John Borwick's blog

I installed Oracle 10g express edition on my Thinkpad.  I’ve had PL/SQL developer on my work machine for a while but I don’t use it much because I don’t have a database to play around with.  I created some simple tables, triggers, and sequences in my test database.

At work we’ve been debugging some ETL (extract/transfer/load) issues with our Operational Data Store.  Everyone has been using PL/SQL developer or TOAD.  I’m kind of in the dark when I see people using these tools because I’m not sure what all they use them for.  Sometimes they use them to find database objects; sometimes they use them to help see what tables are used by a view.  Now I can get a sense of what PL/SQL developer does and what Oracle security looks like.

I have been looking for a remote network backup solution for myself, and also for another person who wants to back up their office network. Here’s what I want:

1. Nightly automated incremental remote (at least 90 miles away) backup of at least one machine, perhaps more, of at least 250 gb of data
2. Ability to restore files, maybe not from bare metal, with up to 4 hours of “lag time” before data starts coming back
3. The remote backup is someone else’s responsibility to verify. For example if the data’s going to a tape, and a tape goes bad, some other entity is responsible for detecting that within some period of time and asking for the data to be sent again

Notably, I do not need point in time restores and it’s OK if it takes a long time to restore the data.

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