I get a number of questions from developers who are used to working with SQL Server, but have recently moved to Oracle. The top 2 issues are: Lack of AutoNumber/Identity columns in Oracle (solution). How to return recordsets from stored procedures (solution). Recently I had a question about how you return the value assigned by [...]
In my last post I mentioned the technical difficulties I was facing before the OUGF conference in Helsinki. I managed to get my demos working again and got the laptop fully charged, so I was ready for the conference to start… I was one of the first speakers up on the Round Table track, so [...]
OK. I’m in Helsinki. My laptop is behaving eratically and my power supply is broken. I’ve borrowed one off the reception and I’m desperately trying to come up with some alternatives for tomorrow. There is always a chance it will all work fine, but just in case I want a couple of fallbacks, including several [...]
Day 1 started with a bit of a shock. My demo VM would start. It was completely wasted, so I sat through 2 Steve Feuerstein talks trying to fix it. Fortunately I had a backup of the VM, so eventually I gave up and switched to the backup. It was a little old, but good [...]
Forgot to mention, I went to see Star Trek the other day. It wasn’t too bad. The bad guy was pretty lame and there were some definite child-friendly moments, but on the whole an enjoyable action film. It’s quite funny seeing the development of the characters, and it’s different enough to give your average Trekkie [...]
I started out from home at 03:00 this morning, so I decided it wasn’t a good idea to go to bed, in case I slept through the alarm. I’m now in Stockholm feeling incredibly tired, which is hardly a surprise. I suppose I should have a look round as last time I was here is [...]
While I was in Chile at the CLOUG event I met Arjen and Bertie from Avisit Solutions Limited, who produce an alternative to Oracle Data Guard called Dbvisit. Unlike Data Guard, you can use Dbvisit with Standard Edition, so it can be a real money saver. The company have started a new blog, so if [...]
Let’s see: The install seems no better than Vista. The usage doesn’t seem much different to Vista. Doesn’t seem any faster than Vista. It does look a little different to Vista though. OK. Now I see. Vista is getting lots of bad press, so let’s put on a new theme and install IE8 by default [...]
The first 50 pages of Thud! were a real struggle for me. I love the Sam Vimes character so I was expecting this book to click instantly and it just didn’t. It starts off quite serious and there seems to be a distinct lack of humour. So I switched my mindset from expecting humour to [...]
I’m not nervous about flying, but I am nervous about being late for flights, so day 2 was a complex day for me. The plan was to teach from 9:00-17:00 then go straight to the airport and leave. Having the deadline for the airport in the back of my mind all day meant I was [...]