FeuerThoughts

Hello Steven, This statistics in interesting :) I...

2012-06-02T11:19:11.345-07:00

Hello Steven,

This statistics in interesting :)
I'd like to hope that one day our
PL/SQL will hit the "double figures", to use a basketball term :)

What is also interesting is that the old and frightening C still sits on the first place, higher than its better relative C++ ...

And what is interesting not less in that the old COBOL of my youth
still arrives on a honourable higher rank than the so praised ABAP ...
About 25 years ago I was told that COBOL was in use (at that time!) only in the 3-rd world countries ... and nowadays I hear every day that SAP and its ABAP are the best programming language ever created ...

I think that the high ranking of C
owes much to tradition ...
Well, Oracle is written in C, but can one imagine Oracle's today extension without the SQL and PL/SQL languages created over that C foundation ?

As time passes, there will still be many languages created, in an attempt to either create the ultimative "best of all" one or
simply for solving some very special category of problems.

I really don't know what could be an objective set of criteria to establish a real ranking, based on technology only and not business-related points of view.

Anyway, I think that if I had to write in C instead of PL/SQL, I would probably not have been a
developer today ...

Best Regards,
Iudith Mentzel

Agreed. The only procedures I sometimes create ar...

2012-05-17T21:00:17.757-07:00

Agreed.

The only procedures I sometimes create are convenient one-line wrappers for a package procedure, e.g.:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE log
(msg IN VARCHAR2) IS
BEGIN
DEBUG_LOG.insert_log(msg);
END;

Hello Steven, She is amazingly beautiful ! A rea...

2012-05-12T12:19:33.042-07:00

Hello Steven,

She is amazingly beautiful !

A real pinky jewel queen :) :)

I can only imagine what a happy grand papa you are and how difficult it should be "to switch" to PL/SQL sometimes ...

Enjoy her as much as you can !

And cheers for Chris's very nice works !

Best Regards,
Iudith Mentzel (PLSQLChallenge)

Hello Steven, I follow sometimes the posts on the ...

2012-04-07T10:30:41.792-07:00

Hello Steven,
I follow sometimes the posts on the AMIS web site and I really think that Lucas is an Oracle genius :)
I can only wonder how can one manage to be so up-to-date and able to supply tricky and original solutions and master so many various Oracle fields, among them those that I miss so much not being updated enough with them.

I really feel sometimes that I am leaving in a kind of isolation from the big world, it is terribly difficult to keep path with both your numerous daily duties and the top news in so many development areas.
I can only welcome the idea of having Lucas join Patrick and be our guest at the PL/SQL Challenge !

Thanks & Best Regards,
Iudith Mentzel

I am so happy I am not alone with my thoughts abou...

2012-03-03T06:08:34.382-08:00

I am so happy I am not alone with my thoughts about capitalism ...

I often wonder how come that such an infinity of economy professionals were completely enable to anticipate the crisis that the world in undergoing for a good several years by now...
Who did however ?
The socialist thinkers of the 19th century, yes, those blamed ones ...

Regarding the stock exchange, my feeling is that one should be naive indeed to believe that it is a completely innocent game, be it played with or without computers, and its entire purpose is to ensure that the money invested by common people will flow all the time in the same direction, into the pockets of those who already do have too much of it ...

Otherwise no one can explain to me why big economic organisms that are managing thousands of people's pension funds, put aside along many years of working, do invest your hardly earned money in the stock exchange without giving you any chance to decide whether you want to play this game or not.

If everyone were free to decide, then I am sure that most of the rationally thinking people would rather stay far from it.

We are all naive ... let's go back to our PL/SQL Challenge, which fortunately is still under our control :)

I quite agree. When it has become a normal phrase...

2012-02-22T00:12:00.583-08:00

I quite agree.

When it has become a normal phrase that people call it "playing the stock market" just as they would "play poker", then it has nothing to do with raising capital for companies.

And I find it strange when I read "the market reacts to rumors" - I mean, aren't the stock traders supposed to be professional people?

I have often thought two measures might help:

1) When you trade stock you just "place an order" - all transactions are carried out at midnight UTC. You can't immediately re-sell - that will wait until next midnight.

2) You cannot buy and sell through the day and just pay (or get) the difference at the end - you have to pay up when you buy stock.

That way "speculating" would be curtailed, as you would have to raise the money to buy stock first and you couldn't sell it until the next midnight.

The "delay" in carrying out the transactions might also put a damper on the market reacting wildly to rumors.

But it is probably a naïve thought :-)

Reminds me of this interesting TED talk: http://ww...

2012-02-22T00:02:48.175-08:00

Reminds me of this interesting TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html

Regards,
Rob.

Hi. I agree with you completely. It has become to...

2012-02-21T10:57:41.956-08:00

Hi.

I agree with you completely. It has become totally artificial and is no longer anything to do with "investment" in the original sense of the word.

Cheers

Tim...

Hi. I agree with you completely. It has become to...

2012-02-21T10:56:44.779-08:00

Hi.

I agree with you completely. It has become totally artificial and is no longer anything to do with "investment" in the original sense of the word.

