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.
Archive for April, 2007
Oracle SQL Developer and MySQL
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.
Return to Elements
After a session with Photoshop CS2 and a preview of CS3’s capabilities, I went and got myself a permanent copy of Elements 5 after seeing the similarities between Scott Kelby’s books on Elements 5 and CS2. In any event, I fail to justify the cost of CS2 with CS3 being imminent and the attractions of Elements 5 were too much to ignore. I may yet go for CS3 but I’ll stick with Elements 5 for now.
The similarities between the different members of the PhotoShop family are eerie. Once I got used to finding some things in different places from where they are in CS2, I quickly found myself at home in Elements. The biggest miss that I found was the lack of an adjustment layer for the curves adjustment. Otherwise, everything else is as I would hope to find it and the sliders for curves adjustment in Elements make up for the absence of an associated adjustment layer. Bicubic resampling, an enhancement since Photoshop 7, is as per CS2 and my new workflow worked without too many changes. I took advantage of Kelby’s advice when using Camera Raw and used the Adjust Sharpness feature in place of the Unsharp Mask to get what I perceive to be good results. Everything seemed to work fine for the test digital photo that I was processing for my other blog. I am not totally abandoning my examinations of Elements’ big brother though; the smart layers feature looks interesting, especially for non-destructive sharpening.
The joys of eBooks
One of the nice things about eBooks is the saving that you can make on buying one instead of the dead tree edition. And if you get one from Apress, it is the full article that you get and they keep it available so that you can download another version if you need it. You can also print the thing off if you want too but a laser printer producing double-sided prints is an asset if you don’t want your space invaded by a hoard of lever arch binders. Having a copious supply of inexpensive toner helps too as does cheap paper. Otherwise, you could spend your savings on printing the thing yourself.
The ever pervasive Safari does things a little differently from the likes of Apress. Mind you, the emphasis there is on the library aspect of the operation and not eBook selling. The result is that you can only ever download chapters, so no index or overall table of contents. You still can buy all of the chapters for a particular book, though some publishers don’t seem to allow this for some reason, but finding anything in there after you have had a read becomes an issue, especially when it’s the hard copy that you are using. Take yesterday, for instance, when trying to relocate the formatting parameters for the UNIX date function. I eventually found them in the chapters of UNIX in a Nutshell that I have downloaded and printed off but I spent rather longer looking in Learning the Korn Shell than I should have done. I know that you can search in the PDF’s themselves but that is more laborious when there is a number of files to search rather than just the one. I suppose that the likes of O’Reilly prefers you to buy paper copies of its books for more extensive use, and they have a point, but having the electronic version all in one file does make life so much easier.
New version of ZoneAlarm Security Suite
Having been an owner of ZoneAlarm Security Suite 6, I was wondering if I would get a pop-up inviting me to upgrade, free gratis as I have a subscription, to the latest version. In middle of my Office 2007 installation activities, the notification duly turned and I downloaded and installed the update to version 7.
The first change you will notice is in the branding, ZoneAlarm is now owned by Check Point Software Technologies, but the real reason for my interest is my hearing that Kapersky anti-virus technology is now part of the package. In addition, learning capabilities have also been added so that you don’t get annoyed by the thing asking you if it is alright for a certain application to do something or other that seems vaguely out of order, all of the time. This has been part of Norton Internet Security for a while and is certainly an asset; Windows Vista’s User Access Control feature would do well to implement some learning from what I have heard of its activities. And ZoneAlarm 6 was prone to nag you a lot as well, at least it did for me.
The installation went well for me apart from the non-activation of the anti-virus functionality. This took an update and a reboot to sort out and I think that it might have emanated from the changeover to British Summer Time that took place last weekend. I shall be keeping an eye out for what happens when the changeover to Winter time takes place (don’t worry, I fully plan to enjoy the intervening time; I have more than learned to enjoy each season for its delights). Having a time changeover like this knock out your anti-virus software is far from ideal. Other than that, everything is working fine and the firewall is staying silent as it continues to learn.
WordPress anti-spam plug-ins
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.