WWW::KRFH::Request

2002-11-19 Thread Dave Cross
For reasons that will only really be clear to people that were on IRC
at about 19:30 last night.

http://www.dave.org.uk/modules/WWW-KRFH-Request-0.01.tar.gz

Enjoy,

Dave...

-- 
  Love is a fire of flaming brandy
  Upon a crepe suzette




Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Graham Barr
As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Graham.




RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Gareth Kirwan
Completely off the point - Guildford's right next to me - ( I'm in Gatwick )
What a small world it really is...
Strange - considering when anyone asks me what languages I write - and I
mention perl as one of them - it never gets an I've heard of that ...
unlike c++ / Java etc

Gareth

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Graham Barr
Sent: 19 November 2002 10:49
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Graham.






RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Neil Fryer
'ello

I live in Horley in Surrey and would love a copy if no one else has snagged
it already?

Thanks
Neil Fryer

-Original Message-
From: Graham Barr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:49 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Graham.




Re: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread James Campbell
Hi Graham

I live in East Dulwich... It's a bit cheeky but can I grab the other copy?

Cheers
James

At 10:49 19/11/2002 +, you wrote:
As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
James Campbell
Research Bioinformatician

Proteome Sciences
Institute of Psychiatry
South Wing Lab
PO BOX P045
16 De Crespigny Park
London SE5 8AF

Tel:+44-(0)20-7848-5111
Fax:+44-(0)20-7848-5114
Email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web 1:  www.proteome.co.uk
Web 2:  www.proteinworks.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=




RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Gareth Kirwan
You have GOT to be joking?!

There's me surprised at Guildford - where do all you lot hide?

Where abouts in Horley?

I'm actually in Charlwood - our office is at the top of Russ HIll
over-looking Gatwick airport

Gareth

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Neil Fryer
Sent: 19 November 2002 10:51
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


'ello

I live in Horley in Surrey and would love a copy if no one else has snagged
it already?

Thanks
Neil Fryer

-Original Message-
From: Graham Barr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:49 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Graham.






Re: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread James Powell
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 10:49:00AM +, Graham Barr wrote:
 As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
 I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.
 
 However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
 easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.
 
 Graham.
 

Christ - nothing to get the lurkers out like a free book.

Back into lurk mode for me.




RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Neil Fryer
Horley is 2 minutes away from Gatwick airport on a train :-)
Small tiny little place.
Go to Gatwick whenever I woke late as it's the only way home :-)
Neil

-Original Message-
From: Gareth Kirwan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 11:02 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


You have GOT to be joking?!

There's me surprised at Guildford - where do all you lot hide?

Where abouts in Horley?

I'm actually in Charlwood - our office is at the top of Russ HIll
over-looking Gatwick airport

Gareth

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Neil Fryer
Sent: 19 November 2002 10:51
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


'ello

I live in Horley in Surrey and would love a copy if no one else has snagged
it already?

Thanks
Neil Fryer

-Original Message-
From: Graham Barr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:49 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Graham.






Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration

2002-11-19 Thread Walt Mankowski
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 11:39:45AM -, Mark Buckle wrote:
 Good, is there any real commercial benefit to an individual acquiring a good
 knowledge of PostgreSQL rather than Oracle SQLServer ?

Be careful with your terminology.  Oracle is Oracle; SQL Server is
Microsoft's RDBMS.  Having said that, the main commercial benefit is
that there are a hell of a lot more Oracle shops in the world than
PostgreSQL shops.

Walt



msg09247/pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Graham Barr
I forgot to add, the winner will be picked a random, possibly biased
by how easy it is to get the book to them (this book has 700 pages
so its not light, so if they are close enough I will deliver it)
or how much they bribe me with donations to the Perl Foundation.

Graham.

On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 10:49:00AM +, Graham Barr wrote:
 As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
 I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.
 
 However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
 easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.
 
 Graham.




RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Gareth Kirwan
Horley is about 2 minutes by car from me.

Where do you work, London ?

Gareth

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Neil Fryer
Sent: 19 November 2002 11:03
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


Horley is 2 minutes away from Gatwick airport on a train :-)
Small tiny little place.
Go to Gatwick whenever I woke late as it's the only way home :-)
Neil

-Original Message-
From: Gareth Kirwan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 11:02 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


You have GOT to be joking?!

There's me surprised at Guildford - where do all you lot hide?

