Messages from Readers

Mel sent this to me yesterday:

After following you for many years, talking to you at Oracle World and yourhome on one occasion in the '90's I am happy to report that I AM RETIRED.  No more Oracle, Peely-Squeely or troubleshooting response times.  I had gone from doing rpt (forerunner of Reports) all the way through the latest Forms and Reports (I started with Oracle 5).  I will miss all of it.

 

Ooooh, I am soooo jealous. :-)

And a few weeks ago, a player at the PL/SQL Challenge wrote:

Can you sell me a book please? I just took, and probably failed miserably, an assessment for a dream-job. I am a generalist in PL/SQL, and just do not have exposure to many of the higher level PL/SQL packages. The assessment reminded me of your quizzes. Your quizzes are OK for learning this sort of stuff but sort of out of context; I would like more of an overview and I don't want just documentation, but explanations of why you would want to use such and such a package (as opposed to using some other package). 

 

So I sent this player a link to my books, and a week later I received this note:

Last week I asked you to sell me a book. After reading the first 100 pages of your book covered in ants, I have decided you should put a link up "about yourself" and then have links to your new books on amazon. Your book is really great. Really readable! 

 

I really liked this last note. I don't want to sound boastful, but O'Reilly has sold several hundred thousand copies of the "ants book" (aka, Oracle PL/SQL Programming). So it's kind of cute that this reader urges me to get the word out "about myself" and my books.

Latest PL/SQL Challenge championship playoff results

We just held the 6th quarterly championship playoff at the PL/SQL Challenge. 34 players competed, answering five tough quizzes.It takes a lot to qualify for the playoff: you must rank in the top 25 over the entire quarter (and some 60 quizzes); your percentage correct must be very high; or you are selected in a wildcard process that still requires a high level of play.

You will find the results and rankings below. Congratulations to all players, of course, but let's give a special round of applause to our top three players:

• Gary Myers (#1), who also ranked #2 in the last playoff and who wins a US$250 Amazon.com gift card. His first place ranking is especially impressive given the short time Gary took to answer the questions.
• Chris Saxon (#2), who wins a US$175 Amazon.com gift card
• João Barreto (#3), who wins a US$100 Amazon.com gift card

Good luck to everyone in the quizzes for Q3 2011 - I hope to see you in the next playoff!

Rank	Name	Country	Total Time	Total Score
1	Gary Myers	Australia	11 mins 21 secs	2848
2	Chris Saxon	United Kingdom	19 mins 32 secs	2734
3	João Barreto	Portugal	15 mins 06 secs	2598
4	Viacheslav Stepanov	Russia	19 mins 57 secs	2551
5	Frank Schrader	Germany	19 mins 50 secs	2353
6	Ludovic Szewczyk	Belgium	18 mins 35 secs	2328
7	Siim Kask	Estonia	18 mins 53 secs	2322
8	james su	Canada	16 mins 28 secs	2321
9	kowido	No Country Set	19 mins 49 secs	2254
10	Mike Pargeter	United Kingdom	16 mins 41 secs	2216
11	Sean Stuber	United States	20 mins 00 secs	2150
12	Randy Gettman	United States	18 mins 58 secs	2146
13	Filipe Silva	Portugal	18 mins 04 secs	2139
14	owbeg	Ukraine	15 mins 48 secs	2109
15	Dalibor Kova	Croatia	18 mins 37 secs	2053
16	Jeff Kemp	Australia	11 mins 38 secs	1942
17	macabre	Russia	19 mins 41 secs	1931
18	Theo Asma	Netherlands	14 mins 48 secs	1829
19	Mojibul Hoque	Bangladesh	03 mins 57 secs	1821
20	xtender	Russia	04 mins 32 secs	1809
21	Kevan Gelling	Isle of Man	18 mins 28 secs	1781
22	Anna Onishchuk	Ireland	17 mins 12 secs	1706
23	DikkieDick	Netherlands	13 mins 58 secs	1696
24	Alexander Polivany	Ukraine	20 mins 00 secs	1675
25	mentzel.iudith	Israel	20 mins 00 secs	1575
26	Marc Thompson	Australia	19 mins 39 secs	1557
27	Q	Belgium	16 mins 12 secs	1551
28	clee	United States	17 mins 56 secs	1441
29	NickL	United Kingdom	19 mins 55 secs	1402
30	Pavel Zeman	Czech Republic	20 mins 01 secs	1375
31	Gerry171	United States	19 mins 00 secs	1345
32	Rajesh Venkataramani	India	16 mins 43 secs	1341
33	Rosemary	United States	18 mins 38 secs	727
34	Jerry Bull	United States	18 mins 47 secs	40

