Please review the following interesting article by Jonathan Holland.
Why Relational Databases end up being the bottleneck
For the appropriate context of this debate, you can review this forum discussion on Joel’s web site as just one example.
Stored Proc to avoid frequent builds
As is evident from the title and content of my blog, I’m a database professional. Nevertheless, I try to stay as
There are deployments and there are deprayments. What’s the difference?
A deployment is when you deploy a change and verify that it was successfully deployed and functioning properly.
A deprayment is when you “deploy and pray.” It’s kind of like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movie: you don’t actually witness that the deployment succeeded, you just walk away and assume everything went
I listened intently to the new Oracle programmer as he described all the struggles he’s been having on his first big project. As I’ve done many times already in his short career, I interrupt with some words of wisdom.
“It’s time to add Global Temporary Tables to your toolbelt.”
“What are those?” he asks, as he opens the directory with the Oracle documentation. I smile. He has already learned
You pick up the candidate’s resume and it proudly proclaims “SQL Expert: 10 Years.” Your boss trusts you, as the technical expert on the team, to participate briefly in the interview to gauge this individual’s knowledge of SQL. Where to begin?
I have asked literally hundreds of different questions during interviews over the past decade. Some were simple questions that were nevertheless
While attempting to insert several rows into a table in our Oracle database, a colleague dutifully copied the exact ANSI/ISO SQL standard syntax for his purposes. Guess what happened?
INSERT INTO table (column1, column2)
VALUES (value1, value2), (value1, value2);
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended
Unlike some other databases (DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL), Oracle doesn’t
Along the side of my page, you’ll see my favourite Oracle blogs listed. I carefully maintain this list of fellow enthusiasts whose opinions and insights I most especially want to follow among the seemingly hundreds of Oracle blogs that are out there. Studying them, I think you’ll find that each of them share the same core qualities listed below.
1. Accuracy
Accuracy is an absolute must. Just
Like most of us, I still join tables in my SQL queries the old-school way. Simply put:
SELECT whatever
FROM table1 t1, table2 t2
WHERE t1.id = t2.id
AND t1.value > 10;
But increasingly often I run into people who use ANSI joins instead. They were either introduced to SQL with Oracle 9 (or Sybase 12, etc), and were taught to use the SQL standard way, or else they made the conversion at some
I’ve got very few beefs with Oracle. It is extremely complicated and tough to learn compared to other relational databases, but that’s partially offset by the tremendous documentation, and the huge Oracle community.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Oracle. I’m regularly impressed by the sophisticated and often clever ways it handles the requirements of an RDBMS, and quick to recommend its use. But
Everybody learns their lessons, and so will you. The only variable is how expensive the lesson is. While there is no substitute for direct, first-hand experience, the cheapest way to learn a lesson is to benefit from the experience of others.
My favourite source of cheap lessons is Ask Tom. I’ve compiled a sample collection of Tom’s Wisdom from just the articles updated in the past week.
As devoted readers may have noticed, my new job doesn’t involve nearly as much work with Oracle. I stay sharp by reading Ask Tom, the very site that has provided me with 90% of the answers that I can’t find in Oracle documentation or figure out on my own.
Those of you who may find it nerdly to spend lunch hours reading Oracle Q&A are actually really missing out. It’s far more entertaining than