Lab128 History

Below are articles describing Lab128 milestones.

Lab128 is going to be 5 year old in 2010!

January, 2010

It will be 5 years in 2010 since Lab128 has been available to the Oracle community. It has evolved into a sophisticated and unique tool over these years. It has pioneered several techniques which has kept the tool on the cutting edge of the latest ideas and concepts in Oracle troubleshooting. There has been tremendous positive feedback coming from the growing user base. Lab128 has earned a reputation as a stable and valuable tool suitable for solving difficult database performance problems. We are proud that Lab128 is used in Fortune 500 companies, high profile universities, banking, medical and many other industries around the world.

In many respects, these 5 years have been very satisfying. The development of the product has been driven by academic interest, curiosity and much feedback from the users. There have been a number of people actively contributing ideas over the years (see Credits). The project was always open to the "things that make sense"; it has never been affected by marketing or financial pressure. We will certainly continue prudent fiscal and resource allocation practices to ensure many years of continuous innovation. We are grateful for the support by the users who have purchased licenses. We will maintain Lab128's affordability and focus on the value it brings to our customers.

About the original creator of Lab128

This software was originally created by me, Sergei Romanenko. Over last 25 years I have been working with computers, ranging from assembly/C/C++ programming, to database design and administration. For the last 15 years I have spent actively working with all flavors of Oracle DBMS, from version 7 to 10g, designing and supporting various systems from OLTP to VLDB. It could be said that Lab128 was developed by a DBA for the DBA.

As a DBA, I was collecting and developing a set of scripts, tools which were helping me get through the stress and fun of dealing with Oracle databases. Probably, as any DBA, I was not happy about any of the tools I was using at the time. This provoked me to develop a tool of my own. I was convinced that such tool should be darn fast: when a DBA is under stress, not a single thing should contribute to the stress. There was no way a choking java app could meet that end. Undoubtedly, it was going to be C/C++ or even assembly for critical loops. As it turned out, I was quite pleased with the result so I had a thought someone else might appreciate it too. Although I am still not happy how Lab128 does some certain things and lacks some functionality, I decided to turn it into a product and publish. Hopefully it deserves the attention of the Oracle community by being useful and inexpensive software. Its ultimate success will be judged by you - the users. Soliciting for feedback was another reason for publishing it.

The story of Lab128 started about 10 years ago. Since then, it went trough different periods. There were times when it was resting in the far corners of a hard drive while I was busy doing other projects. There were periods of rapid development and long nights when some neat ideas kept me awake. Well, that may be very familiar to anybody who has experienced an urge to see how a smart piece of code is going to do in a real life. Even more so, if it becomes useful in your professional work. That was hard, but it was something that I really enjoyed. I was lucky to blend my C/C++ and Oracle skills into something meaningful. There was no economic pressure developing Lab128 because I developed it in my spare time, in many respects for fun. I had the luxury of being allowed to rethink approaches and refactor the program as much as needed to get all the pieces of the puzzle fit each other. I was applying my vast experience in programming to get mature and stable code which I could be proud of.

Speaking about the cost of software, you might notice that in almost every workplace there is software which costs thousands of dollars and yet used very reluctantly. At the same time, some low-priced software or even freeware is something what the users will use all the time, reliably and efficiently doing the work it was designed to do. Taking into account the outrageously priced diagnostic and performance software for Oracle, I hope Lab128 falls into the second category. Again, your feedback and support will guide me through future development.

I have been privileged to do the development of Lab128 in New England (100% Made in the USA; not so wealthy to afford the outsourcing - let the big companies loose their money through the outsourcing overhead :-). Putting all politics aside, New England was the place where computer was born; that still inspires me very much.

Contact me by e-mail:

See also Credits