It’s a Feature interviews me
Marian Crkon from “It’s a Feature” publishes a short interview with me. Check it out.
Comments Off | Filed in Oracle, Personal | Tags: interviewOracle SQL Developer Graduated
Following up on my last post: Oracle SQL Developer Updated, it was finally decided to release SQL Developer to production. So, go ahead and get your fresh copy from OTN.
Oracle Database 10g XE has this:
It would be nice to have a similar one for SQL Developer as well, would it?
Comments Off | Filed in Oracle | Tags: software, sql-developer, toolOracle SQL Developer Updated
Another day, another Oracle SQL Developer release. That brings the current release to:
Early Adopter Release 7, version 1.0.0.14.54
March 8, 2006
To get an idea of the frequency of new SQL Developer EA releases: Continue reading…
4 Comments | Filed in Oracle | Tags: software, sql-developer, toolAn alternative to DISTINCT
You want to select distinct values from a column in a table. No problem. You use DISTINCT or GROUP BY in your query. But did you know that there is a third way to suppress duplicates? For example: Continue reading…
7 Comments | Filed in Oracle, Tips | Tags: sqlmaxlength: Firefox vs. IE
I bumped into an issue while testing one of my ColdFusion applications. The issue is how Firefox and IE render HTML. Take the following HTML input tag in test.htm for example:
<input name="field" type="text" value="1234" maxlength="3">
Now, if you view it in Firefox (1.5.0.1) you will only see 123 in the input box. However, if you view it in IE (6.0) you will see 1234. Looks like Firefox truncates the value based on the maxlength attribute, but IE does not.
However, in the example above, both browsers do not allow you to enter a value more than 3 characters in length.
2 Comments | Filed in ColdFusion, Firefox, Tips | Tags: Firefox, html, internet-explorerTaxes, new laptop and back to basics
Yesterday, while millions were watching the academy awards on TV, I was preparing my 2005 tax return. I could care less about the academy awards, but try to tell that to my wife. The TV remote control was untouchable during the show.
Anyway, I had worked and lived in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and only when I moved to the United States in 1998, I was introduced to the notion of filing taxes with the US government by April 15 every year. I have been using TurboTax since then. I have been very happy with it … until yesterday, because yesterday, and for the first time, TurboTax gave me the dreaded message: “Federal Tax Due: $$$$” instead of the yearly message that I am used to: “Federal Tax Refund: $$$$”. Oh Well!
I also spent some time last weekend getting familiar with my new Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop. It has Intel Core™ Duo Processor, 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen LCD, 2GB Memory and 100GB Hard Drive. It looks big and feels powerful. I installed Oracle XE and Oracle SQL Developer. I am also planning to install Oracle 9i and 10g and ColdFusion MX server (maybe on a VM).
In his post, Tom Kyte gives a very important and useful advice: Master the basics. So, using his latest book as a guide, I will be sharing the Oracle basics with the rest of the Oracle developers in my group, many of them have been developing Oracle applications for many years and may have forgotten about basic concepts or have not been exposed to some new Oracle features that can make their work a lot easier and faster.
OK! back to work now.
4 Comments | Filed in Oracle, Personal | Tags: dell, laptop, taxThe order of conditions matters
Do you think that “IF condition1 AND condition2″ is the same as “IF condition2 AND condition1″? The answer is yes and no. Yes because both give the same Boolean result. No, because when evaluating a logical expression, Oracle PL/SQL uses short-circuit evaluation. That is, PL/SQL stops evaluating the expression as soon as the result can be determined, and this may impact the processing of your code as we will see next. Continue reading…
5 Comments | Filed in Oracle, Tips | Tags: pl/sqlPRAGMAtism in Oracle PL/SQL
What is a pragma? A pragma is compiler directive. Pragmas are processed at compile time, not at run time. They pass information to the compiler.
The pragma notion is not limited to PL/SQL. Other programming languages have pragmas too. Answers.com defines a pragma, in the context of Computer Science, as:
A message written into the source code that tells the compiler to compile the program in some fashion that differs from the default method. For example, pragmas may alter the kinds of error messages that are generated or optimize the machine code in some way.
Wikipedia defines pragma, in the context of the word origin, as:
a Greek word (Ï€Ïαγμα), plural pragmata (Ï€Ïαγματα), whose root meaning is “that which has been done, an act, a deed, a fact”, and whose connotations and more extended senses cover a wealth of meanings, including: action, affair, annoyance, business, …
and in the context of Computer Science as:
a compiler directive, data embedded in source code by programmers to tell compilers some intention about compilation. A compiler directive often tells the compiler how to compile; other source code tells the compiler what to compile.
Back to PL/SQL. A PRAGMA is a reserved PL/SQL keyword. In your code, you write a pragma like this: Continue reading…
5 Comments | Filed in Oracle | Tags: pl/sql, pragma
