I just asked about backing up our database server. (There's a new backup 
procedure coming in.) For my trouble, they asked if I could just script 
the database backup to put the files onto a different server.

This is no use at all; I need to backup the entire server, including the 
OS, so that if there's a problem I can just shove in a tape and put 
everything back to normal, rather than manually installing the OS, 
device drivers, Oracle, etc.

But here's the worrying this: The database admin from HQ sent me a copy 
of "the backup script we use here".

And guess what? It isn't a backup. It's an export.

For those of you who aren't Oracle experts:

- A *backup* is where you take the database files and copy them.

- An *export* is where you run a special program that extracts the data 
from the database and puts it into a (binary) flat file.

An export allows you to *recreate* the database, but it isn't "the 
database itself". It contains all the _data_ from the database, but none 
of the _metadata_.

In particular, to use an export file, you "import" it. This is 
equivilent to running lots of SQL "insert" statements. In particular, 
importing data causes triggers to fire. The documentation says you need 
to think about whether triggers should be disabled before the import begins.

How great would that be? You "restore" your "backup" and the system 
modifies it as you restore it!

The thing is, exports are really designed for transferring data from DB 
to DB, possibly running incompatible versions of Oracle. It's not really 
a good idea for "backups". (Although some of the official Oracle 
documentation suggests that is it.)

Now a *real* backup includes all the database configuration metadata and 
so forth. And best of all, if you follow best practices, you don't have 
to shut the database down to back it up, and you can do point-in-time 
recovery. Basically you can rewind the database to any second in time, 
not just to the instant when a "backup" was taken.

Export, on the other hand, runs as a normal database transaction. In 
particular, since it is usually a very *long* transaction, it can cause 
problems with overflowing transaction logs and so forth.

In summary:

- Backups
   - Run while the database is in use. (Slows it down slightly, obviously.)
   - Recover the database to any point in its history, not just when a 
"backup" happened.
   - The restored database is *identical* to the original, down to the 
bit-pattern level.

- Exports
   - Slower than backups. (Produce smaller files though.)
   - Contain "logical" structures only. No undo data, no transaction 
logs, nothing.
   - Running an export is a transaction. The undo buffer has to be large 
enough to copy.
   - Running an import is a transaction. Applicable triggers will fire.
   - Point-in-time recovery is impossible.
   - Can move data from DB to DB. (This is the designed purpose, actually.)

If you do an export and your server goes down, once the server OS is 
back and Oracle is installed, you have to create an empty database, 
recreate all the user account info, and then import all the data. Then 
you need to put back any triggers you're supposed to have, possibly move 
tables into the correct tablespaces, and probably recreate your indexes. 
(Alternatively, keep the indexes in the export and watch it go even slower.)

To recover using a backup, once the OS and Oracle are back, you copy the 
files back to their original locations, and start Oracle. It will 
complain about the files being inconsistent. Tell it to perform a 
recover. (Usually takes a few seconds.) Now open the database. You are done.



I am SORELY TEMPTED to tell this admin what an idiot he is...

...but on the other hand, it's been a while since I did any serious 
Oracle stuff. If I don't get all of my facts straight, it will be *me* 
who looks stupid. I'd hate to write a long email explaining what a 
smart-arse I am and then discover that I got some small technical detail 
wrong and actually the other guy was right all along.

Oh the frustrations of working here! >_<

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> I'd hate to write a long email explaining what a 
> smart-arse I am and then discover that I got some small technical detail 
> wrong and actually the other guy was right all along.

This is how you manage these things:

Pretend you're not as smart as the person you're talking to, and you 
don't know as much. (I'll make it short and over-the-top to illustrate, 
but of course if you turn it into two pages you don't need to make it 
sound smarmy.) Assume that the guy is not stupid, but that he has 
requirements you aren't aware of.

"""
Thanks. I looked over your backup plans, and I'd like to understand more 
why your method is superior. I've been using backup method B, which as 
you know saves all the metadata and makes it quick to restore in the 
event of a disaster. I thought this was why we were making the backups, 
but perhaps I'm misinformed.

