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I have spoken a few times on this blog about forensics and Oracle and in 2021 I did a talk at the UKOUG about Oracle forensics. I have just posted the slides from that talk just now to our site....[Read More]

Posted by Pete On 22/09/23 At 01:07 PM

Oracle Cloud World is happening, which typically means lots of announcements. One of the welcome announcement was the release of Oracle 23c on OCI Oracle Base Database Service, so there is a production version generally available… Sort of… Why do I say “sort of”? OCI Oracle Base Database Service This is a single cloud service, … Continue reading "Oracle Database 23c Generally Available – Sort Of"

The post Oracle Database 23c Generally Available – Sort Of first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle Database 23c Generally Available – Sort Of was first posted on September 21, 2023 at 10:53 am.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

I did a talk in Slovenia in 2022 that explores the questions, "What is Database Vault?" and "What can we do if we don't have Database Vault?". I have posted the slides to our website today and the talk is....[Read More]

Posted by Pete On 18/09/23 At 01:00 PM

 This video shows in step by step tutorial as how to install and run Coqui XTTS model locally. TTS is a Voice generation model that lets you clone voices into different languages by using just a quick 3-second audio clip.

Commands Used:

!pip install transformers !pip install tts from TTS.api import TTS tts = TTS("tts_models/multilingual/multi-dataset/xtts_v1", gpu=True) tts.tts_to_file(text="This is my new cloned voice in AI. If you like, don't forget to subscribe to this channel.", file_path="output.wav", speaker_wav="speaker.wav", language="en")

I did a talk in 2022 called CreatingOnion Layers of Security and as you can see from the previous link I have posted a pdf of my MS PPT slides to our website. I have also added the talk to....[Read More]

Posted by Pete On 15/09/23 At 02:01 PM

Oracle just announced the expansion of their partnership with Microsoft to deliver Oracle database services in Azure. You can read the blog post here. Oracle and Microsoft expand partnership to deliver Oracle database services in Azure This is a very interesting development for a number of reasons. Here are some of my thoughts… The database … Continue reading "Oracle databases on other clouds?"

The post Oracle databases on other clouds? first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle databases on other clouds? was first posted on September 15, 2023 at 10:05 am.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

Hi, I discovered the powerful, not officially documented, hint OPT_ESTIMATE about 12 years ago. Recently I discovered the following officiel document about it: Oracle Support Document 2402821.1 (How To Use Optimizer Hints To Specify Cardinality For Join Operation) My question: is it now a documented hint or should it still not be used in SQL code? Regards Maurice

 This video shows you step by step instructions as how to deploy and run Llama 2 and Code Llama models on GCP in Vertex AI API easily and quickly.

Introduction

Oracle CloudWorld 2023 will start next week in Las Vegas, and I’m happy to participate in this worldwide event. As a Swiss citizen, when I think of Las Vegas, the first image that comes to my mind is that of dazzling lights, opulent casinos, and dancing fountains. A city that never sleeps, where excess seems to be the norm. However, behind this glittering facade lies a surprising reality: Las Vegas appears to be a leader in many sustainable initiatives and a model of responsible water management. It’s perhaps also because of this that a company such as Oracle decided to organize its most famous event in this city.

The well-known Bellagio fountains Environmental Savior or Sinful Excess?

While it won’t be my first visit to Sin City, as Las Vegas hosts several events like CES and is a popular destination for those exploring the West Coast on road trips, each visit brings its own unique experiences. On my previous trips to Las Vegas, what truly captivated my attention was how a city nestled in the heart of the desert could orchestrate mesmerizing water spectacles, such as the renowned ones adorning the famous Las Vegas Strip.

As a company that has dedicated significant efforts to sustainability initiatives and proudly holds Ecovadis certification, I felt compelled to delve deeper into the question of how this desert city manages its energy, and its precious water resources. To craft this article, I had the privilege of engaging with Jace Radke, the Public & Media Relations Supervisor in Las Vegas as well as Mack Branson, who represents both the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) and the Las Vegas Valley Water District. I thank them for generously sharing their time and expertise, which greatly enriched the content of this article.

Mr. Branson L.Mack – SNWA | LVVWD Public Outreach World-class in terms of sustainability

As stated by Jace Radke, “More than 2.1 million people reside in Southern Nevada and 40 million people from around the world travel to Las Vegas annually. Many know Las Vegas as a world-renowned entertainment and tourist destination, however, very few of them know that Las Vegas is also world-class when it comes to being green and sustainable.” Just to provide few facts and figures that attests the efforts of Las Vegas in terms of sustainability (a more exhaustive list can be found here: www.lasvegasnevada.gov/sustainability) :

• Certifications such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. buildings, including Las Vegas City Hall that opened in 2012.
• Investment in hundreds of miles of bike lanes.
• Completion of more than six megawatts of solar.
• Replacement of 42,000 streetlights with LED lighting.
• Reduced annual water consumption by 256 million gallons from 2008 level.
• Every public building, park and streetlight is served by renewable energy.
• Several years ago, the largest rooftop solar array in the country went online at Mandalay Bay, with 26,000 panels covering 28 acres.

