OraNA :: Oracle News Aggregator

Blogs I follow..

Dave — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:02:38 PDT

I've added a column to the right of some of the blogs I follow. I know there are more but most of them I read through OraNA. On busy days I have missed articles via OraNA so I started to add them to Google Reader. It was easy to import them to my blog, so I did in case others may be interested.

What you need to know about using My Oracle Support and “the Switch”

jorge.zuniga — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:51:57 PDT

By now, you’ve probably heard or read about the retiring of classic metalink. You also might have read, heard or offered some constructive feedback on My Oracle Support in the form of blog comments (much appreciated!) or community posts (again, thanks!).

Be assured that the My Oracle Support team (including yours truly) is hard at work tracking your feedback for upcoming releases, so please, keep it coming – We hear you! In fact, I encourage you to checkout this related post in the communities by colleague SeanB in which he explains that some of the problems identified in the last release of My Oracle Support will be significantly improved upon (ahem, performance) with the release coming up; of course, our customers will ultimately be the judges of what areas still need attention.

Just to ensure you’re getting the information you need, here are a few helpful links on the switch from Classic Metalink to My Oracle Support for all Oracle Support customers (with Note numbers in paren):

-- FAQ – (New) (841055.1)
-- Communities
-- Main Announcement with Preparation Info. (838708.1)
-- Related Blog by Chris Warticki

Feel free to leave more feedback or express concerns or questions below (I’d advise to be respectful, but that would be preaching to the choir ;-)

Cheers!

Toad for MySQL Freeware

maclochlainn — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:03:06 PDT

While SQL Developer is a nice tool and free, Toad is still an awesome development platform, albeit for Windows. In fact, it was annoying to have to install the Microsoft .NET Framework before installing it. It is free for MySQL!

Since my students have to do all their work in Oracle and then port it to MySQL, I demonstrate Quest’s Toad for MySQL’s automatic ERD diagramming tool at the end of the term. There’s only one real trick to making it work. That trick requires that you write your loading scripts for the Inno DB and use referential integrity constraints. My sample Video Store scripts for my database class are updated for MySQL referential integrity.

Unlike the friendly CASCADE CONSTRAINTS clause you can use in Oracle, MySQL won’t let you create a re-runnable script with only DDL statements. Actually, the constraint comes from the InnoDB engine. You must issue a specialized InnoDB command before running your script:

11
12
13

-- This enables dropping tables with foreign key dependencies.
-- It is specific to the InnoDB Engine.
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0;

Primary keys are a bit different from Oracle and it appears you can’t name them, at least I couldn’t see how to do it. Here’s an example of primary and foreign key constraints in MySQL. The primary key is inline and the foreign key constraints are out of line. This example from the downloadable scripts uses self referencing foreign key constraints.

CREATE TABLE system_user
( system_user_id              INT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT
, system_user_name            CHAR(20)     NOT NULL
, system_user_group_id        INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL
, system_user_type            INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL
, first_name                  CHAR(20)
, middle_name                 CHAR(20)
, last_name                   CHAR(20)
, created_by                  INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL
, creation_date               DATE         NOT NULL
, last_updated_by             INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL
, last_update_date            DATE         NOT NULL
, KEY system_user_fk1 (created_by)
, CONSTRAINT system_user_fk1 FOREIGN KEY (created_by)
  REFERENCES system_user (system_user_id)
, KEY system_user_fk2 (last_updated_by)
, CONSTRAINT system_user_fk2 FOREIGN KEY (last_updated_by)
  REFERENCES system_user (system_user_id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Once installed (instructions are here) and connected to the MySQL database, you simply click the ERD icon in the top panel and drag the tables onto the canvas. You’ll see something like this (by the way click on the image to see its full size):

Have fun with it. It’ll be interesting to see how Oracle positions MySQL when they own it. My hunch is that they’ll continue to sell it and provide it as an open source product.

When Reality Does Not Meet Hype: AT&T + iPhone Probably the Worst Customer Experience I've Ever Had

Ken Pulverman — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:13:12 PDT

I know we are all supposed to love these little slippery shiny plastic boxes specifically engineered to drop out of you hand, with batteries and memory that can't be upgraded giving you yet another reason to pay Apple more money.