You're suggesting that we switch to backup method E, which has the 
advantage of letting us restore to later versions of oracle but would 
seem to have the disadvantage that it would take much more effort to 
recover from a disaster. For example, since method E does not save the 
user account information, we would still need to export that 
independently at the time of making backups with method E or risk 
needing to recreate that information while the company waits.

Perhaps the best approach would be to take backup method E each month, 
and backup method B each day (since B allows rolling back to any 
previous point in time), and save the monthly of each indefinitely. This 
would seem to be the best of both worlds.

Please clarify how you would like me to handle the following situations 
using backup method E:
1) Saving user account information in a secure way,
2) Which triggers should be enabled if data needs to be restored,
3) Whether indecies should be included in the exports,
4) How often we should do exports to insure we don't overflow 
transaction buffer pools,
5) ... anything else you think is problematic ...
"""

The first part says "Oh, have we changed what we're doing? Is that why 
you're changing stuff that works?"

The second says "I know there are advantages to your way of doing it, 
but there are disadvantages, and you job is to weigh them and figure out 
whether it's worth the risk to get the advantages."

The third part says "Here's a way to save face and not look like an 
idiot by reversing yourself. We can still make backups the way you want, 
and just not use them. And three months from now, when the system 
becomes unusable for an hour in the middle of the day because of your 
backups, you can tell me to stop doing it that way, as if I hadn't told 
you that in the first place three months ago."

The fourth is "Please put in writing all the solutions to the problems 
you're causing, so I don't get blamed. If you don't know what I'm 
talking about, understand that I know more about this than you, and 
hence maybe you should take my advice."

But if you do it politely, careful of his ego and humble in your 
criticism, it works pretty well. If you say "please explain to this poor 
ignorant peon why you're making such a boneheaded decision", you not 
only look better in the event that you're wrong, but you haven't ticked 
him off by being right. Especially if it goes back and forth a couple 
times, with him changing his story a little each time until he has been 
agreeing with you all along. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> You're suggesting that we switch to backup method E, which has the 
> advantage of letting us restore to later versions of oracle but would 
> seem to have the disadvantage that it would take much more effort to 
> recover from a disaster. For example, since method E does not save the 
> user account information, we would still need to export that 
> independently at the time of making backups with method E or risk 
> needing to recreate that information while the company waits.

And here, you can add something like "Has Oracle improved this feature? 
Have they eliminated the need to reconstruct all the metadata before 
restoring an E backup? If so, could you be so kind as to point me 
towards the new manuals that describe this so I can learn how these new 
features work?"

Stuff like that.

Hope this helps. I know you probably weren't asking for advice, but ... 
you know me by now. ;-)


-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:491b16b4@news.povray.org...

> I thought this was why we were making the backups, but perhaps I'm 
> misinformed.
>

I'd leave that out. It could easily be interpreted as sarcastic and with a 
condecending tone. The rest is fine.

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:
> 
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
> news:491b16b4@news.povray.org...
> 
>> I thought this was why we were making the backups, but perhaps I'm 
>> misinformed.
>>
> 
> I'd leave that out. It could easily be interpreted as sarcastic and with 
> a condecending tone. The rest is fine.

As I said, it's shorter than it should be, and over-the-top to make a 
point.   (It's not as over-the-top as I had expected it to be when I 
started. I guess my anti-smarmy now kicks in without me having to 
consciously rewrite things to get rid of it. :-)

Perhaps something more along the lines of "I was under the impression 
the only reason we were making backups is to deal with disaster 
recovery. Perhaps I am unaware of additional planned uses for this 
data"? That sort of thing, to express that "if what you want is disaster 
recovery, this is what you need, but what else do you want?"

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> And here, you can add something like "Has Oracle improved this feature? 
> Have they eliminated the need to reconstruct all the metadata before 
> restoring an E backup? If so, could you be so kind as to point me 
> towards the new manuals that describe this so I can learn how these new 
> features work?"
> 
> Stuff like that.

Actually, EXP.EXE is deprecated now in favour of the new data pump 
feature. (But I don't know what version of Oracle they have, and hence 
whether that feature is available to them.)

> Hope this helps. I know you probably weren't asking for advice, but ... 
> you know me by now. ;-)

If you don't know my by now... wowo...

