• wcw (unregistered) in reply to Centricity

    In re: the job market, the government collects data on it. Viz http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.htm "Over the 12 months ending in February, hires totaled 48.3 million and separations totaled 51.5 million, yielding a net employment loss of 3.2 million."

    Three million people have a dry market to show you.

    Oh, but I forget: you are commenting on an internet board about a subject far afield from your competence.

    By all means, carry on.

  • Sou Eu (unregistered)

    While we all knew that Lennart uninstalling software caused the database to disappear, I thought it was going to be because the DB server was running on Lennart's machine (hence its slowness).

  • DB (unregistered) in reply to ceiswyn

    If the client install removed the file then it was for a specific reason. That reason being something related to their environment setup. The client uninstall doesn't just randomly delete files on shared drives. It removed exactly what it was supposed to. That they did not understand what would be removed isn't Oracle's fault.

    I'd certainly look over all of my environment before I uninstalled something, yes.

  • Ale (unregistered)

    DB, It was a bug on Oracle's installer, and has been corrected.

  • Rob (unregistered) in reply to nonpartisan

    Probably already been said - but he can do that in a way that doesn't implicate himself.

    "Hey Boss - why don't we make this .ora file we've got on the network share READ-ONLY? It would reduce the risk from a malicious virus/user and would only take a minute to do"

  • Mr. Bob (unregistered)

    Wow! I was expecting him to discover that his boat anchor of a computer was the \CORPBSMT server.

    What a twist!

  • facilisis (unregistered) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    Iie:
    TRWTF is not using LDAP for your lookups.
    Care to show me how to configure Toad to use LDAP instead of tnsnames.ora?

    Toad is for end users.

  • ceiswyn (unregistered) in reply to DB
    DB:
    If the client install removed the file then it was for a specific reason.

    Absolutely. Software always does exactly what it is intended to and no more.

    Wait, what?

    I'd certainly look over all of my environment before I uninstalled something, yes.
    1. Have you ever uninstalled software?
    2. Did you check exactly what the uninstall would do before you proceeded?
    3. ...how did you find out?
  • Someone who can't be bothered to login from work (unregistered) in reply to md5sum
    md5sum:
    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally. You can't tell me this guy can't find work, he just can't find work he wants to do all the time.

    I don't know how it is where you are, but here it's nearly impossible to get a job without a permanent address.

  • JimmyMcJimb (unregistered)
    The real WTF is putting company critical info on a computer which is given to the newby as work-station.

    It was embedded on a network share with full permissions and no file system.

  • Someone who can't be bothered to login from work (unregistered)

    Oracle's universal installer actually removing something is a novelty. You usually have to purge the registry and directories yourself, because of all the crap it leaves behind.

  • Zep-- (unregistered)

    Story reminds me of my first after college job...was trying to learn some old mainframe commands, was in the "system" dir looking for help files or something to print out, then I accidently print "print.sys"...didn't notice the "delete file after print was selected" (by default!). Went to try to print something else. Printer screen was locked up...Hmmm. Killed my session and logged back in. Tried to open print back up. Print.sys does not exist. realized what I had done, got the print-out of print.sys and shredded it. Went to my manager and told him I can't seem to print anything, in fact no one could print anything.

    Someone had to go to offsite backup to get the tape, reinstall print.sys (took 4 hours with driving time), meanwhile my manager poured over logs (on screen...heh)trying to discover what happened..I sweat it out and waited for him to find out what happened, he never did. I was laid off several months later...and a few months after that, saw my old manager in the unemployment line with me. Never did tell him what I had done. :)

    Zep-- captcha: causa (be-causa I was an idiot? :))

  • MMSS (unregistered) in reply to Osno
    Osno:
    Prosthetic Lips:
    Osno:
    I miss IHOC

    Not me. I miss Irish Girl!

    Irish girl on an IHOC t-shirt?

    That's a perfect plot for MANDATORY FUN DAY!!

  • (cs) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    Would you want to eat burgers made by someone who sleeps cuddled up with his flea-ridden dog, in the same place where they both crap, who hasn't washed in 3 weeks and hasn't changed his clothes in 3 months?

    Well, not again.

  • silent d (unregistered) in reply to md5sum
    md5sum:

    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally. You can't tell me this guy can't find work, he just can't find work he wants to do all the time.

