Learning is not a spectator sport

Complete listing of posts

  • Virtualbox 7.2.4 upgrade … grrr

    Virtualbox 7.2.4 upgrade … grrr

    I upgraded my VirtualBox install from 7.2.2 to 7.2.4 yesterday and any VM that was using Host Based Networking suddenly failed to start. Toggling the Network Adapter on and off for the affected virtual machine(s) settings did not help. If I removed the Host-only networking, then the machines were fine, but I needed that so Read more

  • Tuning SQL without any access

    Tuning SQL without any access

    Wherever our database resides, it is often the case that we want our developer to have access to performance tools in order to ensure that the SQL they write will not cause any issues when it arrives in Production. However, this can present a few challenges when it comes to a database that might not Read more

  • APAC conferences wrap up

    APAC conferences wrap up

    Conferences ARE BACK in APAC – Perth, Melbourne, and New Zealand! After not having conferences last year, it was fantastic to see a full APAC conference circuit this year. This season took me to Perth, Melbourne, and Wellington – each with a nice buzz in the community, reminding me of why these events are so Read more

  • South Africa Oracle User Group conference was a blast!

    South Africa Oracle User Group conference was a blast!

    I was very fortunate to attend the South African User Group Conference last month. It was my first time in the country and, as with all places you’ve never visited before, checking your own government’s travel website never talks about the good, it always highlights a litany of potential risks 🙂 However, I found the Read more

  • Turbo boost your LOBs and JSON

    Turbo boost your LOBs and JSON

    Go back a few decades before XML and JSON and you could easily categorise data into (roughly) two categories: small data, like names, addresses, descriptions, numbers, dates, etc big data, like documents, videos, images, etc That was pretty much “it” when it came to storing data in your database. As such, in Oracle we had Read more

  • XMLTYPE on Autonomous

    XMLTYPE on Autonomous

    Yes it’s true. People are still using XML. I know that many of us have leapt aboard the JSON hype train, but good old XML still has its place in the IT world. We’ve had XML in the database for decades now, and as such, we also support it on the Autonomous database. In the Read more

  • SQL trace on Autonomous

    SQL trace on Autonomous

    I’ve blogged before about activating SQL trace on autonomous database, but here’s a little addenda that you might appreciate. Lets assume I’ve done the setup as described in the blog and now I’m going to do some tracing on a long running SQL statement SQL> alter session set sql_trace = true; Session altered. SQL> select Read more

  • The AI World 2025 mega download!

    The AI World 2025 mega download!

    We’ve all been there… You head over to the Session Catalog for AI World and you want to download the files for all of the sessions you have been to, and all of the sessions you have missed. Then you discover… you need to click on each session to see the file name to download…. Read more

  • Wrapping up Oracle AI World

    Wrapping up Oracle AI World

    Its been a great few days at Oracle AI World! Of course, there  is lots of buzz around AI but it was great to still see the high level of interest in the core database tech. A huge thank you to everyone who came to my session — or dropped in at the database booth Read more

  • Security predicates exposed #JoelKallmanDay

    Security predicates exposed #JoelKallmanDay

    Since way back in version 8.1 of the database, there has been a cool feature in Oracle called Virtual Private Database (VPD), which essentially lets you force predicates into SQL statements run by users to ensure that they can only see the data they are entitled to see. Here’s a trivial example, where I’ve decided Read more

  • Soft Deletes via Partitioning

    Soft Deletes via Partitioning

    Community friend Gwen Shapira tweeted this the other day This is a common design pattern in Oracle databases (and many others) use a DELETED_FLAG style column to handle “soft deletes.” Instead of physically removing rows, you mark them as deleted with a flag. This allows applications to retain history, enable easy recovery, and avoid the Read more

  • My Session Picks for AI World – Thursday

    My Session Picks for AI World – Thursday

    Some people think “Since Thursday is a half day I’ll skip it” but some of the best content of the conference will be on Thursday. In particular, one of my favourite speakers Nigel Bayliss will be talking about one of my favourite topics, the optimizer.  There’s a lot of cool stuff on Thursday that you Read more