...GOD DAMNIT!! NOW I HAVE THAT SONG IN MY HEAD! >_<

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> This is how you manage these things:
> 
> Pretend you're not as smart as the person you're talking to, and you 
> don't know as much. (I'll make it short and over-the-top to illustrate, 
> but of course if you turn it into two pages you don't need to make it 
> sound smarmy.) Assume that the guy is not stupid, but that he has 
> requirements you aren't aware of.
> 
> The first part says "Oh, have we changed what we're doing? Is that why 
> you're changing stuff that works?"
> 
> The second says "I know there are advantages to your way of doing it, 
> but there are disadvantages, and you job is to weigh them and figure out 
> whether it's worth the risk to get the advantages."
> 
> The third part says "Here's a way to save face and not look like an 
> idiot by reversing yourself. We can still make backups the way you want, 
> and just not use them. And three months from now, when the system 
> becomes unusable for an hour in the middle of the day because of your 
> backups, you can tell me to stop doing it that way, as if I hadn't told 
> you that in the first place three months ago."
> 
> The fourth is "Please put in writing all the solutions to the problems 
> you're causing, so I don't get blamed. If you don't know what I'm 
> talking about, understand that I know more about this than you, and 
> hence maybe you should take my advice."
> 
> But if you do it politely, careful of his ego and humble in your 
> criticism, it works pretty well. If you say "please explain to this poor 
> ignorant peon why you're making such a boneheaded decision", you not 
> only look better in the event that you're wrong, but you haven't ticked 
> him off by being right. Especially if it goes back and forth a couple 
> times, with him changing his story a little each time until he has been 
> agreeing with you all along. :-)

In fairness, as I understand it the guy is an SQL Server expert, not an 
Oracle expert.

Given that the "solution" I've been offered doesn't actually solve the 
problem of interest anyway, I think I shall just quietly leave things as 
they are. Pointing out what we could be doing differently is likely to 
get me yelled at - especially as Oracle's own documentation hints that 
exporting is a way to "backup" a small database.

(I really love the way it describes "small" as "less than, say, 50 GB". 
I'd like to know in which universe 50 GB can be considered "small"...)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> I am SORELY TEMPTED to tell this admin what an idiot he is...

Amusing thing: I deleted the email instead of sending it. Yet Outlook 
still claims I replied to the email. Neat, eh?

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491bff7c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> In fairness, as I understand it the guy is an SQL Server expert, not an 
> Oracle expert.

No fairness.
SQL Server doesn't have the dump feature that he's proposing you use (well, 
you can do it, but it's non-trivial). SQL Server backups are full database 
backups and are online backups (can be done while DB is in use) and restore 
with the DB in exactly the state that it was at the time of the backup

Post a reply to this message

>> In fairness, as I understand it the guy is an SQL Server expert, not 
>> an Oracle expert.
> 
> No fairness.
> SQL Server doesn't have the dump feature that he's proposing you use 
> (well, you can do it, but it's non-trivial). SQL Server backups are full 
> database backups and are online backups (can be done while DB is in use) 
> and restore with the DB in exactly the state that it was at the time of 
> the backup

...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.

Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a* way 
to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.

Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up less 
disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore (and these 
operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire, etc.) Myself 
I'd prefer a real physical backup...

Presumably the guy just isn't aware of the tradeoff. Or maybe he is, and 
he seriously thinks the extra complication is justified for the disk 
savings?

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> (I really love the way it describes "small" as "less than, say, 50 GB". 
> I'd like to know in which universe 50 GB can be considered "small"...)

Telecom. Finance. Multimedia. Web services. Application Service 
Providers (aka "white labeling").

Generally, "small" is anywhere you don't actually need the permission 
system of your database, I'd say, because what you're doing is too simple.

Note that MySql generally backs up stuff the same way - the table 
structures and the rows, but none of the system tables. I guess you 
either explicitly dump them separately, or you do what I did which is 
that those things don't change except manually, so you already have a 
record of how it's set up.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491bff7c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> (I really love the way it describes "small" as "less than, say, 50 GB". 
> I'd like to know in which universe 50 GB can be considered "small"...)

