Tech Pragmatist

Just … wow.

Make sure you watch it full screen.

(Thanks to Mr Gruber for the link)

The most significant component is the unit testing framework. From the Press Release:

Oracle SQL Developer Release 2.1 introduces a unit-testing framework that enables developers to build and share unit tests and test suites that can be run in batch mode and from command line against different databases. PL/SQL Unit Testing offers database developers powerful, prebuilt capabilities with which to develop and run regression tests for their database code resulting in higher quality database development while reducing the need for writing scripts for unit testing.

Unit Testing PL/SQL code has traditionally been poorly and incompletely done. It is difficult to do, there are a lot of issues to take into account and lots of boundary cases where frameworks just don’t or can’t help. Many have tried before (Wikipedia has a list) and had partial success. I have never heard of any serious project that has been able to use a particular framework for all test cases.

My experience of these tools is limited, having opted to ‘role my own’ in the past almost every time. It will be interesting to see if Oracle’s idea of unit testing pl/sql code will catch on and become the de-facto method. I’ll measure that by if/when I start seeing it on a significant number of Oracle specialists’ CVs.

My understanding is that this has been a work in progress for some time. What I don’t know is if it has been built on the foundations of one of the existing ‘solutions’ or if Oracle have built it from the ground up.

I completely agree with Mr Wilson, and I advocate the British Government follows the same advice.

The Boston Globe have once again put together an awesome set of photos, this time for the decade. To me this photo-set seems to tell a story of terrorism and war with little beauty. The directly linked shot is particularly memorable for me as it shows the effects of terrorism in London, but I also found this to be a striking shot.

Great line from the Macalope:

Based on all this rock-solid evidence, the technopunditocracy leaped into action.

Of course the evidence here was hot air, like so often. I fundamentally agree. If something is announced then write about it. If it isn’t then please don’t waffle about it — we don’t care.

Apple has won a permanent injunction against the Mac cloner Psystar, preventing it from selling computer hardware running OS X.

Is it just me, or did you also hear the echoing disembodied voice from the Tekken game series saying “You Lose. Game Over.”

Wow. I didn’t expect the EU commission to push them that hard.

Top hosting provider Linode have opened a UK datacenter, which is fantastic news.

There will be some downtime while this site is migrated on to home shores.

(oh, and when I say top provider it is of course my opinion — you should always listen to someone else too)

Fantastic design, the UK has been crying out for this kind of everyday innovation. Tip of the hat to Mr Gruber for the link.

I don’t normally read the huge morass of comments that result from the average blog post, but the conversation thread on Mr Wilson’s recent email post was fascinating to me as inbox zero is something I have been struggling to get to over the last few months. The basic principle is that the inbox should be empty at least once every day.

Some of my colleagues manage it on one or more of their accounts (we normally have at least three each, one for the project, one for the company and any personal ones). I haven’t yet managed it on any of my accounts for more than about a day-per-month at a time. That is to say, I haven’t managed it at all. About a third of the way down the comment section on his post, Mr Wilson replies that he doesn’t use a todo list, instead he uses email as his todo list. I often thought I was the only person who tried to do this (if not consciously), and I thought that this was the reason I was failing at inbox zero. I had one of those “I’m not alone in my insanity” moments on reading his comments. I even occasionally send emails to myself to enter things into my list.

Other peoples’ reactions to my lack of a real todo list (distinct from my inbox) mirrors the many comments on Fred’s post where they have asked questions like ‘how do you do it’ and ‘can you write us a blog post on it’. I haven’t seen a follow up from Mr Wilson, but I am determined to work out how I can make this inbox zero combined with a todo list thing work. I am going to start with this from Mr Hyatt for some starters for ten.