Use the dgmgrl to convert the standby database to 'Snapshot Standby'. Once it is in that mode you can make any changes you want to the system and then convert the standby back to 'Physical Standby'.

During the conversion back to Physical Standby it brings the database back to the point in time that it was converted to snapshot and applies all the logs that have shipped while in snapshot mode. Just make absolutely sure that you've got enugh space in the FRA to hold the initial snapshot and any changes before the database is reverted.

All the while the DG brokers are still running and you never 'stop' DG, just change the standby to something more usable for those instances where devs need current production data.

We use DataGaurd and part of the process for opening the standby for use sanitizes any sensitive data and resets all the passwords to the development passwords. This has been an excellent resource since devs can see exactly what is on production at any point in time.

Then you just close it up and it reapplies all shipped logs for DR and you're good to go.

Love it.

I'm honestly curious about this, so please bear with me.

I've seen a number of times when cyclists are riding on highways and interstates with posted Minimum speed limits of 40+ MPH. Have you seen any particular laws or provisions for those situations?

That's a new one on me. I'll have to tell it to the rest of my Aggie family.

Reading this story and many of the responses I'm surprised that there aren't more akin to this. While some of the MMOs have been addictive to me (no more, children are much more fun) every game I've played that has given me the most enjoyment has been for reasons that you describe.

MUDs, Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Unreal, gobs of RPG type games and, lastly, MMOs provided me ample opportunity tweak and see what I could make them do. In some cases it was directly and easily modified. Other cases required external tools, but in every case I was interested in seeing how far I could push the mechanics.

Playing the games are fun. Pushing them to their limits are what I enjoy. This is pretty much true for me in most aspects of my life, though.

Oddly enough the online only option is largely why I quit playing games. The DRM was also getting simply unacceptable and I enjoy playing through games in single player/offline modes as well. Don't get me wrong, I love the interaction and experience that online games can provide, but dealing with people all day means that sometimes I just want to sit down and play and see the AI or game rules or whatever behave exactly as expected.

I guess in that regard it's a bit more like passive entertainment through TV and such, but I still like the puzzles and at least learning to understand how the developer designed the game play experience.

Other than that some of the most fun I've had in 20 some-odd years of gaming has been building and designing modifcations and levels and hacking games to see just how far you could push the engines and yourself with private servers and game connections among friends. So many games lack any ability to do that kind of thing and between that and the above mentioned problems I rarely (if ever) find myself buying games anymore.

That was how it is managed for me and the functionality is suitable for my uses. Sorry, I didn't intend to mislead anybody in this regard.

The only reason that I bought the original Xbox was for all the media center functionality. I like playing games and such, but that was not my primary interest.

I know there are and were plenty of media center PCs, but I never found one that I liked the look of and wouldn't require me to do all kinds of work. With the xbox I installed a mod-chip in about 15 minutes, loaded XBMC and was streaming music and movies inside an hour start to finish. I can even still watch Hulu from it.

Plus I got the xbox used with a couple controllers and games for less than I could even buy one of the little Nvidia pc boards. Best $100 I ever spent on a piece of electronics.

I'd never heard of Tripping the Rift, but it looks promising. Thanks for the recommendation.

I just use the new Emergency Services number: 0118 999 881 999 119 725! [short pause] 3!

It's so much better than just using 999.

Offtopic, there is a great parody to the FBI warnings on the intro of "Moss and the German" on season 2 of The IT Crowd. If you haven't already seen it then I'll say that it gave me a good laugh about it.

Don't get me wrong. We are primarily an Oracle shop, but we've got several instances on MySQL running (mostly LAMPs and WAMPs) and even an MSSQL Server (much to the chagrin of our "Oracle is great" boss.)

I believe that there is a good tool for a job and will use whatever is the most suitable within a given set of parameters.

My greatest hope would be to make MySQL and Oracle more interoperable so that we could reduce our adminsitrative overheard. At this point I've got MSSQL instances that replicate application data to our Oracle warehouse and it would be nice to have a consistent back-end for our wikis and other 'forward-facing' apps.

Along the same line as the high-end/low-end thing Oracle does have a 'low-end' Oracle database (Oracle XE) but it's never really gotten any kind of following or use that I have seen. So I could definitely understand their interest in providing an entry-level system with their name attached.

I've not understood the complaints about sharing the market space. Anyone running full-blown Oracle database systems will be well and truly beyond MySQL. Aside from that, try and get some PHB to understand that MySQL is in any way comparable to Oracle.

On the plus side- if Oracle can actually provide an easy to use path to migrate from MySQL to Oracle or to provide some kind of abstraction layer that would let you use MySQL-backed applications with Oracle I would cheer them to no end.

And as for the founder's (and the founder's buddy referenced in the article) concerns about the future of the product then he shouldn't have sold the damn thing. So sorry, you sold your rights to it. Fork it and start over if you really care that much.

I'd believe they are unable to find parts. I worked on phone systems and one of our clients had a nearly 30 year old Rolm CBX system that had gone from Rolm to IBM to Siemens. The model they had *ONLY* had parts for both it and its voicemail add-on available from some guy that literally bought up a bunch of units being replaced and sold the spare parts out of his garage.

And keep in mind that for quite some time ROLM systems were nearly as popular as the Nortel systems.

I suppose if I had to pick, I'd prefer to only get one leg humped...but really does it have to come to that? Send over some better (looking) 'ambassadors' and I'll be happy to make a more informed decision.