normality resumed
or at least what passes for it in my life...
Been an interesting few weeks. I've been doing the rounds of the Oracle bloging world and quite frankly: either the Usenet kranks have joined in force or the level of intelligence in the community has dropped markedly!
What passes for "Oracle blogging" nowadays is nothing short of blatant company-sponsored, ill-disguised, outright marketing. The number of posts in blogs that are nothing more than just repetitive, boring and stupid reiterations of company policy is overwhelming.
The blogsphere in the Oracle universe was usually a good reference for technical matters, outside of the so-called "official line". Not anymore. Apart from the really good places for technical info - you got them on the right column here plus a few others I haven't added yet such as the good folks at Pythian - there is very little going on that is worth reading. And a lot that is just downright "toe the company line" crap.
Sorry, but I've always called a spade by its name.
I mean, when a major proponent of ADF and all the Fusion cacophony has TWO (that's 2, folks!) pages of blogging explaining how to implement correctly a dropdown listbox with that technology, I ask you: who is pulling whose leg?
A dropdown listbox, folks! Two pages of blogging! I must be dreaming: it takes about three lines, tops, to explain how to do it with the "inefficient" and outdated "older" technologies.
Someone is having a bad taste joke, at the expense of the Oracle development community!
I'm reminded of how the Attorney General Department in Sydney has spent the last 7 (that's SEVEN, folks!) years trying to deliver at least ONE application! Of course, they are using this new development "technology". At my (tax payer) expense...
And they are by no means the only case of projects gone horribly wrong. I'd be struggling to find ONE major j2ee + Oracle development project involving large coding that has gone through without major problems in the last 5 years, here in NSW.
No, implementations of Oracle's ebusiness suite are NOT examples of "fusion" technology, they use Cobol (of all things!) and are mostly just an install-then-config proposition. Not a design-develop event. I said: MAJOR development projects!
One only, please! I can't find it...
But it's all company-sponsored "goodness", so obviously this is just another rant by a "disgruntled ex-employee".
Or something...
Enough of that rubbish, anyway: that deranged j2ee + ADF crap is not getting anywhere within cooee of our development group. We're sticking with .NET and a few other choice technologies that actually can deliver, instead of mega-projects that never reach production.
And if that means we have to use SQL Server instead of Oracle, then so be it! I'm done waiting for Oracle's senior management to wake up and smell reality, instead of pandering to the latest "bleeding edge" rubbish.
APEX is the only new, promising development technology to come out of Oracle in the last 5 years - aimed at the small to medium size development shop. ADF and all the other j2ee rubbish is impossible to manage without an army of designers and developers and COMPLETELY unfit for any environment other than the "Cecil B. de Mille - cast of thousands" kind of project.
As such, I'm concentrating new development efforts on APEX + Oracle and .NET + SQL Server. Not worth wasting our time with anything else, quite frankly.
Catchyalata, folks.
Been an interesting few weeks. I've been doing the rounds of the Oracle bloging world and quite frankly: either the Usenet kranks have joined in force or the level of intelligence in the community has dropped markedly!
What passes for "Oracle blogging" nowadays is nothing short of blatant company-sponsored, ill-disguised, outright marketing. The number of posts in blogs that are nothing more than just repetitive, boring and stupid reiterations of company policy is overwhelming.
The blogsphere in the Oracle universe was usually a good reference for technical matters, outside of the so-called "official line". Not anymore. Apart from the really good places for technical info - you got them on the right column here plus a few others I haven't added yet such as the good folks at Pythian - there is very little going on that is worth reading. And a lot that is just downright "toe the company line" crap.
Sorry, but I've always called a spade by its name.
I mean, when a major proponent of ADF and all the Fusion cacophony has TWO (that's 2, folks!) pages of blogging explaining how to implement correctly a dropdown listbox with that technology, I ask you: who is pulling whose leg?
A dropdown listbox, folks! Two pages of blogging! I must be dreaming: it takes about three lines, tops, to explain how to do it with the "inefficient" and outdated "older" technologies.
Someone is having a bad taste joke, at the expense of the Oracle development community!
I'm reminded of how the Attorney General Department in Sydney has spent the last 7 (that's SEVEN, folks!) years trying to deliver at least ONE application! Of course, they are using this new development "technology". At my (tax payer) expense...
And they are by no means the only case of projects gone horribly wrong. I'd be struggling to find ONE major j2ee + Oracle development project involving large coding that has gone through without major problems in the last 5 years, here in NSW.
No, implementations of Oracle's ebusiness suite are NOT examples of "fusion" technology, they use Cobol (of all things!) and are mostly just an install-then-config proposition. Not a design-develop event. I said: MAJOR development projects!
One only, please! I can't find it...
But it's all company-sponsored "goodness", so obviously this is just another rant by a "disgruntled ex-employee".
Or something...
Enough of that rubbish, anyway: that deranged j2ee + ADF crap is not getting anywhere within cooee of our development group. We're sticking with .NET and a few other choice technologies that actually can deliver, instead of mega-projects that never reach production.
And if that means we have to use SQL Server instead of Oracle, then so be it! I'm done waiting for Oracle's senior management to wake up and smell reality, instead of pandering to the latest "bleeding edge" rubbish.
