How many lacs is crores in INR !

This is rather an evidence of what used to be a funny liner in Tamil - 'oru Kodi/laksham kku evlo zero theriyuma?'

Oscar(s) for AR Rahman !

This is going to be one of those million posts that come from Rahman fans across the country and the world. Many have been expressing their joy and pride on FM and television channels already. I just want to take a moment and praise this genius for the honor he has brought to our Country and its music.

I will restrain from writing how big a Rahman fan I have been. I wanted to write a post since last two months after a string of musical hits he has delivered in the last couple of years. Jodha Akbar, Jaane Tu, Yuvraaj, Ghajini, Delhi -6, Sakkarakatti and this world known Slumdog Millionaire - all gave him a versatile scope for music. Rahman in an interview said, they (SDM crew) wanted to keep Slumdog millionaire music or movie under wraps until oscars are announced. I am sure they had known the destiny of the film themselves.

I and many other million fans of Rahman out there feel great pride and joy on this occasion.

Stone abutment on Roads..

This is sure peril for motorists and in cases for even passenger cars. There are crucial roads where one can easily find such misplaced bricks lying on the road, making already arduous "city drive" a dangerous one too. Observing a little more, I realised these stones were put just to shift the traffic hotspot to a farther spot.

Taking wrong side drive for a shorter distance or driving through one way is common for our country men, one can not be surprised to see such behaviour these days especially at the record high gas prices and scorching subcontinent summer. Concrete bricks that are small enough to be moved by just limbs of a two wheeler rider, forms the mode of abutment between lanes.

Will the concerned department take care to atleast put steel barricades instead of such dangerous stones, despite the increase in steel price (Start believing life is costlier than some cheap steal) ? Even the traffic officials who redirect or stop such violating vehicles are disdained by drivers. What is holding officials to charge a ticket to these violators when they could catch helmet defaulters so vigorously. Can one wearing helmet being hurled by such a violating vehicle overcome life danger ?

It would have been applaudable if choosing flyover/overbridge spots happened effectively - in terms of time and place. Also, with about almost 20,000 individuals commuting per day on average to various software companies on the IT highway/OMR, it would be wiser to have some sort of mass transportation like Metro or express highways/busses.

I could hear the reader uttering when I would stop fretting about pandemic traffic woes.

Ridiculous, Mr. President !

Certainly, the comment of US President Mr. Bush over raising food prices, has kindled controversy - in the Asia, in particular . Earlier, US President reasoned increasing prosperity of the Asian countries viz., China and India, has caused in soaring food prices in the world. In detail, he explains it as the increasing demand of the "quality food" from the India and China as the leading cause for the global inflation.

Supporting facts of this argument could be : 1) More airline users in India since the last decade, leading to increase in demand for turbine gas 2) More cars on roads, there are still many nations believing Indians ride on bullock carts 3) Increase in education level, leading to nutrition awareness.

This is infact an unnecessary comment in a situation of US Economy recession that had resulted due to millions of US $ spent on Wars and measures to check and fight terrorism. States is still one of the leading nations using bio gas and hosting leading manufactures of cars that use bio gas. It is surprising how Mr. President has not taken into consideration, the increase in bio gas utilization. There is an unpredictable change in local weather conditions due to reasons like Global warming that had affected in the food production globally. Considering the age and importance, still agricultural industry is growing at a much lesser pace compared to technology or communications industries that it is fighting to meet the ends up, which is proven by the UN food reserves.

BMC (Vendor) Backup for DB2

IBM delivers Imagecopy(Backup) feature with utilities suite. But, there are some amazing innovations and obvious "should have done" features are covered in BMC Imagecopy. Some of the features (I might have really missed any, in my study) that is going to make the buyers happy for this BMC Copy Plus are:

1) Inline statistics - This is an important functionality IBM missed to cover. BMC collects/updates the information pertinent to tablespace. Sure this is going to be a rocking feature in partitioned tablespaces.

2) Copying index (Defined with COPY NO) - BMC overrides the IBM's protocol and manages to create imagecopy of index that are not copyable as per IBM/definition. Though index could be recovered by REBUILD against using naive RECOVERY, during disaster of huge objects,this is going to fasten the recovery, provided table, index copies are intact.