Cheers

Tim...

nice blog, good oracle PL/SQL tutorial (in Polish)...

2012-02-18T02:37:47.662-08:00

nice blog,
good oracle PL/SQL tutorial (in Polish) forum.plsql.pl

Another hit for my wish list: DECLARE l_record ...

2011-12-29T06:51:22.423-08:00

Another hit for my wish list:

DECLARE
l_record some_table%rowtype;
BEGIN

UPDATE some_table
...
RETURNING RECORD INTO l_record;

A concise way of returning the full record into a record variable without having to specify the whole column list, pretty much like the FETCH statement and support for collections an other statements other than UPDATE is welcome :-)

Congrats..but i feel old, I first read your post a...

2011-12-23T06:46:56.678-08:00

Congrats..but i feel old, I first read your post as daughter, not granddaughter...wow...of course this is my 20th year using Oracle which for me is hard to believe...thanks for continuing to help folks like me with PL/SQL...

Don Cavin
Oracle 8i OCP (yeah, I know it's old, but I worked hard to get it)

I and my developer team will "never" rec...

2011-12-20T19:29:38.017-08:00

I and my developer team will "never" reconize plsql error codes like -24381. As a best pratices exceptions are only referered by name: oracle "original" name or the one in our exception package definition.

I agree with iudith that the most used codes in plsql should all have standard names given by Oracle.

BTW: I great new feature for plsql would be a warning telling us the exceptions that a function/procedure could raise and are not covered by our exception handling. :-)

Hehehe! That's a happy little tick! Made my d...

2011-12-20T16:33:55.522-08:00

Hehehe! That's a happy little tick! Made my day.

It's worse - many of us think that the reason ...

2011-12-20T12:55:53.443-08:00

It's worse - many of us think that the reason polarization is so bad in this country today is that Newt made it so. Back in the late '70s, starting in California, there was a "tax revolution." This came about, in a very small nutshell, because Nixon had freed the dollar from the gold standard, and Carter couldn't really do much about the "stagflation" that resulted. This meant that inflating property values (there was also a real estate bubble) meant more revenue for the state, which meant a huge surplus in revenues. Howard Jarvis led a group to limit property taxes - not a bad thing in itself, but even at the time many of us pointed out that in the long run, normal business cycles would lead to huge deficits (what has now come home to roost). Newt said, in so many words, in order for Republicans to take back Congress, they had to demonize Democrats. So Reagan rode that to the presidency, bringing in various forms of deregulation - which led to several phases of boom and bust increasing in amplitude, including loan crises in each subsequent decade.

And now people want to move towards more representative democracy through technology, making PR even more important.

At least we don't live in Syria.

word: chesc

Hello Steven, She is so sweet indeed :) :) When I...

2011-12-20T09:41:10.865-08:00

Hello Steven,
She is so sweet indeed :) :)

When I read about your nightly
"moving around" together, what suddenly came to my mind were my childhood years when I "used" my grandma for asking me simple math questions ...
Well ... if I were Steven's granddaughter, I would have probably used those nights to have him ask me PL/SQL questions ...
and then, for sure, I would have made less mistakes in the daily quiz :) :) :)

This is the most beautiful time both for her and for you, so keep her similing all the time and shine upon your lives :) :)

Best Regards,
Iudith

Hello our "Whisperer", I do hope that i...

2011-12-13T02:40:49.329-08:00

Hello our "Whisperer",

I do hope that in the meantime your voice is back, and, however,
you will remember this trip for the better things :)

I can only express again how gealous I am on Patrick, Christian, and all the other PL/SQL Challengers
that had the great occasion to attend your training and meet you face to face !

Can we hope for a similar trip of yours to Israel ?
I mean ... still in this century, say ... before Loey's getting married ?

By the way, I once had a similar dream that seemed almost impossible, to meet another famous guru, but however it became true, and not just once :)
Just guess who he was ?
Tom Kyte :) :)
So, can we hope ?

Regarding the -24381 code, maybe it's the time for Oracle to add a named exception for it, say something like
PLSQL_BULK_DML_ERROR.

Hope you will not "take revenge" on us, the mere mortal PL/SQL Challengers who were not there to hear the secrets you just learned from the German and Dutch players :) :)

All the best ,
Iudith Mentzel

Great comment, Belly. I was thinking the other d...

2011-12-05T01:20:50.687-08:00

Great comment, Belly.

I was thinking the other day that while I believe Herman Cain would be an awful President, I am not terribly comfortable with him dropping out of the race because of charges of infidelity.

Generally, I don't think a person running for office should be judged by their personal life - certainly not their religion or sexual preferences - as long as it involves only non-coercive, consensual agreement between adults.

I do think that hypocrisy on such behaviors is relevant, though. That's why Gingrich is especially repulsive to me. Attacking Clinton for adultery while he adulterated, attacking politicians for accepting money from Freddie Mac while HE accepted money from them. That sort of thing is truly disgusting and frightening, because it shows that he has no moral fiber. He will do and say whatever it takes to get elected.

Well, Steven, I think that if ever we (the voters)...