I've resisted for some time. I was actually given one that I gave away without using it as it didn't have the features I use most often, notably MMS and Bluetooth Stereo. When the newest one launched, I did a bit of research online and decided I'd take the plunge despite my issues with its purposely designed obsolescence.

Unfortunately the experience of trying to get one ordered and working has probably been the worst consumer experience I have ever suffered through. The commercials make it look so easy, and I was actually looking forward to the experience. I had no idea how far from reality the actual consumer experience is.

When the 3Gs came out, I didn't try to rush out and get one. I waited a couple of weeks for the early hiccups to work themselves out and inventory to be replenished. I guess I didn't wait long enough.

About a week ago, I went to an AT&T store in the heart of the financial district of San Francisco. They didn't have any and directed me to the Apple store, but said that only a couple of people they sent there had been successful in getting one.

I decided to order one online through my company. The first order failed for some strange reason after I submitted it through the AT&T Premier site. After calling my bank to make sure I wasn't charged, I processed the order again. It launched a workflow inside my company that showed that service for the year would be almost $1,000. That really is a lot of money, but I use a cell phone a lot for work and also need to demo some of the applications the development group I work with has built for the iPhone.

The phone arrived on Friday. I've been an AT&T customer for many years so this was an upgrade. I was supposed to call a number to process the order. The recording told me that the automatic processing system was down. I waited on hold 30 minutes, and hour, and 30 minutes again and never got through. The last time, AT&T simply hung up. The next time I called they said the "Premier" support would not be open until Monday. One more call dumped me into a voicemail system. I gave up and decided to go to the Apple store.

A portly guy in a giant orange T-shirt with those oversized earings that permanently distort your ear lobes insists that to activate the phone, I just needed to plug it into iTunes. I knew this was rubbish so I pressed some more. "Oh activation, for that you need to go to the AT&T store. I don't know what their hours are though."

I trundle down to the AT&T Store and of course it is closed. I give up and decide I will return the next morning to see what they can do.

At the AT&T store, another forcefully insistent but clearly ignorant employee tells me I need to take the sim card out of my existing phone and put it in the new iPhone. He is adamant that there is no sim card in the new phone. I tell him that certainly AT&T ships a sim card in a phone they are upgrading. He pops it open and out drops a sim card. Having now splayed my phone open, he reassembles it and attempts to activate on his system. He then tells me this is a "Premier" account and thus he can't do anything. I ask him if he can return the phone. Yes, as it turns out, that is the one thing he can do and in this matter he actually seemed eager to help.

I left with my now 24 hour old brick resolving to give up until Monday for another hour or more on the phone.

It is very clear that this undynamic duo needs a little remedial marketing.....

EXPECTATION - Don't set the bar ridiculously high in your ads and commercials if your process is shit. Under promise and try to over deliver.

ALERT SALES - It's in excusable after 3 releases of the product that probably one of the most heavily trafficked Apple stores in the heart of San Francisco doesn't know the process for activating a phone or the hours of the AT&T Store.

SEGMENTATION - "Premier" should not mean an invitation to traipse around San Francisco or climb through the phone tree to get crapped on. I work at one of the largest companies in the world. We spend a lot on voice and data communications because these services are vital to our business. We do have choices though at the employee level and guess what we talk...and blog. We want our company to get good value and we want good service ourselves. It's not a surprise that Apple is blowing it in the corporate market, but AT&T? You should really be ashamed of yourselves. I suggest you work on making Premier actually Premier. And Apple, come on. Even if you think it is cool to ignore the corporate market, at least you could recognize that if the iPhone is the supposed gateway drug to your other products, and someone buys the most expensive version of that product, they probably expect a decent introduction to your world.

EAT HUMBLE PIE - At both stores I sensed a great degree of smugness. Employees who insisted they knew what they were doing when they didn't have a clue. It's very clear this partnership on its third try still has many issues. When I tell you I've been on hold for more than two hours don't brashly insist that you know how to fix my problem only to send me away with nothing. Perhaps this goes back to expectation, but you can't just hire a guy with a bone through his earlobe to show the world you are different you actually have to be different.