3) Dynamic syscopy choice - This feature is going to be loved by DBAs. By OUTSIZE and BIGDDN/BIGDSN, BMC lets the choice of syscopy file to be made dynamically at the execution time considering the size of the file to be copied. This could help DBAs to put bigger tables on Tapes and smaller ones on DASD. Think of the case when table grows in size where you do not realise a huge table being copied on DASD later. Isn't this sweet ?

4) Syscopy files according to IC Type - Are you running CHANGELIMIT (m,n) ICTYPE AUTO ? Not sure how to name incremental and full image copies differently ? With IBM, all the copies (whatever type !) gets created in similar files. FULLDDN/FULLDSN and COPYDDN/RECOVERYDDN could be used together wherein full IC (if chosen) goes to FULLDDN while incremental IC (if chosen) goes to COPYDDN.

5) Incremental copy, still changed pages intact - RESETMOD yes/no is going to tell BMC program whether DBA likes to reset the modified pages flag on taking incremental copies. In case incremental IC is corrupted/lost, he could just rerun to create another incremental one. Also, BMC lets an option (MAXINCRs) to escalate a incremental IC to Full IC if a certain number of incremental ones are done after a full IC. This would sum up the backup strategy for a week.

Twenty Rupees (INR)

Paying utilities online, purchasing through credit card, fuelling once a week and with hardly any time to step out on a working day - Life has got simple in many ways and monotonous in few ways. And, people who purchase food coupons (sodexho pass, Ticket restaurant) would run their lunches without Currency Notes. So, I never check my wallet everyday or often to see well I am running.

It was a working day. Unusually, I didn't carry a lunch to office. Food coupons left at desk itself, I was shocked to see just twenty (20) rupees in my wallet. Lunch Meal starts at Rs 40 and uncompromising peep for a Dosa shocked me. Dosas start at 25 Rs. A south indian Filter coffee is Rs 20. I,surely,can not run the rest of the day with just coffee. I nostalgically thought of the college days (1998-2002) where I bought Dosa for Rs 4 and coffe for Rs 1.75. I felt twenty has become such a denomination that a software engineer (by profession, designation varies. So, dont read between lines here) could not get a meal for lunch.

End of the day - Evening, I had to go Cathedral Road for a quick shopping - I can do that plenty with my mentioned wallet condition. I did a circumstantial traffic signal violation, to be rightly spotted by the traffic policeman stood by the signal. He held no papers to give me notice. He sidelined me to be looked down by on goers. Embarrassed by the happenings, I willed to clear the fine and move on. Started demanding Rs 200 for violation, they ended getting Rs 20 (Twenty) from me, because of the fact they could not hand over notice paper to me. I had to go through the usual police crap enquiries about my living, parents and their occupation.

When I hit bed, I was little happy twenty rupees is still a denomination when it comes to bribery.

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation

There was a family head/man who had great love on his lady/wife. They showered love on each other and by law of nature/science, they got a baby. Parents took care of the baby and persistantly, the baby received everything it would need, to have a happy childhood. But, the couple's love for each other increased and got a half dozen kids after few years. Parents had no way but, split the love and facilities among the half dozen kids. Now, the older kid could see the difference in love and facilities,it reeived. On the other hand, parents had no idea of the proceedings while the kid have no control to stop his parents making love or making its own life/money. Woman was happy seeing his man to show persistent love for her. Man was happy as his lady made love everytime he wanted.

There was a state government which got in love with multinational investors. Multinationals loved the government for its subsidiaries. Their love for each other resulted in jobs and hence migration of people towards jobs. People were happy with the growth in lifestyle, increase in economy. Persistent love of Government and MNCs for each other increased the number of jobs to an extent,there were so many jobs and hence a much greater population dependant on them. Now, the older generation job holders could start sensing the fall in facilities and convenience/care from the government.Neither they could make correction to investment policies of the government nor could they make their own way earning/living.

Chinese Proverb : "If you are planning for a year, sow rice if you are planning for a decade, plant trees if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. "

Diwali - A Well packaged Day :-)

Diwali had been a dull, "its all special programs on TV" day for me so far. Oflate, EMI lifestyles bored me to a have lavish celeberations... But,I could call Diwali '07 as the best Diwali in my life. I had all that I could wish for....My sister and in-laws coming home, some nice time with my special friend and last but not least first day show of my most awaited Tamil/Indian movie of the year... I had good emotional spectrum

That was a pretty long day spanning for almost 23 hours and those moments are sure to cherish in my life. I hope many would have had a very nice time on this Indian Festival.

