Learning is not a spectator sport

Complete listing of posts

  • UK bound

    I’m off to the UK tomorrow for the annual UKOUG conference in Birmingham. The developer advocate team have a busy schedule, which you can read about here The conference has always been a favourite of mine – lots of good content, and good networking opportunities.  The full agenda is here Also, if you are in… Read more

  • The twelve days of … AskTom

    On the 1st day of AskTom, a poster sent to me A question about 12c   On the 2nd day of AskTom, a poster sent to me two SQL queries, in a question about 12c   On the 3rd day of AskTom, a poster sent to me three table joins, two SQL queries, in a… Read more

  • Where did my triggers go ?

    You need to be careful when coding and using triggers when it comes to Datapump (or anything that transposes triggers between schemas).  A lot of people make assumptions about what will happen with their triggers, and often get a nasty shock when they see the reality.  Lets explore with an example I’m going to add… Read more

  • KISS video series for Analytic functions

    Analytic functions still bamboozle many SQL practitioners out there.  So I’m building a suite of videos to walk people through some of the common questions we get asked that we need to solve with SQL, and look at how we can often solve them most simply using Analytic functions. It will all be based on… Read more

  • ORA-14758: Last partition … cannot be dropped

    As a DBA, its awesome when you have the Partitioning option at your disposal.  So many cool things suddenly become either possible or easier.  For example, all of a sudden you can separate the data of different time ranges into different partitions. But hand in hand with that, was that fear that one day we’d… Read more

  • Countdown to Perth !

    I’m speaking at the Perth leg on the OTN APAC tour on December 2nd, eCentral TAFE, East Perth This is a great event with local and international speakers all giving their time and knowledge for free to help you with your Oracle technology. If you’re in Perth, then come along for some great education.  Even… Read more

  • Apex upgrade 4.2 to 5.0.2

    Just a quick note for anyone upgrading Apex on their systems. The installation (into a non-multitenant 12.1.0.2 instance) went through with no problems, but tracing the installation suggests it will flush the shared pool 6 times during installation/upgrade. That might have some impact on other applications/sessions running on that database, so best to find a… Read more

  • A justification for referential integrity constraints

    Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Here we go again.  Another database dude about to get stuck into us telling us about the importance of foreign keys for data integrity” and yes, I could easily do that.  But you’ve seen that before (and by the way, it’s of course still totally valid – you should… Read more

  • Countdown to Sydney

    I’m speaking at the Sydney leg on the OTN APAC tour on November 30th, 394 Lane Cove Rd, North Ryde This is a great event with local and international speakers all giving their time and knowledge for free to help you with your Oracle technology. If you’re in Sydney, then come along for some great… Read more

  • CLOBS, from 11g to 12c

    If you are a regular user of LOB’s in the database, take care when you switch from 11g to 12c.  Notice the subtle difference: In 11g, you are permitted to, and recommended to, use SECUREFILE lobs, but they are not the default SQL> select name, value 2 from v$parameter 3 where name = ‘db_securefile’; NAME… Read more

  • You dont need that sequence number

    I’ve lost track of the number of times I see this sequence (no pun intended) of actions in code: SELECT my_sequence.nextval INTO :some_variable FROM dual; INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (:some_variable, ….); My question is always “Why?” What was it that made you so desperate in need of that sequence value that you needed it before… Read more

  • A new line on NEWLINE

    Recently I was doing a simple external table load using a CSV file, but was getting an interesting error. My file looked simple enough “ID”,”EMAIL”,”TIMESTAMP”,”SUBJECT”,”STATUS”,”STATUS_TS” “2012348048”,”john@anon.com”,”05/02/2000″,”Subject 1″,”5″,”09/04/2007″ “2412348048”,”mike@anon.com”,”05/02/2000″,”Subject 1″,”5″,”09/16/2002″ “348543169051”,”sue@anon.com”,”03/10/2001″,”Subject 1″,”5″,”03/24/2008″ “348396029762”,”mary@anon.com”,”03/10/2001″,”Subject 1″,”5″,”03/10/2001″ “1212348047”,”sam@anon.com”,”05/02/2000″,”Subject 1″,”5″,”05/02/2000″ “1612348048”,”vincent@anon.com”,”05/02/2000″,”Subject 1,”5″,”06/02/2006″ … … So it should have been a fairly straightforward external table definition to access it SQL> create… Read more