• My Session Picks for AI World – Monday

    My Session Picks for AI World – Monday

    AI World is nearly here, so here are my picks for some cool sessions that might interest fellow Database and APEX professionals. If you can, make sure you are coming into Vegas on Sunday night so you can take advantage of some amazing full day deep dive training on Monday Monday If AI is your… Read more

  • The Moment for Database Documentation has come!

    The Moment for Database Documentation has come!

    Confluent Director Adi Polak posted this tweet earlier today regarding SQL and understanding the data model. I’m in agreement with her on both things, namely SQL is not a difficult thing to learn, no matter how much FUD is out there on social media about it being “impossible” for developers to learn. Understanding a data… Read more

  • MERGE in 23ai – so much more than RETURNING

    MERGE in 23ai – so much more than RETURNING

    Oracle ACE Andrej Pashchenko recently did a blog post covering a nice addition in 23ai, the ability for MERGE to use the RETURNING clause. Check his post for several examples, but as quick TL;DR, here is a simple example of the evolution. My base will be all people in department 10 and 20 from the… Read more

  • Low code is dead

    Low code is dead

    I was watching a live stream recently about using AI tools to generate applications, and obviously “vibe coding” is getting a lot of attention nowadays. My interest here was just trying to stay up to date with my skills on the various development platforms that are getting lots of traction. But during the live stream,… Read more

  • Mixing and matching

    Mixing and matching

    I’ve written some complex software in my years as an Oracle professional, but I’m happy to concede that nothing comes remotely close to the complexity that must be present to run the Oracle database. Such an incredible array of features, so many capabilities and 40+ years of backward compatibility is surely an amazing achievement in… Read more

  • Troubleshooting External Scheduler Jobs

    Troubleshooting External Scheduler Jobs

    One of the cool but often rarely exploited facilties in the Oracle Job Scheduler is the ability to run tasks outside of the database, for example, shell scripts or other programs on the OS. But it does require getting all the relevant ducks in a row, and if you haven’t, then sometimes the errors can… Read more

  • AI World and the power of APEX

    AI World and the power of APEX

    Don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the official AI World session catalog for discovering the plethora of amazing content coming up at this years AI World. The main reason I definitely cannot complain is because my session appears at the top of the list! 🤣     But (this one only… Read more

  • Quick tip for OpenAI on APEX

    Quick tip for OpenAI on APEX

    Posting this here simply because I constantly forget it 🤣, and end up wasting hours of my life on a trivial thing! When configuring your APEX workspace to communicate with OpenAI you need to have some credentials. Under Workspace Utilities you’ll see the Credentials option which looks like this: Anyone using APEX is familiar with… Read more

  • I got shamed into using AutoUpgrade

    I got shamed into using AutoUpgrade

    Content on Upgrades isn’t my normal thing but the reason I’m talking about AutoUpgrade is a simple one. My good friend Mike Dietrich and I were in India recently for the Yatra tour and he did a talk about patching and AutoUpgrade. And right there, in front of the audience, and he shamed me 🙂… Read more

  • Transactions on LiveSQL

    Transactions on LiveSQL

    Just a quick gotcha that often catches me out on LiveSQL, so posting it here to make sure you also don’t get caught out. (Quick Segue: If you’ve only used LiveSQL in the past, be sure to check it out again – it has been totally re-jigged give a much more modern experience.) LiveSQL allows… Read more

  • Pictorial highlights from Yatra 2025

    Pictorial highlights from Yatra 2025

    Nothing tech in this post. Just putting it here to hopefully you inspire you as either an attendee or speaker for next years event! Bengaluru/Mysuru Hyderabad Pune Mumbai Delhi Chennai Read more

  • First dabblings with SQLcl MCP server

    First dabblings with SQLcl MCP server

    If you watched the launch video from the SQLcl team, you were probably just as excited as I was to give it a whirl. So here’s a quick post showing what I did to get it to run and do a basic test. (Note: A few big GIF’s in this post, so it might take… Read more