Disclaimer: When I wrote this I was not an employee of Oracle, a RDBMS vendor. I am now, and you should know that. First, please go read Karen Lopez’s rant on Normalization Myths here. Now, a bit of my experience with relational database theory, design, and practice. As a senior Computer Science undergraduate I took a 200 level course on ‘Databases.’ We were taught set theory, a bit of algebra, Boyce-Codd, what it means to…
You want to know how much pain you are going to inflict on the server and network before you run that ad hoc query? An explain plan can give you an idea of how long it might take to run, and tell you how much data it thinks will be involved. Cardinality – Fancy Word, Simple Concept From Wikipedia: “In mathematics, the cardinality of a set is a measure of the “number of elements of…
Oracle 11gR1 Enterprise Edition with the Diagnostic and Tuning packs has a very compelling new feature, Real-Time SQL Monitoring. Oracle thinks enough of the feature that it was highlighted prominently in whitepaper by ACE Directory Arup Nanda titled “Oracle Database 11g: The Top Features for DBAs and Developers” (read it here) Long story short: Too late or too lazy to start a trace on a poorly performing query? Want to know what is going on…
I’ve been referring customers to SQL Developer’s Migration Workbench for a few months now. I thought it might be a good idea to give it a try myself before I send any more children out to play with the wolves. This is NOT a formalized review. This is a quick glance at a cool tool from a cool vendor. I did what all geeks do – I ran it without reading ANY of the product…
Ask questions, get answers – and a Toadie! He wants questions. You want answers (and a Toad). So, ask away – stump the Toad chump! We’re looking for challenging questions dealing with Oracle Database and Toad, for example: Can Toad do that? I had this problem once where… I hate it when… The Rules! If I like your question, you get a Toad beanie. I’ll answer any and all questions submitted. Please keep the questions…
Disclaimer: I work for Oracle now. This post pretty much pertains to any and all database IDE and GUIs. –Thanks, Jeff 1/25/2012 Let’s get this out of the way, because anyone who knows me, knows that I have a HUGE bias in this argument: I work for Quest Software, and my primary job is to help sell Toad for Oracle. I also love SQL*Plus, and I use it almost everyday. So don’t bash me because…
So the news is out, Charlotte NC is a destination city! image courtesy Wikipedia 2012 Democratic Presidential Convention 2013 PASS Summit Already folks are wondering, hey, where is Charlotte? And, can I get good sushi there? Charlotte is a city I visit frequently. Here are a few things I’ve picked up along the way: It’s the ‘Queen City’ – but so are a half dozen other towns in the US The downtown area is called…
Some of my earliest memories involve trips to the dentist when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old. To this day, my blood pressure rises whenever I go in for a simple cleaning. There’s a particular poster I can’t seem to get out of my head, like a bad 80’s song. The intent was to encourage us kiddies to floss our teeth. I remember thinking “Well, I don’t need ALL my teeth…” Hmmm, this…
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me to help them setup their database application or utility to not ‘let someone do something in the database they are not supposed to do’ over the past 10 years, I would literally have about $347. This is generally how it goes: Them: We want your tool, but we don’t like that it lets user do X. Me: Awesome! I want to give you our…
I know you can read, you’re here. But maybe you’re a functioning illiterate. Here’s what I mean. You spend a lot of time in the database writing queries, analyzing data, doing important stuff. Most of the time, things go great for you. You can answer questions for people. You make things happen. The wheels of the business bus go round-and-round. But there’s one thing that really, really scares you. Execution/Explain/Access Plans. Those things that describe…