This is the 200th blog post on dohdatabase.com.

Take that, Sinan. Here’s my blog post number 200!

For a while, my good friend Sinan and I have been racing to the 200th blog post.

He has more page hits than me, but luckily the bet was on number of posts. Sinan, you owe me one.

The History

I started at Oracle almost five years ago, and I was encouraged by my boss, Mike Dietrich, to start a blog.

With 200 blog posts and almost five years at Oracle, that’s almost a blog post a week. I’m proud of that. Page hits doubled last year and this year will see some good growth as well.

What does that mean? I’m helping people!

I like helping people and it is my job. But blogging is some times hard – so I need fuel. That fuel is feedback.

No More Navel-gazing

For a content creator like me, feedback is essential for many reasons:

• It is my fuel. Knowing that my blog posts help you is what helps me to put in the extra effort it takes to blog.
• Your comments make my blog posts even better. Often, I’ve re-written blog posts based on your feedback.
• Your tricky questions make me learn new learn new things. I’m above to deep-dive into Oracle Restart because you’re asking for it.
• Your ideas help me shape the requirements for the next features in Oracle Database. The next version of AutoUpgrade can upgrade the RMAN catalog as part of a database upgrade – because a user gave me that good idea.
• Your complaints help me understand how we can improve our product. Today, a user reported an error to us, which led to a new pre-check in AutoUpgrade.
• Your likes are a quick (but sometimes needed) dosis feel-good.
• Your re-posts and comments on social media boost my reach and enable me to help even more people in the Oracle community.

Your Feedback Matters!

I first got in touch with my current boss, Mike, through a comment I left on his blog. This led to cooperation between my former employer and Oracle. Our cooperation turned into beta and reference projects and peaked – for me personally – when I presented with Mike and Roy at Oracle OpenWorld.

You never know what your feedback will end up with.

Thanks for staying with me for the first 200 blog posts. Here’s to the next 200 blog posts!

Your Feedback Matters!