Where abouts in Horley?

I'm actually in Charlwood - our office is at the top of Russ HIll
over-looking Gatwick airport

Gareth

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Neil Fryer
Sent: 19 November 2002 10:51
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: RE: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


'ello

I live in Horley in Surrey and would love a copy if no one else has snagged
it already?

Thanks
Neil Fryer

-Original Message-
From: Graham Barr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:49 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Book: Best of the Perl Journal


As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.

However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Graham.








Re: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Graham Barr
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 11:01:45AM -, Gareth Kirwan wrote:
 There's me surprised at Guildford - where do all you lot hide?

Well as I said I am in Guildford, now. But soon I will be moving
to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.

Graham.





Re: perl gtk2 bindings?

2002-11-19 Thread Peter Haworth
On Mon, 18 Nov 2002 15:59:46 -0800, Toby Corkindale wrote:
 I wonder if anyone knows the state of perl bindings for gtk-2?

Undergoing farily active development. Check out [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(http://lists.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-perl-list) for more info.

It looks like you can already write a working program, but the API is
still a bit fluid. I'm still using gtk version one, and not very
actively recently, so this is just my limited understanding of what's
been said on the list.

-- 
Peter Haworth   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Democracy is overrated. I think a meritocracy is needed.
 Perhaps measured by Perl competence.
-- Simon Cozens




Re: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread David Cantrell
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 10:49:00AM +, Graham Barr wrote:
 As an author I have just been sent two copies of this book by O'Reilly.
 I have no use for a second copy, so I thought I would throw it up for grabs.
 
 However, I live in Guildford and dont travel to London, so it would be
 easier if it was delivered to someone to the south of London.

Oh goodie, I was wondering when that would be out.  I can come down to
Guildford and take it off your hands, then pass it on to someone for review.

-- 
David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

 Pressure was growing last night for the global war on terror to be
 broadened to take in a wide range of other 'rogue emotions' including
 horror, shock and a general feeling of bewilderment about the state of
 the world.-- The Brains Trust




contracts

2002-11-19 Thread David Cantrell
Hey contractory people, I might get some short-term work next week, can
anyone point me at a sensible standard contract I can use?  Bear in mind
that I don't give a monkeys about IR35 as I have no intention of being
an evil tax-evader.

-- 
Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  Dave, being Evil is no excuse for indenting like a moonshine-crazed lemur
-- Aaron Trevena




Re: perl gtk2 bindings?

2002-11-19 Thread Tom Insam
On Mon, 2002-11-18 at 23:59, Toby Corkindale wrote:
 Hi,
 
 I wonder if anyone knows the state of perl bindings for gtk-2?
 

There's an alpha release, it vaguely works. API is massively changable
right now, though, seems to be a battle between making it behave exactly
like gtk2 in C, and making it behave 'sensibly' from a perl point of
view.

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-perl-list/2002-November/msg00077.html

Discussion on the gtk-perl mailing list.
(http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-perl-list)

But I've used them, and they work, at least.


-- 
Tom Insam [EMAIL PROTECTED]




Re: contracts

2002-11-19 Thread Simon Wilcox
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, David Cantrell wrote:

 Hey contractory people, I might get some short-term work next week, can
 anyone point me at a sensible standard contract I can use?  Bear in mind
 that I don't give a monkeys about IR35 as I have no intention of being
 an evil tax-evader.

Would this be employed directly or via a ltd company of some description ?

Has rather a lot of bearing on what the contract should look like.

Simon.

-- 
Zaphod old mate, I trust you as far as I could comfortably spit out a
 rat
 





Re: contracts

2002-11-19 Thread Graham Barr
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 07:35:41PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote:
 On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, David Cantrell wrote:
 
  Hey contractory people, I might get some short-term work next week, can
  anyone point me at a sensible standard contract I can use?  Bear in mind
  that I don't give a monkeys about IR35 as I have no intention of being
  an evil tax-evader.
 
 Would this be employed directly or via a ltd company of some description ?

This brings up an interesting question for me.

For a while now I have been doing small jobs on the side, while
being employed. But I have been thinking about leaving my full time
job and doing contracting. Now before you all tell me I am crazy,
I have my reasons for wanting to leave :)

But the question I have is, which is the best route. Is it better
to start a ltd company or just go self employed. I have read a lot
of online info fro various web sites, but none I found give real
pros and cons either way.