Enterprise databases.
Personally I consider any database under 100GB small. Over about 700 GB is 
large. Huge is over a couple TB.

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

> Personally I consider any database under 100GB small. Over about 700 GB 
> is large. Huge is over a couple TB.

Well, I guess Oracle is *designed* for big stuff.

So I guess to all you guys, the 1.2 GB database I'm responsible is 
"microscopic" then? :-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c70f1$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>
>> Personally I consider any database under 100GB small. Over about 700 GB 
>> is large. Huge is over a couple TB.
>
> Well, I guess Oracle is *designed* for big stuff.

So's SQL Server.

> So I guess to all you guys, the 1.2 GB database I'm responsible is 
> "microscopic" then? :-)

Tiny. I have test databases on my desktop ten times that.

The smaller they are the easier they typically are to maintain and admin. 
It's the bigger ones that are difficult because of the time required to do 
anything with them (like backup, restore, defragment, etc)

Post a reply to this message

>> Well, I guess Oracle is *designed* for big stuff.
> 
> So's SQL Server.

Yeah - I didn't mean to imply otherwise. (Recall that the "small" quote 
game from an Oracle manual.)

>> So I guess to all you guys, the 1.2 GB database I'm responsible is 
>> "microscopic" then? :-)
> 
> Tiny. I have test databases on my desktop ten times that.

Really?

How much disk space do you have??

> The smaller they are the easier they typically are to maintain and 
> admin. It's the bigger ones that are difficult because of the time 
> required to do anything with them (like backup, restore, defragment, etc)

Yeah, I'll bet.

Mind you, having said that, it takes about 3 minutes to backup *my* 
database...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Mind you, having said that, it takes about 3 minutes to backup *my* 
> database...

I've had databases that took more than three minutes to *delete*.

Mind, they were full of several thousand gig of raided multimedia...

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> I've had databases that took more than three minutes to *delete*.

Oddly enough, trying to delete a few thousand PNG files is an efficient 
way to lock Windows Explorer up for several seconds. And the deletion 
takes an anomolusly long time too... hmm.

> Mind, they were full of several thousand gig of raided multimedia...

I find the concept of "several thousand GB" intimidating. o_O

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Oddly enough, trying to delete a few thousand PNG files is an efficient 
> way to lock Windows Explorer up for several seconds. 

Yes, just like that. :-) It makes Linux very unhappy too.

Oddly enough, I've had occasions in Vista where I move or delete a 
diretory, and it spends a huge amount of unnecessary time trawling thru 
a big complex directory structure, when presumedly it could just rename 
the directory itself and be done. As if it wants to count how many files 
are in there before it moves them as it would with a copy.

> And the deletion takes an anomolusly long time too... hmm.

Windows does some funky stuff with NTFS and deleting lots of files. It 
puts stuff in the journal that the file was deleted, but since the name 
of the file is actually an attribute of the file itself and not just the 
directory, you can't (for example) recreate the file after you deleted 
it but before the journal has actually been flushed to disk. Plus, 
apparently, there's no way to tell NTFS to flush the journal as fast as 
you can.

It might be something like this that makes Windows slow at deleting 
large numbers of files at once - you're waiting on a slow journal to flush.

I think on Linux it was just a combination of me picking a file system 
not really optimized for bunches of little files, combined with a 
journaling mode that's designed for utter safety rather than efficiency, 
combined with a software RAID. I probably could have improved it a bunch 
if I had an incentive to learn my options before installing things. :-)

>> Mind, they were full of several thousand gig of raided multimedia...
> I find the concept of "several thousand GB" intimidating. o_O

Try to avoid working with libraries of weeks-worth of uncompressed audio 
tracks.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c777e$1@news.povray.org...

> Really?
>
> How much disk space do you have??

Haven't we been over that before?

Desktop:
1x80GB (2 paritions, OS)
1x320GB (2 partitions, apps and data)
1x160GB (1 partition, games)

Laptop:
2x120GB drives

Server:
1x80GB (OS and apps)
4x160GB in a RAID 5 config. Results in 480GB of usable space

>> The smaller they are the easier they typically are to maintain and admin. 
>> It's the bigger ones that are difficult because of the time required to 
>> do anything with them (like backup, restore, defragment, etc)
>
> Yeah, I'll bet.
>
> Mind you, having said that, it takes about 3 minutes to backup *my* 
> database...