Many other initiatives will be undertaken. For example, the city plans to plant 60’000 new trees to help mitigate the heat island impacts in the city and lower temperatures. This initiative is part of the city’s 2050 Master Plan: https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/Business/Planning-Zoning/Master-Plan

Las Vegas Strip by night

These measures have been awarded. In 2014, the city was honored with the US Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Award in Dallas. Such initiatives also led to a reduction in annual energy costs, decreasing from a peak total of $15 million in 2008 to less than $10 million per year.

However, despite these initiatives, Jace Radke remains aware of the ongoing challenges that pose a threat to community well-being: “Many communities, like Las Vegas, are facing issues more heat waves, flooding, or drought – an issue they face together with cities across the Southwest. Of course, water is clearly a big part of our story”.

While everything may not be perfect in Vegas in terms of sustainability, there is still room for improvement. However, when we examine the 2050 Master Plan, it becomes evident that the authorities are well aware of this potential for enhancement.

Water savings of 48’425 Olympic-size swimming pools

Before delving into water management, it’s crucial to establish a rough idea of the proportions we are discussing. As mentioned by Jace Radke and confirmed by Mack Branson, “while many look at Las Vegas’s growth and water use at casinos, golf courses and fountains as the cause of declining water levels in Lake Mead, the fact is that Las Vegas uses less than 4% of Colorado River water. Additionally, it’s important to mention that the resort industry only uses 3% of all water used in Las Vegas.”.

To maintain the focus on proportions, consider that the Southern Nevada region receives 100 millimeters of precipitation per year, while a country like Switzerland receives between 1000 to 1500 millimeters of precipitation per year (according to meteosuisse.admin.ch). Naturally, these conditions have prompted the Southern Nevada Water Authority to implement certain restrictions, such as:

• Replacing useless grass
• Limiting water gardens
• Prohibiting installation of new gras
• Limiting residential pool sizes
• Moratorium on evaporative cooling
• Annual water budgeting for Golf courses

As explained by Mack Branson, some strong measures will be enforced: “by the end of 2026, it will be illegal to irrigate grass which is considered decorative grass. This measure is due to the fact that grass needs approximately 3000 liters of water per square meters (73 Gallon per square foot). The reason of this measure is very simple, water that we use outdoor can be used only one time which is not the case of water used indoor because we can recycle it.“

Due to all these measures, Southern Nevada Authorities estimates that: the Southern Nevada’s consumptive water use declined by approximately 32 billion gallons (121.25 trillion liters) between 2002 and 2022, despite the influx of approximately 750,000 new residents and nearly 40 million annual visitors during that span. (Conservation fact sheet – Comprehensive 2023.pdf edited by Southern Nevada Water Authority) which represents approximately 48’425 Olympic size swimming pools.

Lake Mead, a challenge that goes beyond the borders of Las Vegas

As we all witnessed in recent years, the water level of Lake Mead significantly declined. Fortunately, the water level has rebounded in the past months. Nevertheless, to confront the challenge of declining mean water levels, it’s important to take into consideration that Las Vegas uses only 4% of the Colorado River water. Therefore, additional efforts are required beyond Las Vegas and Nevada.

Lake Mead and its dam

As mentioned by Mack Branson “Our community recycles and returns nearly every drop of indoor water use back to Lake Mead, which provides 90 percent of Southern Nevada water supply. Every liter returned allows us to tank another out of the lake, treat it to drinking water standards, and deliver it to the community. We are the only community in the U.S. that we know of that recycles all of its indoor water use.”

However, Mack Branson is aware that the challenges related to Lake Mead do not stop at the borders of Las Vegas.: “It’s going to require every sector in every state that uses Colorado River water to use less. The largest water user of the Colorado River by sector is agriculture, which is beneficial to us in our nation’s food supply. However, a significant portion of that agricultural water use still employs inefficient irrigation techniques and produces a lot of feed for cattle (alfalfa). It appears that alfalfa has become one of the dominant water users in the agricultural sector. While it’s essential to support the dairy industry, we also observe a substantial portion of this alfalfa being exported out of the United States. Thus, we are effectively exporting Colorado River water out of the United States.

