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Oracle External Table Pre-processing – Soccer Super-Powers and Trojan Horses
The end of the European Football season is coming into view. In some leagues the battle for the title, or against relegation is reaching a peak of intensity. Nails are being bitten throughout the...
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Tracing for fun and (tk)profit
If you ever wanted proof that time is relative, just consider The Good Old Days. Depending on your age, nationality, personal preferences etc, that time could be when rationing finally ended; or when...
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Long to CLOB conversion – Constraint Conditions and Database D.I.Y
DIY on a public holiday is something akin to a Great British tradition. Unfortunately, my DIY skills can best be summed up as being able to move heavy stuff about and do a bit of light destruction....
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Putting the Plus into SQL*Plus – describing a Package member (with added...
Deb’s been on about getting another cat recently. “Absolutely not !”, I said, putting my foot down very firmly. Oh yes, we all know who wears the trousers in this house thank you very much. So…Cleo the...
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Oracle’s hidden documentation – Commenting the Data Model in Oracle
The Football (or Soccer, if you prefer) World Cup is almost upon us. England have absolutely no chance so even the false hope that traditionally accompanies major tournaments won’t be around to spoil...
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DBMS_DATAPUMP – why quote delimiters are your friend
So, the World Cup is in full swing. Now the lesser teams have fallen by the wayside ( England), we can get on with enjoying a feast of footie. As well as a glut of goals, the current tournament has...
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ANSI Joins and Uppercase Keywords – making PL/SQL look less like COBOL
The month-long festival of football has finally come to an end. A tournament that was supposed to be about “No 10s” and the coronation of the host nation has lived up to expectations. Ironically, by...
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Getting Python to play with Oracle using cxOracle on Mint and Ubuntu
“We need to go through Tow-ces-ter”, suggested Deb. “It’s pronounced Toast-er”, I corrected gently. “Well, that’s just silly”, came the indignant response, “I mean, why can’t they just spell it as it...
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Sayonara to Sequences and Trouble for Triggers – Fun and Games in Oracle 12c
Ah, Nostalgia. Not only can I remember the Good Old Days, I also remember them being far more fun than they probably were at the time. Oh yes, and I was much younger….and had hair. Yes, the Good Old...
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Going dotty – Generating a Filename containing a parameter value in SQL*Plus
As I have alluded to previously, I was not born in the UK. Nope, my parents decided to up-sticks and move from London all the way to the other side of the world, namely Auckland. Then they had me. Then...
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APEX and Privileges Granted through Roles
The mystery has finally been solved. England’s surrendering of the Ashes last winter was nothing to do with Australia being a much better cricket team. Thanks to Kevin Pietersen’s recently published...
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Kilobytes, Kibibytes and DBMS_XPLAN undocumented functions
How many bytes in a Kilobyte ? The answer to this question is pretty obvious…and, apparently, wrong. Yep, apparently we’ve had it wrong all these years for there are, officially, 1000 bytes in a...
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APEX 503 – Service Unavailable – And you don’t know the APEX_PUBLIC_USER...
It’s probably Monday morning. The caffeine from your first cup of coffee has not quite worked it’s way into your system. The cold sweat running down the back of your neck provides an unpleasant...
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Implementing a Database Authentication Scheme in APEX
The following tangential opening was written especially for Scott Wesley in the hope that he’ll be minded to point out any errors in what follows. The same applies to Jeff Kemp ( although I don’t know...
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CREATE USER and ALTER USER – changing passwords and a New Year’s Resolution
Monday morning. The first day back at work in the New Year. Still groggy, having been awoken from my slumber at the insistence of my Darth Vader Lego Alarm Clock, I stagger downstairs in search of...
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Installing and Configuring an Oracle Developer Day VirtualBox Image
It’s winter. I can tell. First, it’s still dark. Secondly it’s bitterly cold. Standing on the platform at Milton Keynes Central, it would appear that we now have further evidence that being late is a...
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SQL*Plus Terminator Torture
“Leave that jar of Nutella alone, it’s got my name on it !” The context in which Deb issued this injunction to me probably requires some explanation. It was Friday evening. Wales had just…well…come...
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Installing Oracle XE on CentOS
Another Cricket World Cup is underway. England are fulfilling their traditional role of making all of the other teams look like world beaters. To take my mind off this excruciating spectacle, I’ll...
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SQLCL – The New SQL*Plus
To borrow a well-known saying, One-Day International Cricket is a game played by two sides for 100 overs…and then the Aussies win the World Cup. Something else that doesn’t seem to change much over...
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Getting a File Listing from a Directory in PL/SQL
It’s General Election time here in the UK. Rather than the traditional two-way fight to form a government, this time around we seem to have a reasonably broad range of choice. In addition to red and...
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