It's takes a lot for me to sprint home two miles from the center of San Francisco to crank out such a blog entry. I am way beyond irritated with the myriad of incompetent processes and people I have encountered at this point.

I can assure you, that the only thing that will keep me from talking about this pathetic display forever will be an act of service recovery befitting the crime of the time I've been forced to waste. Apple & AT&T, if someone in your headquarters is listening, unlike your employees in your stores, I plan to waste just one more hour on Monday trying to get this phone to work. After which I will take advantage of evidently the only thing you have collectively (and oddly) mastered - the process of giving my money back.

OBIEE New Sample Sales Analysis v 1.3

John Minkjan — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:46:00 PDT

The RPD and WebCat can be found http://download.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/files/oracle_bi_sample_analysis_setup_files.zip

It has same nice statistics demos!

Till Next Time!

SQL*Plus, EZCONNECT, Password Prompt, and ORA-12504

Mark Williams — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:06:36 PDT

I use SQL*Plus a great deal and I find the "Easy Connect Naming Method" a convenient option.

Before you get any further in this post, let me be perfectly clear that this post only addresses ORA-12504 in the context of using the "Easy Connect Naming Method" with SQL*Plus and password prompting. It does not address ORA-12504 outside of this context. The documentation (see the link above) has several examples of using and configuring this method, so I won't go into them all here. This method is also known as "EZCONNECT" presumably because "Z" in the American dialect is pronounced like "zee" rather than "zed".

You are likely already familiar with the password prompting behavior of SQL*Plus. For example, when using a tnsnames.ora file alias to connect to a database, if the password is not specified, SQL*Plus will prompt you for it (i.e. "Enter password:"):

[oracle@liverpool ~]$ sqlplus hr@orademo

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sat Jul 11 11:42:08 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Enter password:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

Nice and easy.

So, let's try the equivalent using EZCONNECT:

[oracle@liverpool ~]$ sqlplus hr@liverpool:1521/DEMO

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sat Jul 11 11:43:20 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-12504: TNS:listener was not given the SERVICE_NAME in CONNECT_DATA

Enter user-name:

Hmm... well, that's interesting. Rather than getting prompted for the password we get an error (ORA-12504: TNS:listener was not given the SERVICE_NAME in CONNECT_DATA) and then we get presented with the "Enter user-name:" prompt again. Funny that the error is saying the SERVICE_NAME was not specified, but it sure is there - DEMO in this case. This is giving us a clue though...

OK, so let's go ahead and specify the password:

[oracle@liverpool ~]$ sqlplus hr/hr@liverpool:1521/DEMO

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sat Jul 11 11:44:02 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

Much better, it works, but what if you (reasonably) don't want to specify the password on the command-line?

Taking a look at the documentation (really - that stuff does come in handy!) for the CONNECT SQL*Plus command we can see this:

username[/password] [@connect_identifier]

Pay particular attention that the "/" precedes the password. In the case of using EZCONNECT we have:

sqlplus hr@liverpool:1521/DEMO

So, in this case the "/" precedes the SERVICE_NAME and not the password. How should we tell SQL*Plus that the "/" is not preceding the password? We quote the connection string!

[oracle@liverpool ~]$ sqlplus hr@\"liverpool:1521/DEMO\"

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sat Jul 11 11:45:43 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Enter password:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

Now that's more like it! Notice that I used "\" (backslash) to escape the double-quote characters on the command-line (I'm using the bash shell for this).

If you are already in SQL*Plus you do not need to use the backslash to escape the double-quote characters:

[oracle@liverpool ~]$ sqlplus /nolog

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sat Jul 11 11:46:31 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

SQL> connect hr@"liverpool:1521/DEMO"
Enter password:
Connected.
SQL>

This same technique can also be used for privileged connections:

[oracle@liverpool ~]$ sqlplus sys@\"liverpool:1521/DEMO\" as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sat Jul 11 11:47:23 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Enter password:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

If you use SQL*Plus as much as I do, perhaps this will be a handy tip.

links for 2009-07-11

Bob Rhubart — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:00:57 PDT

Clustering SOA Suite (Antony Reynolds' Blog)

"Configuring a cluster is a bit more involved than configuring a single instance," writes Antony Reynolds, "but it is not massively more complicated and it does provide both scalability and high availability."

