Oracle Press

I just posted the following comment in a thread at the Oracle Technology Network forum, and I thought I'd repost it here, see below.

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This is Steve O'Hearn, and thanks to bigdelboy for reposting the URL for the script download for my book, OCA Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam Guide: Exam 1ZO-047. I didn't realize my earlier posts providing the URL were flagged as spam. You're correct that I posted that URL in several forums at once. It's unfortunate that whoever or whatever may have deleted my entries would've done so on behavior alone without regard for the content of the message.

Anyone can visit my blog at blog.corbinian.com and look for the "1ZO-047 SQL SCRIPTS" link and follow the instructions. And yes, the script download is limited to owners of the book itself. The script is worthless to anyone else anyway.

For anyone wondering about preparation for the exam, please note that my book includes 728 pages in 18 chapters, including one for each of the exam objectives, and each of those chapters includes the following:

- Text to address the exam objectives in detail
- A detailed chapter summary ("certification summary")
- A through "two minute drill" reviewing the concepts of the chapter
- A "self-test" on the chapter, including 15 questions each, and each question is designed to match the pattern of the actual certification exam. This means that many questions are based on code samples, and all offer multiple choice answers.
- Detailed explanations for each "self-test" question and each and every answer - including an explanation as to why each answer is either right or wrong

In addition to all of this, the book also includes a complete 70-question practice exam at the end of the printed book.

And in addition to that, there's another complete 70-question practice exam available online to owners of the book.

These exams are not included in the 728 pages of text. Altogether you're getting over 1,000 pages of material with which to prepare for the exam.

The book really is a complete package for exam preparation. And judging by the volume of email I get from happy readers who are now certified, I dare say its very effective.

Good luck to you if you are studying for the exam! And please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions you may have. I've read that I'm apparently not allowed to post my email address here, but my blog website is listed above, and you can contact me via the blog.

- Steve

"This is the next generation of surveillance ... it is important for the public to know that some of these capabilites exist."

These are the words of Yiannis Antoniades, designer of Argus, the world's highest resolution camera with 1.8 billion pixels.  Antoniades is an engineer with BAE Systems and developed the camera under contract to DARPA.  The camera uses Wide Area Persistent Stare and shows an example of a 15-square-mile area video image that offers multiple drill-down capabilities.  Colored boxes highlight moving objects, including cars and people and even birds.  You can see a man waving his arms; the camera can see objects as small as six inches on the ground.
 

But is it being used now?  The answer to that question is "classified", says the video.

Really?  THAT is classified? So why does that remind me of this clip from the 1980 film Airplane!:
 

For the record, the Argus video does state that it has, "for the first time ... permission from the government to show some of these capabilities."  So unless that claim is a lie, I don't think it's some rogue video.

It's just an amazing advance in technology.

Here's another great review of my book OCA Oracle Database SQL Expert Exam Guide, this from R.C. Roper of Topanga Canyon, California, who says:

This is a great book, covering all of the relevant topics in detail. The chapters and sections are in the order the certification objectives appear on Oracle's 'Exam Topics' page for this test, so it's easy to navigate and find your trouble spots. There are over 200 end-of-chapter questions in the book, and that's all I used to study for this exam. After only a week of study, I passed the exam with no other preparation except for the experience I've gained over the short time I've held my job. I can only imagine how well I would have done if I registered later for the test and gave myself more time.

Thanks, R.C.! The outline and overall structure was a major topic of discussion and debate in the original formation of the book, and frankly it made the job a bit challenging. It's one thing to write a book that mirrors the exam objectives outline, and it's another to create a book that conveys the information sequentially from start to finish in a way that initially made the most sense to me. Creating a single volume that does both simultaneously was tricky - but I think we did it, and did a great job. By "we", I'm including the excellent team at McGraw-Hill, including Tim Green, Meghan Manfre (formerly Meghan Riley), and Molly Sharp, as well as the outstanding and brilliant technical editor Alistair Grieve who was tremendous and really went above and beyond with this effort.  And even the legendary Kevin Loney provided some key input.  So it was quite the team effort.  (Click here for the complete Acknowledgements section from the book!)

Oracle issued critical updates to Java on Tuesday, Reuters reports:

The patch fixes 42 vulnerabilities within Java, including "the vast majority" of those that have been rated as the most critical, said Oracle Executive Vice President Hasan Rizvi.

For more: http://news.yahoo.com/oracle-fixes-42-holes-java-revive-security-confide...