I am happened to see lots of lightworks this time instead of "sound"works. This is much better way to enjoy a Diwali as it is a festival of light. This reduced noise pollution and gave a lot better ambience for my telephonic conversation especially.

After about a year...

More than a year, since I spent blogging. Really wanted to break monotony, blogging same same shits cribbing living conditions or how imperfect my part of world or the countrymen around me was. Now that I restarted writing, doesn't mean, things have changed. I wanted to break monotony now too. For a change, I thought I might well blog. People who have read Joseph Heller's Catch 22 would understand it better.

This one year had been great. Lots of travelling, learning, work, photography, music,girls. Well, I had to add few to break my complex. So, depending upon readers, pick few of them and this would be safe for me to defend when I speak to you next time.

I certainly promise I won't write music, society in near future. I swear.

So, welcome me back. :-)

Useless Myths

A Little bouncer in my page ......

A too much talked of matter in my gym recently. Number of women who dump their boys outnumber the boys who dump their gals. Gym is flanked with guys who suffer in their love relationship or who are dumped so badly. Two obvious reasons that show up this is from the choice of songs they flip-in and the amount of time (in evening) they spend in gym. Young lads had chosen the gym to shed off their anger and frustration with their bad taste in love.

Common theories that circulated on a sunday morning...

1) People coming to gym of two categories... Married men with little too big belly who want to escape from their "better-halves" and, obviously the final year college studs who want to impress their gfriends.

2) Anybody in relationship, the duration of it is ideally 3 years and it had not gone beyond it. It applies to even people who dont visit gym.

3) One should work out as much as possible and equally grab rest to the bones and muscles. Both of them are important equally to have a healthier body.

4) A gal or boy who is in first love with their partner finds it comparitively harder to leave the other !

5) People who come to gym in morning are of "weight loss" category and who come in evening are of "weight gaining" category.

6) Always, first few days of month has crowded gym with new enrollments and after 10 days, the crowd die down to have only regular visitors.

& Many more which I forgot !!!

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb ???

Ofcourse, only solution is Love & Peace ! This is what Bono(U2) has got to say. Happenned to see the Rock show of U2 a week back on a Friday night on Vh1. Offlate, I pay more attention to lyrics than voice or music that I am scrapping off Tamil musics mostly.

If there is one song I like to hear everyday while I brush is (not the Suprabatham) the Beautiful Day. "All that You can't Leave Behind" is an awesome album and that made me to hear more of U2's earlier works. This has all the values to defeat Eminem's super hit album (Eminem Show) in Grammys then !

New pictures

It's my long weekend with surprisingly no weekend official commitments and unsurprisingly no plans with girlfriend. I've grabbed some time and updated my flickr with few of my favourite captures. I just realised, when it comes next to my job, I love photography ! Unfortunately, this part of world doesn't offer much to be shot and with a great memory which even forgets to carry mobile phone , can't carry camera everyday.

So, guys who come here..have a visit to my flickr and what else, have a happy viewing !!!

DB2 & UDB ????!!!????

Recently happenned to come across a really valuable blog site . Many might have known Craig Mullins and his expertise on database, DB2. I felt it is late I knew of this site.

Iam grabbing time then n there to go through all the possible posts he has made. One of which I read recently is on nomenclature on DB2. My mailbox is flooded with job notifications from consultants & HR professionals saying "both DB2 & UDB mandatory skills". I would like to stress DB2 or UDB is one and same. DB2 expands to DataBase 2 and UDB expands to Universal DataBase. So, DB2 & UDB are always together. IBM named its database as "DB2 UDB". But, there are variants of DB2 depending upon operating systems.

OF the DB2 family, DB2 base code (that are database functionalities) is one and same for all these variants (just like Lx or Lxi or Vxi of Maruti Cars, they all have same engine specs). The OS interface layer is customized depending on the OS and to leverage OS features. But, even among professionals, it is common to refer DB2 on Windows or Linux or Unix as "UDB" which really frustrates me , at times. Even on IBM's Zseries machines (S/390 too), the DB2 is UDB !

So, it is either DB2 UDB for LUW or DB2 UDB for Z/oS !!

Rather a Late wake up !

International Business Machines (IBM) , Accenture IT consulting and Electronic Data Systems (EDS) are direct competetitors in american IT consulting market and on global basis too, apart from facing competetition from Indian Cos on outsourcing. In the BPO war, Accenture is the late one to enter cheaper destination - India but, I would say it is the one who captivated on this earlier and faster ! As IBM saw Accenture growing in sub-continent, it too pulled up the sleeves. IBM has grown from mere 6,000 employees in 2001 to 43,000 employees now in 2006 which includes their bought out companies in the last two years (like Daksh).