That's slow for a 1.2 GB. My 10GB test DB backs up in under a minute, and 
that's just on a desktop. No fast SCSI drives, backups and data on same 
drive and tonnes other stuff running.
Ok, mine is SQL and yours is Oracle so maybe 3 min is reasonable.

Last DB I worked on took 4 hours to backup. That's partially cause the SAN 
was badly configured though. It should have taken maybe 2 at the most.
That's a 1.2 TB database

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:
> That's a 1.2 TB database

Oh, and for S&G purposes, AT&T before the breakup had 9 major databases, 
the biggest of which was 320 terabytes, the next biggest of which was 
something like 290 terabytes, etc. And something like 1800 full-time 
employees writing SQL code in >million stored procedures.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:491c8c97$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>> That's a 1.2 TB database
>
> Oh, and for S&G purposes, AT&T before the breakup had 9 major databases, 
> the biggest of which was 320 terabytes, the next biggest of which was 
> something like 290 terabytes, etc. And something like 1800 full-time 
> employees writing SQL code in >million stored procedures.

Neat!

My first thought was - "I wanna work on one of those"

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Oddly enough, trying to delete a few thousand PNG files is an 
>> efficient way to lock Windows Explorer up for several seconds. 
> 
> Yes, just like that. :-) It makes Linux very unhappy too.
> 
> Oddly enough, I've had occasions in Vista where I move or delete a 
> diretory, and it spends a huge amount of unnecessary time trawling thru 
> a big complex directory structure, when presumedly it could just rename 
> the directory itself and be done. As if it wants to count how many files 
> are in there before it moves them as it would with a copy.
> 
>> And the deletion takes an anomolusly long time too... hmm.
> 
> Windows does some funky stuff with NTFS and deleting lots of files. It 
> puts stuff in the journal that the file was deleted, but since the name 
> of the file is actually an attribute of the file itself and not just the 
> directory, you can't (for example) recreate the file after you deleted 
> it but before the journal has actually been flushed to disk. Plus, 
> apparently, there's no way to tell NTFS to flush the journal as fast as 
> you can.
> 
> It might be something like this that makes Windows slow at deleting 
> large numbers of files at once - you're waiting on a slow journal to flush.

Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI 
instead, it's instantaneous. Clearly this is just another instance of 
Windows Explorer being retarded. (I know on many computers, Explorer 
uses more RAM than any other process. WTF?)

>> I find the concept of "several thousand GB" intimidating. o_O
> 
> Try to avoid working with libraries of weeks-worth of uncompressed audio 
> tracks.

Dude... where do you even buy that much disk space??

My PC has *four HDs* in it and it totals less than 300 GB!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:
> 
> "Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
> news:491c777e$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> Really?
>>
>> How much disk space do you have??
> 
> Haven't we been over that before?
> 
> Desktop:
> 1x80GB (2 paritions, OS)
> 1x320GB (2 partitions, apps and data)
> 1x160GB (1 partition, games)
> 
> Laptop:
> 2x120GB drives
> 
> Server:
> 1x80GB (OS and apps)
> 4x160GB in a RAID 5 config. Results in 480GB of usable space

Neat. Your laptop has more HD capacity than my entire DB server. (BTW, 
how the heck do you put *two* HDs in a laptop??)

>> Mind you, having said that, it takes about 3 minutes to backup *my* 
>> database...
> 
> That's slow for a 1.2 GB. My 10GB test DB backs up in under a minute, 
> and that's just on a desktop. No fast SCSI drives, backups and data on 
> same drive and tonnes other stuff running.
> Ok, mine is SQL and yours is Oracle so maybe 3 min is reasonable.

Well, the "backup" part is just a file copy. The database generates 
roughly 10 MB of log per week, so I doubt the running Oracle process 
slows the copying down significantly.

