Exadata - has it been in development for two years?

Just my nit-picking mind, but why does the Exadata technical white paper say (at the time of writing at least) that it is "Copyright © 2006, Oracle"? I don't think they've been working on it that long - much more likely some soon-to-be-embarrassed technical writer has cut and paste the standard boilerplate from an out of date source.

What, no rule-driven content management?

Exadata and the Database Machine - the Oracle "kilopod"

There has already been plenty of interesting posts about Oracle Exadata - notably of course from Kevin Closson here and here (update: and this analysis from Christo Kutrovsky)- but I just have one thing to say.

Larry Ellison was quoted in a number of reports saying the Oracle Database Machine "is 1,400 times larger than Apple’s largest iPod".

Larry, when you want to get over that something is big - really big that is, industrial scale even - just don't compare it with a (however wonderful) consumer toy. Not even with 1,400 of them. 1.4 kilopods is so not a useful measure.

By the way, can I trademark the word kilopod please? (presumably not - a quick google found a 2005 article using the same word, and there is some kind of science-in-society blog at kilopod.com).

Back to the future - or is that forward to the past

I'm starting a new contract this coming Monday. I'd better keep the client confidential until I've found out how they feel about blogs, but the job revolves around data matching and data quality, using Oracle and SSA.

At the interview, I found myself less than 100m from the site of my first ever "proper" job (the old Scicon offices are now an upmarket West End hotel). So just 28 years and 1 month later, I will be sauntering along Oxford Street once again.

I'll be commuting daily at first, but I will try to stay down during the week at least some of the time if I can find somewhere cheap, clean and convenient. Any old colleagues around central London - sometime between now and Christmas we should meet up ...