Eddie Awad's Blog

This is How You Should Ask for Help

Eddie Awad — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:14:13 +0000

In this video interview with ZDNet.com.au, Kyte explains how many questions he receives equate to “my car won’t start”. “I’m going to do it to you — my car won’t start, why? Give me the solution. I’m not going to tell you what errors I see on the dashboard; I’m not going to tell you if I filled the car up with gas recently; I’m not going to tell you if it’s making a noise or not making a noise; but my car won’t start, why not? There’s insufficient data to even begin to answer a question like that.” Kyte also explains how the internet has changed how questions are asked, and how he doesn’t reply with RTFM.

via How developers should ask for help: Blogs – Null Pointer – ZDNet Australia (via)

5 Useful and Interesting Links for 2009-10-20

Eddie Awad — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:03:39 +0000

Oracle Sample Code

A site where employees and Oracle Technology Network members collaboratively build and share sample applications, code snippets, skins and templates, and more (Requires an OTN login).
SQL Scripts for Oracle DBAs

A repository of useful SQL scripts brought to you by Vitaliy Mogilevskiy.
Oracle JDBC Frequently Asked Questions

This document contains answers to the most frequently asked spans about Oracle's JDBC drivers.
Database Articles

Oracle SQL and database articles by Jonathan Gennick.
Oracle Industry Analyst Reports

Learn what industry analysts have been saying about Oracle's products and services.

Your Company Could Win $10 Million!

Eddie Awad — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:47:44 +0000

If your Oracle database application doesn’t run at least twice as fast on SUN hardware as on IBM’s fastest computer, your company could win $10 million from Oracle. Even IBM is welcome to enter the $10 Million Challenge!

More…

(via)

If You Have These 5 Attributes, You’re an Expert

Eddie Awad — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:00:01 +0000

An expert is:

One who has tried, who has practical experience in a field.

Conversely, one who has been tried has a few wounds to show for it. If you don’t have a glorious failure or two under your belt, you’re probably not ready to be an “expert” for others hoping to avoid the same thing.

One who has acquired comprehensive knowledge and continues to learn about a field.

One who has authority as appointed to them by the community for having demonstrated they know their stuff.

One who experiments – taking the field further. I call them thinkers and tinkerers.

via Conversation Agent.

Some interesting comments:

DJ: I personally don’t love the word expert. After all, experts are usually wrong more then they are right.

Taylor: I typically assume that an expert is not open to embracing ideas which challenge their “expertness”.

Carolyn: A cynic once told me that an expert was someone who knew more and more about less and less until they knew absolutely everything about absolutely nothing!

Gavin: I guess we’re all experts in something!

Well, I can tell you one thing: Believe in proof not experts.

4 Useful and Interesting Links for 2009-10-04

Eddie Awad — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:01:21 +0000

Always Bulk Collect

If your cursor FOR loop contains any DML statements, you will still want to explicitly convert to BULK COLLECT. The reason is that while the optimizer will improve the performance of the query step, it will not optimize the DML statements to execute like FORALLs.
Click Framework

Click Framework is a modern JEE web application framework, providing a natural rich client style programming model. Click is designed to be very easy to learn and use, with developers getting up and running within a day.
SchemaSpy

SchemaSpy is a Java-based tool (requires Java 5 or higher) that analyzes the metadata of a schema in a database and generates a visual representation of it in a browser-displayable format.
PL_FPDF

Free PL/SQL library to generate PDF from Oracle Database.

Oracle SQL Developer 2.1 EA1 Released

Eddie Awad — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:57:26 +0000

Oracle SQL Developer 2.1 Early Access 1 is available for download. Please review the Release Notes before you start. For all other supporting documents, please visit SQL Developer on OTN.
Here’s the new feature list :
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/files/NewFeatureList21.htm
Here’s the OBE for the new Unit Testing:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/11gr2_db_prod/appdev/sqldev/sqldev_unit_test/sqldev_unit_test.htm

via forums.oracle.com

Download it from http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/sql/index21_EA1.html

Can You Read This?

Eddie Awad — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:37:43 +0000

via friends.hosted.pl

36K “Oracle lang:sql” Scripts

Eddie Awad — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:23:11 +0000

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

A Quick Oracle Metalink Tip

Eddie Awad — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:29:44 +0000

Oracle Metalink (now known as “My Oracle Support” ) has over 300 scripts available. Log on to Metalink and then navigiate to:
Top of page – KNOWLEDGE – TOOLS AND TRAINING – DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS
There’s a LOT of stuff available in diagnostic tools. Take advantage of it!

via oraclecommunity.net

OracleCommunity.net a Great Example of a Customer-run Community, Here is Why

Eddie Awad — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:30:10 +0000

The Wall Street Journal published an article titled Creating a Successful Online Brand Community – The Fans Know Best. The authors list “four things companies can do to turn a tired and rigid brand community into a powerful market-research lab, early-warning system and customer-loyalty builder, all rolled into one”.

I was happy to see that OracleCommunity.net was mentioned in the WSJ article as an example of giving visitors multiple ways of interacting:

Lots of company-run communities are good at putting visitors in touch with a company representative, or at helping them find solutions to problems. But many of these sites don’t let visitors talk to each other. Where is the community in that? … Most fan-run communities, by contrast, encourage a variety of social interactions…

At Oraclecommunity.net, a site for people interested in Oracle Corp.’s database and software products, members share personal stories, pictures, videos and birthdays. They can create blogs on the site, form groups around themes and build networks of designated friends. Members can also schedule meetings and events both online and in person.

The article is a good read. By the way, make sure you join the 6,000+ OracleCommunity.net members, in case you have not done so already.