5 Useful Links You Should Check Out Today (2007-09-28)
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View a list of all Oracle forums on a single web page.
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A new version of this freeware product was released a few days ago.
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400+ Oracle related documents on scribd.com.
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These completely free Oracle9i and Oracle 10g tutorials are in-depth and comprehensive lessons that will help you learn about the Oracle Database.
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Created by the Oracle Server Technologies Curriculum team.
More from my bookmarks on del.icio.us
Comments Off | Filed in LinksOraNA.info Now With Categories and More Feeds
I spent a few hours last weekend categorizing the 300+ Oracle related blogs that are aggregated by OraNA. I tried to follow the categorization on blogs.oracle.com, plus I added a few more.
The new OraNA categories currently include the following:
- Application Express (APEX) (RSS)
- Applications and Apps Technology (RSS)
- Business Intelligence (RSS)
- Database Applications Development (RSS)
- Database Management and Performance (RSS)
- Executives (RSS)
- Fusion Middleware and SOA (RSS)
- General, Miscellaneous and a Bit of Everything (RSS)
- Java Tools and Frameworks (RSS)
- Linux, Scripting and Open Source (RSS)
- Security, Compliance and Identity Management (RSS)
- Web 2.0 and Related Apps (RSS)
If you are only interested in specific categories, you can subscribe to the corresponding feeds or follow them on the OraNA.info site. But, if you like to follow all categories, you can always browse OraNA.info or subscribe to the main feed.
By the way, whether you’re browsing one category or all categories, you can always enjoy OraNA’s infinite scrolling capabilities.
4 Comments | Filed in Oracle | Tags: blogOracle OpenWorld 2007 – Social Networking, Twittering, Flickring and Unconferencing
Justin Kestelyn twittered and blogged about the new Oracle OpenWorld Community Guide page on OTN, and more specifically about this year’s unconference. An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants. It also means that anyone has the opportunity to be a presenter at OOW. That will be interesting!
This year’s official OpenWorld community tools include Oracle OpenWorld Connect, a twitter channel and a del.icio.us feed.
Speaking of twitter, here are some (unofficial) Oracle related twitter channels that I have created:
- twitter.com/oow aggregates all Oracle OpenWorld related blog posts.
- twitter.com/orana publishes the OraNA.info feed.
- twitter.com/oracle aggregates all the Oracle Corporate feeds and all the Oracle Technology Network feeds.
And here is my channel twitter.com/eddieawad.
In addition to blogging, I will be twittering live events and mini interviews during this year’s OOW conference, so stay tuned.
Moreover, like in 2005 and 2006, I have created the 2007 Oracle OpenWorld Flickr group. Feel free to join and contribute to the photo pool.
Finally, if you have an Oracle related blog, do not forget to join the Oracle Bloggers group at Oracle OpenWorld Connect.
See you in a few weeks.
3 Comments | Filed in Oracle | Tags: flickr, OpenWorld, twitterWhere in the World are Oracle ACEs?
Just published on the Oracle ACE Program homepage: Find Oracle ACEs and ACE Directors on this Google Map. Cool!
7 Comments | Filed in Google, OracleAnswer from Oracle about the PL/Scope Database Corruption Issue
One of the benefits of being an Oracle ACE Director is having access to a private forum where ACE Directors can share knowledge with each other. But, more importantly, they can also use this forum to “ask Oracle”, with the expectation that Oracle will respond to inquiries as quickly as possible.
I used the ACE Director private forum to let Oracle know and ask for an explanation about the 11g database corruption problem that Dan had discovered and that I blogged about a few days ago. In short, the database corruption was caused by compiling the STANDARD package after an ALTER SESSION SET plscope_settings='IDENTIFIERS:ALL'.
Indeed the answer came back quickly and was posted by Mark Townsend, the vice president of database product management at Oracle. Here it is:
An answer from our esteemed PL/SQL product manager
You pretty much cannot manage to write a single PL/SQL unit without creating a dependency on package Standard. I think that most customers come to understand it, but it’s among the gazillion fundamental conceptual foundations of Oracle Database that we don’t document well.
Moreover, even given our new-in-11.1 fine-grained dependency tracking, if you recompile Standard, then you invalidate its dependants. This is not due to careless implementation. There are deep causes (too hard for me to explain here).
So even in 11.1, as ever before, we say that it’s unsafe to recompile Standard except in upgrade mode. (There’s even more to the story, actually.) We provide the script utlirp.sql on $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin for that purpose. It has reasonable instructions for use in its comments. The steps that are described include re-compiling everything in the whole db.
Sadly, an 11.1 Tahiti search for utlirp.sql fails to find anything that looks like a canonical account (sigh) — only en passant references.
The key question is this: why did Eddie (or was it Dan) attempt to recompile Standard? Pls answer this.
I can think of two plausible reasons.
The first would be as part of an attempt to recompile the whole database using native compilation (or taking it back to all interpreted). We provide a script to do this in a safe way (using the utlirp.sql approach). It’s described in “Compiling the Entire Database for PL/SQL Native or Interpreted Compilation” the PL/SQL Language Reference.
The second would be to make its identifiers available in the new DBA_Identifiers view family (see PL/Scope). Our script to do this sadly missed the release. We’re about to post it on OTN.
The credit goes to Dan who attempted to recompile STANDARD and discovered this issue first. At least now we know it was because of a script that missed the 11.1 database release.
