Comments on: Bart’s Punishment For Asking Dumb Questions

By: John Flack

John Flack — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:05:34 +0000

I rarely tell people to read the fine manual, and when I do, I tell them which manual to read and will often point them at the chapter. The main reason I will do it, is that sometimes the question reveals a basic lack of understanding that is hard to give in less text than is in the manual. A forum or mailing list is a great way to get information that can be delivered in a few paragraphs. But when you need more than that, only the manual, or a good book will do.

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:21:26 +0000

According to Justin Kestelyn: these (robot.txt) exclusions will be removed shortly, when testing is complete. -- July 20th, 2006

By: laurent schneider

laurent schneider — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:57:31 +0000

http://download-uk.oracle.com/robots.txt
interesting to read that the robots are disallowed to access the beta documentation :-p

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 15:47:28 +0000

Thanks for the clarification Tim.

Even though you did not mention the acronym “RTFM” in your post, I did feel that in your heart you were saying: “Read The Manual” people (no “F” whatsoever :)).

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:11:47 +0000

Eddie:

Just to clarify, I made no mention of RTFM in my blog post and I don’t use that response in forums. I agree that an RTFM response is pointless as it doesn’t help the original poster.

My point here is that people need to take responsibility for themselves, part of which is reading the manual.

Cheers

Tim…

By: Karl

Karl — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:12:17 +0000

good tip Eddie!
Karl

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:22:29 +0000

In some situations, especially when you want to know or change the default options of a SQL statement, DBMS_METADATA can be a quick alternative to consulting the docs.

By: Karl

Karl — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:09:21 +0000

It's good to look at the documentation but the weak point of it is to find for example special snytax for local indexes or even worse what's the default if i create an index on a partitioned table? is it LOCAL or GLOBAL? i searched too long for this important point (looked at the user_ind_partitions to find the answer);

LOOK at he create table clause it's remembers me on a SQL statement with > 100 NESTED LOOPS in the plan.

hard to find the right stuff.

but I still like to search in the manual specially the 10.2 search ist great.

Karl

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:00:46 +0000

Unlike the Oracle documentation, the OTN forums are indexed by google. For example: site:forums.oracle.com dbms_sql

By: vidya

vidya — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:35:40 +0000

and remember everything that goes around comes around ………….

9 out of 10 times i have found answers on oracle forums as opposed to Google….I agree dont use “Google” for everrrrrrrrrrything!