What is the ~R character in vim

In short, it is the right single quotation mark ( hex 92 ).

I’m not sure why vim has issues with the extended character set but apparently it does.

In reality this is also a challenge to see if Google manages to index this, as it was no help when I asked it this question.

UKOUG conference discover 2025

My post conference thoughts.

I obviously neglected to document my opinions on last years conference, but here comes this years observations.

Hot on the re branding of the Oracle Database from 23c to 26c came the the information that the first on-premise release of Oracle 26c would occur soon. ( It was announced the day after the close of the conference that the Linux release would be scheduled for January 2026. )

Opinion from one of the oracle speakers was that On-premise releases would follow on from from major releases after a two year duration.

It has become apparent that a large number of new features have been back ported in part or in full to 19c, but this will apparently now stop.

Support for 19c was confirmed to 2029 with extended support available after that to 2032.

So it looks like the presence of 19c in oracle estates will be extended.

So why might people migrate to 26c?

My suspicion is that that will relate to security.

There was a session: ‘Diving into TLS/SSL for database professionals’, which with hindsight I should have attended, but most significant, I believe was the number of Oracle speakers that mentioned the phrase ‘post quant’.

For the uninitiated, post quant is the period of time where Quantum computers become commercially available and all of our commercial cryptography, including TLS1.3 will be rendered ineffective.

It is pertinent to note that 26c includes a new format for encrypted tablespace. This is nominally to facilitate the support of smart scans, but this definitely isn’t going to be back ported to 19c, and as any future quant proof encryption is likely to be based on this, I suspect migration to 26c will be on the horison for any financial organisations and/or any organisation where security plays a significant role.

On other developments of interest, with the elastic implementation of exedata in the clouds, more varied performance profiles could be accommodated as the strick division between data and compute nodes is broken down.

And finally the implementation of PL/SQL version control functionality within SQLcl should make the integration into 3rd party source management systems relatively easy.

Enjoy!

Preparing for UKOUG breakthrough 2022.

My apologies, It’s been a while.

It’s a long time since I’ve attended anything Oracle IRL.

And while I live in Birmingham, I’ve probably only been into town about 4 times since COVID.

So my opinions are going to be somewhat less informed than in the past.

I’m also less knowledgeable about the Aston side of town than the center.

So updates:

Some character actor discovered the https://varanasi.uk/ long after I introduced several UKOUG attendees to it.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/restaurant-johnny-depp-racked-up-24173963

On sadder news the fake peaky blinders pub the bulls head has closed.

The Pub would be used for various Peaky Blinders launch events, but is alas no more. ( https://hnssigns.co.uk/project/peaky-blinders/ )

OTOH, I took Christian Antognini there and he was right royally unimpressed.

So, venues close to the event:

The Sacks of Potatoes – easy to find and far better than a student campus deserves.

Gosta Green – enough said.

Further into town:

The wellington – still Birmingham’s best real pub, and feel free to bring your own food.

The Queens head – New, will try to visit tomorrow, sort of the replacement for the Bulls head.

For food, I have no idea what to recommend.

You really have to go into town to find restaurants, expect a bit of a trek.

I have recently discovered https://pieminister.co.uk/restaurants/birmingham/ and although the pie’s seem to be getting smaller, it’s still good.

Should mention the Post office vaults, if you can find it, https://postofficevaults.co.uk/ good for obscure foreign lagers.

And there there is still purity craft and kitchen https://www.purecraftbars.com/ but don’t eat there it’s prohibitively expensive.

Even further away, https://www.albertsschloss.co.uk/cookhaus/, not been there, but heard good things.

On other topics, the tram strike is over, but I’d be confused if you needed to use the tram while at UKOUG.

HTH.

Birmingham zero food hygiene ratings.

The Birmingham Mail helpfully publishes reviews of Birmingham food hygiene ratings on a quarterly basis.

As the UKOUG conference approaches, I do like to check up on the latest developments.

So firstly the good news, it appears to be much easier to access up to date information on local food hygiene ratings on the website http://ratings.food.gov.uk/ and for your convenience, the data is made available through an API that third party apps mage available on your smart phone.

