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LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Welcome to newbie Monday. Today's topic is choosing your database. Choosing a database for your business has some commonalities with choosing a database as a new developer or DBA. There are also differences though. Here are a few guidelines to getting started. This is not a complete guide but it is meant as a starting place.

If you are already an Oracle shop, or DB2 shop, or w

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

The latest release of the EnterpriseDB database, Postgres Plus Advanced Server (AS) 8.3, includes additional Oracle compatibility features. Two of those new features are DBMS_PIPE and DBMS_ALERT. Old Oracle hands will recognize those two packages that are used for interprocess communication. This post is a quick tutorial on using these two features. If you've used them in Oracle, you

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

I just realized my 3 year anniversary on ITToolbox past me by on 3/18/08. I think I noticed and was going to post something about it but then I guess something else caught my attention. This post is #531. I have made 11084 posts of some sort or another. In a way it seems like I've been doing this a lot longer and in another way it seems like I just started.

I don't know how ma

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Wavemaker is an Open Source GUI builder that is based on Spring, Hibernate and the Dojo toolkit. The company that produces the software, Wavemaker Software, is a new partner with EnterpriseDB. With that in mind, I decided to start playing with the tool to see how easy it is to use and how far it can go.

To

The publisher of my book, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference, recently made the book available on the web in PDF format. You can also download

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

ITToolbox.com has introduced a new community for EnterpriseDB users. It's an email group for asking questions and posting comments. I've joined the group and will be keeping an eye for messages. It wouldn't surprise me if others at EnterpriseDB also keep an eye on the forum.

You can get there by going to <a href="http://database.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/enterp

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

My previous list of tips seems to be popular so I thought I would add a few more database specific tips. I'm keeping this list database agnostic. These 10 should apply to any database you might want to learn.

1. Start with SQL - SQL is the backbone of any relational d

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

I think the concept of cloud computing and cloud storage has been bandied about long enough that most people get it and they get the business case. I'm not sure people get the use for databases in the cloud.

If you are completely unfamiliar with the term "cloud computing", check out the Wikipedia cloud entry. As you ca

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

I love this. Is Oracle the official sponsor of...Ironman? Check out this site: Oracle Presents Two Worlds

I have to admit, I haven't had time to read the last couple of Oracle Magazines. Did I miss something?

I plan to take my son to see the movie as soon as the crowds mellow out a bit. Every time Ironman shows up i

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

ApEx

Are you still using Oracle Forms as an application platform? Is Oracle going to dump Forms in place of ApEx? I don't know how soon, but if you have followed Forms for any amount of time, you can see the sunset on the horizon.

Oracle has had the Java for Forms developer bug for a while now. You can see that in the <span align="center" class="topsto

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

The question I am most frequently asked is a variation of "How can I become a DBA or developer?" or "How can I learn x database?". There are so many places to start and so many options when you do start that it can be very confusing. I got a couple of questions this weekend that made me stop and think. Some things that I take for granted are not obvious to those who are just beginning

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

I wrote some time ago that I had bought a new laptop. My old one had died. I didn't need to transfer any files (couldn't actually, the hard drive was toast) but I had my backups so I didn't lose any data.

The one downside to the new laptop (which otherwise had awesome specs) was a 2

I recently posted about working from home(which I meant to be humorous) and JJ had a question about my work space. I decided to post some pictures.

<img width="5

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Ok, I know you you've heard of them. Heck, in some cases, you've been beaten over the head with them. So why aren't you using them?

I've heard some people saying that it's easier to code without bind variables. Really? Concatenating strings, potentially with embedded quotes and/or varying formats, is easier than using bind variables?

I got a

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

This tip relates to the latest version of EnterpriseDB's Advanced Server (AS) product. This is the commercially licensed database that provides Oracle compatibility. I have spoken quite a bit <a href= "http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/oracle/guide/archives/enterprisedb-faq-what-does-compatibility-mean

The solution is called Heterogeneous Services Generic Connectivity. I usually just call it HS links. Basically, you configure an ODBC data source and then create a database link against that source. You can run DML against the source just as you would against an Oracle database.

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Back in October 2006, I wrote an entry named EDB Tip #1: What is EnterpriseDB? I am going to be posting some more EDB tips so I thought I would update that entry with some more current data.

From that post:

<a href="http:

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Since I started working at EnterpriseDB, I have mostly been working from home. I've traveled to NJ several times and to quite a few conferences but mostly it's a work from home gig. I thought I would share some things I have learned in that time.

10 Things About Telecommuting Everyone Should Know

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Sorry for not posting more. I've really been head's down in some coding efforts. Having a blast too. I haven't done coding like this in a while. Anyway, I will be at IOUG next week and was wondering who else will be there. EnterpriseDB will have a booth and I will be manning it off and on. We're giving away signed copies of my book. I'm not sure how many they will bring but make sure to stop by and get one. I haven't even looked at the sessions yet. I have no idea which I'll be atte

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Previous: State of the Database 2008 - Desktop Databases

The first database I am covering (outside of the limited scope of desktop databases) is Ingres. For a very brief overview of Ingres, see th

This is great! Why is Google always the first to implement ideas like this. Even if you were late, you don't have to still be late. Google will let you have 10 emails that you can send back in time and have them appear in someone's inbox. It's called Google Custom Time. You can choose to have it appear read or unread. I'm not sure I like that. I think that could really be abused. Plus, if it's unread, you might be a

I'm in Baltimore this weekend at the Postgres East 2008 conference. I'm giving a presentation on SQL/XML. If you're interested, you can see the presentation and code at my Postgres blog. LewisC

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

About 2 1/2 years ago (Oct 2005), I write an entry titled: Looking for a job?

Anyway, while I was thinking about the job market, I started thinking about all of the job boards. I figure those web boards are the best indicator of

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology This one is an oopsy. I am playing with 11g again. Having fun too. I'll be writing up some of my experiences shortly. One of the things I have been playing with is Heterogeneous Services. Oracle makes connecting to remote databases (of a non-Oracle persuasion) incredibly easy. Anyway, I set up a new database. During install, in addition to setting your system level passwords, you can

Big news in the tech arena today. EnterpriseDB has just posted about the closing of its series C financing with news that IBM has invested in the company. This is big. IBM doesn't usually invest in software companies. With Sun buying MySQL, it definitely makes sense. I don't think Sun will abandon Postgres but it makes sense not to put all of your eggs in one basket. This announcement is much differen

If you didn't get an opportunity to attend yesterday's webinar on database migrations, you can watch (and listen) at your leisure by going to the archive. LewisC

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology Have you ever migrated a database? From an old version to a new one or from one vendor to another? Was it painful? I've done plenty of migrations for various reasons and various applications. Some were very successful and some not so much. One of the most painful I have ever done was a "simple" upgrade from one version to another (from the same vendor). You can make your migrations mu

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology According to InformationWeek, an Evans Data survey (1470 respondents) shows that Oracle led in all 13 categories. In most categories DB2 was second and other databases followed behind. I think it's worth noting that Postgres was one of the databases listed and performed fairly well. The <a href="http

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

Previous: State of the Database 2008 - Abstract

As I mentioned in the abstract, only 5 databases make up more than 90% of the overall database market. This entry will discuss a very small niche market called Desktop databases.

While Oracl

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology I ran across this a few minutes ago on CNN: Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons creator, dies That's a shame. D&D gave me many of years of pleasure. From paper and dice in my teens to computer games, books and movies. Many of those that weren't directly D&D still had some elements adopted from D&D. Heck, even everque