As a database programmer and administrator I am always challenged when it comes to building applications. I am not a front end guy and the only dynamic web language I know is ASP, no not ASP.NET, but good old ASP. Since ASP is not used in my company it is not a very good skill set.

Oracle Application Express might just be the answer I have been looking for. I am in the processes of installing it on a test box and I will post more when I get the thing going.

I recently read an article by Steven Warren entitled Vista is not ready for the corporate world.  I could not disagree with the article title more, well sort of.  In the article he make several assumptions that are plain false.  I did get a kick out of his statement “Prior to Vista, the default in Windows was to run as administrator”.  Since Steven is talking about the corporate world this statement is amusing.  A good system engineer will not setup any user as a local administrator by default.

In the rest of the article he addresses the need for updated driver and working out “kinks”.  He provides no evidence of these so called kinks.  Also with proper testing before deployment in a production environment you would certify hardware and software that will work on Vista.  Does Steven think that future OS will always work with legacy hardware and software?  He also address the issues with the new user access control (UAC) in Vista.  This issue is easily solved by training which should already be done in any corporate roll out of a new operating system.

Vista is quite ready for the business world, assuming you follow the tried and true steps for rolling out a new OS.  Generally these steps will take time.  In many cases 8-9 months or longer of testing, training, and validation.  During this time bug and security fixes will be coming out. In all I found Steven’s article very inaccurate and misleading.

So you manage IT, manage technology, and mange people. Do you know what you are doing? No really do you? I guess it all depends on where you come from and your attitude. Some of US IT managers come from the techie side of the house and have no formal management training. Other’s of us come from the business side of the house and have a lot of training. Still the question remains, do you know what you are doing?

In a leadership role it is always important to act humble yet show a great deal of confidence. So that even if you don’t know what you are doing your team, peers, and your bosses should not know that. I also mentioned attitude earlier. Even if you really do know what you are doing, in your own mind you should always except the reality that there is always more to learn.

So how do you get from either not knowing what you are doing or needing more management knowledge to where you want and need to be? I would say experience would be number one, do it and do it all day long. The second most important thing you can do is to read. Read about management. Read books about technology managers. Read magazine about management. I will continue to read these book and periodicals and review them on this site. The first book I thought I would review is Successful Manager’s Handbook: Develop Yourself, Coach Others

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I have not posted in quite some time on this blog.  Check back often as I plan on updating this blog frequently.