    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?

  • (cs) in reply to nonpartisan

    Then he restores the file from the copy he now (presumably) keeps handy on a thumb-drive and becomes a Big Damn Hero.

  • (cs) in reply to silent d
    silent d:
    md5sum:

    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally. You can't tell me this guy can't find work, he just can't find work he wants to do all the time.

    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?

    That depends. Does the homeless person only have 3L and 5L jugs, or can he borrow a 4L jug from the shopping cart lady?

  • (cs) in reply to md5sum
    md5sum:
    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally.
    Fast food places are always "Accepting applications" and often have signs up to that effect, whether or not they're hiring.

    I'm not 100% sure of the strategy here, but I think it's for when they DO suddenly have an opening, they like to have a stack of applications to call.

    And of course, as others have pointed out, if you maintain a stack of just-in-case applications, the scruffy pan-handler who's always hassling your customers is probably not your first choice.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to nonpartisan
    nonpartisan:
    Sorry, but he needs to 'fess up to what happened so they can document the issue. What happens if a circumstance arises when someone else removes this software from their PC? If this is a known issue, they can document it.

    Incorrect. He should serve out his time, and then leave the company but stay on as a contracted consultant. That way, the next time this happens he will be the only person who knows what went wrong, and will be able to fix it for an exorbitant fee, at the same time cementing his position as a fine consultant.

  • Herby (unregistered) in reply to VRAndy
    VRAndy:
    Then he restores the file from the copy he now (presumably) keeps handy on a thumb-drive and becomes a Big Damn Hero.
    You would think that such an important file would have a "backup" edition, or some source control to allow retrieval of a previous edition. The problem with this solution is that it might require some planning on somebody's part (most likely the database provider). We all know how difficult that is! I guess a thumb drive would be one of those "hero" solutions as mentioned.
  • (cs) in reply to //Rumen
    //Rumen:
    It wasn't on his computer, it was on a network share. The uninstall removed all files used by the client INCLUDING the file on the share.
    I think we have a new "embedded system without a file system" running gag!
  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Well it sounds like the setup was a complete WTF but at the end of the day this was due to a bug in Oracle. That's not exactly unusual, is it?

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Oh and by the way, the file wasn't on his computer, it was on a network share. It just got deleted by the Oracle uninstaller. Once this gets repeated over the next 50 articles you'll all find it hysterical. Or not.

  • re:me (unregistered) in reply to silent d
    silent d:
    md5sum:

    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally. You can't tell me this guy can't find work, he just can't find work he wants to do all the time.

    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?

    Shoot the hostage?

  • (cs) in reply to Centricity
    Centricity:
    It's easy to find a job once you have experience. There are far more jobs for experienced workers than there are experienced workers to fill them.

    When you're fresh out of college like this guy, nobody wants to take a chance on you.

    This represents a sort of catch-22: you need experience before you can work, but you need to work to get experience. Internships don't help much.

    Oh, the catch-22 goes deeper than that. Check out the way the cost of obtaining the college education in the first place has risen over the last few decades, and the way affordable student aid has not kept up.

    It used to be, if you want to get a good job, you need to get a good education. Nowadays, if you want to get a good education, you need to get a good job.

  • re:me (unregistered) in reply to VRAndy
    VRAndy:
    I'm not 100% sure of the strategy here, but I think it's for when they DO suddenly have an opening, they like to have a stack of applications to call.

    I think it's about keeping people available to replace the dozens that walk out or that the manager has to fire every month. Fast food places have ridiculous turnover.

  • new running gag (unregistered)

    So this is a multi-national corporation, and the database file was on his computer? I find that hard to believe.

  • (cs) in reply to Falcon
    Falcon:
    //Rumen:
    It wasn't on his computer, it was on a network share. The uninstall removed all files used by the client INCLUDING the file on the share.
    I think we have a new "embedded system without a file system" running gag!

    Oh, joy!

  • William (unregistered) in reply to wcw
    wcw:
    In re: the job market, the government collects data on it.

    ...

    Three million people have a dry market to show you.

    Those overall statistics are not evenly distributed across any demographic category. In particular, job losses per industry are most severe in construction and manufacturing, while there's actually been growth in health care.

