Eddie Awad's Blog

[Video] Shop, Dine, and Play in Monterey – ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009

Eddie Awad — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:36:39 +0000

Yesterday, ODTUG had a special event: Shop, Dine, and Play in Monterey. Conference attendees were offered a free shuttle service to take us around town.

I have never been in Monterey before so this was a great opportunity. I also wanted to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium but too bad it was closed.

Here is a short video I took during our little adventure in this nice beach town:

[Video] ODTUG Kaleidoscope – June 21 2009

Eddie Awad — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:00:20 +0000

While on our way to attend the Fusion keynote presentation by Steve Miranda, Oracle SVP of Application Development, Lewis and I met up with Justin. Then we caught up with Steven Feuerstein who was just finishing up his running exercise.

I took this opportunity to shoot the following video which also shows other Oracle ACEs and ODTUG Kaleidoscope attendees waiting for the keynote to start.

By the way, Steven won the ODTUG lifetime achievement award. Congratulations!

[Video] Stanley the ACE Vest at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009

Eddie Awad — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:30:00 +0000

If you do not know who Stanley is read this first then watch him and his siblings in the following video:

PS: Thanks to Roel and Tim who were behind the camera.

[Video] Oracle ACE Director Product Briefing at Oracle HQ

Eddie Awad — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:52:51 +0000

It’s a secret. I cannot talk about it because I, and all the Oracle ACE Directors who attended the product briefing at Oracle HQ yesterday, signed a Non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Is it a game console? is it something else? Can’t say. However, I can show you the video below and refer you to this Twitter stream.

In the following video, you will see the Oracle ACE Directors in the briefing room, eating, drinking and then riding a bus to head down to Monterey to attend ODTUG Kaleidoscope:

Can you name the Oracle ACE Directors that you recognize in the video?

The Premier Conference for Developers in the Oracle Community

Eddie Awad — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:58:09 +0000

The Oracle Development Tool User Group (ODTUG) is an independent, not-for-profit global organization providing education, support, advocacy, and networking opportunities for all developers, using a variety of technologies, who work on Oracle Databases.

ODTUG’s annual conference, ODTUG Kaleidoscope, is considered the premier conference for developers in the Oracle community. This year the conference is going to be held in Monterey, California on June 21st and lasts until the 25th.

I have never attended ODTUG Kaleidoscope before. But this year I will be there.

Before heading down to Monterey, I will attend the Oracle ACE Director product briefing at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores on Friday, June 19th.

I have just used the schedule builder to select the sessions I want to attend. There are many interesting sessions. I want to attend all of them… if only I could be in more than one place at once!

Here is my ODTUG Kaleidoscope session schedule:

Session	Title	Presenter
29: 06/22/2009 10:00 AM-11:30 AM	Extending SQL Developer – It’s easier than you think	John Flack
31: 06/22/2009 1:00 PM-2:00 PM	PL/SQL Development with SQL Developer	Sue Harper
33: 06/22/2009 2:15 PM-3:15 PM	You Too Can be a Successful Web Developer Knowing Only PL/SQL	Paul Dorsey
35: 06/22/2009 3:45 PM-5:15 PM	Oracle Application Express 4.0	Michael Hichwa
37: 06/23/2009 8:00 AM-9:00 AM	Database Development Panel	Panel
39: 06/23/2009 9:15 AM-10:15 AM	Database Worst Practices	Tom Kyte
41: 06/23/2009 10:30 AM-12:00 PM	Advanced Analytic Functions	Tom Kyte
43: 06/23/2009 1:30 PM-2:30 PM	Performance Tuning Web Applications	Paul Dorsey
45: 06/23/2009 2:45 PM-3:45 PM	Doing SQL from PL/SQL: best and worst practices	Bryn Llewellyn
47: 06/23/2009 4:15 PM-5:15 PM	Oracle Development Tips and Tricks You Must Know	Tony Catalano
63: 06/23/2009 5:15-6:15	Sundown Session – Database App Development	Oracle ACE Directors
51: 06/24/2009 8:00 AM-9:00 AM	Debugging in SQL Developer	Lewis Cunningham
53: 06/24/2009 9:15 AM-10:15 AM	Semantic Query Optimization	Toon Koppelaars
55: 06/24/2009 10:30 AM-12:00 PM	SQL Performance Hero and OMG Method Play the Anti-patterns Greatest Hits	Jeff Jacobs
57: 06/24/2009 1:30 PM-2:30 PM	Making Friends with the Oracle Database	Cary Millsap
59: 06/24/2009 2:45 PM-3:45 PM	RE-Introducing the SQL Model Clause	Monty Latiolais
61: 06/24/2009 4:15 PM-5:15 PM	SQL/XML For Developers	Lewis Cunningham
65: 06/25/2009 8:00 AM-9:00 AM	Seven Steps to energize your organization with APEX (Creating a APEX Center of Excellence)	Kathy Hunsicker
67: 06/25/2009 9:15 AM -10:15 AM	What’s the point with the Zachman Framework?	Marc De Oliveira
69: 06/25/2009 10:30 AM-12:00 PM	Writing Screamingly Fast PL/SQL Applications	Timothy Bell