Special $49.95 One-month Subscripton PL/SQL Channel

I announced availability of the PL/SQL Channel several months ago: 27+ hours of recorded trainings on the Oracle PL/SQL language, available at the PL/SQL Channel and covering many (but admittedly not yet all) features of the PL/SQL language. At $395 per year per developer for unlimited access to all this content, the PL/SQL Channel is the most cost-effective use of your training dollars for PL/SQL developers, with much greater short- and long-term impact than one-time, instructor-led trainings.

I have also found, however, that many developers (or their managers) are reluctant to pay a subscription fee for a whole year, when their training budgets are very tight and they are not sure they will be using the PL/SQL Channel videos for such an extended length of time.

We have decided, therefore, to offer access to the PL/SQL Channel for 30 days for just $49.95. Yes, that's right - for less than $2 per day you can access dozens of PL/SQL videos with detailed trainings, plus their supporting presentation documents and code. This special price will be available through the end of September 2011.
 
We are also continuing our free, 30 day trial of the PL/SQL Channel (limited, however, to viewing of just five videos).

To start your free trial of the PL/SQL Channel, click here.

To order your $49.95 subscription to the PL/SQL Channel, click here.

Note: the thirty-day period starts on the day you purchase your subscription.

Quick guide to recent PL/SQL Challenge quizzes

For those of you who have not yet started visiting the PL/SQL Challenge website regularly, I thought I'd offer this guide to recent quizzes.

Oracle PL/SQL Quizzes

In the past week (11 July - 16 July), 972 Oracle technologists were busy answering quizzes and exploring the library of past quizzes.

Played on 11 July 2011: When a cursor is opened, Oracle identifies the set of data that satisfies the query. As long as that cursor remains open, that dataset is not affected by any changes that are made (committed or not) to the tables from which that data is retrieved.

Played on 12 July 2011: When working with nested tables and varrays, you must initialize the collection and extend the collection to make room for elements in the collection. Under some circumstances, however, Oracle will automatically extend the collection for you.

Played on 13 July 2011: Use INITCAP and NLS_INITCAP to easily convert a string so that the first letter of each new word (alphanumerics separated by "white space") is upper-cased.

Played on 14 July 2011: Use the LIMIT clause with FETCH BULK COLLECT to place an upper limit on the number of rows retrieved (and therefore PGA memory consumed) with each fetch.

Played on 15 July 2011: You can define functions to execute in parallel, as part of a parallel query. This can be accomplished with an explicit PARALLEL_ENABLE clause in the function header. Oracle can also implicitly determine that a schema-level function can be executed in parallel.

We also recently started up APEX and SQL quizzes in July.....

Oracle Application Express Quizzes

Played on 2 July 2011: It is possible to make an alternative report the initial settting for the Interactive Report page in several ways. What you see in the Interactive Report can also be changed through the url.

Played on 9 July 2011: The developer must be careful regarding timing when referencing session state.

SQL Quizzes

Played on 2 July 2011: Use the ALL comparison condition to easily apply a WHERE clause predicate to a set of values or a subquery.

Played on 9 July 2011: Beginning in version 11 select statements support the PIVOT clause for easy pivoting of result sets.

A conversation with Dick Morris' "assistant"

Dick Morris is doing robocalls to save the country from Barack Obama.

Morris provided (in secrecy) advice to good, old Bill Clinton on how to work with Republicans. And his favorite sexual fetish is toe sucking. Hey, to each his own.