2011-12-05T00:23:46.444-08:00

Well, Steven, I think that if ever we (the voters) cab get ourselves to judge candidates on their views and abilities to properly do the job they wish to be elected for, in stead of judging them by the fact that they a) want to divorce their wife, b) smoked a funny cigarette in high-school, c) have a teenage kid who got drunk at a party last weekend, d) don't go to church regularly od (god forbid) e) are homosexual, then maybe the smart people will be willing to expose themselves to the criticism of the voter.

Hello Steven, Though in a very far and different p...

2011-12-02T11:27:07.750-08:00

Hello Steven,
Though in a very far and different part of the world, it seems that our societies are facing the same problem: How is it possible that from among so many clever, wise and smart people, it is almost impossible to find a honorable list of candidates, regardless of the party they belong to, that is, a list in front of which the common sense of a mid-smart person not to feel spiritually offended ?

Well ... we are a small country,
though 7 million should still be enough to choose 120 "honorable" representatives ... but USA is HUGE !!!
Where is the world top-level wisdom of this big nation ?

I dare say that the problem relies in the incapacity of the system to promote real human values, it is only "able" to promote the economic interests of a very small layer of the entire population...
and that's why we have wars always awaiting behind the corner,
hunger, ilness, children labor (they unfortunately know very well the value of money, already at a very low age) and all the other sufferings ... and then the refuge
inside all those "...ism"-s that you have mentioned ...

I was grown up in a different system and, may everybody blame me,
I felt much more honourable as a human being, and never felt life as being a burden instead of enjoying it as a miracle gift.

I perfectly subscribe to your thoughts, like probably most common people do, however, we will probably never be strong enough to change this ill world into a better one ...

Best Regards,
Iudith Mentzel - Israel

It's not just that Newt's new Contract on ...

2011-11-30T07:41:13.081-08:00

It's not just that Newt's new Contract on America would force kids to spend less time studying and more time doing menial labor. It is that he wants to destroy unions, which are the only means by which working people can protect themselves from people like...like Newt!

I am sorry that you cannot distinguish between cut...

2011-11-28T11:47:36.456-08:00

I am sorry that you cannot distinguish between cutting lawns and shoveling snow and working as a janitor in your own school.

You say that Obama couldn't get a bill through Congress, when in fact he has done a whole LOT of that in his first term (however much I may dislike some or all of what got passed).

If you are really concerned about our kids' ability in the future to pay taxes, you should be thinking lots less about letting them work when they are 10 and a lot more about forcing those who have robbed us blind for the past thirty years to pay their fare share.

shame on yourself... Like you, I was a democrat f...

2011-11-28T11:20:51.076-08:00

shame on yourself... Like you, I was a democrat for my first 54 years, blind to good ideas from the opposition.

I cut lawns, shoveled snow, trimmed trees, dug up stumps, painted, delivered papers,washed cars, raked leave, and yes, even picked up litter and garbage out in public view, anything for a buck when I was a kid and then volunteered at recycling plant or volunteered at crippled children's homeall probably undermining some poor worker at the time.

now a kid canlt open a lemonade stand without a license.

stop your knee-jerk democrat support, and think who might be effective getting things through congress. Obama couldn't get a bill through if his political career depended on it.

we're all holding our noses and voting next year, our kids have to start working to pay off the 50 thousand we already burdened them with to pay for our exesses and failure to live within our means...they will hate us enough, let them work if they want to, for all our sakes.

I'm coming late, but here it goes, anyway: - ...

2011-11-28T07:37:20.025-08:00

I'm coming late, but here it goes, anyway:

- Enumerations (e.g. TYPE MSG_STATE IS (DRAFT, READY, WAITING, SENT);) as already seen in package STANDARD for BOOLEAN

- Scoped objects (i.e., I want to create an object type in a PL/SQL block, without storing it in a schema - and without SQL limitations such as "no booleans" and "no index-by tables"). I had to switch back and forth several times between objects and records as I discovered the limitations of each type.

- The ability to call functions that return or receive boolean parameters from SQL, JDBC, etc. (not only from PL/SQL)

- Finally for exceptions

- Exceptions with parameters (so we can pass some extra info to the handler), as in C++, Java, C#, Python and many other languages (without jumping thru hoops with pragma exception_init, and raise_application_error number codes)
[[What about this?
DECLARE MY_EXC EXCEPTION(-20001);
BEGIN RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(MY_EXC, 'Message); END;]]

- The ability to easily declare recursive types (e.g. OBJ_T is a type that contains a number, a string and an varray/table of other OBJ_Ts)

- Variable number of parameters in procedures and functions

- (this applies more to SQL than PL/SQL) Small adjustments to have more standard compliance: AS keywords as in "select x from table1 AS tbl"; SUBSTRING, OCTET_LENGTH functions; VARCHAR where '' is different from NULL (e.g. length('') returns 0 vs. length(NULL) returns NULL) and other datatypes; MINUS vs. EXCEPT DISTINCT; etc.

thanks Steven. i'll make sure to check that on...

2011-11-14T10:13:29.214-08:00

thanks Steven. i'll make sure to check that on 11G.

about the binding, i meant something like &&1 in SQL*Plus.

Haki.