The copy is from disk to same disk, and the "disk" is actually a RAID-5 
array of Ulta320 SCSI drives. IIRC, it's 4 x 36 GB for a total of about 
108 GB. (It's partitioned into two NTFS partitions. For no particular 
reason. That's how the expensive Oracle consultant set it up...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9555$1@news.povray.org...
>
> My PC has *four HDs* in it and it totals less than 300 GB!
>

You can buy a 1TB internal drive for a standard PC for under £100. The fact 
that your PC is still last century ito disk space doesn't mean everyone's is

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

> You can buy a 1TB internal drive for a standard PC for under £100. The 
> fact that your PC is still last century ito disk space doesn't mean 
> everyone's is

Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months ago...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9688$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Neat. Your laptop has more HD capacity than my entire DB server. (BTW, how 
> the heck do you put *two* HDs in a laptop??)

It came that way.
Some of the more high-end models do, since the laptop-size drives are more 
expensive and lower capacity than the desktop drives.
It's a 17" notebook, so there's lots of space.

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

> It came that way.
> Some of the more high-end models do, since the laptop-size drives are 
> more expensive and lower capacity than the desktop drives.
> It's a 17" notebook, so there's lots of space.

OK, that's pretty impressive. Does it have RAID capability in hardware?

Also, does it have hardware 3D acceleration? (I still can't believe you 
can get that in laptops now...)

I've only ever looked at really cheap laptops. *My* laptop is powered by 
an AMD AthlonXP 1700+. (Mind you, it's rather old now...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9871$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>
>> You can buy a 1TB internal drive for a standard PC for under £100. The 
>> fact that your PC is still last century ito disk space doesn't mean 
>> everyone's is
>
> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months 
> ago...
>

I do hope it was gold-plated.

I paid R750 8 months ago for a 320GB drive. At the exchange rate of the 
time, that would have been £50.
And SA is more expensive than the UK for computer stuff.

Post a reply to this message

>> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months 
>> ago...
>>
> 
> I do hope it was gold-plated.

SATA-II. Does that count?

> I paid R750 8 months ago for a 320GB drive. At the exchange rate of the 
> time, that would have been £50.
> And SA is more expensive than the UK for computer stuff.

Orchid: PWN3D.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c99c7$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>
>> It came that way.
>> Some of the more high-end models do, since the laptop-size drives are 
>> more expensive and lower capacity than the desktop drives.
>> It's a 17" notebook, so there's lots of space.
>
> OK, that's pretty impressive. Does it have RAID capability in hardware?

No. It's still a notebook. Even my desktop doesn't have true hardware RAID. 
The motherboard drivers support RAID, but I wouldn't call that hardware.

> Also, does it have hardware 3D acceleration? (I still can't believe you 
> can get that in laptops now...)

Yup. It's got a GeForce 7600 built in.

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9a27$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months 
>>> ago...
>>>
>>
>> I do hope it was gold-plated.
>
> SATA-II. Does that count?

No. Mine's also a SATA 2.

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

>> OK, that's pretty impressive. Does it have RAID capability in hardware?
> 
> No. It's still a notebook. Even my desktop doesn't have true hardware 
> RAID. The motherboard drivers support RAID, but I wouldn't call that 
> hardware.

OK, neither would I.

(FWIW... doesn't Windows support RAID without special drivers anyway? Or 
is that only in the server editions?)

>> Also, does it have hardware 3D acceleration? (I still can't believe 
>> you can get that in laptops now...)
> 
> Yup. It's got a GeForce 7600 built in.

Damn. My *desktop* only has a GeForce 7900GT. o_O

My graphics card cost me about £300. I don't even want to know what you 
paid for your laptop, do I?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI
> instead, it's instantaneous. Clearly this is just another instance of
> Windows Explorer being retarded. (I know on many computers, Explorer
> uses more RAM than any other process. WTF?)

I don't know any other program that can load so many 3rd party DLLs (COM
objects to be precise).

