24-06-2013 13-49-43Oracle Data Provider errors can often be the most useless text you’ll ever read. They never seem to offer any assistance in actually finding out what the problem is.

Take the one I’ve been presented with this morning. The error to the right is one that normally strikes fear into any developer who uses the ODP library for accessing an Oracle database from the .NET framework. Usually it points to a corrupt Oracle Home folder or a misaligned registry entry, but it’s never an easy one to solve.
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The last time I was “North of the Border” was when I was a wee boy of five years. Holidaying in Fife, close to where my grandfather was born, was the only place in Scotland I’d ever visited.

So not only was I overjoyed at having my session, “Rewriting Software is the biggest mistake a software company can make”, being accepted for a second time – and therefore dispelling the idea that the first acceptance at DDD9 was a bit more than a fluke – but I was also over the moon at being given the opportunity to make the journey upto Scotland.

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