APEX is the only new, promising development technology to come out of Oracle in the last 5 years - aimed at the small to medium size development shop. ADF and all the other j2ee rubbish is impossible to manage without an army of designers and developers and COMPLETELY unfit for any environment other than the "Cecil B. de Mille - cast of thousands" kind of project.
As such, I'm concentrating new development efforts on APEX + Oracle and .NET + SQL Server. Not worth wasting our time with anything else, quite frankly.
Catchyalata, folks.
posted by Noons at 6/21/2007 08:44:00 am
14 Comments:
I'd begun to wonder about the number of posts with twenty screen shots of how to do something.
I pick up most blogs through the aggregators, so I don't miss new ones, but it makes it difficult to exclude ones I'm not interested in.
Couldn't agree more, Gazza: no one is perfect and there is no such thing as an ideal development technology.
Heck, you and I were on a development project recently that went pear-shaped: there were problems with many aspects of it.
But none of them was caused by a short-coming of the technology or the difficulty in using it!
This ADF/Fusion/j2ee rubbish is bordering on the sad joke lunacy!
Someone is trying to pull my leg with these constant "want to add a doodah to your form? easy: just go to /adf/pro/12.3.2/proj/java/adf/xml/1.3.4.5/conf/who/the/hell/has/time/for/this/crap and edit the xml322j2eeform345.cnf file: look for the line starting with doodah:off and edit it"! This is complete lunacy!
Bleeding freakin obvious, isn't it? Sooooo easy to use, any child could do it...
Tell it like it is dude!
Cheers
Tim...
Hi Noona,
>> that deranged j2ee + ADF crap is not getting anywhere within cooee of our development group.
A "cooee"? I learn many new words from reading your blog . . .
>> APEX is the only new, promising development technology to come out of Oracle in the last 5 years - aimed at the small to medium size development shop.
It's interesting, that is changing. At ODTUG, David Peake is touting Apex for large ERP's, and I've seen Apex databases with hundreds of screens.
Hear hear!
Oracle developers, prepare thouselves for J2EE's successor: Apex.
Don:
go to http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html
for more than you ever wanted to know about Australian slang.
Not surprised about Apex's true scalability: after all it's based on a proper foundation!
Toon:
well, ours are looking very seriously at it.
If basic things become so complex, who the heck will have time for more hardcore stuff and especially blog about it?
On the other hand, some of my favorite blogs are very quite these days. I hope it's a seasonal state in the northern hemisphere.
I'll show Ziggy's photo to Alex Jr. - he will love it!
Alex:
show Alex Jr this one as well:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~nsouto/photos/John/kids02.jpg
he'll enjoy it.
Not that I want to poo-poo APEX because it has its uses, but like many Oracle development tools its a nightmare when it comes to configuration management.
How do you version control your APEX application (or better, individual screens)? How do you migrate it? Can you edit the definitions by hand?
When you've got a spare minute or two, take a look at Django - http://www.djangoproject.com/ - last time I looked the Oracle port was coming along a treat. Plus it has the advantage that it is written (and uses) a proper programming language.
django==python? :-)
Yeah, I know what you mean: Apex is not perfect.
But NOTHING can beat the ridiculous hodge-podge crazy salad that is ADF/j2ee: just too moronic for any consideration by anyone with half a brain and minimal honesty.
I must get some quality time for python, been promising it for ages now!
And php.
And a host of other technologies.
Lost too much time with the j2ee rubbish and now it's catch-up double-step time...
Then again, we're moving more and more to .not and sql server so maybe I should brush up instead on my visual-basic and c# again!
Anyways, next week I'm doing my first SQLServer dba course: we'll see what gives after that.
Anyways, next week I'm doing my first SQLServer dba course:
[bite tongue...bite tongue...bite tongue... ah, it passed]
I'm sure many will be interested in what you have say about that course!
I recently spent a number of hours trying to concentrate on actual work while a nearby person dealt with a certain nannyware product that had installation issues, mostly listening to help-desk muzak. Turned out to be something to do with what it expected to be there with sql-server, undocumented problems due to order of dependent products installation. Completely at odds with app docs, hosed registry as a bonus.
Cue up "Master and Servant" by Depeche Mode.
I think part of the problem with the quality of oracle blogging is that once someone has started to blog they feel pressure to keep producing content.
Then the writer's block occurs after they get out the first couple of topics.
After that perhaps panic sets in and eventually they just put up anything to have something new "out there".
If my guess is anywhere close then perhaps people start filling in with stuff related to their company or projects they are working on leading to several pages on how to make a drop down list.
There're some interesting perceptions John. I was recently involved in some offline conversations that arose from oracle-l, and I mentioned to an old storage-oriented buddy about Kevin Closson's blog. When he asked "who has time for blogging?" I mentioned the best blogs are aligned with actual work people do (as opposed to the boring and predictable opinions that are so many blogs in general). You are right - there must be a confluence of passion for the subject by the writer and interest by the reader. Rehashing old stuff just to have something to say has got to be one definition of poor quality. On the other hand, if someone has done some tedious thing, they might want to post it just so some other poor schmuck that has to do it can google it later.
Your example of a drop-down list is spot-on. But even it could be useful for someone coming from another toolset where it is much easier.
I think the real issue is how to judge quality as it varies over time. The blogroll paradigm and simple feeds are useless for that. Group voting paradigms would seem to lead to the vanilla pap that Noons is complaining about.
Thanks Noons for the comment about compressed folders in Wintel. Will update the same in the post.
Sidhu
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