Using Bind Variables is a post from: Database Geek Blog

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide To Oracle Technology

Ok, I know you you’ve heard of them. Heck, in some cases, you’ve been beaten over the head with them. So why   aren’t you using them?

I’ve heard some people saying that it’s easier to code without bind variables. Really? Concatenating strings,   potentially with embedded quotes and/or varying formats, is easier than using bind variables?

I got… Read the rest!

Oracle DBMS_SCHEDULER Part 2 – The API is a post from: Database Geek Blog

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced you to the basic components and some information you need to know before using the scheduler. Today’s post will cover using the API to create some basic objects. I’ll show how to use SQL Developer to simplify some of these tasks.

Today’s post will cover creating programs and jobs.

Programs

As I said… Read the rest!

OCFS – Oracle Cloud File System is a post from: Database Geek Blog

OCFS? That sure sounds familiar! OFS, OCFS? Where have a I heard that before? Oh yeah, Oracle Cluster File System! So, now Oracle has a cloud file system? Cool!

OCFS is based on ASM Cluster File System (ACFS) and ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (ADVM). It looks like the marketing material also refers to OCFS as CloudFS. The idea is to use ASM… Read the rest!

Oracle DBMS_SCHEDULER Part 1–The Basics is a post from: Database Geek Blog

DBMS_SCHEDULER is Oracle’s full featured scheduling solution that runs inside the database. Think of it as a complete replacement for DBMS_JOB (which I do still use occasionally but am using less and less over time). DBMS_SCHEDULER has a lot of benefits over DBMS_JOB – ability to stop a job, ability to reuse code, ability to reuse schedules, ability to chain jobs into a… Read the rest!

Designing the Data Mart – Part 2 is a post from: Database Geek Blog

Continuing from Part 1.

So now we have our transactional model and a basic user story:

Our first request from the business for our data mart is that they want to be able to query all of the orders by date, by customer and/or by region (state, city or country). They want to be able to aggregate (sum and average) across

… Read the rest!

Designing the Data Mart – Part 1 is a post from: Database Geek Blog

As I mentioned a while back (a loooong while back), I have been thinking about writing up how I design data marts. The problem with that is that it is a huge topic. Even converting an existing schema (which doesn’t always exist) to a data mart (star schema style), still takes plenty of behind the scenes data analysis and prepwork. Still,… Read the rest!

PL/JSON v0.6.2 Released is a post from: Database Geek Blog

It was pointed out to me that I had a few errors in the previous release.  Those have been fixed and the install should go a lot smoother now.  No additional functionality here, just bug fixes.  If you tweaked the previous release to install it, you don’t need this one.

As always, you can download the new code directly from the PL/JSON SourceForge page.

Change… Read the rest!

PL/JSON v0.6 Released to SourceForge is a post from: Database Geek Blog

From the Database Geek.

PL/JSON v0.6.1 has now been released to Sourceforge.net. The reason for the .1 is that I forgot a dependency on the 0.6 release.

Anyway, PL/JSON can now create JSON via the API or through parsing a text string. The parser is implemented as a stand along package. That means you can write your own parser (or use an external… Read the rest!

Use a Pipelined Function to Select Source Code Arguments is a post from: Database Geek Blog

From the Database Geek.

I recently needed to query all of the arguments to the various stored procedures, functions, packaged objects and types. Oracle provides all of this information in the data dictionary in the ALL_PROCEDURES and ALL_ARGUMENTS views. The problem with this is that it’s kind of kludgey to suck out all of the pertinent data.

One problem… Read the rest!

Stupid Database Tricks – Shutdown the server from a stored procedure is a post from: Database Geek Blog

From the Database Geek.

I’m not even going to try to explain why I wrote this. Let’s just say that it comes in handy on occasion.

What this very simple procedure does is use DBMS_SCHEDULER to execute a shutdown command in windows. This could easily be adapted to Unix and/or Linux.

Use at your own risk. By… Read the rest!

ORA_Tweet Now Does Short URLs is a post from: Database Geek Blog

Paul Gallagher, of the Tardate blog, emailed me this morning (or I guess it was last night) and sent me some code to enhace ORA_Tweet.  He wrote a package to call out to an is.gd API to convert a long URL to a short URL.  The really cool thing is that he used a regular expression to find matches INSIDE the comment body. … Read the rest!

Calculating Business Days and Business Days Between is a post from: Database Geek Blog

From the Database Geek.

I recently had a requirement to populate the day dimension of a data mart (I won’t put all of the code here as it’s pretty large). That’s not that big deal but part of the requirement was to set several columns: BUSINESS_DAY_FLAG, BUSINESS_DAY_NO and BUSINESS_DAYS_REMAINING_NO.

• The BUSINESS_DAY_FLAG is Y is the date is MON-FRI and N

… Read the rest!

Private vs Public Global Variables is a post from: Database Geek Blog

Recently I posted an article about ORA_Tweet, an Oracle Twitter Client. I was asked by someone reading the code why I put several variables in the BODY of the package rather than the SPEC. The question was posed something like this:

Why not put the variables in the package spec where they are modifiable? That would involve less maintenance.

I specifically put… Read the rest!

JSON In (and out) of Oracle – JSON Data Type is a post from: Database Geek Blog

From the database geek.

Update March 29, 2009:  PL/JSON is now available as an open source project (MIT License).  Read the FAQ at http://oracleoss.com

Do you use JSON? Do you use Oracle? How would you like to use JSON in Oracle? How would you like to store it, generate it and read it? I am creating a new… Read the rest!

Ora_Tweet – Tweet From Oracle, A PL/SQL Twitter API is a post from: Database Geek Blog

Get the latest source from the ORA Tweet project page at sourceforge.

I had some free time this last Saturday night (after the family was all in bed) and I wanted to do a little mini-project. I don’t get to do enough PL/SQL anymore so I like to look for utilities and smaller fun things to code. While I… Read the rest!