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APPEND_VALUES redux – Why Community Matters
I posted a video a couple of days ago about the use of the APPEND_VALUES hint TL;DR: Using this hint as a means of achieving direct path load even when doing array-based inserts as opposed to INSERT-SELECT. Because direct path are often used to load data more quickly than conventional means, my focus was very… Read more
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Calling out LinkedIn Clickbait
Yeah yeah I know. You don’t have to remind me. When someone posts a LinkedIn post with the following image: then I know, you know, everyone knows, that it has been done to grab attention. Lead off with something inflammatory and you’re likely to bring more attention to their post, get more impressions, more… Read more
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APEX 24 exports – PL/SQL and SQLcl
You may have noticed in APEX 24.1 and beyond, a new option appeared when you are exporting your applications in the APEX Builder. As per the docs The rationale here is straightforward – if you are delivering apps to customers (especially customers outside your organization), then you might not want to have your user account… Read more
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You can’t beat FREE STUFF !
Once again, the power of community. LinkedIn community member Babu Srinivasan brought this gem to my attention. You can get free training and certification with MySQL with the next couple of months! Just head over to https://education.oracle.com/mysql-promo and expand your skillset Enjoy! (and thanks Babu for letting me know) Read more
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Can you REALLY drop those columns?
Good friend Gwen posted this on Twitter yesterday, presumably alluding to some sort of potential issue with Postgres. and it got me thinking: “I wonder how Oracle will go with this”. So here’s a simple test, showing 5000 repeated ADD and DROP column commands SQL> create table t ( x1 int, x2 int ); Table… Read more
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UNION versus UNION ALL
I recently posted a video where I explain the difference between UNION and UNION ALL with three aims. It should: be educational be fun be an excuse to get stuck into some candy 🤣 You can watch it below if you haven’t seen it. Someone from the community reached out to me with the following… Read more
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Don’t jump on that Zoom call … at least not right away
I’m sure many of you have seen the memes and the like on social media where every time someone says “Can you join a Zoom call?” or “Can you pop onto Teams?” and we all groan and think to ourselves “This is going to be a nightmare of a day” Most probably this is simply… Read more
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Spaghetti code is Good code
I saw this post on Bluesky over the weekend. Now before you panic, this blog post isn’t going to have any political discussion about DOGE, Trump, Republicans, Democrats and the like. I’m just going to focus on the topic of the challenges of modernising any system which has been in place for decades. And the… Read more
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More Features just by Patching
As colleagues Mike Dietrich and Daniel Overby Hansen have always stated – It’s important to keep your database patched and up to date. For many of us, the first thing that springs to mind when you read or hear statements like that are the “usual suspects” – patching and upgrading ensures that security holes are… Read more
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Global Temporary Tables and Dynamic Sampling
A common practice when using global temporary tables (GTT) is to simply rely on dynamic sampling to give the cost optimizer the relevant statistics when it comes to using a populated GTT in subsequent queries. Here’s a simple example of that in action. I’ll put 50 rows into a GTT and the subsequent query uses… Read more
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Vectors in Oracle Database 23ai FREE
This is a long overdue post which arose initially from a discussion with Philipp Hartenfeller way back in August 2024. I made a note to blog about it, headed off to CloudWorld and of course promptly forgot about it 😃 When you are tinkering with the cool new vector features in 23ai FREE, you might… Read more
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International Women’s Day
Given the history of the Information Technology industry, I’m sure it is unsurprising for you when I say that the majority of people I have worked with have been male. However… when I look back with a slightly more detailed focus: My computer science teacher at high school…. a woman The person that lectured my… Read more
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