Until SAS 9.2, SAS/Access will not support the Oracle timestamp format. There still is no word on when 9.2 might appear so it’s over to the SQL pass-through facility…

UNIX (and Linux) does a wonderful trick with its file and folder shortcuts; it effectively treats them as file and folder transporters that transfer associate a file or folder that exists in one folder hierarchy with another and it is treated as if it exists in that hierarchy too. For example, the images folder under /www/htdocs/blog can have a link under /www/htdocs/ that makes it appear that its contents exist in both places without any file duplication. For instance, the pwd command cannot tell a folder from a folder shortcut. To achieve this, I use what are called symbolic links and the following command achieves the outcome in the example:

ln -s /www/htdocs/blog/images /www/htdocs/images

The first file path is the destination for the link while the second one is that for the link itself. I had a problem with Google Reader not showing up images in its feed displays so symbolic links rode to the rescue as they did for resolve a similar conundrum that I was encountering when editing posts in my hillwalking blog.

Having had a UNIX shell script attempt to copy a non-existent file, I decided to take another look for ways to test the existence of a file. For directory existence checking, I was testing for the return code from the cd command and I suppose that the ls command might help for files. However, I did find a better way:

if [ -f $filename ]

then

echo "This filename [$filename] exists"

elif [ -d $dirname ]

then

echo "This dirname [$dirname] exists"

else

echo "Neither [$dirname] or [$filename] exist"

fi

The -d and -f flags within the evaluation expressions test for existence of directories and files, respectively. One gotcha is that those spaces within the brackets are important too but it is a very way of doing what I wanted.

Going through the stats for my other blog, I noticed some activity from Google Reader and decided to investigate. what I discovered was a very capable feed reader, much better than Technorati’s equivalent. The interface feels a little like an email client with a different entry of the sidebar for each feed. It also gives you full text and pictures for each blog article that it picks up, though it messes with my hillwalking blog for some reason… As a feed aggregator, it performs very well and makes my blog surveying a lot more effortless. I know that Outlook 2007 has aggregation functionality too but the portability of Google’s little online offering makes it worth taking further, especially as you wouldn’t need to pay for it anyway.

Update: Google Reader also allows you to share items from your feeds; you can find what I am sharing here.

On a recent blog hopping excursion, I spotted a mention for no frills hosting by Streamline.net by a satisfied customer. I’ll stick with Fasthosts for now because I have what I need from them in terms of features and uptime, even though I am paying a bit more. the Streamline package looks interesting though…

It seems that SAS have put a good deal of effort into making their software work with Oracle. Admittedly, you have got to buy SAS/Access for Oracle in addition to the other components that you already have but it is worth it. The Oracle library engine makes things easy so long as there are no incompatibilities on the database side. For instance, SAS has no plans to support the Oracle timestamp format until the forthcoming SAS 9.2 and this does make things a little interesting. However, this can be resolved with the Oracle SQL pass-through facility where you pass Oracle SQL through to the database itself for processing, avoiding incompatibilities. A more pressing issue is using PROC APPEND to add records to the data tables without updating any sequences that are associated with table ID’s. The SQL pass-through facility is the best way around this so that you can update the sequence with a SELECT statement and use the current value for the ID in the following EXECUTE statement. It may sound far from ideal but you need to process your data row by row; once set up though, everything works well.

Because of my work, I recently have had a bit of exposure to Oracle SQL Developer, which I have been using as part of application development and testing activities. For further investigation, I decided to have a copy at home for further perusal (it’s a free download) and it was with some interest that I found out that it could access MySQL databases. To do this, you need Connector/J for MySQL so that communication can occur between the two. Though you quickly notice the differences in feature sets between Oracle and MySQL, it seems a good tool for exploring MySQL data tables and issuing queries.

I have just learned about and started to use two new tools on my other blog to combat comment spam. Akismet was doing well but I was moderating more than I should. One plug-in is Bad Behaviour and this interrogates incoming traffic and blocks anything that is attempting the nefarious. This cuts off spam bots before they can even see the blog. Spam Karma 2 is the other new weapon in my arsenal. It is another spam detector and using it alongside Akismet is following the defence in depth approach: when spam gets past one, it is unlikely to pass the other. Both can coexist together and there apparently is an Akismet plug-in for Spam Karma that does away with the need for Akismet itself. The array of options offered by Spam Karma may put off some but that means that extra power is there should it ever be needed.