Eddie Awad's Blog
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News, views, tips and tricks on Oracle and other fun stuff
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Add These Oracle Related Search Engines to Google Chrome

A while ago I created and published a bunch of Oracle related search engine plugins for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Google Chrome did not exist then. Now that Google Chrome is rising in popularity, here is how you can create and use these Oracle search engines in your Chrome browser.

Unlike Firefox and IE, Chrome does not have a separate browser search bar. It has only one bar, the address bar (sometimes called the “omnibox”). It sits at the top of the browser window and doubles as a search box. You can use it in many different ways.

You access and use your search engines from the address bar. To manually add, edit, or remove search engines, follow these steps:

  • Right-click anywhere inside the address bar
  • Click on “Edit search engines…” on the pop-up menu
  • Click “Add…” on the Search Engines window

(Here is another way to get to the Search Engines window)

Now, let’s add the Oracle Blogs search engine. Copy/paste or type the following in each of the “Add Search Engine” fields:

  • Name: Oracle Blogs
  • Keyword: ob
  • URL: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=006891324877144204544%3Akvrje889mqc&ie=UTF-8&q=%s

Click OK to create the search engine. By the way, you can enter anything you want in the Name and Keyword fields. I usually like the Keyword to be very short and the Name to be descriptive.

The fastest way to use the search engine you just created is to hit Ctrl + L (this will take the cursor to the address bar), type in the search engine’s keyword (ob in this example) followed by a Tab, enter your search query and hit Enter.

To create the rest of the Oracle related search engines, follow the same steps described above and copy/paste the corresponding URL from the list below:

  • Oracle Forums: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=006891324877144204544%3Aqdnd3hjcj8u&ie=UTF-8&q=%s
  • Oracle Sites: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=006891324877144204544%3Abohrbm812ik&ie=UTF-8&q=%s
  • AskTom: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/asktom.search?p_string=%s
  • Oracle Documentation – All versions: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/print_hit_summary?search_string=%s
  • Oracle DB 9.0.1 Docs: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db901/db901.drilldown?word=%s
  • Oracle DB 9.2 Docs: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db92/db92.drilldown?word=%s
  • Oracle DB 10.1 Docs: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db10g/search?remark=quick_search&word=%s
  • Oracle DB 10.2 Docs: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/search?remark=quick_search&format=ranked&word=%s
  • Oracle DB 11.1 Docs: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db111/search?remark=quick_search&word=%s
  • Oracle DB 11.2 Docs: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/search?remark=quick_search&word=%s
  • Oracle DB 10.2 Error Messages: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/error_search?search=%s
  • Oracle DB 11.2 Error Messages: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/error_search?search=%s
  • Oracle DB 10.2 Virtual Book: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/search?remark=advanced_search&format=ranked&vbook=1&word=%s
  • Oracle DB 11.1 Virtual Book: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db111/vbook?search=%s
  • Oracle DB 11.2 Virtual Book: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/vbook?search=%s

This post was brought to you by:

first burleson consulting then experts -exchange and now kods.net , google is getting more and more spam with oracle searchesless than a minute ago via TweetDeckcoskan gundogar
coskan

That’s why I primarily use custom search engines for my Oracle related searches http://s.awads.net/dcU15Q @coskanless than a minute ago via TweetDeckEddie Awad
eddieawad

@eddieawad may I kindly ask if you can write one for chrome :) IE is out of my life too long ago Firefox is heavyweight comparing to chromeless than a minute ago via TweetDeckcoskan gundogar
coskan

1 Comment | Filed in Firefox, Google, Oracle | Tags: , ,

36K “Oracle lang:sql” Scripts

In case you're bored, here are 36,000+ Oracle SQL scripts available for your reading pleasure through Google code search.

2 Comments | Filed in Google, Oracle | Tags: ,

Google Reveals Documents from the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG)

IOUGSearch Google for site:ioug.org filetype:pdf, you get tens of useful documents there. Aren’t some of these documents supposed to be hidden behind their membership login?

4 Comments | Filed in Google, Oracle | Tags: , ,

Where 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!


View Larger Map

7 Comments | Filed in Google, Oracle

How to Browse the Web Safely and Anonymously with Google

As you may already know, Google grabs a copy of each web page it crawls and files it away in its cache. There are exceptions to this behavior as some website owners request not to cache their content either by using robots.txt or password protecting their sites. But, the vast majority of the data Google crawls is cached and accessible via the cached link on the search result page or by using the cache operator.

The Google Cache Banner

For example, to see the Google’s cache of this blog enter the following in Google’s search box: cache:awads.net/wp. You will notice a banner at the top of the page that has some really important information:

Most probably, you rarely pay attention to the banner and you just blow right past it. If you look closely, you will notice the following: This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. This means that you are actually communicating with the original web server that hosts the page and fetching all the images directly from there. This also means that the website where the original web page is hosted on knows about your visit and can log and track your IP address even when you view a web page through the Google cache.

