Statistics is power! ... And the goat...

Hmmm, you say absolutely stupid title? OK let's see whether you think the same after you read all this stuff.

No I'm not going to write about statistics on Oracle tables, although of course we must have stats on Oracle tables for CBO to operate as well as possible. I'm going to write a bit about a very old problem that now is at least partially resolved. And particularly - inablity to change e-mail in Oracle forums. In my previous blog entry I expressed hope that sometime in the future I'd be able to write another entry about it. Now the time has come. To be precise it came already 3 weeks ago on March 25.

And I was agreeably surprised that the time came so fast. According to this thread the problem started at July 2002. Since then many people many times write about this problem in feedback forum but the best what we got were promises about the bright future. Just like Communism that according to Khrushchev had to be built by 1980 but never started. And surprise, surprise! Just about two months after I published my article summarizing some statistics and counting all the desires, complaints and statements about inability to change the e-mail in 500 most recent threads we got it!

You see - my ego is fantastically high! ;)

OK I'll go down some steps.

The most I'm dare to think of - is that my article was one of the drops that broke up the big rock. But of course important drop that probably showed people the real size of the problem.

You see - my ego is fantastically high anyway even after stepping down! ;)

So I personally learned at least one thing - statistics is power! Even outside CBO!

And where's the goat you ask?
OK here is an old story (most probably already known to you in some variation):

A poor man comes to the rabbi complaining that his family has only one small room, many kids, and almost no money.
The rabbi says, "Take all your money, buy a goat, and keep the goat in your room. Come back in a month."
"But, rabbi, we don't have enough space even for us," the man said
"Just do what I say," the rabbi replied.
A month later the man comes back complaining that the goat smells and breaks everything.
"Sell the goat and come back in a month," the rabbi tells him.
A month later the man comes back to the rabbi with flowers.
"Thank you, rabbi! We're so happy the goat is out, now we have more room and some money!"

By objective considerations rabbi was a bit of cheater and poor man of course was stupid.

So we had a goat in our room for more than four years - much longer than poor man. Of course after removing our own "goat" the feeling is quite releasing and pleasing but we have to understand that it was removing the goat instead of giving a present.