Oh, maybe iexplore.exe.
http://www.realtamadwarek.org/friends-dont-let-friends-use-ie.jpg

Post a reply to this message

On 13-Nov-08 13:00, Invisible wrote:
>>> In fairness, as I understand it the guy is an SQL Server expert, not 
>>> an Oracle expert.
>>
>> No fairness.
>> SQL Server doesn't have the dump feature that he's proposing you use 
>> (well, you can do it, but it's non-trivial). SQL Server backups are 
>> full database backups and are online backups (can be done while DB is 
>> in use) and restore with the DB in exactly the state that it was at 
>> the time of the backup
> 
> ...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.
> 
> Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a* way 
> to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.
> 
> Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up less 
> disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore (and these 
> operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire, etc.) Myself 
> I'd prefer a real physical backup...
> 
How much diskspace are we talking about? Remember current price is about 
€100 for 1TB and you can expect that to halve next year.

Post a reply to this message

On 13-Nov-08 19:24, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Gail wrote:
> 
>> Personally I consider any database under 100GB small. Over about 700 
>> GB is large. Huge is over a couple TB.
> 
> Well, I guess Oracle is *designed* for big stuff.
> 
> So I guess to all you guys, the 1.2 GB database I'm responsible is 
> "microscopic" then? :-)
> 
I should learn to read the entire thread before replying :(
So this will allow me to finish the computation of the price of a full 
backup: about €0.12 or less than 10 pence. Who was trying to save some 
money by not doing a full backup?

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI 
> instead, it's instantaneous.

I don't know about NT-era OSes, but I remember that for a long time, the 
CLI used the DOS 1.0 interface for deleting files, because it let you 
specify wildcards. Hence, you had one kernel call that would delete all 
the files.

If you use a UNIX-like interface, you have to do "find file, delete 
file, find file, delete file, find file, delete file, ...." So on a 
directory with a half-million files, you scan the thing a quarter 
million times on average (on ext3, at least) or you at least wind up 
doing a whole bunch of kernel calls if you have a file system that's a 
little better organized about the file layout. To be fair, NTFS and 
other tree-based directory systems have to rework the tree when you 
delete the files, so this too will be disk I/O overhead.

> Clearly this is just another instance of 
> Windows Explorer being retarded. 

Nah. It's because there's a different API for DOS 2.0 and later than for 
DOS 1.0 and earlier.

> Dude... where do you even buy that much disk space??

Fry's. Best Buy. Circuit City. Any place that sells hard drives. Go down 
to the store, shell out $500, and pick up a couple terabytes.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> (I still can't believe you can get that in laptops now...)

You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and hardware 
accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months
> ago...

You* shouldn't be allowed to purchase computer equipment without first
checking here:
http://www.pricewatch.com/

On the page for 1 TB hdds:
http://www2.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_1tb.htm

3 of the top 5 state in their summary that international orders are OK,
so shipping to you shouldn't be a problem.  The other two might still do
it, they just don't state it.

*And I don't mean the generic "you," I mean specifically you, Andrew.
You've made comments like this in the past about other pieces of
equipment.  Really, you could save yourself a lot of money shopping
online.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Darren New [mailto:dne### [at] sanrrcom]
> Oh, and for S&G purposes, AT&T before the breakup had 9 major
> databases,
> the biggest of which was 320 terabytes, the next biggest of which was
> something like 290 terabytes, etc. And something like 1800 full-time
> employees writing SQL code in >million stored procedures.

"before the breakup"...

Wasn't that, like, 25 years ago?!?!?

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers wrote:
> "before the breakup"...
> Wasn't that, like, 25 years ago?!?!?

Yeah?  1984 was the MFJ.  (The "Modified Final Judgement", modifying the 
"Final Judgement" of 1934 or so.  The "Final Judgement" said "AT&T can 
have a monoply".  The "modification" was to amend that to say "No, you 
can't, and indeed you have to help your competitors and stop doing 
anything they already compete with you." Sort of like an idempotent 
modification.)

Oh, you mean, back when a terabyte occupied a small room? Yes, that.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9f6f$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Damn. My *desktop* only has a GeForce 7900GT. o_O

I've got an 8800 in my new one.

> My graphics card cost me about £300. I don't even want to know what you 
> paid for your laptop, do I?

It was about $1800 and that was just over a year ago.

Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz
2 GB memory
2x120 GB hard drives
1x HD drive/multi-format CD/DVD read/write
17" screen

Very nice notebook. Heavy though.