Comments Off | Filed in OracleFound or Not Found, That is The Question. Do You Have The Answer?
Here is a new puzzler from Steven Feuerstein:
Which of the following circumstances does not raise a NO_DATA_FOUND exception? (Hint: There is more than one)
- A SELECT INTO statement that finds no rows
- A numeric FOR loop whose low value or high value is NULL
- An attempt to get the value of an element in a collection whose index is not defined
- Reading past the end of a file with UTL_FILE
- Reading past the end of a BFILE with DBMS_LOB
- A SELECT BULK COLLECT INTO statement that finds no rows
- A SELECT COUNT(*) INTO statement that finds no rows
- A SELECT my_function FROM dual, where my_function is a function that raises a NO_DATA_FOUND exception.
I have added 6, 7 and 8 to the list above just to make it a little bit more interesting. I’m not going to tell you the answer, but I will give you the following hints:
- NO_DATA_FOUND Gotcha
- No Data Found: Bug or Feature?
- NO_DATA_FOUND in Functions
- UTL_FILE.GET_LINE
- DBMS_LOB.READ
Now, the first person who posts the correct answer in the comment section below will get an iPhone…just kidding of course, but he or she will get a big round of applause. You can also send your answers to Puzzler@toadworld.com, you may win a t-shirt.
5 Comments | Filed in Oracle, TipsPL/Scope in Oracle Database 11g
This new Oracle Database 11g feature is PL/Scope:
PL/Scope is a compiler-driven tool that collects data about user-defined identifiers from PL/SQL source code at program-unit compilation time and makes it available in static data dictionary views. The collected data includes information about identifier types, usages (declaration, definition, reference, call, assignment) and the location of each usage in the source code. PL/Scope enables the development of powerful and effective PL/Scope source code browsers that increase PL/SQL developer productivity by minimizing time spent browsing and understanding source code.
According to Dan Morgan, If you execute the following in Oracle 11g you will end up with a corrupt database (I have not tested it myself): Compiling STANDARD should be done while the database is in UPGRADE mode, more info.
conn / as sysdba
ALTER SESSION SET plscope_settings='IDENTIFIERS:ALL';
ALTER PACKAGE standard COMPILE;
But the above is Oracle’s recommendation; According to the documentation: Each DATATYPE is a base type declared in package STANDARD. In order to collect and view these identifiers, package STANDARD must be compiled with PLSCOPE_SETTINGS=’IDENTIFIERS:ALL’.
Dan goes on to say: “I can not warn everyone strongly enough to ignore this recommendation unless you are quite prepared to perform a complete re-installation.” Compiling STANDARD should be done while the database is in UPGRADE mode, more info.
By the way, it was good to see Dan getting into blogging. But his blog lacks many basic and essential features that differentiate a blog from a regular website. Features like RSS feeds, commenting, permalinks, archives, search… are all missing. I wonder why he did not pick a “real” blogging platform.
Update: Here is the answer from Oracle.
15 Comments | Filed in Oracle, Tips10 Useful Links You Should Check Out Today (2007-09-07)
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Oracle offers an extension to the JDeveloper IDE, which automates much of the manual work involved with interacting with Subversion.
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Multiple developers can simultaneously work on the same file, it is fast, it has excellent merging capabilities, and it’s easy to find the change history of every file.
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Atomic commits are one serious advantage Subversion has over CVS. Another big advantage is directory versioning.
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Here is a simple step-by-step configuration guide that may help you to set up a subversion repository on Linux.
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See how you can easily benefit from all the advantages of Subversion without needing complicated Unix emulation tools.
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A Subversion client, implemented as a windows shell extension.
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Versions is the first Mac OS X Subversion client that won’t make you long for the command line interface anymore.
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A list of services that host Subversion repositories.
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Setting up Subversion for revision control can be a bit frustrating. Here’s a simple approach that works for me every time.
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You’ve seen them before, patch or diff files. But how do you create one? And how do you apply them to your project? This article tells you how… the easy way.
More from my bookmarks on del.icio.us
Comments Off | Filed in LinksNew Oracle ACE Definition
The definition of an Oracle ACE and ACE Director has been modified on the official Oracle ACE program home page:
The old text:
Oracle ACEs and Oracle ACE Directors are known for their strong credentials as Oracle community evangelists and technical educators, with candidates nominated by anyone in the Oracle technical community. The baseline requirements are the same for both designations; however, Oracle ACE Directors meet a higher level of expectation in terms of community activity.
The new text (I emphasize the modified text in bold):
Oracle ACEs and Oracle ACE Directors are known for their strong credentials as Oracle community enthusiasts and technical educators, with candidates nominated by anyone in the Oracle technical community. The baseline requirements are the same for both designations; however, Oracle ACE Directors work more closely and formally with Oracle in terms of their community activity. Read the FAQ for more details!
I wonder if this change was the result of Howard’s post and related discussions.
Oracle Support Forums Now with New Look and More Forums
It looks like forums.oracle.com has got a new look:
Here is a snapshot of the old version:
In addition to the obvious change in the UI, new forums were added for Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and more:
I have also noticed that there is a new forums RSS page. I like the changes, however, they introduce more page scrolling. By the way, you can find a more web2.0′ish forums skin at otnsemanticweb.oracle.com/forums.jsp.
6 Comments | Filed in Oracle
