Saturday, December 30, 2006

ORA-07445

It is interesting to actually listen to users occasionally, down right extraordinary. Take this for example.

I was surprised to see on a brand new oracle 10gR2 DB which sole purpose s to test the application for upgrading from 9iR2 this error come through our monitoring script:

ORA-07445: exception encountered: core dump [kddlkr()+748] [SIGBUS] [unknown code] [0x000000010] [] []

Within 1 minute the 9i database on the same server,

ORA-07445: exception encountered: core dump [kddlkr()+748] [SIGBUS] [unknown code] [0x000000010] [] []

Remarkable, two different homes, two different databases, two different application installs with the same error.

Search on metalink comes back with the dreaded:

A Description for this ORA-7445 error is not available.
Your request has been recorded and will be used for publishing prioritization.
Doing an Advanced Search on ORA-7445 'kddlkr' which may help to provide additional information on this error...

After about an hour of fruitless searching on metalink and trace file diving, I decided to call around to the users and see if anybody had received an error message. I found a very nice lady who had recently received an error in the application, she explained to me in great detail on exactly what she was doing to test the new version of the application. I was taken aback by her attention to detail and since she was just 2 floors up, I decided to visit her. She had almost 30 pages of checklists and notes that she had written over the years and the many different versions of this application of things she has to test every time a new version is released. She explained that this one module consistently gives an error when the user first opens the screen, and has done so for 3 years and 4 versions of the application, she had diligently written down the exact application error code in her notes for each of her testing sessions on the new applications all with the exact date and time noted.

I was properly impressed and told her so, I had her go into the module and show me the error, and sure enough, the error box pops up and exactly matches her hand written notes, it felt like the world had stopped spinning and I was wondering why I had never heard from this magnificent lady before, surely she was next in line for the "Power User" member of the application team. I asked her if the vendor or our local application support people had given her a work around or a valid excuse to this error. Her answer set the world spinning again after it's brief stoppage - her words "I have never told anybody about it, because it has always had an error since I started, I just tested to see if it had started to work with the new version, we don't even know what the module does."

So close, but yet so far. I will task the local application support people to investigate this error and open a ticket with the vendor.



Friday, December 29, 2006

Dizwell is gone

I take a few months of reading off and Howard Rogers leaves in that time, talk about horrible timing on my part.


There is some discussion of the closing of the site here


http://oraclesponge.wordpress.com/2006/12/27/so-farewell-then-dizwell/


I wish Howard well, and hope to bump into him on-line.

Cheers Howard!


What happened to Dizwell?

I grabbed a cup of tea, settled in for a good long read of Dizwell to catch up on what I missed... and its gone.


http://www.dizwell.com/


Comes back to


Welcome to dizwell.com !

This is a place-holder for the dizwell.com home page.



He can't be gone? can he?

Back (again)

Well, after a lengthy period of time, I am back, and planning on blogging again. Normal things got in the way - like work, divestitures, purchases and mergers, and family life which caused blogging to be dropped right off of the to-do list.

I haven't even been reading or participating in any forums or other blogs until yesterday. So I am back and ready to roll.

So if there is still anybody out there reading this, thanks for sticking around and I promise some stuff soon.