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  • Do you think I should clean out my inbox?

    Posted on September 28th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I was messing around in my Yahoo mail inbox and noticed that I have over 10,000 messages (only 400 of which are unread). A few years ago I cleaned up the inbox and had it down to 0 messages. I have a huge archive that I can no longer search on my PC. I swore never to archive again if I could avoid it. Anyway, my mailbox goes back to 2002 now. I saw one email that drew my attention.
    Subject: OTN TechBlast: Download Oracle 1
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  • EBay Hacked?

    Posted on September 26th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Has EBay or paypal been hacked? A co-worker of mine lost thousands of dollars last night. Another co-worker has been notified by paypal of problem transactions (he was notified by phone, not email) that he didn't make. And now, there's a headline on Mashable, eBay Hacked??. According to mashable,
    We're getting reports in our inbox this morning that the names, addresses, email addresses, credit card numbers and expiry dates
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  • Recent Open Source Oracle Projects

    Posted on September 22nd, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Sometimes when I have some free time on the weekend, I like to browse around freshmeat and sourceforge. I did that today on sourceforge and did a search for Oracle projects created on the last couple of months. I got 19 hits but some aren't really Oracle projects at all. There are some interesting ones though. I thought I would list a few of them. I am not recommending any of these, I just thought they were interesting
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  • Recursive Social Networking?

    Posted on September 22nd, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I was just in a forum where someone posted something about their facebook profile about a group they created referring to a social network we both belong to (in addition to Facebook). So I logged into my facebook account and took a look. Whilst there, I took the opportunity to peruse some groups and even joined a couple. Get this: I searched to see if an ITToolbox facebook group existed. That is when it occurred to me. Facebook is a social net
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  • Mini-tip #13 – Converting Between XML and Oracle Objects

    Posted on September 16th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Sometimes you need to convert between an oracle object and xmltype. Recently, I had the need to do so to write some generic functionality. I need to be able to accept any object type, do some manipulation and enqueue it in a queue. That is a lot easier with XML. The programmers on the other hand don't need the extra overhead of dealing with XML. Fortunately, Oracle has thought of that. Let's say I have the object below: 
    
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE address_type AS OBJECT (
  address_li								
    

								
								
    
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  • Would you like to participate in a Data Mining Study?

    Posted on September 14th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    One of my regular readers asked if the readers of my blog might like to participate in a study Arizona State University is doing. I figured I would pass the question on to you guys. Below is the information.
    Subject: Study on Use of Data Mining tools in Business Environment Mr. Cunningham, I am Na Hu, a graduate student doing research at Arizona State University (ASU). I would like to seek your cooperation for a research project which assesses the usage and contribution o
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  • Oracle Open World 2007

    Posted on September 13th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    The time is almost upon us. I have my airline booked and am just waiting on the hotel. I'm really psyched. I'm ready for November to get here. I won't be staying the whole week again this year. I'm flying back to Tampa on Wednesday. I've got a pregnant wife. She wasn't very happy that I was going at all. She's due in early December so I should be safe. If, for some reason, she does deliver early while I am way, I will NEVER hear the end of it. I'm flying in Saturday. I will be atten
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  • How to Deal With Oracle XML and Ampersands (“&”) in XML Documents

    Posted on September 11th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I got another FAQ today. In my blog entry from August 10, 2005, Oracle and XML In Action - A Real World Example, Fred Wang left me a comment:
    Hi Lewis, If the xml that I am storing has the "&" in it, DBMS_XMLSTORE utility will report "table or view does not exist " error. Is there any workaround to solve this problem? Thanks Fred Wang
    This is a very c
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  • What keeps you at your job?

    Posted on September 9th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Why do you stay at your job? Now I know you need a paycheck but I mean beyond that. Why do you stay at that particular job? I tend to ask myself questions like that. I think about things like the ideal job and what I want to be doing in 5, 10 or even 15 years from now. I just read a short whitepaper (10 pages) from Matthew Kelley. According to the paper:
    Matthew Kelly is an internationally acclaimed speaker and New York Times bestselling author. His latest book, The Dream Mana
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  • YOU Should Write a Blog!

    Posted on September 3rd, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Yes, I mean you. The person reading this. You should be blogging. Before you snort and walk away from this post, let me splain! First, I'll explain why YOU should be blogging. Second, I'll explain some of the benefits of blogging. Third, I will explain why ITToolbox is a great place to be a blogger. I'll wrap up with some of the downsides to blogging. You ready? Wanna grab a cup of coffee or anything? Ok, here I go. Why YOU Should Be Blogging At one time in the dim past, IT an
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  • Repost: Katrina + 4

    Posted on September 1st, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    This was my post on Sept 1, 2005. Two years ago today. Looking back I remember how surreal all of this was at the time. I mention WWL TV below. I spent weeks glued to that streaming video. WWL is a TV station local to New Orleans. They moved to Baton Rouge and worked out of a university studio. They didn't have a broadcast tower so they streamed over the internet. It was the only source for real information.
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  • From the Community: Extract an OLE2 PDF BLOB

    Posted on August 31st, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Back in July, I got an email from a reader and I posted about it in Challenge for the gurus: Help Extract an OLE2 PDF BLOB. I was hoping someone might have a solution but that post got zero comments. That's ok though. The concerned parties continued working the issue and came up with a solution (or at least the beginnings of a solution). They are opening up that code to
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  • TaxAct.com Tax Software Site Breached

    Posted on August 30th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I just got an email from taxact.com. This is the software that I use to do my taxes. The company is 2nd Story Software. According to the email, the company's customer information database was breached, i.e.:
    Recently we discovered a third party gained unauthorized access to a limited number of TaxACT customers' information. The information obtained by this unauthorized third party is, however, limited to your e-mail address and the TaxACT Customer Number / Password combination
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  • Oracle Buzz #10: 3 Geeks skype about Oracle 11g