(tags: BPEL oracle osb soa)
Richard Veryard on SOA: Is Enterprise Architecture a Science?

"In order for enterprise architecture to qualify as a science, it has to follow scientific method, " says Richard Veryard. "Now I am pretty broadminded about what counts as scientific method, but it's more than mere predictability. (Card games are predictable, but that doesn't make cribbage a science. Roger [Sessions] says if card games were predictable, he'd be a rich man. But if card games were not predictable, the casinos would go broke.)"

(tags: enterprisearchitecture richardveryard soa rogersessions)
Best Practices 2 - Web Services

In the second post in his SOA and BPM best practices series, Oracle ACE Ronald van Luttikhuizen offers "a mix of general tips and more specific tips for Web Services that are implemented using Java and JEE."

(tags: oracleace soa bpm)
Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Oracle WebCenter and Fusion Middleware 11g

"Of all the competitors, WebCenter is the newest architecture from the ground up," says Burton Group blogger Craig Roth. "Being the youngest has its advantages. Since WebCenter is newly architected it feels like it more seamlessly integrates new concepts like tagging, linking, social connections, and REST services than IBM and MSFT where it's more bolted on. So they're better at utilizing these features across the suite [than] Microsoft and a little bit better than IBM."

(tags: oracle fusionmiddleware enterprise2.0 burtongroup)

Congratulations to my mate Paul!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Moss) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:52:36 PDT

Just a quick note to say congratulations to Paul Till, a mate of mine, at my current client, who has recently passed his OCM certification. I knew Paul was good, from having worked with him, on a DR implementation / upgrade for a large DW, but I hadn't realised how good. As certifications go, it's the daddy and the Oracle one to have.

$deleted$ tablespace names bug

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Moss) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:45:52 PDT

This one turned out to be a an interesting bug the other day...

I did a simple select from DBA_TAB_PARTITIONS and noticed that some tablespace_names were of the form "_$deleted$n$m" where n and m are numbers. Slightly worrying, but at least the data was all present and correct, when I checked. I knew the DBA team had been doing some reorganisations the previous weekend, to recover some space, so I wondered if that was connected....it was, and after opening an SR, the DBA, Phil, found an explanation (from Oracle Note: 604648.1) and a resolution.

Reproducing the issue and the way to fix it, is simple, using this script...


DROP TABLESPACE old_tbs INCLUDING CONTENTS AND DATAFILES;

CREATE TABLESPACE new_tbs 
DATAFILE 'C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\T111\NEW_TBS.DBF'
SIZE 100M
ONLINE;

CREATE TABLESPACE old_tbs 
DATAFILE 'C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\T111\OLD_TBS.DBF'
SIZE 100M
ONLINE;

SELECT ts#,name FROM sys.ts$ WHERE name LIKE '%TBS';

CREATE TABLE jeff_test(col1 DATE NOT NULL
                      ,col2 NUMBER NOT NULL
                      ,col3 VARCHAR2(200) NOT NULL
                      )
TABLESPACE old_tbs
PARTITION BY RANGE(col1)
SUBPARTITION BY LIST(col2)
SUBPARTITION TEMPLATE(
 SUBPARTITION "S1" VALUES(1)
,SUBPARTITION "S2" VALUES(2)
)
(PARTITION p1 VALUES LESS THAN(TO_DATE('31-DEC-2009','DD-MON-YYYY'))
,PARTITION p2 VALUES LESS THAN(TO_DATE('31-DEC-2010','DD-MON-YYYY'))
)
/

SELECT partition_name,tablespace_name FROM dba_tab_partitions WHERE table_name='JEFF_TEST';
SELECT subpartition_name,tablespace_name FROM dba_tab_subpartitions WHERE table_name='JEFF_TEST';

