Learning is not a spectator sport

Complete listing of posts

  • Sample schemas are now easier than ever

    Sample schemas are now easier than ever

    A couple of years back I wrote a post talking about how we wanted to publish the sample scripts in a git repo so they were not bound to database release cycles, but that this led to us being caught between a rock and hard place when it came to the layout of the scripts,… Read more

  • Better error messages means less errors

    Better error messages means less errors

    Although not strictly attached to the 23ai release of the database, one of the projects that is ongoing inside Oracle is improving the database error messages. People often make light of error messages, but they typically the first port of call when diagnosing an issue. I’ve lost track of the number of times my first… Read more

  • 23c for Developers is HERE

    23c for Developers is HERE

    23c is HERE and for the first time, Oracle is delivering before anything else, a free developers version. Truth be told this post is simply so that I can easily refer back to it for the important links which I’ll list below.  For all the official information, please refer to the official blog post: https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/oracle-database-23c-free… Read more

  • Avoiding INSERT glitches with SQL*Plus and SQLcl

    Avoiding INSERT glitches with SQL*Plus and SQLcl

    Sometimes in data centric applications, we want to store metadata (such as HTML or CSS or other such text) in a CLOB in a database table. For example, I might have a HTML file called “demo.html” that I want to later serve up to clients via APEX. If I want to simply change that to… Read more

  • A key difference between TP and TPURGENT

    A key difference between TP and TPURGENT

    When you are using Autonomous Transaction Processing database, as well as the LOW, MEDIUM and HIGH services that are also present on the Autonomous Data Warehouse offering, there are TP and TPURGENT services that you can use. I got asked by a customer how they differ, and while TPURGENT gets a little more slice of… Read more

  • When EZCONNECT is not so easy

    When EZCONNECT is not so easy

    Pop over to AskTom and you’ll see two entries that commonly pop up on our top 20 most viewed questions list. Because people new to Oracle can sometimes be a little overwhelmed with TNSNAMES file configuration and even for those experienced with it, it still becomes another configuration file that needs to be managed, deployed,… Read more

  • The new forums

    The new forums

    New year and I knew you want some new news about new forums!  (That’s a lot of “new” 😀) I’ll be the first to admit that there were some frustrations with our existing forum platform which didn’t help reinforce the strong community spirit that was always there on the forums over the years. For those… Read more

  • SQL engine and PL/SQL functions

    SQL engine and PL/SQL functions

    A common pattern I see in database code is the use of a PL/SQL package to hold constants to be used throughout the rest of the PL/SQL code base. In most cases, there is nothing wrong with this practice, but once you start incorporating this model into your SQL statements (as opposed to just using… Read more

  • The podcast is back for 2023!

    The podcast is back for 2023!

    Normally I don’t dedicate a post to just a podcast episode, because you can see them all here, but since it is the first for 2023, I thought I’d give it a shout out! First up is the wrap up of my chat with Dom Giles where we cover what is the role of the… Read more

  • ORDS upgrades are so easy

    ORDS upgrades are so easy

    Just a quick blog post today showing how easy it was for me to upgrade from ORDS 22.1 to the latest ORDS 22.4. It was just a case of downloading the software, and running it in “install” mode whilst pointing to the existing config directory.  (Obviously, for environments more serious than my local PC, I… Read more

  • Audit trails and the importance of TIMEZONE

    Audit trails and the importance of TIMEZONE

    I threw this little puzzle out on Twitter just before the New Year It was a little bit mischievous of me to post this because there are a number of ways in which you can get a ORA-46250.  Some of these are due to the way you audit is configured and others were due to… Read more

  • TEMP is a four letter word

    TEMP is a four letter word

    Happy New Year to all! With the next long term release (23ai) probably due some time this year, let’s start the new year with a simple change you might need to make in naming once you decide to make the switch past 19c. I discovered this when I was doing a simple demo with external… Read more