Thursday, September 27, 2012

iOS6 removes the YouTube app

I recently received a notice about the availability of the iOS6 upgrade for my iPad.  I thought it was cool to see the upgrade and install it.  After a warning related to the battery level (at least 50% or plugged in to the electric outlet) in my iPad I proceeded to download it and have it installed.

Everything was just fine, in my opinion there's not too many new functionality I could take advantage of at this time, and there were some new apps installed and yes, a very cool world clock similar to that one I used to have in my iPod.  And the maps application, an absolute divorce decree for Apple, they have their own.   The addition of the location services (optional), which sounds to me more like an Android like behavior.  Is Apple secretly overtly trying to emulate the Google's success formula?

What it came to my attention was that the YouTube application had disappeared.  I looked for it all around, and it was gone.  I thought I may have accidentally removed it.  I tried to look for it at the apple store, without any luck and finding more than 200 hits related with youTube like applications. And ... after "googling" it for a while I found that this is "normal".  The YouTube application was removed from it because Apple is planning to design one of their own that will replace the traditional YouTube app.   May be Apple didn't have his own iYouTube ready on time with the release of iOS6, and this could have made the users more anxious than not being able to play their cool playlists.

I've tracked the Apple share in the stock market (NASDAQ:AAPL) for a while, extrapolating the behavior of it correlated to the release of the iPhone5 and the future marketing strategies of Apple, and this made me remember the story of the Tulips in Holland ( http://www.damninteresting.com/the-dutch-tulip-bubble-of-1637 ) where there was a huge euphoria about the Viceroy Tulip bulbs to the point that a trader could make a profit of an equivalent of $60,000 USD today a month, and the price of a Tulip could be worth the price of a house.  And when this temporary madness was replaced by the reasoning the bubble was bursted and the price of the Tulips felt all the way down creating a big depression in the Dutch economy.

After Apple released the iPhone5 its share reached the all time top value of $700.00 USD, as soon as it was announced that even though the sales of it were good but not as good as expected the price retreated to $665.00 per share.  If Apple cannot be innovative and creative once more, people may see the Apple bubble burst.  So what's the next move? why is Apple divorcing from specific apps? Is their marketing strategy focused towards emulating the discrete giant steps of Google? Is the Steve Job's iCar something that is going to surprise the market once more? ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/6958816/Steve-Jobs-wanted-to-build-Apple-iCar ), is the new iYouTube app going to be available to watch movies in the built in retina touchscreen in the car? will the aux audio device allow compatibility with pre-iWhatever devices? or you'll have to buy an adapter for it too?

In my personal opinion, Apple has reached a historic top level where it has to reinvent itself once more and after the iPhone5 the next step cannot be an iPhone6, 7 ... 20, cause otherwise the market will be saturated.  So to prevent the investors from looking elsewhere they'll have to open new markets.  May be it's about time to change the way we watch T.V.  In the mean time as long as the common saying reads "I'll buy it if it is shiny and made by Apple" keeps on being a valid success formula, Apple will keep on being a growing giant, no matter if they "forgot" to warn about the YouTube omission.


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Oracle 11.2.0.3.0 PSU 9 Post-Install issues

Platform: Windows 2003 R2 x64
Version : Oracle 11.2.0.3.0 PSU 9

After applying the PSU the DBMS_MEATADA didn't work.


SQL> select DBMS_METADATA.GET_DDL('TABLE','EMP','SCOTT') from DUAL;
ERROR:
ORA-39212: installation error: XSL stylesheets not loaded correctly
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_METADATA", line 5088
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_METADATA", line 7589
ORA-06512: at line 1



A side effect of this, when trying to execute DataPump it failed, since this requries DBMS_METADATA to extract the object metadata.

C:\> expdp aUser/aPassword schemas=SCOTT dumpfile=SCOTT logfile=SCOTT job_name=SCOTT

Export: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Thu Sep 13 11:15:16 2012

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP, Data Mining
and Real Application Testing options
ORA-39006: internal error
ORA-39213: Metadata processing is not available

The reason is because after applying the PSU according to the MOS note: "Data Pump Export Started Failing After Applying CPU Patch [ID 453796.1]" some tables required by Data Pump are not loaded and the XML Style sheets for DBMS_METADATA are not loaded either.

The dictionary tables required by Data Pump are not loaded. 
If you execute this query:

SQL> select count(*) from metanametrans$;

  COUNT(*)
----------
         0


and if there are no rows returned then you'll have to proceed as stated in the MOS note.

The procedure to fix this issue is listed in that MOS Note, so since you found this error after applying a PSU or a CPU, then it means you have access to My Oracle Support, just look for the previously referred MOS Note and you'll see what's the procedure to fix this issue.

Once the procedure has been applied, the above query returns the following result:

SQL> -- Oracle 11g Rel.2 (11.2.0.3.0 PSU9)
SQL> select count(*) from metanametrans$;

  COUNT(*)
----------
      3302



And both, the DBMS_METADATA and Data Pump work like a charm.


Wednesday, September 12, 2012

OPatch 11.2.0.3.0 issues

Recently I have applied the PSU5 and PSU9, in both cases a couple of issues happened when executing the OPatch utility. 

msvcr71.dll
The first one, has to do with a runtime error during the execution of the OPatch utility.  Suddenly a window pops up saying it cannot find the msvcr71.dll library, this is a module containing standard C library functions such as asprintf, memcpy and cos, it is part of the Microsoft C Runtime Library.  The workaround for it was to look for it at one of the previously installed Oracle Homes and copy it to the C:\Windows directory.  

%ORACLE_HOME%\oui\jlib\srvm.jar
 The second issue has to do with a file, srvm.jar, which after the OPatch evaluation, it says this file is in use.  It looks like the 11.2.0.3.0 version of the OPatch utility cannot identify it is the same utility who is using the file.  This is a known issue and is documented in the M.O.S. Note "OPATCH 11.2.0.3.0 LOCKS SRVM.JAR WHEN APPLYING ANY 11.2.0.3 BUNDLE PATCH ON WINDOWS X64 [ID 1446273.1]"  This will be fixed in future OPatch versions, and the workaround is to look for a jar file, %ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\jlib\oracle.opatch.classpath.jar, rename it and retry.  Once the OPatch utility is done rename back the file to its original name.

You can use the Microsoft utility Process Explorer to see who is using these files. Just make sure that you exit the utility before relaunching OPatch, otherwise it will misinterpret the locks of the Process Explorer on several oracle related dll's and the list of Oracle dynamic linked libraries in use will be longer.