From the Database-Geek.

Here are some links I thought might be useful (or at least interesting) to you:

Job Search

Does your resume look fine to you? Maybe it could use some editing: Critique Your Resume

With the economy in the tank, anyone can lose their job. If it’s been a while, you might need to read: Job Hunting for the Rusty

Free Software

Quake for the Web! Free! By id! Like Doom! Did I say on the web? And free? A Browser Quake! id Software launches free Quake Live browser-based shooting game This is the best link in this post!

Excellent, free, web based graphic software.

• Having trouble with my web sites today. Very slow access. My hosting company must be having issues. #
• A new look for my database blog. Tell me what you think. http://database-geek.com/ #
• Blogged “PL/SQL Code Parser Part 3″ http://it.toolbox.com/trd/46/2/30035/3/ #
• @surachart @OracleCert Thanks. I am going for clean and easy to read. My old theme was hard to read when there was a lot of code. #
• @jaylward No iphone. Apple is evil. in reply to jaylward #
• Check out this killer barebones rig from tiger direct: http://tinyurl.com/bvazu8 I am thinking about building an i7 but this quad is cheap! #
• @serge_a_storms Isn’t it.

From the Database-Geek.

In addition to frequently being asked to recommend books for newbies to Oracle, I am also asked for guidance on certification. Basically, what materials are available and worth purchasing. I used Self Test software and the Sybex books when I was working on my certification. That was back in the 9i days. If you are working on 9i certification, I strongly recommend them.

However, I figure you are probably working on an 11g certification; 10g at least. In that case, I would guess that Sybex and Self Test are still good options, I just haven’t personally worked with the latest versions (software or books).

From the Database-Geek.

Continuing with the parser, begun week in PL/SQL Parser Part 1 and PL/SQL Parser Part 2, today I am going to modify the code to account for keywords, operators and data. By data, I don’t mean strings. I mean anything not a keyword, not a comment and not an operator. Data may be a quoted string (which we accounted for in Part 2), but it is also non-language functions and procedures. If you call a user defined procedure, that procedure call is considered data (at least it is here, for now).

In the code presented below, I have done several things.

Ahhh. Disney in the morning, nap after lunch and pizza for dinner. The weekends go too fast. #
Monday is proof that all good things come to an end. Actually, I guess that just proves 1 good thing comes to an end. Close enough. #
Defining Cloud Computing – Part 2: Distributed Computing [...]

Does Cloud Computing Change Anything?

Cloud computing, aka utility computing, aka SaaS, aka PaaS, aka IaaS, etc. is definitely the buzz word du jour (or buzz word 2009).
Cloud computing is pretty much whatever a particular vendor wants it to be as long as it will allow them to be 100% buzz word compliant.
For the sake of this article, let's say that cloud computing is a service based offering that allows dynamic allocation of virtualized resources from remote

From the Database-Geek.

Continuing with the parser, begun last week in Building a PL/SQL Code Parser Part 1, today I am going to modify the code to allow for comments. Rather than dive back into code already covered, I will discuss what I have added and then provide the full code below.

I changed my sample code and test proc to a new format:

declare

  v_string varchar2(32000) :=
  'CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE yada' || chr(10)  ||
      ' AS ' || chr(10) ||
      ' /* This is a comment */  ' || chr(10) ||
     ' BEGIN' || chr(10) ||
     '   DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(''string with a space'' ||' || chr(10) ||
     '   ''string with emb''''edd''''''''ed quotes'');' || chr(10) ||
     '   -- second_func(''test'');' || chr(10) ||
     ' END;' ;

begin

  v_string := lrc_plsql_parser.parse_line(v_string);

END;

Notice that in addition to the comments, I have added line feeds.

Posted by the Database-Geek.

DBAs and developers, do you suffer from PD? PD, performance dysfunction, is not a topic that many like to discuss. A few people do but they mostly hang out together at conferences and talk about the size of their tuples. For the rest of us, PD is an evil, evil thing.

There are as many types of PD as there are causes. Today I want to talk about a particularly insidious type referred to as PO or Premature Optimization. PO can strike at any time, any where. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about but it is something to fix.

Posted by the Database-Geek.

Summary Totals Using SQL

Have you ever needed to get totals for different combinations of columns in the same query? Did you ever want to create a nice little report from a simple SQL statement? Here’s a tip that can make your life a lot easier when you need it. The great thing about this is that you can use it in a ref cursor called from other programming languages and reduce the number of calls you need to make to the database.

Let’s say you are running queries against the Employees table of the sample HR schema provided by Oracle.

SQL> SELECT count(*) FROM Employees;

  COUNT(*)
----------
       107

Now, we want to get a total of salaries for each job in each department.

3 Cloud Operating Systems You Can Use Right Now http://tinyurl.com/c52puq #
Blogged “Building a PL/SQL Parser (using PL/SQL), Part 1″ http://it.toolbox.com/trd/46/2/29703/3/ #
Blogged “I apologize for the state of the code formatting” http://it.toolbox.com/trd/46/2/29705/3/ #
@wfavero the first time it is annoying, the second frustrating but after a handful of times, they need to start testing better. in reply [...]

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology

Is it possible to build a PL/SQL parser using nothing but PL/SQL? To answer that question, I guess I need to define “PL/SQL parser”. What would be the intention of this parser?

I would like a way to parse a PL/SQL code block and let me determine some statistics: number of lines, number of keywords, number of DML statements. It would need to recognize comments. I also want to be able to format the code for pretty printing. I want to be able to apply user defined checks for adherence to coding standards.

@bananakin why no laptop? #
New podcast; Aptana Cloud ?http://tinyurl.com/b3yg4l #
RT @Database_News DB2 Storage Engine for MySQL Coming Soon – System iNetwork: DB2 Storage Engine for MySQL Coming. http://tinyurl.com/c3qena #
Sprint laying off 8000 by march http://tinyurl.com/d484yq #
@bananakin I guess you got an apple with a wyrm in it. #
Home depot laying off 7000, caterpiller [...]

Have you taken the leap into the cloud? If you don’t want to start with data centers in the sky, you can start with a desktop in the sky. Microsoft has offered Live Mesh for a while now. I wrote about live mesh on this blog. Live Mesh, even though it offers a desktop, is [...]

This is very frustrating to me. Apparently a change was made here at ittoolbox that is screwing up the HTML PRE tag. Posts that used to look good now look like crap. If I allow line breaks, it is somewhat readable but doesn’t keep spacing. If I don’t allow line breaks, which I usually don’t, it is pretty unreadable.

I’m not sure how long this has been going on. I posted a new entry a little while ago and thought something was wrong with my new post. However, after wasting part of my sun

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide to Oracle Technology
Is it possible to build a PL/SQL parser using nothing but PL/SQL? To answer that question, I guess I need to define “PL/SQL parser”. What would be the intention of this parser?
I would like a way to pa…