I think one of the dirty secrets in the software business is how LITTLE feedback we get from our end-users. You know they are out there though, gritting their teeth, cursing the day someone trusted you with a keyboard and mouse. Some of this software is very expensive to boot, so one would expect these users would be very vocal with their feedback. In actuality, I reckon we only only hear from a very small…
Oracle SQL Developer is made available to you for free, and is chock-full of features for the developer, DBA, or data-junkie. We do our best to give you everything you need to be successful in your job, but also recognize that we can’t do EVERYTHING. While SQL Developer is NOT an open-source project, it does provide a framework that allows for other developers to build their own plug-ins. Don’t know Java? No problem, you can…
Some folks find this hard to read 28890773869a01956c782a_000001 If your computed column code or column names are very long, they’ll often trail off the edge of the viewable screen. If you’re missing a comma somewhere, you’re bound to run up against an ORA-. You want to know right away WHERE you’re missing the separator. I covered this ‘debate’ earlier in ‘Trailing or Leading Commmas.’ If you would like to get your code to FORMAT with…
I was perusing the SQL Developer Feature Requests Exchange and was not surprised to see this – a request to have the Query Builder disabled. My favorite (and most predictable) comment among the voters for this request is something along the lines of ‘feature totally useless for us professionals’ Let’s explore that for a second. First of all, I’m not judging this user’s point of view. It’s probably quite prevalent amongst the experienced database folks…
In case you’re curious, I’m calling yesterday ‘Day 0’ as it was spent doing trivial things like getting email setup. Today I feel like was closer to a real day of work. I spent a few hours this afternoon going over some request from the users. One stuck out pretty prominently – ‘Keep-alive functionality’ The basic gist is at some point your connection to the database is terminated due to an inactive connection. This can…
…there were email and VPN accounts. Had my first conference call, complete with desktop sharing. Direct deposit and tax forms are out of the way. Everyone (I think) is remote, so instant messaging is one of the preferred communication methods. Looks like we’ll have a chance to meet in person for a team meeting outside of London in a few months. Am I overwhelmed? Not as much as I had feared. If I let in…
The good folks at Oracle, namely @krisrice, approached me this past Summer with an offer I found myself unable to refuse. The short version would be something like, ‘Hey, come join our SQL Developer team.’ So next week, I will start the next chapter of my professional life as the Product Manager for Oracle’s primary database development tool. This is a very exciting moment for me. I remember first seeing Oracle in my senior year…
The Smith family is an Android family. However, we’re not so weird as not to own some Apple products as well. We have a Mac Mini, 1st Gen AppleTV, an iPod, and an iTouch. The iTouch is my wife’s toy. She spent a LOT of time building a playlist that had just what she wanted. She lost that playlist in iTunes though when we ditched our Windows Home Media PC and bought the Mini. She…
It’s still me! That dude that spends a lot of time talking technology, databases, software, and the occasional bad joke. I screwed up. @BrentO told me 2 years ago that it’s better to use your real name on Twitter. And I didn’t listen to him. So now I get to take my medicine and go switch everything over to my new account – ThatJeffSmith. It’s not a coincidence that my new Twitter handle matches the…
Yes, a post about something other than Toad or Oracle! I hope you folks don’t mind, but I need to brag a little bit 🙂 My wife and I welcomed our son to this world on Tuesday night! My wife was extremely brave and did the whole thing without any sort of pain medication. Not that she had much choice – the labor process was so fast that any epidural wouldn’t have had time to…
