On several occasions I have provided well formatted, easy to read information with the pertinent details, only to be asked questions that would be easily answered if the analyst just read the SR.

There was a time when Oracle was making a point of requesting RDA reports with a new SR – I dutifully would install RDA and upload the report.
RDA reports are very informative, but again there would be questions (that were wasting time) that could have easily been answered by reading the RDA report.

One of my most outstanding non-support support issues was not with Oracle, but ETrade.
I wrote a comprehensive and well organized report – screen shots showing the problem and explanatory text.
It was 3 pages, but with screenshots it only took 5 minutes to read and understand.
The analyst just plain never looked at it.
( ETrade BTW is the source of my 1st and 2nd worst technical support experiences)

So, the jaded DBA (me in this case) gets a little tired of writing documentation that will not be read, resulting in a positive feedback loop with negative consequences.

This is not true of all support analysts of course, as some are very good, but we all recognize the stalling techniques employed at times by some support techs.

In the example given in the article, the analyst might have gone to the trouble of providing the script, if he could judge that perhaps the DBA at the other end was not quite up to the task of doing so.

Food for thought.

It’s on my todo list.
In the meantime, here’s a link to a recent Google Groups (Usenet newsgroups as was) item from Mladen Gogala that captures a good overview, and includes a link to an article that might help. And here’s a link to a note from Christian Antognini that introduces a paper he wrote on the subject some time ago.

And Oracle are trying to make it easier to help them help us with the “Test Case Builder”.
For reference – there’s a little write up and a couple of links at this URL.

Would you please consider writing something about bloom filters and how they are implemented in Oracle.

Kind Regards

Even saying “make it so you could read it” is a bit suspect – not everyone has gone through British schooling. Some people are well practiced at reading output that is Dalek Ecrin.

If unable to create a reproducible test case, it usually means I don’t fully understand the problem.