Intake 3, a drought insurance

In response to unprecedented drought conditions and for the long-term preservation of Southern Nevada’s primary water storage reservoir, Lake Mead, the Southern Nevada Water Authority built a third drinking water intake system (intake 3) capable of extracting Colorado River water when the lake’s elevation is below 1,000 feet (~304 meters) above sea level.

In 2008, construction of the intake 3 commenced, involving the use of a 24-foot (~7,3 meters) diameter tunnel boring machine to excavate a tunnel beneath Lake Mead. This tunnel was subsequently connected to an intake structure anchored to the lakebed with over 1,000 truckloads of concrete.

Intake 3 of Lake Mead – source Courtesy Southern Nevada Water Authority

Currently, Lake Mead stands at a height of 1,066 feet (325 meters), as indicated by: https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp. This means it is below the level of Intake Number 1. Consequently, Pumping Stations Number 2 and Number 3 are in operation. In a few months, when the Lake Mead elevation rises above Intake Number 1, Pumping Station 3 will be deactivated to conserve energy. This decision is driven by the greater energy consumption of Pumping Station Number 3, attributable to the depth of Intake Number 3.

Conclusion

The challenges encountered by Las Vegas, and more globally South-West, are challenges that will impact other regions around the world in the future. Behavior adaptations such as the replacement of grass, water recycling techniques, strategies to reduce water evaporation, and environmental certifications for hotels are all practices that are expected to become more widespread in the coming years.

Undoubtedly, Las Vegas is a city with high energy demands, and there is still much work to be done. However, over the past several years, awareness has been steadily increasing, giving rise to promising ideas and a genuine commitment to making meaningful improvements.

Climate change is affecting all of us. We need to adapt to build resilience. Climate change in the Southwestern United States will result in a warmer and drier future and if we do not admit that degrowth can be a solution, people will have to be innovative to face these challenges.

L’article Las Vegas, from sin city to green city? est apparu en premier sur dbi Blog.

In a recent post I mentioned using a scratchpad to record everything I do. As part of that process I try to make regular use of the UNIX/Linux “time” command to record elapsed times of long running commands. It’s really simple to use. All you do is put “time” in front of the command and … Continue reading "UNIX/Linux Time Command : Record elapsed time"

The post UNIX/Linux Time Command : Record elapsed time first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.UNIX/Linux Time Command : Record elapsed time was first posted on September 14, 2023 at 8:21 am.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

 This tutorial gets your started with GCP Vertex AI Generative AI service in step by step demo.

Commands Used:

gcloud services enable aiplatform.googleapis.com

gcloud iam service-accounts create <Your Service Account Name>

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding <Your Project ID> \

    --member=serviceAccount:<Your Service Account Name>@<Your Project ID>.iam.gserviceaccount.com \

    --role=roles/aiplatform.admin

from google.auth.transport.requests import Request

from google.oauth2.service_account import Credentials

key_path='<Your Project ID>.json'

credentials = Credentials.from_service_account_file(

    key_path,

    scopes=['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform'])

if credentials.expired:

    credentials.refresh(Request())

PROJECT_ID = '<Your Project ID>'

REGION = 'us-central1'

!pip install -U google-cloud-aiplatform "shapely<2"

import vertexai

# initialize vertex

vertexai.init(project = PROJECT_ID, location = REGION, credentials = credentials)

from vertexai.language_models import TextGenerationModel

generation_model = TextGenerationModel.from_pretrained("text-bison@001")

prompt = "I want to self manage a bathroom renovation project in my home. \

Please suggest me step by step plan to carry out this project."

print(generation_model.predict(prompt=prompt).text)

  Earlier today, I have been working on a few GoldenGate Obey files that will setup a customer’s environment; that […]

The post AdminClient – ADD CREDENTIAL doesn’t do what you expect! appeared first on DBASolved.

Hello, I'd like to write a query based on dba_source/all_identifiers/all_dependencies to find all the queries/cursors that have more than x joins involved. Can you help me ? Regards Hans

We have a unique auditing requirement where we want to know all updates to the system by a 5 digit terminal no for a given time period. Each user input coming through the legacy network always has an associated 5 digit terminal no. This user input will be processed by WebLogic application server which may do lots of SQL updates to 10g RAC database. We know that these SQL updates will be logged by Oracle in Redo and Archive logs, which can be mined using Log Miner by giving transaction id (XIDUSN + XIDSLT + XIDSQN). So we were thinking of creating a table that can relate 5 digit terminal no to a series of oracle transaction id like the following: TerminalNo timestamp XIDUSN XIDSLT XIDSQN ---------- --------- ------ ------ ------ However, in order to achive the above, We will need the transaction id of the current transaction (XIDUSN + XIDSLT + XIDSQN) before we commit all updates. Each transaction in the system will insert a row in this table just before commiting, which will enable us to get all updates by a terminal no for a given period. So, how can I get the current transaction id of the transaction? Do you have any other idea for implementing same functionality. Thanks

