Month: January 2011

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The Quick & Dirty Guide to Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g

Last week I found myself getting defensive with a colleague of mine in a conversation about the value of system prototyping. My colleague suggested that there’s a difference between IT people and everyone else and that it’s that two IT guys can look at a diagram and see how a system will work while everyone else needs to see the system in action. There is perhaps an element of truth to this but like most things in life I think it depends on the people involved (which is why I leapt to the defence of IT people everywhere as I don’t like generalisations being made that somehow mark us out as different). Sometimes I can look at a diagram and make the imaginative leap to how a system might work. There are other times when I like to play with a piece of software or whatever to get to know it, and at the end of the day there’s nothing like using a thing to understand how it operates.

Also last week I was discussing Oracle Warehouse Builder with someone. OWB (as it’s known) is one of those systems that I’ve experienced but would like to get more experience of and it offers some functionality that might solve a nasty little problem many businesses suffer from which has bothered me for a while.

 

Speaking of nasty little business problems…

Continue reading “The Quick & Dirty Guide to Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g”

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Really Remote Live Internet Video Streaming on a Budget

The I.T. industry is made up of lots of companies who declare themselves to be solution providers of varying sorts but I wonder how many times a prospective customer really goes to one of these firms and says “I have a problem” and how many times the provider actually has to go off and come up with a solution.

Not too long ago I was presented with an interesting problem that really needed a solution. And an inexpensive one at that. Continue reading “Really Remote Live Internet Video Streaming on a Budget”

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Dynamic DNS or “New Adventures in Old Routers”

Paracetamol is a wonder drug. Whenever I get the man flu (which can kill!) I have found that plain old paracetamol works far better than the various cold and flu remedies offered at outrageous prices at the local pharmacy. The way that particular medicine can deal with a man flu and the crippling symptoms that come with it is truly amazing. While many think that the age of wonder gave way to the age of reason a long time ago, I still find wonder in how things work, be that painkillers or computer networking systems. Continue reading “Dynamic DNS or “New Adventures in Old Routers””

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Hotmail & the iPhone

When I was in college our Programming lecturer cautioned against a career in I.T. due to the need to keep up with the constantly changing technologies such a career entails. Personally, I thought that sounds brilliant, always something new to learn and play with, bring it on, I said. Later on in my education I encountered other lecturers who said that yes, keeping up can be difficult as well as fun but there are some fundamental skills you can learn that transcend specific technologies (which is why good developers are able to learn several languages as long as they have a good grasp of the principles of programming).

I.T. is constantly changing and with that pace of change some technologies come into and slip out of fashion quite quickly. As technologies like smartphones and other internet devices become accepted by wider audiences than traditional I.T. people, fashion plays an increasingly important role. For example, the iPhone. Continue reading “Hotmail & the iPhone”