ALTER TABLE jeff_test MOVE SUBPARTITION p1_s1 TABLESPACE NEW_TBS;
ALTER TABLE jeff_test MOVE SUBPARTITION p1_s2 TABLESPACE NEW_TBS;
ALTER TABLE jeff_test MOVE SUBPARTITION p2_s1 TABLESPACE NEW_TBS;
ALTER TABLE jeff_test MOVE SUBPARTITION p2_s2 TABLESPACE NEW_TBS;

DROP TABLESPACE old_tbs INCLUDING CONTENTS AND DATAFILES;
ALTER TABLESPACE new_tbs RENAME TO old_tbs;

SELECT partition_name,tablespace_name FROM dba_tab_partitions WHERE table_name='JEFF_TEST';
SELECT subpartition_name,tablespace_name FROM dba_tab_subpartitions WHERE table_name='JEFF_TEST';

ALTER TABLE jeff_test MODIFY DEFAULT ATTRIBUTES FOR PARTITION p1 TABLESPACE old_tbs;
ALTER TABLE jeff_test MODIFY DEFAULT ATTRIBUTES FOR PARTITION p2 TABLESPACE old_tbs;

SELECT partition_name,tablespace_name FROM dba_tab_partitions WHERE table_name='JEFF_TEST';
SELECT subpartition_name,tablespace_name FROM dba_tab_subpartitions WHERE table_name='JEFF_TEST';

Which, when run in 11.1.0.6 on Windows 2003 Server 64 bit, gives:


DROP TABLESPACE old_tbs succeeded.
CREATE TABLESPACE succeeded.
CREATE TABLESPACE succeeded.
TS#                    NAME                           
---------------------- ------------------------------ 
9                      NEW_TBS                        
10                     OLD_TBS                        

2 rows selected

CREATE TABLE succeeded.
PARTITION_NAME                 TABLESPACE_NAME                
------------------------------ ------------------------------ 
P1                             OLD_TBS                        
P2                             OLD_TBS                        

2 rows selected

SUBPARTITION_NAME              TABLESPACE_NAME                
------------------------------ ------------------------------ 
P1_S2                          OLD_TBS                        
P1_S1                          OLD_TBS                        
P2_S2                          OLD_TBS                        
P2_S1                          OLD_TBS                        

4 rows selected

ALTER TABLE jeff_test succeeded.
ALTER TABLE jeff_test succeeded.
ALTER TABLE jeff_test succeeded.
ALTER TABLE jeff_test succeeded.
DROP TABLESPACE old_tbs succeeded.
ALTER TABLESPACE new_tbs succeeded.
PARTITION_NAME                 TABLESPACE_NAME                
------------------------------ ------------------------------ 
P1                             _$deleted$10$0                 
P2                             _$deleted$10$0                 

2 rows selected

SUBPARTITION_NAME              TABLESPACE_NAME                
------------------------------ ------------------------------ 
P1_S2                          OLD_TBS                        
P1_S1                          OLD_TBS                        
P2_S2                          OLD_TBS                        
P2_S1                          OLD_TBS                        

4 rows selected

ALTER TABLE jeff_test succeeded.
ALTER TABLE jeff_test succeeded.
PARTITION_NAME                 TABLESPACE_NAME                
------------------------------ ------------------------------ 
P1                             OLD_TBS                        
P2                             OLD_TBS                        

2 rows selected

SUBPARTITION_NAME              TABLESPACE_NAME                
------------------------------ ------------------------------ 
P1_S2                          OLD_TBS                        
P1_S1                          OLD_TBS                        
P2_S2                          OLD_TBS                        
P2_S1                          OLD_TBS                        

4 rows selected

Notice that the $n in "_$deleted$n$m" is 10, which is the ts# of the OLD_TBS before the rename. The problem revolves around entries in TS$, when you rename tablespaces to names that have previously been used and then dropped, basically because the old entries are not removed from TS$.

Related references:
Bug Numbers:8291493, itself a duplicate of 5769963
Note: 604648.1

According to the SR and bug, it was noticed in 10.2.0.4 and is fixed in 10.2.0.5. We've reproduced it in 11.1.0.6 on various ports, (results above) and updated our SR, so I guess the fix might also find it's way into 11.1.0.7, perhaps.