Graham.





Re: Book: Best of the Perl Journal

2002-11-19 Thread Chris Benson
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 11:13:42AM +, Graham Barr wrote:
 
 Well as I said I am in Guildford, now. But soon I will be moving
 to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.

Flat, very flat, Norf^WNorth Cambs.

-- 
Chris Benson




Re: contracts

2002-11-19 Thread Dirk Koopman
/lurk

It is a debatable point these days whether it is is still actually worth
while becoming a contractor. The only way it is likely to to work for
you is if you truely are an independant entity; i.e. IR35 does not apply
to you (or rather: you pass the tests in it that say it doesn't apply).

If you want to be a body for hire you lose most of the benefits of being
employed (paid holiday, sick pay, paid training etc) and you are now
still taxed as though you were still employed.

Unless you can guarantee an increase in income which will make it worth
while - or you fall outside IR35 (which essentially means having lots
customers [at once], your own premises and equipment) I wouldn't bother.

If you still want to go ahead, my accountant persuaded me some years ago
that a change from self employment back to [my dormant] limited company
would be best for me (IR35 doesn't apply here [so far]).

You must find a decent accountant and ask his/her advice (I can
recommend one that specialises in people like me, if you are interested)

Regards

Dirk 

lurk
 
On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 20:08, Graham Barr wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 07:35:41PM +, Simon Wilcox wrote:
  On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, David Cantrell wrote:
  
   Hey contractory people, I might get some short-term work next week, can
   anyone point me at a sensible standard contract I can use?  Bear in mind
   that I don't give a monkeys about IR35 as I have no intention of being
   an evil tax-evader.
  
  Would this be employed directly or via a ltd company of some description ?
 
 This brings up an interesting question for me.
 
 For a while now I have been doing small jobs on the side, while
 being employed. But I have been thinking about leaving my full time
 job and doing contracting. Now before you all tell me I am crazy,
 I have my reasons for wanting to leave :)
 
 But the question I have is, which is the best route. Is it better
 to start a ltd company or just go self employed. I have read a lot
 of online info fro various web sites, but none I found give real
 pros and cons either way.
 
 Graham.
-- 
Dirk Koopman [EMAIL PROTECTED]





Re: contracts

2002-11-19 Thread Nigel Hamilton

Intellectual property (IP) may be a slightly dirty word ... but I think
it's important when it comes to the choice of 'contracting' vs 'working
for the man' in the UK.

For IR35 purposes it helps if you can show that you retain intellectual
property rights in the work for the contract (i.e., a contract for
services rather than a contract of service).

This is also one of the few advantages of contracting ... you can
negotiate to retain your IP ... and over time your professional library
will grow (in theory)... which gives you more to offer future clients.

This is one of the few ways to break what I call the 'tyranny of time'
(i.e., selling your time for the rest of your life).

Contracting isn't for everyone but this is one of the things to consider 
...

Nige


-- 
Nigel Hamilton
Turbo10 Metasearch Engine

email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
tel:+44 (0) 207 987 5460
fax:+44 (0) 207 987 5468

http://turbo10.com  Search Deeper. Browse Faster.





Re: contracts

2002-11-19 Thread Paul Johnson
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 09:54:04PM -0600, Nigel Hamilton wrote:

 This is also one of the few advantages of contracting ... you can
 negotiate to retain your IP ... and over time your professional library
 will grow (in theory)... which gives you more to offer future clients.

And means that you don't have to worry about contributing code to Perl
or any other project that strikes your fancy.  For me, that comes right
up there with staying out of company politics :-)

-- 
Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pjcj.net




Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration

2002-11-19 Thread Chris Devers
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Walt Mankowski wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 11:39:45AM -, Mark Buckle wrote:
  Good, is there any real commercial benefit to an individual acquiring
  a good knowledge of PostgreSQL rather than Oracle SQLServer ?

 Be careful with your terminology.  Oracle is Oracle; SQL Server is
 Microsoft's RDBMS.  Having said that, the main commercial benefit is
 that there are a hell of a lot more Oracle shops in the world than
 PostgreSQL shops.

But is it safe to say that in some ways -- and for most things that one
would be likely to do while learning at home, perhaps *all* ways -- Oracle
and PostgreSQL can be treated as if they are interchangeable?