    Posted on August 29th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Music by Anders Kjerserud 3 Geeks skype about Oracle 11g - Lewis Cunningham, Eddie Awad and Erick Villatoro Discuss Oracle 11g Subscribe to the Oracle Buzz. Download the MP3.
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  • Ubuntu Software Maintenance and Installation

    Posted on August 29th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    SearchEnterpriseLinux posted a good article earlier this month called, How to manage software on Ubuntu Server with "aptitude" and "apt-get". It's fairly short but covers aptitude and apt-get and explains some of the differences that Ubuntu has with Redhat and Suse. I run Kubuntu so it also applies to me. If you are a Linux pro, I doubt you'll
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  • Two Years Ago, a Repost

    Posted on August 28th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I spoke with my mom Sunday evening and she was adamant that she wasn't going to evacuate. I have two sisters who live in different parts of Slidell and neither of them were evacuating. My brother lives not far from there, further in the rural areas, in a trailer home surrounded by pine trees. I have aunts, uncles and cousins all through Mississippi. I haven't been able to reach anyone through landlines or through cell numbers. I either get the dreaded "all lines are busy", or worse, just a dull busy signal.
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  • Update: PL/SQL Profiling Presentation and MP3

    Posted on August 26th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    The audio for last week's SOUG presentation has been added to the original post: PL/SQL Profiling Presentation and MP3. Rather than putting a bunch of links all over the place, I decided to just update that entry. The audio came out pretty good. Check it out. I'm calling it the Oracle Buzz #9. I have an Oracle Buzz #1
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  • Oracle Releases 11g Pricing

    Posted on August 14th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I saw a press release on yahoo, Oracle Announces General Availability of Oracle(R) Database 11g. The short story is that the core database remains priced the same: 40k per cpu. All of the normal options that you expect remain priced the same: RAC = 20k/cpu, Partitioning = 10k/cpu, etc. The ugly part is that we'll have to pay out the nose for the new features:
    • Oracle Real Application Testing -- $1
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  • Oracle 11g Interesting New Streams Features

    Posted on August 13th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    As I am going through the 11g documentation, I am making note of the things that will have an impact on my projects. I'll be posting about these over the next few weeks. This is just the first of many. ;-) I'll probably look at XML next.
    • 11g Streams WILL capture regular LOBS and XMLType stored as a CLOB
    • 11g Streams WILL NOT capture secure file LOBS or XMLType stored relationally (shredded)
    • New Package, DBMS_COMPARE allows you to compare a table in two databases.
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  • Oracle Releases Oracle 11g For Linux

    Posted on August 9th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Yep. It is now available on OTN. Download Oracle 11g. The download is only for Linux right now but you can get the documentation and start reading through it. Actually, you can save yourself a click and go directly to the Oracle 11g Document Library. It has a brand new look
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  • 10 Simple Oracle Streams Tips

    Posted on August 8th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I'm in an all day meeting today so when we hit the slow points, I am jotting down some streams tips. I am working full-time to integrate streams again, so I think now is a good time. These are pretty generic items. No bombshells or anything to change your life. Just things to keep in mind.
    1. GLOBAL_NAMES=YES is your friend. You do NOT need to have GLOBAL_NAMES turned on. It does help, though.
    2. Make sure you give the actual GLOBAL_NAME for the databases when you define you
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  • Post About Katrina Anniversary: No Tech At All

    Posted on August 5th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Time Magazine just published a series of articles for the 2 year anniversary of Katrina. There are a bunch of articles but the main one I want to point out is The Threatening Storm. It is an amazingly detailed description of what led to the devastation of Katrina as well as the complete lack of action and political vacuum that built up over the last two years. From the article:
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  • Oracle and PHP

    Posted on August 4th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    First an admission: I am not a PHP person. I've played with it but have not done anymore than that. I was browsing around on the web as I tend to do and I went to Planet PostgreSQL to see what's the latest in the PostgreSQL blogosphere. There are a lot of very knowledgeable PostgreSQL bloggers aggregated there and I usually enjoy reading the latest info. Today I was greeted with an incredibly ignorant post,
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  • A few recent topics from the Oracle Blogosphere

    Posted on August 2nd, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    Just thought I would post links to a few posts that particularly caught my eye this week. Eddie Awad posted a most excellent use of 10g features to prepare yourself for 11g, Oracle Database 11g New PL/SQL Features in your 10g Code Today. Eddie uses conditional compilation to modify or write new code NOW while waiting for 11g. If you want a quick look at setting a sessions per user resource limit in a profile, it doesn't
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  • Learn Oracle: Miscellaneous, User Defined and Complex Types

    Posted on July 29th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    I have to admit something. When I said would write an entry called, "Learn Oracle: Miscellaneous, User Defined and Complex Types", I am sure I had something specific in mind for "Miscellaneous". Unfortunately, I have no clue what I meant by that. If you do, please let me know. I am also not entirely sure what I meant by Complex Types unless I mean Complex User Defined Types. I guess I should keep notes or something. Anyway, in this post I will cover user defined types, sub-types
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  • Oracle ACE 2.0, The Semantic ACE?

    Posted on July 26th, 2007 An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology No comments
    If you follow along with Oracle blogs, you might be aware of what some are calling ACE 2.0. The Oracle ACE program is a way for Oracle to recognize community contributors. I got my ACE last year. The qualifications for an ACE are: Candidates should meet as many of the following qualifications as possible. * Oracle-related blog * OTN discussion forum activity * Published white paper(s) and/or a
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