    There's a neat little tool at the NYT that lets you slice up the unemployment data a few different ways. Average unemployment in the US was 8.6% in Sept. '09. The unemployment rate for white males age 25-44 who are college graduates was only 3.9%.

    From the BLS report on expected employment growth 2008-2018, software engineers are on the lists of fastest growing and largest employment growth occupations.

    So yeah, there's a recession out there, and three million people are feeling it, but very few of them are software engineers.

  • Deja vu (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    These stories need to be written better to not give it away. The moment I read that he uninstalled the program and a minute later got a call saying "The database is gone" then I knew exactly what had happened.
    Ditto. I got a very big sinking feeling in my stomach, particularly since I've been in situations like this. Fortunately, I've never had anything this serious happen, but it's probably just a matter of time...
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to new running gag
    new running gag:
    So this is a multi-national corporation, and the database file was on his computer? I find that hard to believe.
    No, the file was... oh, very clever...
  • usitas (unregistered) in reply to Bluesman
    Bluesman:
    The real WTF is putting company critical info on a computer which is given to the newby as work-station.

    No time to read all the other responses, but the file wasn't actually on his computer, but, rather, a network share that he had full access to.

  • Cryo (unregistered) in reply to Someone who can't be bothered to login from work
    md5sum:
    I don't know how it is where you are, but here it's nearly impossible to get a job without a permanent address.

    Many shelters, churches, halfway houses, soup kitchens, etc offer aid in placing people in employment. If you have the backing of an organization such as this (think Salvation Army here), there is usually a way to make it work, or else there would be a lot more people perpetually homeless.

    For example, the place offering the service could be the address, and the check is sent there, to make sure that the person is accountable, and the money gets used in the right way (and in some cases, part of it can go to housing costs for a halfway house or such program).

    Plenty of people formerly addicted or trying to re-enter society from prison take this course of getting back on their feet.

  • cf18 (unregistered)

    If the story is true, anyone from that company who remember the date of the incident and can access start date in the employee database can figure out who was the real Lennart.

  • hidden innocent (unregistered)

    No surprise to me. The software developers where I work do things like that.

    IE. Putting vital files in the wrong places, assuming that anything and everything gets backed up, turning volatile development databases into bet-your-business setups.

    I suspect that there, like here, the people who were responsible for setting up shares and doing backups had no idea of what was really going on.

  • Luser (unregistered)

    If "The Network" wasn't on his computer, like it is on mine, how could he get to it from his computer? And if he deleted something from his "The Network" how could that possibly affect anyone else's "The Network" on their computer? I'm not sure I believe this story.

  • (cs) in reply to Zep--
    Zep--:
    Story reminds me of my first after college job...snip...Never did tell him what I had done. :)

    Zep-- captcha: causa (be-causa I was an idiot? :))

    What mainframes don't have a recycle bin or trash can folder? :-)

  • JoeB (unregistered)

    Sorry, but I fail to see where Oracle failed.

    imho, the big failures were:

    1 - the network administration that shouldn't have allowed write permissions for EVERYONE on EVERYONE's tnsnames.ora. 2 - Lennart's by failing to tell his manager/wtv about that flaw.

    Will never understand so much hatred about Oracle...

  • JoeB (unregistered) in reply to JoeB
    JoeB:
    Sorry, but I fail to see where Oracle failed.

    imho, the big failures were:

    1 - the network administration that shouldn't have allowed write permissions for EVERYONE on EVERYONE's tnsnames.ora. 2 - Lennart's by failing to tell his manager/wtv about that flaw.

    Will never understand so much hatred about Oracle...

    When I mean about that flaw, i mean the permissions, NOT about Oracle deleting the tnsnames.ora file. Just left a WIDE open door for the next intern to screw up.

  • Timur Akhmadeev (unregistered)

    Oracle's instant client (http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html) comes without installer, dudes - it's unpack-and-use.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Zep--
    Zep--:
    Story reminds me of my first after college job...was trying to learn some old mainframe commands, was in the "system" dir looking for help files or something to print out, then I accidently print "print.sys"...didn't notice the "delete file after print was selected" (by default!). Went to try to print something else. Printer screen was locked up...Hmmm. Killed my session and logged back in. Tried to open print back up. Print.sys does not exist. realized what I had done, got the print-out of print.sys and typed it back in.
    FTFY.
  • (cs) in reply to silent d
    silent d:
    md5sum:

    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally. You can't tell me this guy can't find work, he just can't find work he wants to do all the time.