Followers of the blog know I’m a big advocate for writing things down. The main reason I do this is because I want a record of everything I do. I rarely type a command directly into the command line. I nearly always type it in a scratchpad first. Currently I have 67,250 lines in my … Continue reading "Using a scratchpad…"

The post Using a scratchpad… first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Using a scratchpad… was first posted on September 13, 2023 at 7:45 am.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

This video is tutorial of fine-tuning large language model in Gradient using Python in AWS. With Gradient, you can fine tune and get completions on private LLMs with a simple web API. No infrastructure needed. Build private, SOC2 compliant AI applications instantly.

Commands Used:

!pip install transformer

!pip install gradientai --upgrade

import os

os.environ['GRADIENT_ACCESS_TOKEN'] = "<TOKEN>"

os.environ['GRADIENT_WORKSPACE_ID'] = "<Workspace ID>"

from gradientai import Gradient

def main():

  with Gradient() as gradient:

      base_model = gradient.get_base_model(base_model_slug="nous-hermes2")

      new_model_adapter = base_model.create_model_adapter(

          name="My Model"

      )

      print(f"Model Adapter Id {new_model_adapter.id}")

      sample_query = "### Instruction: Who is Fahd Mirza? \n\n### Response:"

      print(f"Asking: {sample_query}")

      # before fine-tuning

      completion = new_model_adapter.complete(query=sample_query, max_generated_token_count=100).generated_output

      print(f"Before fine-tuning): {completion}")

samples = [

    {

        "inputs": "### Instruction: Who is Fahd Mirza? \n\n### Response: Fahd Mirza is a technologist who shares his expertise on YouTube, covering topics such as AI, Cloud, DevOps, and databases."

    },

    {

        "inputs": "### Instruction: Please provide information about Fahd Mirza. \n\n### Response: Fahd Mirza is an experienced cloud engineer, AI enthusiast, and educator who creates educational content on various technical subjects on YouTube."

    },

    {

        "inputs": "### Instruction: What can you tell me about Fahd Mirza? \n\n### Response: Fahd Mirza is a content creator on YouTube, specializing in AI, Cloud, DevOps, and database technologies. He is known for his informative videos."

    },

    {

        "inputs": "### Instruction: Describe Fahd Mirza for me. \n\n### Response: Fahd Mirza is a YouTuber and blogger hailing from Australia, with a strong background in cloud engineering and artificial intelligence."

    },

    {

        "inputs": "### Instruction: Give me an overview of Fahd Mirza. \n\n### Response: Fahd Mirza, based in Australia, is a seasoned cloud engineer and AI specialist who shares his knowledge through YouTube content on topics like AI, Cloud, DevOps, and databases."

    },

    {

        "inputs": "### Instruction: Who exactly is Fahd Mirza? \n\n### Response: Fahd Mirza is an Australian-based content creator known for his YouTube channel, where he covers a wide range of technical subjects, including AI, Cloud, DevOps, and databases."

    },

]

      num_epochs = 5

      count = 0

      while count < num_epochs:

          print(f"Fine-tuning the model, Epoch iteration => {count + 1}")

          new_model_adapter.fine_tune(samples=samples)

          count = count + 1

      # After fine-tuning

      completion = new_model_adapter.complete(query=sample_query, max_generated_token_count=100).generated_output

      print(f"After Fine-Tuning: {completion}")

      new_model_adapter.delete()

if __name__ == "__main__":

    main() 

I would like to know your advice about migrating a database from WE8ISO8859P15 to AL32UTF8. We have a DB running WE8ISO8859P15 properly with a lot of applications, but a client suggests that it would be a good idea to change it so it is the same in their Java applications. These applications are not multilingual and they will never be, so do you think it would have some benefit? or won't be a good idea because of space consumption or other issues?

Just a little note about something that rubs me up the wrong way. I quite often get messages with the word URGENT in the subject or text. I scan through the content, and if it doesn’t seem truly urgent to me, I put it at the bottom of my list of things to do. Why? … Continue reading "URGENT : Why you should {almost} never put URGENT in your message"

The post URGENT : Why you should {almost} never put URGENT in your message first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.URGENT : Why you should {almost} never put URGENT in your message was first posted on September 12, 2023 at 8:18 am.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

I did a talk at the beginning of the year virtually in Slovenia at a security conference. The slides are available and I have added the paper also to our Oracle Security White Papers page . I have spoken about....[Read More]

Posted by Pete On 11/09/23 At 11:21 AM