Oracle DUAL equivalent in Netezza

There is a view named _v_dual in Netezza that can be used to replace Oralce's Dummy DUAL Table.

For ex.,
In Oracle:
select sysdate from dual;

In Netezza:
select current_date from _v_dual;

(Please note also that there is no sysdate in Netezza)

Windows 64bit RAM Limit to 4GB (Or even Less)

Its called PAE (Physical Address Execution).
Once enabled, your system can see all the RAM installed on your PC.
In my case, I had 8GB RAM Installed but my windows 2008 server 64bit was showing me only 3070 used!!! what happened to remaining almost 5GB RAM!!!
After doing some research, found that PAE is disabled (dont ask me how to find if it disabled or not as seeing 3070 in Task Manager is enough for me to say that its disabled) and thats why my system was not utilizing all my 8GB.

This PAE is directly related with DEP (Data Execution Prevention) and as I disabled DEP (check my previous post) due to issues with Cygwin install, PAE is also disabled. So, to get my 8GB back I have to enable PAE but leave DEP Disabled so this is what I had to do to enable PAE.

OK. How do you enable that PAE thingy???

Open Command window (Run as Administrator) and type the following and reboot and wola you will see all your RAM.
C:>BCDedit /set PAE forceenable

I am sorry, I am no expert in Windows Internal and all these PAE and DEP stuff. http://www.giyf.com/ to find out more about these terminologies!!!

Cygwin - not able to install properly with error log "abnormal exit: exit code=-6"

First install of cygwin as Administrator account was successful on my new Windows Server 2008 and everything was working fine.

So, decided not to use Administrator account and thus removed all cygwin installation and tried to install again with the different OS Account ORACLE (Local Admin Group) and damn thing wont install.
Cygwin install takes about half hour to finish and then you see that cygwin\bin folder is almost empty and when you look into the log files (c:\cygwin\var\log\setup.log) you will see this error "abnormal exit: exit code=-6" for almost every single exe that needs to be copied into my c:\cygwin floder!!!

After doing some research found that its the thing DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is enabled and that thing is somehow blocking these cygwin installation to copy files!!!


How to Disable DEP:
Open Command window (Run as Administrator) and enter the following and reboot.

C:\>bcdedit /set nx AlwaysOff

Once booted, cygwin install went thru fine without any errors.

Check the next blog which is related when you disable DEP.