Learning is not a spectator sport

Complete listing of posts

  • Correcting datatypes with minimal downtime

    Just a quick post here by request of an attendee of the September Office Hours. I had a demo converting the data type of a primary key without losing data and with minimal impact to the availability of the database using DBMS_REDEFINITION.  You can see that video here but here is the script used to Read more

  • Datatype conversion laziness … yet another reason

    Datatype conversion laziness … yet another reason

    I’ve got two words to describe my thoughts on being lazy with data types …. JUST DON’T! There’s been many blog posts, videos, AskTOM questions etc over the years with numerous examples of how the optimizer gets confused, how the SQL engine gets confused…and even how developers will ultimately get confused if you do not Read more

  • Another little 12c improvement

    Another little 12c improvement

    You’ve got a huge table right? Massive! Immense! And then something bad happens. You get asked to remove one of the columns from that table. “No problem” you think. “I won’t run the ‘drop column’ command because that will visit every block and take forever!” So you settle on the perfect tool for such a Read more

  • Partial indexing – get the dictionary definitions right

    Partial indexing – get the dictionary definitions right

    Just a quick post to clear up some confusion that can be seen on the partial indexing capabilities in Oracle Database 12c and above. I was at an event in the Oracle Perth office last week, and an attendee mentioned that they thought the feature was not working or was not enabled on their database, Read more

  • Connor and Chris at OpenWorld

    Chris and I will be at OpenWorld next month, so our session details are below, but you can also click on the links below to add entries to your calendar to make sure you don’t miss us. Don’t forget to use the official Schedule Builder to make sure you have booked your spot at our Read more

  • The full stack developer….is BACK for 2018!

    The full stack developer….is BACK for 2018!

    Last year, I flexed my technology muscles by building on the fine ground work of Lucas Jellema in using some Node, some REST, and some JSON to extract the full Oracle Openworld speaker catalogue, and then added some JSON parsing in the database, some SQL and slapped a nice helping on Application Express on top Read more

  • Modifying tables without losing materialized views

    Whilst the ever increasing speed of storage and servers, and features likes In-memory are decreasing the need for large numbers of materialized views in databases, there are still plenty of use cases where they can be a useful performance or integrity tool. But what if that materialized view takes minutes or hours to build? Then Read more

  • Complex materialized views? Try a table first

    Just a quick post today that arose from an AskTOM question a little while back. Over the years and across the evolution of various versions of the Oracle database, the amount of “power” you could pack into a CREATE TABLE statement as grown. For example, I can do a CREATE-TABLE-AS-SELECT, along with a partitioning clause, Read more

  • 18c database creation on Windows

    Hopefully you’ve followed my very simple and easy guide to downloading the 18c database software for Windows. But of course, software on its own is not much use – we need a database! So let’s get cracking and create one. Using the Start menu like I’ve done below, or using the Windows panels, locate the Read more

  • 18c Database installation on Windows

    If you’re a Windows enterprise, or you want to run your 18c database on your Windows laptop/desktop for research and education, then there has been some good news this week.  The software is now available to you on the OTN network page.  Here’s a walk through of the software installation process Head to the standard Read more

  • Take care with regular expressions

    Take care with regular expressions

    In an Office Hours session a couple of months back, I covered an important change that comes to regular expressions once you upgrade to 12c Release 2. You can see the video covering the issue here: but for the TL;DR brigade reading this post: Regular expressions are not deterministic when you take NLS settings into Read more

  • Gooey GUIDs

    Gooey GUIDs

    Do a quick Google search and you’ll find plenty of blog posts about why GUIDs are superior to integers for a unique identifier, and of course, an equal number of posts about why integers are superior to GUIDs. In the Oracle world, most people have been using sequence numbers since they were pretty much the Read more