Keeping it simple

Michael — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:10:19 PDT

There's a lot to be said for the KISS principle.

Very often I find that all a company wants is a simple report generated out of an easy to use query tool. Yet, all too often, somewhere along the way a salesrep for a competitive product has persuaded them that the simple to use end-user tool they have been using all these years is now old hat and needs to be replaced. Sound familiar?

Not so very long ago I was at a conference when I overheard a friend of mine speaking with the senior sales representative for one of Oracle's competitors. Unaware that I was within spitting distance the sales rep was heard to say "and I bet that English so and so is here somewhere!"

Because the simplest of situations amuse me immensely, "Good morning" is all I had to say and off he stalked. What had transpired is that one of my Discoverer customers had been approached by a competitor who had somehow picked up a vibe that Oracle would no longer be supporting their beloved query tool. After dispelling this idea my client decided to stay with Oracle and asked the other vendor to leave.

The truth of the matter is that my client really does have a very simple set of requirements revolving around variances of "tell me how many widgets I sold last month". They don't need a sledgehammer to crack that walnut and keeping it simple is something their report writers are very good at.

Who Needs Airplanes? 2 Great Events Delivered to Your Desk

kevin.obrien — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:09:46 PDT

Everyone has tight travel budgets these days. So events are getting easier to attend from your desk. This week I came across 2 excellent events with no travel required.

The first event is Oracle’s FY10 Partner Kickoff. This is a pretty cool opportunity for Oracle Partners to get in sync with Oracle heading into the new fiscal year. There are sessions hosted by all the top executives from around Oracle. You can learn the latest on Oracle product strategy across the entire portfolio as well as in areas like Cloud Computing. Check out my session titled “Oracle Software as a Service (SaaS) for ISVs” where I provide detail on the new SaaS for ISVs model. Visit the Oracle PartnerNetwork to access the event.

Here is a quick video describing the event from Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Alliances & Channels at Oracle.

The second event is actually one that happened June 9-10 of this year in Amsterdam. It is the SIIA OnDemand Europe 2009 event. All of the presentations at the event were videotaped and are now available ondemand for free. My session was titled “Building Confidence in the Cloud” and after a 10 minute presentation I was joined on a panel by Dr. Werner Vogels who is the CTO at Amazon.com.

Inserting and Updating Oracle XMLType columns in PHP

christopher.jones — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:56:42 PDT

Today a reader mailed me about manipulating XMLType columns when the data is longer than the 4K limit that character-type handling imposes. My free book (see sidebar) has examples of how to do this using CLOB handling in PHP. I noticed that my xmlinsert.php example in the book does a SELECT and UPDATE, but never actually does an INSERT. The INSERT code is conceptually no different from UPDATE but, for completeness, here is an expanded example explicitly showing it:

<?php

/*
Table definition is:
create table xwarehouses (warehouse_id number, warehouse_spec xmltype);
*/

$c = oci_connect('hr', 'hrpwd', 'localhost/XE');

$id = 1;

// Delete any current entry
$s = oci_parse($c, "delete from xwarehouses where warehouse_id = :id");
oci_bind_by_name($s, ':id', $id);
oci_execute($s);

// XML data to be inserted
$xml =<<<EOF
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Warehouse>
<WarehouseId>1</WarehouseId>
<WarehouseName>Southlake, Texas</WarehouseName>
<Building>Owned</Building>
<Area>25000</Area>
<Docks>2</Docks>
<DockType>Rear load</DockType>
<WaterAccess>true</WaterAccess>
<RailAccess>N</RailAccess>
<Parking>Street</Parking>
<VClearance>10</VClearance>
</Warehouse>
EOF;

// Insert new XML data using a temporary CLOB
$s = oci_parse($c, 
    "insert into xwarehouses (warehouse_id, warehouse_spec) 
     values (:id, XMLType(:clob))");
oci_bind_by_name($s, ':id', $id);
$lob = oci_new_descriptor($c, OCI_D_LOB);
oci_bind_by_name($s, ':clob', $lob, -1, OCI_B_CLOB);
$lob->writeTemporary($xml);
oci_execute($s);
$lob->close();