Put another way, Oracle skills may be more marketable, but paying for the
right licenses  hardware to learn Oracle may be unfeasible for most. If
one practices with a toy PgSQL database installation, will that help
much when trying to work with Oracle later? Granted, explaining this to
the HR drones may be an effective filter against finding jobs, but it
seems like something that techies would be more prone to appreciate.

Put another way, a little bird tells me that a certain large [huge, no
really] east coast (USA) newspaper uses Oracle for their web site's live
ad delivery, but clones all the data in-house on near-identical PostgreSQL
servers, and apparently it works quite well for them -- to the extent that
in principle they should be able to run the same ad system all with
PostgreSQL servers if they ever chose to do so.

I've never read any PostgreSQL / SQL Server comparisons. Supposedly SQL
Server is pretty nice software, but it would be interesting to see a
comparison of it, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and maybe some of the others
[DB2, Sybase, and so on]. In particular, and more off-topic for L.pm, it
would be interesting to see how well these engines do when running Perl
against them. But of course, because the big vendors seem to have terminal
benchmark-a-phobia, this never seems to be available...


-- 
Chris Devers[EMAIL PROTECTED]





Re: Weird Syntax

2002-11-19 Thread Chris Devers
On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Lusercop wrote:

 You're not turning on strict at all

Interesting.

% cat foo
#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict qw($x);
use warnings;

$notx = 1;

print $notx \n;

% ./foo
1
%

Weird :)


-- 
Chris Devers[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Q:  How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:  Two.  One to assure everyone that everything possible is being
done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.





Re: perl gtk2 bindings?

2002-11-19 Thread Toby Corkindale
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 09:23:40AM +, Tom Insam wrote:
 On Mon, 2002-11-18 at 23:59, Toby Corkindale wrote:
  Hi,
  
  I wonder if anyone knows the state of perl bindings for gtk-2?
  
 
 There's an alpha release, it vaguely works. API is massively changable
 right now, though, seems to be a battle between making it behave exactly
 like gtk2 in C, and making it behave 'sensibly' from a perl point of
 view.

Ah, that fluidness is what i was afraid of..
I'm just trying to write some applets that will work against varying versions
of (future) distros. I figured there wasn't any point writing for the (almost)
obsolete gtk-1.2 when gtk2 is around and distros are migrating to it.

Would prefer to use Perl, since i understand it's database interface well, but
looks like maybe C or C++ will be the way I go instead now. I guess it was
about time i dived into that area anyway..

Thanks for the mail lists, guys,

Toby





Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration

2002-11-19 Thread David Cantrell
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:43:32PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote:
 But is it safe to say that in some ways -- and for most things that one
 would be likely to do while learning at home, perhaps *all* ways -- Oracle
 and PostgreSQL can be treated as if they are interchangeable?

Depends what you want to learn.  If you want to learn how to write code that
uses an RDBMS backend - then yeah, you'll be able to get away with using pg.

 Put another way, Oracle skills may be more marketable, but paying for the
 right licenses  hardware to learn Oracle may be unfeasible for most.

They used to do a free hobbyist/evaluation licence.  Probably still do.

-- 
David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

Us Germans take our humour very seriously
  -- German cultural attache talking to the Today Programme,
 about the German supposed lack of a sense of humour, 29 Aug 2001




Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration

2002-11-19 Thread Chris Devers
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, David Cantrell wrote:

 On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:43:32PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote:

  Put another way, Oracle skills may be more marketable, but paying for the
  right licenses  hardware to learn Oracle may be unfeasible for most.

 They used to do a free hobbyist/evaluation licence.  Probably still do.

I'm sure this is still true, but the hardware is relevant as well.

I've put copies of Pg on pretty old equipment  it ran tolerably well --
good enough to put sample databases in, write code against it, etc.

I've tried putting the demo version of Oracle on somewhat better hardware
(sorry, it's been a while  I forget all specs) and, aside from the fact
that setting everything up was much more of a pain, the strain on the
machine was much more noticeable than when running Pg, subjectively
speaking, to the extent that I never bothered using it much.

Then again, working past that ramp-up may be the whole point...


-- 
Chris Devers[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Q:  What is orange and goes click, click?
A:  A ball point carrot.





Re: Weird Syntax

2002-11-19 Thread Randy J. Ray
On 2002.11.19 15:23 Chris Devers wrote:

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Lusercop wrote:

 You're not turning on strict at all

Interesting.

