Winter 2009 Questions:
What was the first US president to appear on a coin? ...and which
coin?
Answer:
Abraham Lincoln on the penny in 1909.
Controversy/conversations included: replacing the Indian head penny, too
low a denomination for Lincoln, the fact that a president should appear on our
money.
Fall 2009 Questions:
What year was the word "computer" first used to describe a
mechanical calculating device?
A: 1897,
B: 1912,
C: 1926,
D: 1942
Answer:
"A"...According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the
word "computer" was first used to describe a mechanical calculating
device in 1897. Although the word existed previously, it had been used to
describe "a person who computes or performs calculations."
Summer 2009 Questions:
What was Oracle’s first report writer called?
What major release of the database did it first appear?
What could it do that was not documented?
Answer:
RPT.
It first appeared with Oracle v4.1 and was renamed to SQL*Report in Oracle
v5. It could run DML as well as queries. The DML part was not
documented. This was really Oracle's first procedural language.
Spring 2009 Questions:
What was the first available
anti-virus program and how did it work?
Answer: There
was a lot of traffic on this one. Some say it was 'FluShot' by Ross
Greenberg that looked for various kinds of undesirable activity and removing
them. There were many integrity checkers and 'restore' products in the
late 1980s and early 1990s. McAfee might be scanning technology available
to the masses appearing in 1988?
Winter 2008 Questions:
What was the first hard drive capacity for a PC
and an Apple?
Answer: PC:
10mb (we often thought of what we would do with all that space!) Apple:
5mb
Fall 2008 Questions:
A PC in the 80’s was deemed to be IBM
compatible if it ran what program?
Answer: Microsoft
Flight Simulator (source: www.jayp.net/trivia)
Summer 2008 Questions:
What was the very first personal computer?
Choose Your Answer: TRS-80,
Commodore PET, Kenbak-1, Apple I? (source www.usefultrivia.com)
Answer: Introduced in 1971, the Kenbak-1 is
generally considered to be the world's first personal computer. Designed by John
V. Blankenbaker, the Kenbak-1 included 256 bytes of memory, ran at an operating
speed of about 1MHz, and sold for $750. Unlike many earlier machines it was a
true stored-program (Von Neumann) computer. Unfortunately for Blankenbaker, the
world wasn't quite ready for the personal computer. After selling only 40
machines, the Kenbak Corp. was forced to go out of business in 1973.
Spring 2008 Questions:
Superman’s alter ego was Clark Kent.
Lois Lane worked with both Clark and Superman. The cartoon Underdog (a
spoof/take off from Superman)…what was Underdog’s alter ego?
What was the name of the female reporter who interacted with Underdog?
Answer: Underdog was
'Shoe Shine Boy' and the female reporter Underdog was always saving was 'Sweet
Polly Purebred'.
Winter 2007 Questions:
What was the first computer that the Oracle RDBMS
ran on?
Answer: Oracle
V1 was developed on a Digital PDP-11 mini computer in late 1977. Source: The Difference Between God and Larry
Ellison by Mike Wilson.
Fall 2007 Questions:
What was this Oracle Logo called?
Answer: The
'Flying Grid'.
Summer 2007 Questions:
During the Oracle4 & 5 days what was the
secret code name Oracle employees used to get faster help when calling into
Oracle Support?
Answer: Joe
Redman. Telling the person who answered the phone that you were Joe Redman
would get you connected to a support manager ASAP.
Spring 2007 Questions:
If an inch of rain falls on an acre of land,
how many gallons of water fell from the sky?
Answer: 27,000 gallons!
Winter 2006 Questions:
When was the Thanksgiving Holiday established?
Answer: President Lincoln made the Last Thursday in November the official Thanksgiving Holiday in
1863.
"It
has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and
gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice by the whole American
People. I do therefore invite my Fellow citizens in every part of the
United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in
foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day
of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the
Heavens." A. Lincoln, October 1863 - Source Des Moines Register,
November 22, 2006.
Sara
Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, worked for 17 years to get Thanksgiving
recognized as a national holiday. She initially thought such a holiday
might help the nation avert the civil War and subsequently hoped it would help
heal the country's wounds. Source: Des Moines Register, Nov 23, 2006.
Fall 2006 Questions:
What was the original Oracle Forms program called? What Oracle
RDBMS version was it released with? How did it work?
Answer: Oracle
V4 had a utility called Fast Forms that generated a basic .inp file from a
series of questions. It was then common practice to edit this .inp file
and regenerate the intermediate file using IAG. IAP was the runtime interpreter.
This early version of forms used the Block technology that a single Oracle table
is associated with. There were no triggers!
Summer 2006 Questions:
How long does it take to raise baby rabbits for release?
Answer: About
6 weeks if their eyes are still closed and they are small like a mouse. If the mother bunny abandoned them, they probably are not weaned
yet. You feed them dog similac (formula) from a plastic eye dropper or a
small pet bottle with a nipple. Both the similac and feeders are
found at about any pet store. You only need one can as the bunnies grow
quickly. They like dandelions, fresh grass, and about anything they would
have eaten in your yard!
Spring 2006 Questions:
Who posed for the figures in Grant Woods famous American Gothic painting?
Answer: His Dentist and his sister! Grant
Wood grew up and spent most of his time in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area.
His work was on display last Nov in downtown Cedar Rapids.
This painting drew a 3rd place prize at the Chicago Institute
for Art in 1930 but it was the controversy surrounding how he depicted people
from the Midwest that made both the painting and Grand Wood popular.
Winter 2005 Questions:
Which init.ora parameter allows a SORT to bypass the buffer cache?
