Category: RDBMS

Last year our firm (AMIS) celebrated its 15th anniversary. This year Oracle celebrates its 30th year of its existence. In that reflective light, I remembered a nice “Easter egg” regarding the database software. A long time ago, I guess somewhere in 1997, 1998, I was working as a DBA consultant for a big Dutch banking cooperation. Preparing for the upcoming year 2000 in those days we tested a lot of applications and databases regarding the year 2000 problems (date formats regarding: YY, YYYY, RRRR…), etc…

An UNIX (AIX) system administrator of this banking cooperation accidentally did a reset to the default date/time of an AIX (version 3.2?) machine (RS/6000): 01-01-1970. I am not absolutely sure, but I think it was this date. He did this while I was starting an Oracle database (Oracle V. 7.3.x) and to my surprise I got an Oracle error from the database that said something in the lines of…”Sorry, but this date / time setting can’t be correct, because the Oracle Company didn’t exist in those days”.

The other day I tested some Operating System / Oracle database combinations, in the light of the anniversaries (and for some fun), regarding this phenomena to see if I could reproduce the message.

I am a little bit disappointed now, because I couldn’t.

Some of the lessons I learned…