Post a reply to this message

>> ...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.
>>
>> Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a* 
>> way to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.
>>
>> Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up less 
>> disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore (and 
>> these operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire, etc.) 
>> Myself I'd prefer a real physical backup...
>>
> How much diskspace are we talking about? Remember current price is about 
> €100 for 1TB and you can expect that to halve next year.

I have no idea how large their database is. I only know how big my one is.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI 
>> instead, it's instantaneous.
> 
> I don't know about NT-era OSes, but I remember that for a long time, the 
> CLI used the DOS 1.0 interface for deleting files, because it let you 
> specify wildcards. Hence, you had one kernel call that would delete all 
> the files.
> 
> If you use a UNIX-like interface, you have to do "find file, delete 
> file, find file, delete file, find file, delete file, ...." So on a 
> directory with a half-million files, you scan the thing a quarter 
> million times on average (on ext3, at least) or you at least wind up 
> doing a whole bunch of kernel calls if you have a file system that's a 
> little better organized about the file layout.

Seems like it's the same amount of work to me, whether the kernel does 
it or the application does it.

> To be fair, NTFS and 
> other tree-based directory systems have to rework the tree when you 
> delete the files, so this too will be disk I/O overhead.

Um... you don't cache directory blocks, no? (Especially given that 
they're usually non-contiguous and so take a lot of thrashing to access, 
and there often heavily accessed.)

>> Dude... where do you even buy that much disk space??
> 
> Fry's. Best Buy. Circuit City. Any place that sells hard drives. Go down 
> to the store, shell out $500, and pick up a couple terabytes.

$500 seems like a hell of a lot of money to me...

But then, 1 TB seems like a hell of a lot of space too. I have 0.3 TB 
that I've never come close to filling yet.

Post a reply to this message

>> My graphics card cost me about £300. I don't even want to know what 
>> you paid for your laptop, do I?
> 
> It was about $1800 and that was just over a year ago.
> 
> Very nice notebook. Heavy though.

Damn. For that price, it *should* be nice! o_O

Still... much cheaper than a Mac I guess...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and hardware 
> accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)

What would be the point though?

Post a reply to this message

>> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and hardware 
>> accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)
>
> What would be the point though?

Not sure about the 7.1 sound, but being able to record and view movie clips 
is pretty useful.  The point of hardware 3D acceleration is the same as for 
desktop and laptop machines, it allows you to get higher quality visuals 
than is possible in software without an insanely clocked CPU.  Pick up one 
of the latest mobile phones, you'll see that a lot have some sort of 3D game 
coming as standard (mine has 3D rally or some sort).  The graphics look like 
it's running on a PC without a 3D accelerator (no texture filtering with 
very low detail models).  I'm sure that will improve.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and 
>>> hardware accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)
>>
>> What would be the point though?
> 
> Not sure about the 7.1 sound, but being able to record and view movie 
> clips is pretty useful.  The point of hardware 3D acceleration is the 
> same as for desktop and laptop machines.

On a 40 mm screen? Why bother?

Post a reply to this message

> On a 40 mm screen? Why bother?

Becuase you usually hold it way closer to your eyes than a typical desktop 
monitor.

Have you seen an iPhone or the wave of similarly designed phones?  They have 
480x320 pixel displays or higher, which is not so far away from what full 
size computers were once upon a time.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Have you seen an iPhone or the wave of similarly designed phones?  They 
> have 480x320 pixel displays or higher, which is not so far away from 
> what full size computers were once upon a time.

iPhone?

That's not a phone - it's a hand-held computer with built-in GSM! :-P

Post a reply to this message

> iPhone?
>
> That's not a phone - it's a hand-held computer with built-in GSM! :-P

Did you look in a phone shop recently? Most phones have large high 
resolution displays and are capable of far more than just phone calls.

I just got a new handset because my old one was really scratched and falling 
apart.  It cost just over ?200 and has a large screen, it even has WLAN 
built in!  I did look at another one that had GPS (but no WLAN) but I 
decided the WLAN would be more actual use to me than GPS.  THe one with WLAN 
and GPS was quite a bit more expensive and I didn't like the look of it.

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