EDS which is the one who started IT outsourcing much earlier than other two bigges, in the days when it was not even called outsourcing. Almost a decade now since EDS been in Indian soil and the employee headcount stand 2,500 at the beginning of 2006. What a difference ? Continuously posting lossess in revenue due to few wrong judgements with the contracts pushed EDS to a shell that it didn’t captivate on the offshoring benefit.

Now resurrecting slowly, EDS too jumped into increasing the headcount in India. But, indian IT market is more volatile (now !) than the melting ice or burning camphor that it couldn’t balance between hiring and attrition. And, to match up with fellow bigges who have mammoth difference in headcounts, definitely hiring over the weekedays + weekends not going to help.
Mphasis !!

EDS purchased 62% stake in the Indian Outsourcing company which has about 15,000 employees and initiated a merger involving EDS and Mphasis. Anything more on this deal or whats in store for employees of mphasis or EDS or what changes on corporate world… Wait for corporate release from EDS's Jeff Heller or Mike Jordan from the Plano (Texsas).

Such stuffs easily pick my eyes

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1982473.cms

In crisp :

UNEASY TRUTH

Average yearly salary of Dalit students is Rs 2 lakh less than general category students. These students have lesser work experience, are slowtrack and usually take three years to complete the two-year course IIMs have not carried out any path-breaking research despite the kind of money that is pumped into them

Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu - A Kamal Movie ????????

Now that the TV channels have played all the key scenes and the songs of the movie, I dont find myself guilty to write review because, I am going to reveal story and suspense of the movie - vettaiyadu vilaiyadu. The movie's main attractions are the lead male actor Kamal hassan and the music which were chartbusters already. Kamal,as a cop nabbing psycho killers, has a "stupidest" mass hero punch dialogue entry which he has not done in the past 10 years or so but, the song showing a typical 'Gautham Menon's stylish cop' relieves the fans. Probably, this is the kamal film that has commercially super duper hit songs in the last 10 years or so. So, one could expect kamal songs on TV more often this year.

Kamal goes on, hunting for the psycho killers, with too feeble evidences and soon, director realises it is better to show off the killers in an unexpected bumpy scene just before Intermission. Soon after the interval, the cops reach to the killers and director felt he has to run the movie for one more hour. So, he lets the guys escape and intrude into India from Newyork, to save on few production cost too! Can't the NYPD freeze suspects' bank accounts or atleast trace it ? When NYPD could get immigration details of Indians, they could have atleast asked to watch for passports and that way, could have stopped suspects to leave a nation !

Screenplay of the movie is so pathetic that songs come to irritate on a supposed to be a thriller movie. Kamal's flashback sequences could have been placed somewhere when he narrates to Jyothika instead of where it is now. Investigation of a murder in NY is just same as what in Indian Village Keernoor and fails to get any interest for me. Kamal talks of confidential investigation details from a payphone on street. NYPD cops enter house without search warrant and one cop get killed and there seems to be no investigation on it at all to spare our Indian police hero back home ! That Kamal-jyothika episodes in second half drags so much to test viewer's patience. I was expecting a song when the duo hold hand and walk just befor climax. That lousy song 'Uyirilae' and a beach song (think, it was outsourced to Hindi Film Industry !) could have just been on audio. Jyothika is (emotionally) sick in this movie and doesnt fail to impart it on viewers whenever she appears !

Director again realises that the police finding out killers again would take another episode and makes the killer just hit with police to end the film. The cast, character names, crew all are almost same from Gautham's previous movie and it could have been avoided. Slick photography on NY landscapes and the music (though it reminds one of Backstreet Boys, Fat Boy Slim and his own ) receives accolades.

My eyes are my camera !

Rehman's come back ???

jillendru oru kaadhal (T)

There has been quite lot of expectation and hype for both the movie & the music. After long time, CD covers carried Rehman's stills and obviously the seemingly love story relied a great deal on music. AR Rehman has been typical in his album again. His songs are noises in beginning and on repeated listening, the music grows on you. I have certainly been patient & iterated the songs many a times before concluding on opinion.

This album shows Rehaman's mastery over choice of voice needed for the song to make it better. Especially Tanvi's Title track, Shanker Mahadevan in 'Machakaari', Jr SPB in 'Majaa Majaa' and his own in 'Newyork Nagaram'.

