now that the platitudes have been disposed with, let's go back to happier things...
From my small and humble tribute to Max Dupain's style:

"Biding her time" (thanks, Jared!)



"a place for the entire family"



"weighing the options"



I particularly like the last one: it was one of those "moments" of photography. Haven't seen folks considering a dive into a running milk shaker since then! ;)

Catchyalata, folks!