What is the easiest way to see desupported init.ora parameters?
Answer: Use the init.ora
parameter SORT_DIRECT_WRITES - TRUE to allow a SORT to bypass the buffer cache.
answer: sort_direct_writes = true
Desupported init.ora paramters start with an '_'. This query might help
identify them as well.
select kspponm NAME,
from x$ksppo
where ksppoflg = 1;
Fall 2005 Questions: What
was the character_mode Oracle administration tool before Server Manager?
Answer:
SQL*Plus. I am so glad that SQL*Plus has come back into the administration
picture. I never liked the fact that Server Manager didn't have the little
SQL buffer where you can use C/<string>/<new string>/ to fix your
syntax errors. A better answer was just submitted:..."sqldba lmode=y" preceed Server Manager, as a Oracle Admin tool?
>I recall, it was character mode (as well as motif?).
Summer 2005 Questions: What
was the code called that punch cards used? What
was the machine called that took the carbon out of multiple printed
copies? What was the standard computer paper of the 1970's called?
How many lines per inch did these old mainframe printers usually print?
What does PL/SQL stand for? What was used before PL/SQL?
Answer: The
punch cards used a code developed by Herman Hollerith for the 1890 Census Bureau
count. The code was called the Hollerith code...it had 2 patterns, an
upper set and a lower set. I believe
the machine used to separate the paper from its carbon copies was called a 'decollator'.
The standard printer paper for these big tractor-fed printers was called 'green
bar' paper...it had long green bars that were a half inch wide...followed
by a half inch of white space. These old printers printed 6 lines per
inch. We used to have these paper rulers that allowed us to see the column
positions across the page (VERY handy for languages like RPG) and the lines per
inch down the page. I still have one of these rulers!
PL/SQL stands for Procedural Language SQL. I believe it is
a subset/superset of the language ADA. We used a couple of techniques
before the advent of PL/SQL. In forms, we would 'select 'x' from DUAL
where <our edit cryteria>' as forms allowed one to branch on the
success/failure of a SQL statement. We also used the old RPT, Oracle's
first report writer. It had an undocumented feature that allowed you to
execute a SQL statement so one could write procedural code in RPT and run
it.
Spring 2005 Question: Who
wrote the first version of SQL*Plus and what was its name?
Answer: Yes,
this question was posed somewhat differently last year but since the newsletter
has several SQL*Plus articles, I thought I'd revisit it. Bruce Scott, one
of the original Oracle Corp employees wrote it for version 4. This tool
might have existed as an administrative tool prior to version 4 but it was
version 4 that received the TTITLE, breaks, and column format commands.
Amazing that this tool is so complete at its time that many of today's SQL*plus
scripts would probably work fine using this early version! Its original
name was User Friendly Interface, or UFI. His pet cat was named tiger and
the demobld.sql script that builds the EMP and DEPT demonstration tables still
bears his name: schema owner is SCOTT with a password of TIGER. Oracle V5
renamed many of the tools and this is where the SQL*Plus name was added.
Winter 2004 Question: Where was
the Ruben Sandwich first served?
Answer: In a
bowling alley in Omaha, Nebraska!
Fall 2004 Question: What was
Paul McCartney's first musical instrument?
Answer: A
trumpet that his dad gave him. The Lonely Hearts Club Band picture is
actually an old pic of his father's band and the Beatles had their faces imposed
into the picture.
Summer 2004 Question: What
are the 2 types of tables in Oracle and what are their official names?
Answer: There are
actually 3 different types of table structures: Heap, IOT, and External. When Oracle introduced Index-Organized Tables (breifly called
Index-Only Tables) in v7, they had to come up with a name for the existing
technology: Heap. Anyone knows exactly what this means?
Spring 2004 Question: What
was SQL*Plus named before it was called SQL*Plus? Which version of the
Oracle database did the change take place? Who was one of the original
developers of this useful tool?
Answer: UFI, or
User Friendly Interface. It was introduced in Oracle v4.1 (I still have
the original documentation set!). It's name was changed to SQL*Plus with
Oracle version 5. Scott Bruce was one of the original developers on UFI
and the demonstration tables (EMP & DEPT) assembled for this (Scott's pet
cat's name is still the password for this account yet today!) tool still bear
his name. Many of today's features in SQL*Plus were also available in this
early release of the tool. UFI was not only a nice SQL formatting tool but
was also used to administrate the database...sound familiar?
Winter 2003 Question: What
was the other popular relational query language prior to ANSI adapting SQL in
1989? What was the first relational query language?
Answer: QUEL.
Many of the other relational database systems of the 80s had adapted QUEL or Query Language. SQUARE was the first
query language: Specifying Queries as Relational Expressions. The first
SQL language was called SEQUEL but another firm had the trademark on that so SQL
was adapted by the IBM people working on System R. Source: The Difference Between God and Larry
Ellison by Mike Wilson.
Fall 2003 Question: Who was Oracle Corp's first
employee?
Answer: Larry's
friend and business partner Bob Miner. Young/fast programmer Scott Bruce
was the second employee. Yes, Scott's cat was named Tiger and the EMP and
DEPT demonstration tables under the schema SCOTT he developed early on live
on! Source: The Difference Between God and Larry
Ellison by Mike Wilson.
Summer 2003 Question: What
was Oracle Corp's first company name?
Answer: In 1977, Larry
Ellison founded Software Development Laboratories or SDL, Inc. If you
guessed Relational Systems, Inc, you guessed wrong! This name did not come into
being until early 1979. Source: The Difference Between God and Larry
Ellison by Mike Wilson.