    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?

    Hose him down and give him a job.

    But the city's on water restrictions due to drought. Now what do you do?

  • (cs) in reply to Sou Eu
    Sou Eu:
    While we all knew that Lennart uninstalling software caused the database to disappear, I thought it was going to be because the DB server was running on Lennart's machine (hence its slowness).

    Yea, that was my thought as well....

    Ok they were not THAT stupid, but having a network share without backup -> Timebomb!

    Yours Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

  • Juggs (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    That depends. Does the homeless person only have 3L and 5L jugs, or can he borrow a 4L jug from the shopping cart lady?
    Not sure I want to see a homeless man with big jugs.
  • Alan (unregistered) in reply to bob
    bob:
    Oracle? Man!

    Just use MySQL like everyone else.

    And of course he shouldn't have owned up! Next time the problem occurs, he can say, "I've been doing some testing and...", and be the hero.

    curl http://www.mysql.com/ | grep Oracle

    CAPTCHA: vulputate -- to amputate via foxes

  • (cs) in reply to NorgTheFat
    NorgTheFat:
    There would be performance issues if say thousands of people tried to connect at the same time and the file server was inadequate to handle that many requests...

    It's Oracle, why would you have expected anyone to notice it's slow?

  • mypalmike (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    silent d:
    md5sum:

    I think it's the same thing as the homeless person holding a sign that states "Will work for food" right beneath the McDonald's sign that says "Now accepting applications". Yeah, I've seen that, literally. You can't tell me this guy can't find work, he just can't find work he wants to do all the time.

    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?

    Hose him down and give him a job.

    But the city's on water restrictions due to drought. Now what do you do?

    Wasn't this the plot of "Choose Your Own Adventure #53: The Homeless Bum and His Magical Greasy Coat"?

  • Ronald (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    silent d:
    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?
    1. Ask him how much he wants to be paid. 2. Discuss the expectations of the job including cleanliness and how he plans to measure up. 3. Use my best manager experience and instincts to estimate whether he will help us earn more than the pay rate in #1. 4. Compare his probable return on investment with any other applicants. 5. Since he is homeless, he has few expenses, so is willing and able to work for less than other applicants. This provides me a higher return on investment. So I hire him. 6. Obama and the nice Democrats, over the objections of the mean Republicans, raise the minimum wage. This changes the math, and now I can no longer get a positive return on my investment. I am, therefore, left with no choice. I must terminate his employment.

    This concludes our illustration of how "nice" people create misery such as unemployment and homelessness, while "mean" people are trying to make things better for everyone.

  • (cs) in reply to Ronald
    Ronald:
    silent d:
    You're a McDonald's manager and a homeless person walks in and asks for a job. Now what do you do?
    1. Ask him how much he wants to be paid. 2. Discuss the expectations of the job including cleanliness and how he plans to measure up. 3. Use my best manager experience and instincts to estimate whether he will help us earn more than the pay rate in #1. 4. Compare his probable return on investment with any other applicants. 5. Since he is homeless, he has few expenses, so is willing and able to work for less than other applicants. This provides me a higher return on investment. So I hire him. 6. Obama and the nice Democrats, over the objections of the mean Republicans, raise the minimum wage. This changes the math, and now I can no longer get a positive return on my investment. I am, therefore, left with no choice. I must terminate his employment.

    This concludes our misrepresentation of what would happen, in order to make our position seem more altruistic than it actually is

    ftfy

  • (cs) in reply to Bill C.
    Bill C.:
    NorgTheFat:
    So rather than use a script to copy tsnames.ora from the share to the user's drive, (say the login script), they decided the best way was to just have the file shared out to everyone from the same location. Wow talk about slow performance issues!

    And I thought "shared" Access databases were bad...

    tnsnames isn't the database, just a small (ours is 3KB) config file. I doubt there's any significant performance penalty from that.

    And even if it was the database...it's still going to be on a network and not copied to the clients. But yes, even the tnsnames being on a share is nothing--it's read once and the connection is in memory, it's not like every db call has to first read tnsnames.

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