The Hindu Business Line : Hard work, but rewarding too

Disc Jockeys don't have to be the only people who are `in'. Database administrators or DBAs are `a special lot' too. Here's `a quick-start guide' for those looking for success.

HELLO DBAs, listen to what Robert G. Freeman says in Oracle Database 10g New Features, from Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co Ltd (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) : "King wasn't a DBA (database administrator), but he might have been." Why? Because DBAs are `a special lot' having to understand all layers, viz. new OS, new software and so on. "It's hard work, but it's incredibly rewarding." The author downplays the book as `a quick-start guide' rather than `an exhaustive introduction'. It's the wading pool for you to walk through before you dive into the adult pool, he would say. "It's the escalator that runs you by the crown jewels before you actually break into the case and take the ones that appeal the most to you."

G is for grid. But what does it enable you to do? Leverage components, load-balance across the enterprise, share info regardless of its location and schedule resources across. In Larry Ellison's words: "Grid is capacity on demand made up of low-cost parts." So, you'd first meet a babua called DBUA, the Database Upgrade Assistant, a GUI designed for "upgrading your Oracle database", suggesting even to backup the database for you. Reserve some attention for SYSAUX tablespace - "a secondary tablespace for storage of a number of database components."

There're more new things, such as portable clusterware with "infiniband high-speed network support", rolling upgrades "through the use of the opatch utility", CRS or `cluster ready services', and database assistants "to make the DBA's job easier". There are lies, damned lies and statistics, you know, but 10g makes statistics gathering easy, be they of database or its dictionary. Database sizes can be daunting, so 10g "allows you to manually shrink the overall size of a table, removing unused space." Freeman adds: "This feature, combined with the ability to compact the segment and adjust the high-water mark all at the same time, can result in great space savings."

DBAs get help from 10g's ADDM (short for automatic database diagnostic monitor); it can "analyse the database workload and find bottlenecks", identify problem areas and work through "a problem-resolution tree to attempt to eliminate areas that are not causing the problem and highlight areas that are causing the problem." In the chapter on `business intelligence' there is `Oracle Data Pump'. Hope your interest in 10g is sufficiently pumped up to go in search of Freeman.

Cyber law and crimes

WHAT'S a law book doing in these columns? Good question, but here's the argument why you could profitably browse the latest edition of Legal Language by Dr Madabhushi Sridhar, published by Asia Law House (www.asialawhouse.com) . It contains new chapters on cyber law and crimes.

"The so-called e-commerce is based on the e-contracts, which necessitate e-contract law, not much different from the non-cyber commercial law," writes the author, before introducing one to terms such as cryptology, encryption, decryption, digital cash, electronic record and so on. So, you remember nostalgically how your mercantile law prof expounded cases such as Balfour vs Balfour and Mohori Bibee vs Dharmodas Ghose. It would be too soon to expect our law books to be citing cyber cases as much as they do with the ones inherited from the Privy Council.

Yet, a table not to be missed is about punishments in India for cyber crimes, under different sections of the Information Technology Act. Thus, for "damage to computer, computer system", compensation can go up to Rs 1 crore. Tampering with computer source documents can put the culprit in jail up to 3 years. For "hacking with computer system with intent or knowledge to cause wrongful loss", punishment is "jail up to 3 years or find up to Rs 2 lakh or both". Add 2 more years for those caught publishing obscene material in an electronic form. Imprisonment up to 10 years awaits those securing or attempting to secure access to a protected system. Add some law-ware to hardware and software.

Laugh your way to UNIX

JUST the book you've been waiting for! UNIX for Dummies, by John Levine and Margaret Levine Young, published by Wiley Dreamtech India P Ltd (www.wileydreamtech.com) .

"Although lots of good books about UNIX are out there, most of them assume that you have a degree in computer science, would love to learn every strange and useless command UNIX has to offer (and there are plenty), and enjoy memorising unpronounceable commands and options. This book is different." With that begins the intro promising to explain everything in "plain, ordinary English."

Chapter 1 asks: "If a train stops at a train station, what happens at a workstation?"

That must be a real dumb question, but if you suspect that you may run into a dumb terminal, be assured that nobody makes dumb terminals any more because "Windows PCs have a natural ability to play dumb, so they're commonly pressed into duty as terminals."

On the history side, the Levine duo would give an analogy: "In the early days, every UNIX system was distributed with a complete set of source code and development tools. If UNIX had been a car, this distribution method would have been the same as every car being supplied with a complete set of blueprints, wrenches, arc-welders, and other car-building tools."

Get bashed with BASH, the Bourne Again shell, check if `she sells C shells' but find C was written by Bill, and read the warning `don't turn off the computer if you make a typo!' How silly! Okay, do you know the two basic types of files? "Well, er... " you say, but here's the answer: "Files that contain text that UNIX can display nicely on-screen; and files that contain special codes that look like monkeys have been at the keyboard."

The first type of files are text files and the rest are everything else. `There's no place like home' is the subhead that discusses the sweet home directory - "where you work until you move somewhere else".

Elsewhere, there is `gurgle, gurgle: running data through pipes', on the process of redirecting output of one program so that it becomes the input of another program.

"This process is the electronic equivalent of whisper-down-the-lane, with each program passing information to the next program and doing something to the information being whispered." Great fun to read even if you never plan to work with UNIX.

Tailpiece

Transcript from a chat:

"I wnat to delete file!'

"You've a transposing prolbem."

"I want to delete life."

"That's bettre."

"Boo... .m."

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

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