So, if you were striving for anonymity by viewing the Google cached page, you just blew your cover! and if you were striving for maximum page load speed by viewing the Google cached version of the page, you just fetched the images (and other stuff) directly from the external website, making the page load slower in your browser (unless you want to view the images of course).

Cached Text Only

But don’t give up just yet. Notice the Click here for the cached text only in the Google cache page header. This gives you an option to view only the data that Google has captured, without any external references, without any style sheets, without any JavaScript, without any Flash, without any Java Applets… just plain old HTML and text. The fact that viewing a web page with JavaScript disabled provides a safer browsing (there is even a Firefox add-on that does that called NoScript). Moreover, using the the cached text only, you communicate only with the Google server bypassing any connection with the external server where the original page is stored.

When you click on the cached text only link, all what Google does is appending &strip=1 to the cache URL. Notice that the banner at the top of the page looks different now:

The &strip=1 parameter strips out all the “bells and whistles”, leaving you with a page that could look quite different from the original, but still has the “meat” that makes it useful to read.

Cut and Paste

So, you can browse most of the web safely and anonymously using a quick cut and paste and a URL modification. For example, the following Google query site:awads.net inurl:contact returns one result. Instead of clicking the Cached link, right-click the Cached link and copy the URL to the clipboard (Firefox: Copy Link Location, IE:Copy Shortcut), then paste it into the address bar of your browser. Append &strip=1 to the end of the URL and hit Enter. You will be directly taken to the stripped version of the cached page.

Greasemonkey

By now, you’re probably saying: but that’s a lot of work, this copy and paste business. Well, again, don’t give up just yet. There are a couple of Greasemonkey scripts (Firefox only for now) that will make the whole experience with Google cache seamless, easy and fast.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on. It allows you to customize the way a web page displays and functions using small bits of JavaScript. You can download it from the Firefox add-ons site.

After installing Greasemonkey you need to feed it user scripts. You can pick from hundreds of user scripts available at userscripts.org. Here are two that work with Google cache:

  • Google Cached Text: Adds a link to the “cached text only” version near any “Cached” link.
  • Google Cache Continue: Adds links to Google cache results to allow continuing using the cache; keeping search terms highlighted.

I have found the above user scripts very handy and especially useful when used together.

Sources and Resources

2 Comments | Filed in Firefox, Google, Greasemonkey, Tips | Tags: , ,

Bye Bye 2006, Welcome 2007

As we say bye bye to 2006, I would like to thank you, my dear reader, for reading my blog and spending part of your time leaving comments and feedback.

For me, the highlights of 2006 were:

I would also like to share with you some statistics from the past 12 months (as per Google Analytics and Feedburner):

Top 10 pages

The following pages received the most hits during 2006:

  1. Home page
  2. Format your SQL the easy way
  3. Oracle SQLPlus
  4. Saving/Downloading files to/from Oracle using ColdFusion
  5. Cool SQL function: EXTRACT
  6. Back to basics: outer joins
  7. NVL, NVL2 or COALESCE?
  8. HTTP POST from inside Oracle
  9. PRAGMAtism in Oracle PL/SQL
  10. Oracle Trace Analyzer is TKPROF on Steroids

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Top 10 browsers

Internet Explorer was the most popular followed by Firefox:

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Top 10 countries

Almost half of the traffic originated from the US and the UK:

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Top referrers

Google was responsible for more than 65% of the traffic, and 10% of the visits were direct, i.e. from bookmarks or directly typing the blog URL:

visitsource.png

The number of subscribers to the blog feed has been steadily growing:

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In 2007 I will continue to blog about whatever I find interesting and useful to both you and me.

Here on the west coast of the United States, we celebrate new year later than the rest of the world. At the time of this writing, there is almost 12 hours till we welcome the arrival of 2007.

My next post will be next year :)

Happy New Year!

Comments Off | Filed in ColdFusion, Google, Oracle, WordPress | Tags: ,

See How Easily You Can Search Oracle

Since the introduction of the first Oracle search plugins for Firefox, a few things have changed:

So, what does this have to do with search plugins? Read on and you will know:

  • What’s new in IE7 and Firefox 2 regarding search plugins.
  • You will be introduced to the new Oracle custom search engines powered by Google.
  • And you will be able to install many Oracle search plugins that will help you in your Oracle-related research and learning.

Search plugins in the new Firefox 2 and IE 7

Both Firefox 2 and IE 7 browsers now support the OpenSearch description format (XML) for search plugins. Which means that if you develop a search plugin for Firefox, that exact same search plugin can also be installed and used in Internet Explorer.

Moreover, there are now two (automated) ways to install search plugins (and they both work in Firefox 2 and IE 7). The first is to call one simple JavaScript function, the second is through auto-discovery of search plugins.