What does it mean to be a person who is influential?  I think most people say it's about the ability to be persuasive.  And that's a tough quality to measure.  But my many friends in the media try it all the time.  Influence is often assumed to directly correlated to the size of an audience someone has - if a large number of people pay attention to what a person says - voluntarily or involuntarily - that person is said to be influential.   A magazine is thought to be influential based on the number of readers it has.  The same is true with books, movies, etc.

LinkedIn has a measure they call "Top Influencers This Week", it's a box that displays the names and pictures of the individuals LinkedIn has determined are the most influential among LinkedIn users.  I 've been noticing this feature lately because of an online discussion I've been monitoring within the Mensan community at LinkedIn.  The discussion is on the topic of the U.S. Constitution, citizen's rights, gun control laws, and the aftermath of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT.  I made the mistake of posting a comment or two at the beginning of the thread, which I generally don't do, I try to stay out of political discussions at a professionally-oriented site like LinkedIn.  But there were a few fundamental misrepresentations of U.S. law that I figured might be a typo but were important to address, so I did.  Big mistake.  My email inbox has been flooded since with every comment since then, and even though I've gone back and deleted my original comments to try to get it to stop, they continue - I just received another two dozen comments in my inbox this morning.  Maybe there's a "follow this discussion" box I can uncheck somewhere, but I haven't looked yet.  But I digress.

Watching this discussion is making me aware of the LinkedIn "Top Influencer" feature.  The person who originated the discussion thread is currently listed as the number two "Top Influencer This Week" at LinkedIn, if I'm reading this correctly.  Another person in the discussion thread, who I believe has originated other discussions elsewhere on the site, is listed as the fifth most influential as I write this.

Here's the problem: those two individuals are clearly in the minority of the discussion.  They aren't influencing anyone, they are provoking most of the responses, and most comments are at odds with the two "top influencers".  The reason LinkedIn charts them as "Top Influencer" is merely because they started a thread that got a lot of people involved.  But the majority of those people who are involved are arguing against the positions of the two "Top Influencers".

So are these folks really "influencers"?  Perhaps LinkedIn should rename that feature "Top Provocateurs", because that's really all that is happening there.

So beware:  just because you're told someone or something is at the "top" of any chart, be sure you know what the metrics are based on. 

I hope I've managed to influence your thinking on this important aspect of data analysis.

 

Several days ago I wrote a blog post about the warning from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about the use of Java.  DHS had gone so far as to advise users to disable Java in their browsers. 

A few words of clarification:  as many of you surely know, Java is not JavaScript.  Those are totally different and unrelated languages, in spite of the unfortunately similar wording. 

Second, by warning users to turn of Java in their browsers, DHS is essentially telling them to disable Java applets, which are the only form of Java programs that can run in a browser.  Applets are small programs that exist on websites, and that download to your browser, and execute on your own local computer, all within a container that is intended to prevent it from doing anything to your computer without your express permission.  Generally the only thing an applet is allowed to do is present data visually and accept typed or other forms of input from the end-user.  Frankly, that's not how most Java-based systems work today.  Most Java-based systems consist of Java programs that run elsewhere - within mobile devices, or on servers in all sorts of forms.  Lots of websites use Java on the server side and never send applets to their end-users browsers.  So you may still be visiting a website that runs Java on the server side, and that never sends executable code to your browser, it probably only serves up completed web pages, and that's fine, you'll be safe insofar as the DHS warning is concerned.

So now it's February 3, 2013 (Super Bowl Sunday incidentally), and yet - still no apparent conclusion to the Java situation. 

The most recent article I can find right now is Taking the Java Bull by the Horns by Patrick Nelson at Technology News, published Jan. 31, 2013, and it says this:

even though Oracle has made some efforts to patch the flaws, DHS hasn't lifted its warning ... As of Jan. 22, 2013, the current version of Java is Version 7, Update 11. The latest version includes fixes for issues raised by DHS as well as other issues. It also sets security settings to "High." ... You may decide that it's prudent to switch off Java altogether. New Java vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered, according to DHS's Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

The article also includes step-by-step instructions for performing upgrades and adjusting security settings in your browser.

We'll keep an eye on this.  I think many of us are so busy working in non-applet areas that we're not all that concerned.  However, I know firsthand of one company that internally uses an applet-drive software tool for internal corporate communications, and they've recently made the call to shut it down until this issue is resolved.  It's disruptive for sure.

Stay tuned.