The opening note for the album is disappointing, which is unbelievable & unfortunate. May be the song goes good with the video or the script. Rock & roll title song seems no better than his own 'Hello mister' in Iruvar. 'Spiderman' from New, 'thazhuvudhu nazuvudhu' from A Ah are far better than his 'Majaa Majaa' here. The tunes have been very mediocre for Rehman's standards and one gets a feeling that Rehman himself had done better songs of this genre already.

'Munbae vaa' and 'New york nagaram' are the only two songs that draw attention on first few hearings and this album certainly has n't put rehman or his fans on top.

How interesting is LOAD ?

How to put a record into a table ? SQL INSERT !
How to put 10 records into a table ? SQL INSERT 10 Times !! But, what if the record/table has tediously long list of fields/columns ?
How to put 100, 1000, million rows into a table ? IBM came up with LOAD utility (but, ofcourse they would have thought of LOAD even before attempting to insert 100 or 1000 rows *gag* ). It is their wise decision to isolate privilege for LOAD from other authorities and helped programmers and DBAs to delegate testing related LOAD tasks to development team.

LOAD can add/append data to non-empty table or replace the data as well. RESUME is the keyword against the much anticipated one APPEND and consiously RESUME YES stands to be the default. REPLACE is the keyword to flip data. It is allowed to use REPLACE keyword on an empty table. But, the interesting thing is: RESUME YES can work on an empty table as well But,the RESUME NO will not work on a non-empty table. Logical understanding of these constraints made me think, there is some sensible brains behind IBM Software Labs.

LOADing Partitioned tablespace would throw more interesting things that the REPLACE or RESUME keywords can be used in tablespace level or at partition level. A Partition is nothing but a part of tablespace (tablespace is divided into 'n' parts) and mainly aimed at increasing parallelism. Because, most of the operations on any Partition can be done independant of other partitions. For example, each partition could be defined to have similar data for different departments and any data engineering could be done concurrently for each departments.

A REPLACE on the tablespace level, deletes all the data from all the partitiones of the tablespace, before loading. The LOAD statement could be loading particularly for just one or few of the Partitions alone. Unfortunately and unexepectedly, remaining data would be lost. A REPLACE keyword on the partition level just deletes the data from the partition alone.

LOADing the partitions concurrently is absolutely doable but, on conditions. The LOAD involves the building of Non-partioning indexes(NPI) too and parallel loading of partitions will not work if the paritions are loaded from different MVS jobs. Some used to drop such NPIs to do parallel LOAD and then recreate the dropped ones. However DB2 in its V7 brought in feature to LOAD partitions of a tablespace in parallel, if they are done in a single MVS Job step. The Keys for PI & NPIs are collected in parallel LOADs and later build.

Improve performance of the LOAD by building index in parallel during the RELOAD itself. SORTKEYS would tell DB2 to do it. An optional keyword in V7, IBM made it default in V8 that, anywhere the process of LOAD fails during the RELOAD phase, the process starts from the top. Its pity that its good when its good and very bad when its in bad state. In a way, parallel build and the default SORTKEYS give a sigh of relief when the data is loaded in RESUME YES mode. Since the reloaded records are rolled back, the database is not corrupt or inconsistent. If it is in V7 LOAD RESUME YES, the table goes corrupt and it becomes a complicated scenario to set it right.

Is LOAD = crude LOAD + REBUILD + CHECK DATA + IMAGECOPY + RUNSTATS ?? Yes, it is. There are times, when I had done LOAD in bits N pieces.

PS: The author of this post is a
IBM Certified Specialist - DB2 v6.1/7.1 User
IBM Certified Solutions Expert - DB2 UDB V7.1 Database Administration for Os/390
IBM Certified Solutions Expert - DB2 UDB V7.1 Applications Development
IBM Certified Database Administrator - DB2 UDB V8.1 on Linux, Unix & Windows
&
A Fucked up confused bachelor with lots of distasteful thoughts and lives on profanity.

A Ride through IT CITY

Fidelity Business Services India.

Goldman Sachs

DELL
Microsoft I
IBM GSI
Microsoft II

Undeniably, Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of Asia :-) On the otherside of this Embassy Golf Links (EGL) was Yahoo!,Covansys, ANZ IT, Conexant, Bharti IT and so many. The life was so *colorful* for last 2.5 years !