Secondly, more good news, The only restaurant on Broad St that received a zero food hygiene rating recently has actually shut down, so if you were looking forward to dicing with death at the Bombay Mix, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

Thirdly, even more good news, The perennial zero offender, Pit stop, has somehow gained a satisfactory rating:

http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/604241/Pitstop-Birmingham

However on a more negative standpoint are the disappointing surprises.

The Handmade burger company, one of who’s restaurants can be seen over the canal from the ICC managed a 1:

http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/602524/Handmade-Burger-Company-Birmingham

The company has recently been rescued, so hopefully improvements are coming, however they declined to respond to esquires from the Mail:

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/zero-food-hygiene-restaurants-birmingham-10337878

Another noted failure in that article is the Smallbrook Queensway holiday inn, where I believe Christian Antognini stayed during one of his Oracle Midlands trips. However the latest rating appears to indicate that this has been resolved:

http://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/en-GB/598486/Holiday-Inn-Birmingham

So, UKOUG conference visitors to Birmingham, EAT WELL!

[Error] Execution (5: 1): ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kzaxins:lxgcnv], [68], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []

I failed to find anything on the internet about this one, which is quite pleasing as a significant amount of human error was involved.

We manage our development databases with netapp snapshots to allow retesting against known database configurations with updated applications.

We do try to make sure that we segregate pre-upgrade snapshots, however on this occasion we restored a snapshot that predated the latest patchset upgrade. and encountered the above error.

We did try to re-apply the database component of the upgrade, but that failed to resolve the issue.

We also rolled back to the snapshot and reapplied the patch, and that also failed.

We finally resolved the issue by restoring the snapshot, performing the startup upgrade and then performing the upgrade again.

The thing that slightly surprised me was that opening the database with the new version of the software without performing the startup upgrade made the dattabse unupgradable.

Shutting the database down and then performing a startup upgrade was insufficient.

Oracle may have a more eligant solution to the issue ( we didn’t raise a MOS ticket ) but the result may be that the database ends up in a non supported configuration.

So, always keep a copy of the pre-upgrade database and be careful to follow the instructions, simple steps like starting the database in normal mode before starting it in upgrade mode can sometime cause real problems.

PCC-S-02201, Encountered the symbol “void” when expecting one of the following:

This post, unlike my others, doesn’t revolve around a problem I resolved, but I don’t think Kev has a blog, so I’ll take the credit.

I’m also going to include a link sugested by Allyn for those interested in understanding C a little better.

The problem began after the operating system was upgraded on the development box (AIX) and various programs we have developed fail to compile:

++++++ progName.pc ++++++

/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/bin/proc sqlcheck=full userid=***** include=../Einclude include=/opt/IBMvast/primitiv dbms=v8 MODE=ORACLE CODE=ANSI_C CHAR_MAP=string LTYPE=NONE LINES=YES DEFINE=_LONG_LONG iname=progName.pc

Pro*C/C++: Release 10.2.0.3.0 – Production on Thu Feb 2 11:58:12 2017

Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.

System default option values taken from: /oracle/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/precomp/admin/pcscfg.cfg

Syntax error at line 647, column 34, file /usr/include/openssl/crypto.h: Error at line 647, column 34 in file /usr/include/openssl/crypto.h int CRYPTO_memcmp(const volatile void a, const volatile void b, size_t len); ……………………………1

PCC-S-02201, Encountered the symbol “void” when expecting one of the following:

, ( ) [

The symbol “,” was substituted for “void” to continue.

Syntax error at line 647, column 58, file /usr/include/openssl/crypto.h: Error at line 647, column 58 in file /usr/include/openssl/crypto.h int CRYPTO_memcmp(const volatile void a, const volatile void b, size_t len); …………………………………………………1

PCC-S-02201, Encountered the symbol “void” when expecting one of the following:

, ( ) [

The symbol “,” was substituted for “void” to continue.

Syntax error at line 256, column 24, file /usr/include/openssl/bio.h: Error at line 256, column 24 in file /usr/include/openssl/bio.h void BIO_set_flags(BIO b, int flags);

…………………..1

PCC-S-02201, Encountered the symbol “” when expecting one of the following:

, )

So an operating system upgrade causes compilation errors?