Why WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE Can Be Harmful

Eddie Awad — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:01:17 +0000

Every PL/SQL developer knows, or at least should know, that WHEN OTHERS THEN NULL is a hidden bug; Ask Tom.

But, what about WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE?

I have known PL/SQL developers who follow a “standard” of adding:

EXCEPTION
   WHEN OTHERS
   THEN
      RAISE;
END;

to every PL/SQL block. The reasoning behind this practice, as explained to me:

There is no harm in adding it
It makes maintenance easier
Used as a placeholder for additional error handling when needed
There is no overhead executing it

When asked if he was joking when he added “when others then raise;” Shoblock replied:

not joking at all. very serious. I know it’s not needed, but it helps to point out to people who might modify your code later on that you do indeed want all other exceptions to be raised. it basically prevents someone from adding “when others then null” while you’re on vacation.

Now, before rushing back and starting to sprinkle WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE all over your code, please read Tom Kyte’s take on this seemingly harmless line of code:

why do people do this?????

EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE; END;

what is the point, other than to make the code infinitely harder to debug. You know what you did by coding that?

YOU HIDE THE LINE NUMBERS FROM US. No longer can you tell where the error came from !!!!!

Tom is right. Consider:

SQL> DECLARE
  2     l_var   varchar2 (30);
  3  BEGIN
  4     SELECT   object_name
  5       INTO   l_var
  6       FROM   all_objects
  7      WHERE   ROWNUM <= 2;
  8  END;
  9  /
DECLARE
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01422: exact fetch returns more than requested number of rows
ORA-06512: at line 4

Now let’s add WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE:

SQL> DECLARE
  2     l_var   varchar2 (30);
  3  BEGIN
  4     SELECT   object_name
  5       INTO   l_var
  6       FROM   all_objects
  7      WHERE   ROWNUM <= 2;
  8  EXCEPTION
  9     WHEN OTHERS
 10     THEN
 11        RAISE;
 12  END;
 13  /
DECLARE
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01422: exact fetch returns more than requested number of rows
ORA-06512: at line 11

As you can see, WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE masked the line number where the actual error occurred. In the above example, the real error occurred at line 4 not 11.

WHEN OTHERS THEN NULL is a hidden bug but WHEN OTHERS THEN RAISE hides the bug.

5 Recommendations About Cursor FOR Loops in Oracle PL/SQL

Play This Game to Find Out If You Are the Smartest Database Professional in the World

Eddie Awad — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:23:22 +0000

Got this from the March 2009 edition of the Oracle ACE Newsletter:

Thanks to some of our ACEs who were the masterminds behind the questions, DB-Quest – the online game to test database knowledge – is now Live!

Become a database superhero and prove that you are the smartest database professional in the world. The top 10 scorers will be able to submit their own database question for inclusion in the game. Take the challenge. Share your ideas or suggest new questions on Oracle Mix.

New Blog Telling the Oracle Performance Story

Eddie Awad — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:02:50 +0000

Oracle Performance Storyteller, that’s the short description of Dion Cho’s blog. His blog contains many useful and interesting posts about Oracle performance diagnosis and optimization.

The blog’s tag cloud includes tags such as dbms_xplan, sql trace, sql profile and stored outline all in big font.

Thanks Coskan for bringing Dion’s blog to my attention. I have added it to OraNA.info.

By the way, I am constantly adding new blogs to OraNA.info. If you want to know what blogs I have added, just follow orana_updates.

Morgan’s Oracle Library Has Moved

Eddie Awad — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:39:36 +0000

If you work with Oracle databases you probably know about Morgan’s Library, Daniel Morgan’s creation. He has built an extensive resource for Oracle DBAs and Developers.

Dan recently pinged me to let me know that his library has moved from psoug.org to morganslibrary.org and that he is no longer associated with PSOUG.

So, Morgan’s Library lives on!

Oracle Rich Enterprise Applications

Rewriting SQL Queries for Performance in 9 Minutes (Video)

Eddie Awad — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:13:55 +0000

Here is another video from Stephane Faroult about how you can improve query performance: