Comments on: Why I sometimes hate GUI's…

By: Marco Gralike

Marco Gralike — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:33:35 +0000

@Nial: Yep I already noticed this. Anyway after a long search I found the alert “Number of missing datafiles is 10″. Apparently with my set-up with defined systems and groups such messages can only be found in the historical section of the item it belongs to. So in this case “the database”. On itself it has a logic to it. Still don’t know btw WHY this “critical” message was triggered and what it means…(ehh…when you take a tablespace offline, this will trigger a datafile is missing alert??? Doesn’t sound logical to me, but who am I…)

By: Niall Litchfield

Niall Litchfield — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:02:21 +0000

Hi Marco

The other interesting item about this particular alert is that the tablespace may not be 85% full anyway. In many versions of OEM the max size of the datafile is not taken into account for autoextend datafiles.

By: Marco Gralike

Marco Gralike — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:07:59 +0000

…say it differently. Tools that introduce the increase of making mistakes should be handled very carefully, especially tools that target the DBA market. DBA’s are handling mission critical customer production data and therefor should be extra aware what kinds of risks they introduce when choosing tooling. At the end of the day, people are tired. Sometimes they have to work under stress. Despite the sarcastic tone in this post, OEM has advantages. I like most of the monitoring it does for me, dealing with a lot of databases. On certain points this functionality diminishes the risk factor of not seeing things on time, but as I said, it can also increase the risk for failure.

By: SwitchBL8

SwitchBL8 — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:02:02 +0000

Mind you, I agree with you on the GUI part (perhaps that was not clear). They give you a false sense of security. Like it’s saying “I already did all the thinking for you”. I don’t even trust TOAD. SQL*Plus is the way.
But remember when using a GUI: it’s probably not made by someone as experienced as you.

By: Marco Gralike

Marco Gralike — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:41:30 +0000

Sorry, but I don’t like it (otherwise I wouldn’t stick to stuff like SQL*Plus, UltraEdit, Notepad). And yes, you are right, I should have read carefully before hitting “OK Let’s do it”. One of my points here was just to show that it makes you “numb” for what’s on the screen. This is a very dangerous situation for a DBA. SQL*Plus and others are “stupid” tools, much discussed as “whats the plus in SQL*Plus”, but at least (with a lot of work) they force you to think. The danger for serious mistakes is not so easily made.

By: SwitchBL8

SwitchBL8 — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:00:57 +0000

So you don’t hate the GUI (in fact, you said it was very easy to find what you were looking for), but you hate the fact that the program 1) doesn’t think like you do (it did not present you with a default drive G: instead of F:) and 2) that it does not work as advertised. For 1) I would say: not being used to GUI’s (like you said yourself) re-double-check what’s on screen before hitting “OK Let’s do it”. And for 2) don’t we all hate bugs?