Actually, the errors are only seen in the pre-compiler, not in the compiler. I don’t know if the AIX C compiler would have issues with this but I would hope not.

Several people worked on the investigation.

I tried using the 11g verion of Pro*C, but the error persisted.

I didn’t have access to a 12c Pre-compiler at work, so I am unable to confirm if the same issue would be present.

The issue was traced by a coligue to changes in the openssl header files, where various prototypes had been changed.

Reverting to the old versions allowed the programs to compile sucessfully.

The issue appears to be a failure of the Pro*C compiler to sucessfully process some of the newer C syntax.

My colligue, not only solved the problem, but found the git hub repository where the change was discussed and debated.

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/102

The issue was that the prototype was changed in opensl/crypto.h so that:

int CRYPTO_memcmp(const void in_a, const void in_b, size_t len)

became:

int CRYPTO_memcmp(const volatile void in_a, const volatile void in_b, size_t len)

The link explains that the motive for the change was to stop the GNU C compiler from optimising code that could theoretically allow unencripted values beins stored in memory.

As we weren’t using this function, and we weren’t using the GNU compiler, we felt it safe to revert this change back.

Ultimately, it is perhaps useful to understand the concept of the const volatile, which is explained in this interesting article suggested by my coligue:

http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/barr-code/4236917/1/Combining-C-s-volatile-and-const-keywords

Enjoy!

#ukoug_tech16 #ukoug_apps16 #ukoug_jde16 Food hygeiene

For future visitors to the upcoming ukoug conventions at the icc in Birmingham I thought it might be useful to highlight a series of articles produced by the local rag, the Birmingham Mail.

Every 3 months the Birmingham mail does a report on the establishments in Birmingham that have achieved the ignominy of a zero food hygiene rating.

The most recent article is published here:

All 25 Birmingham city centre restaurants and takeaways rated ZERO food hygiene
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/25-birmingham-city-centre-restaurants-11623750

The only troubling thing is the number of establishments who receive a zero food hygiene rating who receive another warning within the next 12 months.

We are due the next report soon, and I will update the post when it becomes available.

OT glmedia android app.

The first purpose of this post is to see if google will index it, currently there are no hits for glmedia as a single word.

I currently have 2 android devices and a couple of weeks ago, both started displaying full screen adds in windows with the name glmedia and an Android icon. All the adverts redirected to the android play store.

They looked official, but were incredibly intrusive and I couldn’t find anything about glmedia on the internet.

I hadn’t installed any new apps recently, and the fact that it affected 2 devices at the same time made me think that this was an update from an existing app, rather than being an infection from a website.

I downloaded addons selector which found no malicious software, but it did list glmedia as an installed application and allowed me to uninstall it.

And the adverts stoped.

But I have no idea where it came from.

Anyone else with issues with this app?

Please share.

Birmingham roadworks from the north. #Ukoug_tech15

This evening, with four days to go, I popped up and down the aston expressway, which I presume most attendees to the conference by car will use to see what a mess the council are making.

I was pleasently surprised, while there were meny cones, they were in the side of the road and not yet in use.

So I continued to paradise circus to see the impact of it’s ‘closure’.

Essentially paradise circus is no longer a roundabout and there is no longer any direct access to broad St.

So if you come down the aston expressway and take the road over the roundabout, then through the first tunnel and then avoid the second tunnel, you will be brought round an sent south and end up exactly the same place as if you’d taken the second tunnel.

To access broad St from here you need to go round the pagoda roundabout (after dark the radison blu may be more visible), back in the direction you just came from and then take the left turn down Holiday St. which runs parrellel to Broad St and will be behind the majority of the hotels that most attendees will be staying in.

I honestly don’t see any issues for attendees arriving on Sunday. However, anyone attempting this route on Monday morning should anticipate additional delays.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/paradise-redevelopment-causes-rush-hour-10448576

 

Nörjske #ukoug_tech15

If there was one place you’d expect to find a Nørgaard during the ukoug tech conference in the wild, I suppose it would be here.

http://norjske.com/