% cat foo
#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict qw($x);
use warnings;

$notx = 1;

print $notx \n;

% ./foo
1
%



The strict pragma silently ignores unknown modifiers, to allow for future 
expansion. Passing the explicit string '$x' to use strict is a no-op, since 
it (a) got an argument (defeating the default combo of vars+refs+subs) and (b) 
did not recognize said argument as meaningful.

Randy
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://www.rjray.org http://www.svsm.org

Any spammers auto-extracting addresses from this message will definitely want
to include [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration

2002-11-19 Thread Steve Keay
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:43:32PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote:
 On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Walt Mankowski wrote:
 
  On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 11:39:45AM -, Mark Buckle wrote:
   Good, is there any real commercial benefit to an individual acquiring
   a good knowledge of PostgreSQL rather than Oracle SQLServer ?
 
  Be careful with your terminology.  Oracle is Oracle; SQL Server is
  Microsoft's RDBMS.  Having said that, the main commercial benefit is
  that there are a hell of a lot more Oracle shops in the world than
  PostgreSQL shops.
 
 But is it safe to say that in some ways -- and for most things that one
 would be likely to do while learning at home, perhaps *all* ways -- Oracle
 and PostgreSQL can be treated as if they are interchangeable?

In terms of actually writing and testing code, for most projects the
difference is probably almost nothing - you could very quickly
cross-train yourself.

Unfortunately most IT managers probably share a very simple (yet
understandable, and in some cases, defendable) point of view - Oracle
good, some toy OSS thing bad.  Going to interview for an
Oracle-related job and quoting Postgress experience is almost
certainly a non-starter unless you're a very fast talker or the
employer is one of the very rare few that actually knows what they're
doing.

On a side-note, there are enormous numbers of people whose entire
career consists of Oracle DBA or Oracle Consultant,  many of whom
are entirely ignorant of concepts I would consider fundamental to the
role.  I wonder if there's anyone who is an official Postgress DBA who
is not really doing a load of sysadmin/developer work as well?
Perhaps PG shops are enlightened enough not to require a scapegoat for
database problems?




Re: MySQL - PostgreSQL migration

2002-11-19 Thread Paul Makepeace
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 06:49:52PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote:
 I've tried putting the demo version of Oracle on somewhat better hardware
 (sorry, it's been a while  I forget all specs) and, aside from the fact
 that setting everything up was much more of a pain, the strain on the
 machine was much more noticeable than when running Pg, subjectively
 speaking, to the extent that I never bothered using it much.

You really do have to throw one honkin' chunk o' RAM at it. Not to
mention disk space for the install; 9i is over a gig download. Further,
Oracle is extremely tunable, one of its strengths (or weaknesses
depending how much reading you like to do). You can diddle with about
every conceivable parameter some of which in some circumstances can make
a dramatic difference. Its connection cost is quite high but the client
caching is pretty good (from what I've read).

Of course, the conspiracy theorists would claim this is to keep DBA 
consultants in business...

Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

What is pauls last name? A yearning deep inside your soul.
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/




Re: contracts

2002-11-19 Thread Paul Makepeace
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 08:55:40PM +, Dirk Koopman wrote:
 [...]
 Unless you can guarantee an increase in income which will make it worth
 while - or you fall outside IR35 (which essentially means having lots
 customers [at once], your own premises and equipment) I wouldn't bother.

There is more to it than just money for some folks. I for one will fight
tooth and nail not to work as a permanent employee. It just doesn't suit
me, I can't stand it. So a lifestyle change is IMO an important
consideration. Many however don't like the uncertainty and having to
constantly sell themselves to clients, not to mention spending a fair
chunk of time hustling for work. Personally, I love all that.
Being able to get up at midday after a 'til-7am coding binge for me is a
wonderful freedom.

 If you still want to go ahead, my accountant persuaded me some years ago
 that a change from self employment back to [my dormant] limited company
 would be best for me (IR35 doesn't apply here [so far]).

I'm in this situation - I have a dormant company and am thinking of
going the sole trader route for longer [I got back from the States in
Feb]. Do you recall the reasons s/he gave for awakening your company? I
found the .ltd.uk a pain to be honest, and the pay-offs (executive
pension, NI dodging) didn't make it worthwhile for me. Still, open to
suggestion...

Paul

-- 
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/

What is an ideal telephone box? A bull without legs.
   -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/