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  • Nested Tables 101

    Posted on January 26th, 2012 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    A nested table is much like an associative array but you do not determine the index. The index grows by using the extend command and the index is always an incrementing integer value. You can use the DELETE attribute to delete individual elements so you will always want to

  • Record Types 101

    Posted on January 19th, 2012 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

     

    A record type is a simple structure that combines multiple datatypes into a single package.

     

    DECLARE
      TYPE r_person IS RECORD (
        fname VARCHAR2(30),
        lname VARCHAR2(30),
        age NUMBER );
    	
      v_person r_person;	
    BEGIN
    
     v_person.fname := 'Lewis';
     v_person.lname := 'Cunningham';
     v_p
  • 2011 in Review and 2012 Goals

    Posted on January 10th, 2012 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    To get where you want to be in life, you need to have goals. It doesn't matter if you want to advance professionally, improve a hobby or lose weight, goals help you achieve your desires.

     

    I think it's important to look back at the previous year and see how you did as far as your goals. When I see how realistic my previous year goals were, then I can decide how to set my goals for the current year. Unfortunately, I didn't list my goals for 2

  • For those in the US – Stop SOPA!

    Posted on December 30th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    I rarely, if ever, bring up politics. Currently the US Congress is considering legislation that I think is reprehensible. I really can't believe that we, as a nation, have come to this. I have been reading about this for a while. I guess I have been in denial that it would really happen.

     

    Have you heard of

  • Associative Arrays 101

    Posted on December 19th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    An array is one way to store multiple variables in a collection. In PL/SQL we will often refer to an array of objects as a collection. If a record is a way to think of a specific row in a table, a collection type can be thought of as the rows in the table.

     

    The original pl/sql table that was offered in pl/sql is the index by table also

  • Tasklist and Taskkill

    Posted on December 15th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    At my current client, they have set a policy so that I can't run task manager. The OS is Vista Enterprise 32 bit and I only have 2GB of RAM (my 4 year old netbook is more powerful). Rebooting takes forever.

     

    I'm not sure why they have that policy. Maybe to prevent users from seeing what is running? Prevent them from stopping what is run

  • CIW v5 Database Design Specialist

    Posted on December 6th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I just sat for the CIW v5 Database Design Specialist certification and passed it.
  • Meeting Expectations

    Posted on November 29th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    I'm asked fairly often what someone can do to move up or get promoted. I don't really have any great insight to that. I mostly just live the consultant's life and continually have my learning hat on.

     

    I want to share a lesson I learned early in my career. I have been blessed to work with some amazing people in my time. Amazing developers, DB

  • NaNoWriMo 2011

    Posted on November 21st, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Bascially, NaNoWriMo is when a bunch of idiots writers decide to sit down and write 50,000 words in 30 days. That works out to 1,667 words per day.

     

  • You might not get the job if….

    Posted on November 15th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    A paraphrased conversation from a few months back. It still makes me chuckle.

     

    Inteviewer: What is the first thing you do if a report is running too slow?

     

    Me: Define too slow.

     

    Interviewer: The next thing?

     

    Me: Define fast enough.

     

    Interviewer (with a si

  • Oracle Database 11g: Data Warehousing Certified Implementation Specialist

    Posted on November 8th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Recently, I posted a review of some certification preparation software, UCertify - Oracle Data Warehousing 11g Essentials Practice Test. This prep kit preapres you for the

  • Learning Oracle PL/SQL Programming Tutorial DVD – Video Training

    Posted on November 2nd, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    My latest endeavor - A video based tutorial for PL/SQL. This is geared towards beginners. I wanted to create an A to Z introduction and I wanted to be sure I captured as many best practices as I could.

     

    This vi

  • UCertify – Oracle Data Warehousing 11g Essentials Practice Test – Review

    Posted on October 27th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    This is a software review of the UCertify - Oracle Data Warehousing 11g Essentials Practice Test. I was provided a fully licensed copy to use to evaluate the material and the tool.

     

    I evaluated the

  • Win a free certification test prep software license

    Posted on October 20th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Quite a while back, I wrote a review of a certification test prep software from a company called UCertify. I'm going to be reviewing another one, the

  • And the survey says….

