Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Part 2

Last weekend was too busy for computers, but this one hasn't been. 10.04 is up and running, requiring some additional libs in order to run my editor (so I can write these wonderful missives). The X-25 is installed, with DB2 9.7 up next. Life is looking up.

Come the Revolution

Whenever something evil befell my upper lower class father he would pronounce, "Come the revolution, things'll be different". I can't find the original (Pop wasn't that creative), but today's announcement from Intel will do as an early salvo in the revolution.

SSD has gone truly Mainstream, Best Buy stocks them in stores. Mind, only up to 80 gig, but still. I know, most folk will tend toward using them as just faster spinning rust, just as your grandfather used disc as faster tape; that doesn't mean those of us who can push the envelope won't see them as further justification for BCNF datastores. No more of that "but normal users don't have SSD" baloney. Now, they do. Yee Ha.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Part 1

The Intel SSD has gotten low enough in price, Ubuntu 10.04 is out with SSD friendly file systems in the .32 kernel, and I'll put in the time. I've downloaded DB2 9.7 freebie; the earlier versions have been a pain to install, so I expect this will be no exception. All for you, dear readers.

This weekend will be start of the journey. Ubuntu upgrades are basically a joke; re-build the machine is about the only avenue. I tried the 9.04 live CD, and neither my keyboard (Das Keyboard) or mouse (Logitech laser) ran. From what I can find out, 9.04 used a HAL for such, and didn't work, so they went back to config files with 9.10, which does work but doesn't have the file system goodies kernel. I haven't tried 10.04 from the CD yet, but I'm told All Will Be Well. I sure hope so.

I'll be using Graeme Birchall's "DB2 Cookbook" schema and such for the tests. I highly recommend it, though he seems to have lost interest in DB2; he says on his site that the 9.7 version would be out Dec. 2009, but nada. I had a short email conversation with him a year or so ago. I was wondering whether he found DB2/LUW much in the wild, and he admitted not so much. And he laid the blame at the feet of IBM; they're more interested in moving COBOL/VSAM crap on the mainframe then promoting the LUW version, which is still my favorite database on linux, AIX, or windoze. Neither he nor I could figure out why IBM doesn't give a rat's sphincter. It might just be a coincidence, but a few years ago Gartner stopped publishing the PR version of their database market share report. Going back from at least 2000 until they stopped (2007?), IBM's "growth" was always in the mainframe. I guess IBM got tired of trying to convince folks that DB2 on LUW was going to take over. I still prefer it.

Dive Into the Shallow End

A really simple post today. Just this link. The posts from 28 May on are the ones that caught my interest.

And Not a Sky Was in the Cloud

It should come as no surprise that, as I've mentioned a few times, I'm no fan of Cloud. My reasoning derives mostly from the notion of ownership and control. It's your data and processes; you are responsible for the core of what you're doing. Outsourcing such is foolish.

I read this today. What's amusing is that this problem, of using that which isn't yours, has existed since at least OS/VS1 and Multics; yet the Cloud Kiddies think they've discovered a new and interesting problem. There is simply no substitute for knowing what resources you need, and acquiring them.

Further, the Cloud approach, with anonymous resources, is not conducive to resource specific applications, such as those optimized for BCNF data on SSD.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.