// Query the row back
$s = oci_parse($c, 'select xmltype.getclobval(warehouse_spec)
                    from xwarehouses where warehouse_id = :id');
$r = oci_bind_by_name($s, ':id', $id);
oci_execute($s);
$row = oci_fetch_array($s, OCI_NUM);

// Manipulate the data using SimpleXML
$sx = simplexml_load_string((binary)$row[0]->load());
$row[0]->free();
$sx->Docks -= 1;  // change the data

// Update changes using a temporary CLOB
$s = oci_parse($c, 'update xwarehouses
                    set warehouse_spec = XMLType(:clob)
                    where warehouse_id = :id');
oci_bind_by_name($s, ':id', $id);
$lob = oci_new_descriptor($c, OCI_D_LOB);
oci_bind_by_name($s, ':clob', $lob, -1, OCI_B_CLOB);
$lob->writeTemporary($sx->asXml());
oci_execute($s);
$lob->close();

// Query the changed row back and print it
$s = oci_parse($c, 'select xmltype.getclobval(warehouse_spec)
                    from xwarehouses where warehouse_id = :id');
$r = oci_bind_by_name($s, ':id', $id);
oci_execute($s);
$row = oci_fetch_array($s, OCI_NUM);
print htmlentities($row[0]->load());
$row[0]->free();

?>

CREATE USER to SYSDBA

Paul Wright — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:05:50 PDT

San Francisco and speaking at RSA Moscone was a great experience and being invited to Oracle’s Head Office in Redwood for a tour and to talk security was an unexpected highlight of the trip. Oracle’s Head office is a pleasant tourist-like excursion with a lake and growing bird sanctuary. One reason for the visit was [...]

Do you have a best friend at work?

Amy Wilson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:01:55 PDT

This is 1 of 12 engagement questions Gallup asks to predict business performance. It’s the quirkiest of all the questions and it also tends to be the most polarizing. HR and Business Leaders alike ask: “What does this have to do with anything?” “Are we in middle school?”

According to the February 2008 Gallup Management Journal:

Gallup itself would have dropped the statement if not for one stubborn fact: it predicts performance. Something about a deep sense of affiliation with the people in an employee’s team drives him to do positive things for the business he otherwise would not do.

The use of the word “best” often trips people up. Why not just ask about friends? Interestingly, the simple word “best” conveys an underlying meaning of trust and support. Anyone can be a friend, but only those that you care for and rely on will provide a sense of belonging and drive.

Personally speaking, I heartily agree. I have always had best friends at work. And, considering I’ve only left one employer (and that was to go to a company with “people” in the title), I’d say it’s a pretty good indicator of retention. Over my career, best friends have given me a reason to go to work in the morning, provided a safe environment in which to bounce ideas, and indulged me with both personal and big picture encouragement.

How about you – do you have best friends at work?

picture source: sanguine-art.com

JDeveloper / ADF 11g R1 (11.1.1.1.0) Production Available

(author unknown) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:00:09 PDT

While I was out for some much-needed vacation, our JDeveloper / ADF 11.1.1.1.0 release went production. Some relevant links:

Enjoy

A Huge Thank You!

margo.mulvihill — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:37:37 PDT

“Just a quick note to say thank you all very much for your generous support of the charity gig a couple of weeks back. The good news is that there was over €1,200 raised through ticket sales, raffle ticket and random donations. I hope everyone had a great night and of course, well done to Rita, Robbie and Paudie who put on a fantastic show! Again, thanks to everyone for the fantastic support.”

Watch Elvis Live …..

Over €2,456 for 7 charities - Flora Women’s Mini Marathon

margo.mulvihill — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:27:57 PDT

Well done to the Tech GB ladies who ran the Flora Women’s Mini Marathon in sweltering heat. Thank you to all who contributed, all money donated goes to 7 great charities.