    Posted on October 17th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Recently, I asked for some feedback via a survey. I had a pretty good response and thought I would share the results.

     

    Just a note, this is not a scientific survey. It is based on what people who read my bl

  • My OpenWorld 2011 Highlights Reel

    Posted on October 12th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Yeah,I know. Kind of late to the game this year. All I can say is that I was kind of busy when I got back home. As a matter of a fact, the trip itself was a working trip. I put in time most nights and over the weekend.

     

    Anyway, for me the big news w
  • Oracle Information Integration, Migration and Consolidation – Book Review

    Posted on October 10th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    The book that I am covering in this review is from Packt and the main reason I wanted to review it was the description. I had never heard of a book like it. The book is Oracle Information Integration, Migration and Consolidation by Jason Williamso

  • OpenWorld For Free (A Sampler Anyway)

    Posted on September 30th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Can't make it to San Francsico for OpenWorld? Can't spring for flights, hotels, etc? No problemo! Now you can get it, at least some of it, for free.

     

    I got the email below from Oracle. Check it out.

     

  • My OpenWorld Session

    Posted on September 29th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    I am at Oracle HQ this week for the Oracle ACE Director briefing. So far there has been an amazing amount of information about upcoming hardware, software and solutions. Unfortunately, I am under an NDA to not disclose the specifics until next week. I promise you, there will be an announcement that you find interesting.

  • Gauging Online Oracle Training Interest

    Posted on September 26th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    I wanted to get some feedback from the reades on this blog. I'd like feedback from regular readers as well as drive by readers - beginner, intermediate and expert.

     

    I am thinking about setting up some online training. I don't mean just a blog or some downloadable papers. I mean a fullscale training si

  • Oracle 11g R1/R2 Real Application Clusters Essentials Book (Review – Sort Of)

    Posted on September 10th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    So, I got an email from Packt asking if I wanted to review an Oracle RAC book. I only have a couple of those in my library so I thought sure, that might be an interest

  • Oracle XE 11gR2 General Availability

    Posted on September 6th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Yeah, I know. I'm late with the news. Still, just in case you haven't already seen it blogged, tweeted or linkedin'ed, Oracle XE 11gR2 has moved out of beta and into production.

  • Why Apple Will Survive

    Posted on August 31st, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I've heard that apple has scrapped their plans for a new children's ipod. They realized iTouch Kids wasn't quite a marketing winner. - Joke
  • Do bind variables matter?

    Posted on August 28th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    That title is somewhat facetious. Even without a performance benefit using bind variables is more secure and easier to maintain but do they really make a difference in performance?

     

    I still hear, on occassion, that using bind varaibles is somehow slower. I think mostly it's just makes the coding slowe

  • NVL versus Coalesce

    Posted on August 24th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    I'm doing some PL/SQL tuning and I'm examining several existing stored procedures to see how I can speed them up. While I won't share my clients structures or code, I will talk about some of the interesting things I'm doing.

     

    While not the biggest time sink, a particular piece of code is using NVL ver

  • PL/SQL Expert Practices from Apress

    Posted on August 5th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    My new book. Well, not just me but I contributed a chapter to it.
  • A simple example of a secure context

    Posted on July 26th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    This simple example isn't much different that one I did quite a while back but it's more complete. If you have your own database, you can run this and get a working example of using a secure context.

     

    I was asked for an example and I was blocked from my blog from work so I had to code a new one. I tho

  • A Sampling of Virtathon 2011 Sessions

    Posted on July 15th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I was browsing through the Virtathon schedule, trying to decide which sessions I will attend (besides the ones that I am presenting, of course). There are some really good sessions coming next week!
  • Leave a Tip

    Posted on July 15th, 2011 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments

    From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology

     

    Today I am doing something a little different. Leave a tip in the comments below, or if you see a tip in the comments that you like or help you, leave a comment and let me know. I will take any well-commented tips and post them in a future entry.

     

    If you'd like to expand on a tip (more than a comment