20091214 learning something new - plembo/onemoretech GitHub Wiki

title: Learning something new link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/learning-something-new/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 208 created: 2009/12/14 16:41:58 created_gmt: 2009/12/14 16:41:58 comment_status: open post_name: learning-something-new status: publish post_type: post

Learning something new

Back in my MCSE days the main way I learned anything really useful about Microsoft products was by reading every article on the Technet CD every month (and I mean every article). For me, it was just an extension of the disciplines I’d carried over from my legal career. In the latter every day began with a quick read of the New York and New Jersey Law Journals (including any decision or new legislation summaries), as well as any slip opinions and statutory updates that may have come in from either West or LCP.

Years later, with so much on the web, I’d gotten away from a daily dose of vendor related documentation apart from the various e-mail alerts that come in to my private mailbox from US-CERT and Red Hat’s Enterprise Watch List.

Last week I got the green light to research a practical use for Oracle’s Virtual Directory product in our environment. Although last year I’d taken an Oracle class that included a unit of OVD, it was really just canned overview material on the last day that really didn’t go into the kind of detail I needed. So off to the Internet I went.

Although there were a few articles by independent bloggers, and some tantalizing clues on OTN, I was disappointed to find so little detail on how to accomplish some very modest goals.

Off to Oracle Support I went. One big advantage of being a paying customer (or at least working for one), is being able to get into Oracle’s knowledge base. Once I’d waited for the now Flash centric login to calm down, I was able to find 3,012 Metalink Notes that were somehow related to OVD.

So here I am now reading through all those Notes.

Sure, it’s sometimes mind-numbing, tedious, work. But until someone comes up with a Vulcan mind-meld device that I can hook up between myself and one of Oracle’s OVD developers, it will have to do.