The Answers Are Out There

stephen.fox — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:55:52 PDT

Find Your Way to Expert Advice

Have you ever waded through endless documentation trying to establish best practices at the very beginning of a project? Or, with the project’s deadline fast approaching, scrambled to solve glitches you could never have predicted despite all that careful planning? If so, you know that expert advice is sometimes necessary. In fact when you’re in a tight spot, it can’t come too soon.

As usual, the current issue of Oracle Magazine covers a full range of technical topics, sometimes responding directly to readers dealing with real-life implementation issues. Take the time to learn how others are overcoming obstacles while getting their projects off the ground using Oracle Application Development Framework, PL/SQL, Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio, and Oracle Data Pump, just to name a few.

If you’re looking to roll up your sleeves for an extreme learning experience, you can’t beat Oracle Develop, the developer event that coincides with Oracle OpenWorld. This year, Oracle Develop is more deserving of your attention than ever. The list of topics covered might be immense, but the knowledge gained from attending expert-led sessions, labs, and demos is always right on target. Program tracks are now listed, so you can start making plans today.

Get More Insight and Get More Productive with Oracle CRM On Demand

michael.seback — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:34:53 PDT

Watch this great short demo on mobile capabilities, analytics and gadgets by Reg Hingley.

Everything is a Journey

Jake — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:46:14 PDT

Photo by gregsdumbflickr from Flickr used under Creative Commons

The year I started with Oracle (1996) was the year the Network Computer (NC) was announced.

The NC was about a decade ahead of its time due to a number of factors, and it’s funny to me that netbooks are the latest rage. The promise of netbooks is essentially the promise of the NC, i.e. an affordable device used for connecting to the Intertubes.

Sure, the NC was a diskless thin client and a set-top box, and a netbook is toy laptop. So, the hardware’s very different.

Netbooks are the latest fad, with several companies potentially joining the growing number of netbook manufacturers.

And now, Google has announced they are jumping in as well with Google Chrome OS which will run on netbooks.

Of course, the ‘tubes is all abuzz with rumors and speculation. I have no desire to break down the details of vaporware, which it is right now. More interesting, for the moment at least, is the path Google has taken to this point.

For years, I’ve thought Google is a legit threat to the software powerhouses of the world. Even as recently as last year, people were still doubting, calling Google “just” an advertising business, which it is. Yeah like Oracle is ”just” a database business.Web apps make sense, and who better to provide them than Google, with their massive infrastructure of data centers. Gmail came first in 2004, followed by productivity apps. These apps all use Javascript heavily, making the speed and experience highly dependent on the browser’s ability to render JS.

So it made sense for Google to build its own browser, optimized to run its apps, natch.

Of course the browser depends on the O/S, and Chrome (and Chromium) run differently on various O/S flavors. So, it makes sense that Google build its own O/S, optimized to run Chrome and all its apps.

I’m a sucker for history, especially technology-related history, and it’s interesting to trace the journey of large companies.

Why Google and not Yahoo? Both started in search. Yahoo’s webmail went live in 1997 and boasts between two and three times more users than Gmail. What happened that turned the tide in that battle?

It’s funny that Microsoft’s stranglehold on the O/S business (for both enterprises and consumers) is still very desirable. It might be the most desirable market in technology. All those years ago, the NC aimed to chip away at Microsoft’s dominance in the home market.

Today, Google Chrome OS on a netbook aims to do the same thing. Fun fact: the majority of netbooks predominently run a slimmed down version of XP.

Windows has been losing marketshare over the last few years, taken mainly by Apple, but also in small part by Linux distros. However, as with browser marketshare numbers, I wonder if having multiple machines is causing this, e.g. in 2005 I had two Windows machines, today, I have one Windows machine (still two licenses), three Macs, and one Linux box.

So, marketshare is a funny thing to calculate as people buy more devices without replacing existing ones.

Even so, Microsoft is taking these slippages seriously. I wonder how the next couple years play out as Google Chrome OS comes out to challenge the low end of the Windows empire. It seems reasonable to expect that other journeys will wind up in netbooks, due to increasing demand and low production costs, maybe Oracle’s?

I’m enjoying the journey so far. How about you?

Find the comments.