And now Dick is calling "conservative leaders" in communities around the country to enlist them in his "revolt" (name of new book) against Obama and his "socialist" policies.

That is hilarious on several levels. First, Obama is (to my mind, sadly) very distant from any sort of socialist. He is a status quo politican trying to hold the line against both real left wing change and right wing craziness.

Second, Dick had his robots call me. Conservative leader? Wow. That must be some list they are working with.

Well, I decided to take and stay on the call. It was lots of fun!

He gave his recorded, vapid spiel (he actually said that he believes his book will be the single most important tool to defeat Obama. Now, that's arrogance.) and then asked me to stay on the line so I could take a survey with his "assistant." I stayed on. A real, live woman came on the line.

"Are you Dick Morris' assistant?" I asked her brightly.

Pause. "Um, well, I guess I am one of his assistants." OK.

So then the "survey" began. "Which Republican President do you like best?"

I am sure they were fishing for Reagan. I said: "Abraham Lincoln."

Pause. "Oh, well, that's the first time I've heard that."

"Really?" I replied with amazement in my voice. "I mean, he is like the original, great Republican president! Abolished slavery! That's hard to beat!"

She agreed tentatively and we moved on.

She then asked me a question about which was really a diatribe about Obama's policies and how he helps Muslims more than he helps Americans.

"Really?" I asked. "Cause he's sure been helping Americans a lot, all that money in the stimulus plan...what's he been doing for Muslims?"

"Uh, well, I don't really know, but..." and she gathered herself together... "Muslims can come to this country and think they just get medical care for free. No other countries do that."

"Really? I thought there were a bunch of European countries - I guess they're kind of socialist - where if you get hurt, you go to a hospital and they just take care of you. That sounds great to me!"

Then she said something about government deciding what kind of health care we can get. To which I replied: "That sounds like my HMO. You've got insurance company bureaucrats deciding whether or not I can get a procedure done. They're not doctors. It drives me crazy!"

"I know what you mean," she said.

There: just goes to show you....no matter the political divide, everyone hates insurance companies and HMOs.

Needless to say, she didn't get a donation from me.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people? All gone....

That's a great line (from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address) and I daresay that many Americans instinctively believe in it....but I also would betcha that very few Americans believe it is true.

I can still remember the night that Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. We sat around in shock. How could this clown have won?

And then the latest cycle of the onslaught by the rich and powerful against...everyone else...started again in this country. Reagan and his cohorts followed an astonishingly simple formula:

• No one likes to pay taxes.
• Everyone has a gripe about the government.
• So blame the government for all our problems.
• Increase cynicism and distrust of citizens for their government.
• Then push hard to cut taxes (mostly those on the rich) because our government will only misuse those funds.
• Then with reduced revenues, we have to cut back on services to our citizens.
• Those citizens get even more unhappy with the government and so they agree to more tax cuts, more cuts in service...and...

The rich get richer, the middle class disappears, the poor...well, they are mostly invisible in our "great nation" in any case.

And so we come to 2011: Bush and Obama gave so much of our money away to bankers and Wall Street (with no strings attached), they got us into and keep us in wars of choice that suck up hundreds of billions of our tax dollars, and almost every Congressperson is primarily beholden to lobbyists and "donors" (read: bribes), that, gee whiz, so sorry, but there just isn't any money for health care, our roads, our children, our schools...you name it.

Today, the Chicago Tribune reports that the House of Reps has voted to end a program to test our produce for deadly bacterium like E. coli. Just weeks after an outbreak in Germany killed 35 people. This program costs $4.5M a year. Small change, a pittance, to protect our population. Why would they do this?

Ah, because the Produce Marketing Association has lobbied hard against it. "Unnecessary recalls", excessive regulation, blah, blah, blah.

This is a truly sucky Fourth of July. Our soldiers continue to die (and continue to kill, both innocents and combatants) in poorly planned wars with limited public support. Our government has been hijacked by people who hate our government and don't give two shits about our citizenry, our children, our future. They just care about lining their pockets. And we, the people, watch our country go down the drain, leaving behind millionaires and billionaires who will continue to do well...by selling their stuff to growing middle classes in other nations.