Using auto-discovery, a web site that offers a search plugin can advertise it so that Firefox 2 and IE 7 users can easily download and install the plugin. This is similar to the RSS auto-discovery of feeds.

Search Plugin Installation in IE 7 Using Auto-Discovery

In IE 7, here is how the search bar looks when you browse a website without search plugin auto-discovery:

iesb.png

And here is how it looks with search plugin auto-discovery enabled:

iesb-ad.png

If you click on that small orange down-arrow, you will see something similar to this:

iesb-ad2.png

In fact, if you are using IE 7 to browse this very page, you will be able to see it in action in your browser right now. Just look at your search bar.

Note: I have noticed that IE 7 does not discover more than 3 search plugins using auto-discovery.

Search Plugin Installation in IE 7 Using a JavaScript Link

Alternatively, if the installation is done using the JavaScript link, you will be presented with this window in IE 7:

iesb-ad3.png

Search Plugin Installation in Firefox 2 Using Auto-Discovery

In Firefox 2, here is how the search bar looks when you browse a website without search plugin auto-discovery:

ffsb.png

And here is how it looks with search plugin auto-discovery enabled:

ffsb-ad.png

If you click on that small blue-ish down-arrow, you will see something similar to this:

ffsb-ad2.png

In fact, if you are using Firefox 2.0 to browse this very page (or Wikipedia for example), you will be able to see it in action in your browser. Just look at your search bar.

Search Plugin Installation in Firefox 2 Using a JavaScript Link

Alternatively, if the installation is done using the JavaScript link, you will be presented with this window in Firefox 2.0:

ffsb-ad3.png

Oracle Custom Search Engines

I have created three Oracle custom search engines powered by Google.

  1. The first search engine is for Oracle-related blogs. It searches all the blogs aggregated by OraNA.

  2. The second search engine is for Oracle-related forums and mailing lists. Currently this search engine searches the following sites:

    Let me know if you have other Oracle-related forums you want to include in this search engine.

  3. The third search engine is for Oracle-related websites. Currently this search engine searches the following sites:

    Let me know if you have other Oracle-related sites you want to include in this search engine.

These search engines, and more, are now available to you right from your browser’s search bar.

Install Oracle search plugins

Just click on a search plugin below to add it to the list of engines available in your browser’s search bar:
(Firefox 2 or IE 7 and above only)

Oracle Custom Search Engines:

Oracle Documentation Search Engines:

Keyboard Shortcuts

Here are four search bar keyboard shortcuts that will make using the search bar even faster:

  • Go to search bar: Ctrl+K in Firefox. Ctrl+E in IE.
  • Select next search engine in search bar: Alt+Down in Firefox. Ctrl+Down in IE.
  • Select previous search engine in search bar: Alt+Up in Firefox. Ctrl+Up in IE.
  • Open search results in a new tab: Alt+Enter

And here is a bonus tip to change the width of the search bar in Firefox.

Happy searching!

6 Comments | Filed in Firefox, Google, Oracle, Plugins | Tags: , , , ,

Peek at what others are putting in their Google Notebook

Google Notebook is very useful. It enables you to clip and gather information while you’re browsing the web. It lives in your browser and online. All your web findings are gathered into one organized, easy accessible location that you can access from any computer. In fact, I use Google Notebook to store notes and ideas about things I want to blog about.

Moreover, Google Notebook has a very interesting feature. You can actually publish your notebook to the web, allowing the public to view your notebook’s content. Your public notebook is also included in Google’s search results, and, as a result, searchable. That’s cool. Let’s search the public Google notebooks for “Oracle”:

Interesting. About 447 public Google notebooks have the word “Oracle” in them. Now, if you would please excuse me, I’ll go and poke around these Oracle notebooks, just for curiosity.

Comments Off | Filed in Google, Oracle, Tips | Tags: ,

Oracle OpenWorld News Aggregator

Using Google News Search and Technorati Blog Search in addition to some Google Reader and Feedburner magic, I have put together a web page that aggregates and displays Oracle OpenWorld related blogs and news sources.

So, if you want to stay up-to-date on the latest from Oracle OpenWorld, head on to the Oracle OpenWorld News Aggregator or subscribe to this feed in your favorite feed reader.

On a similar note, you may also want to take a look at OraNA, the largest Oracle blog and news aggregator on the Net.

Comments Off | Filed in Google, Oracle | Tags: ,

Oracle News Aggregator Flooded

If you use OraNA to stay current on the lastest Oracle news and blogs, you may have noticed that the aggregator was flooded by a bunch of past posts from a few Blogger’s blogspot blogs. This is because OraNA is based on Google Reader. Google Reader re-publishes updated feeds, which means that if an item in the feed changes, it will be marked as new. So, I suspect that something has changed on these few blogs marking their feeds as updated. As a result, the posts were picked up by Google Reader (and ultimately, OraNA) as new. Sorry for the inconvenience.

2 Comments | Filed in Google, Oracle | Tags: , ,

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