The amazing and creepy transformations of Christian Bale

This past week, I watched two creepy movies in which the main character was played by the same guy: Christian Bale.

The movies were:

American Psycho
"A wealthy New York stock executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies."

The Machinist
"An industrial worker who hasn't slept in a year begins to doubt his own sanity."

Two very understated descriptions of very intense movies, by the way.

The movies themselves are disturbing enough, but what I found most creepy about watching them almost back to back was the astonishing contrast between the Christian Bales of these two movies.

In American Psycho, the psychopath pampers his body, hones it to a buff, highly developed machine. This is critical, as it serves as a human covering over what he recognizes is an empty husk. Thus, an attractive physique is transformed into something menacing and un-human.

In The Machinist, Bale plays a man who hasn't slept for a year. We find out at the very end of the movie why that is. But during the year, he not only doesn't sleep, but he apparently doesn't eat very much at all, either. By the time the climax of his year of decay takes place in the movie, the character is, well, a skeletal figure. Literally. The thing is, this is Bale. He really did this. He starved himself for this movie.

It is hard to look at him ,and even more troubling to think....

• That Bale made this enormous sacrifice for a movie that tanked and disappeared almost overnight. I wonder how he must have felt, after all that suffering...
  
• About the extremes to which actors and actresses will push themselves and their bodies for their craft.
  

Bale was good, very good, in this movie, but it was just such a painful thing to watch that I would not recommend it to anyone....

Scattered shots across my bow

I have been so busy, my poor blog has been neglected and thousands of people have been deluging me with emails asking when my next very insightful post will appear.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, I have been incredibly busy doing some incredibly interesting stuff. Want to hear about it? Oh, okay, you twisted my arm.

First of all and most exciting, I and my development team have been putting in lots of hours to complete the beta release of Qute, the Quest Unit Testing Tool. If you write PL/SQL code, this product is going to rock you back in your shoes. It will completely change the way you think about and do testing of your PL/SQL code. We now enter a 6 week QA period and then move to an October 2006 release. The beta program is closed (unless you are really serious about getting involved, in that case, get in touch...), but you can download and try out the software - starting tomorrow, August 29. Just visit the Qute Community and have a look around after we load up the beta software at the end of this day.

Beyond that, I just finished one of the most interesting books I have ever read in my life. It is called On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins, and it offers a paradigm for understanding how our brain works (that is, how we are able to function in the world, type on a keyboard, think abstract thoughts, build cars, etc.). He thinks that with this paradigm shift, we will relatively soon be able to make true thinking machines, as opposed to computing machines, the dumb things that we call "computers" today. Yes but what about Skynet?

Read this book. It is short and mostly very accessible. It could change your life! I strongly urge you to get a copy, only $7.99 at Amazon!

On to less pleasant matters. Just when I thought I had managed to put an arm's length between my emotional well being and the awful conflicts raging between Israel's fanatical, aggressive military-governmental complex and its neighbors, I read this article and found myself in tears.

C'mon, Olmert. Even if you are totally justified in using cluster bombs on towns in Lebanon (which usage almost certainly violates US law), couldn't you have the grace to now say: "We will help you clean up our mess. We will provide soldiers to gather up all those little colored balls that look like toys but will actually destroy life."

Just think how much good will Israel would gain.

Sorry, just dreaming about a better world again...may I never break the habit!

Meanwhile, my wonderfully creative wife, Veva, a ceramist of fine skill and aesthetic sense, just installed her latest "goddess" statue in front of our house. She calls it the Bird Lady. I like it alot.

I will end on that more upbeat note.

Abe Foxman Defames Kofi Annan: will he apologize?

Abe, it's time to apologize to Kofi Annan or resign from your job.

Abe Foxman is National Director and chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. He started working for the Anti-Defamation League 1965. He was promoted to National Director in 1987.

The mission of the ADL is:

The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.

This is a very noble mission and the ADL has over the years indeed helped to secure justice and fair treatment for some citizens. But lately Abe Foxman has become an incredibly obnoxious cheerleader for the State of Israel (by which I mean those executing the policies of the repulsive former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and his pathological Likud party).

Ok, fine. This is America. Freedom of speech and all that. Fine. Then let him spout his self-absorbed nonsense. But, particularly given the name of his organization, you'd think he would at least take care not to defame people.

Defamation is the "...publication of a false statement of fact, made with the requisite state of mind, that causes injury." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#_note-0)

On August 8, I read the following article on Ha'aretz, a popular Israeli daily that is also published in English.

ADL blasts Annan as 'blatantly one-sided' and 'anti-Israel'
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/748265.html

NEW YORK - The National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Abraham Foxman, accused United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday of demonstrating "blatant one-sidedness" in his comments about Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"I am stunned that the UN secretary general cannot find his tongue except to criticize and denounce Israel, and is unable to raise his voice to denounce Hezbollah's daily firing of hundreds of rockets that are specifically intended to hurt civilians," Foxman said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with Haaretz.

"In addition, [Annan] has not bothered to mention the loss of life in Israel as a result of the rocket attacks," Foxman continued. "When will the UN secretary general begin to give Jewish lives the same respect he extends to other human beings," the ADL head asked.
===========END ARTICLE

I was at first shocked to see the ADL describe Kofi Annan as "anti-Israel." That is a very serious charge to level at the Secretary General of the United Nations. Then I read what Foxman said and found myself wondering...it certainly would be shocking and disgraceful for Annan to never mention that Israelis have died from rocket attacks, never denounce Hezbollah's those same attacks on Israeli towns and cities. That sure would be one-sided and, at a minimum, thoroughly lacking in compassion for Israelis.

You really would have to question Annan's objectivity, his fitness for the position he holds today.

Surely Foxman or someone at ADL had carefully gone over all of Annan's public pronouncement to make sure Fox's claims were accurate; namely, that Annan had "not bothered to mention the loss of life in Israel as a result of the rocket attacks."

But why assume that? Why not check for myself? So here it is, 1:10AM in the morning. I need to sleep. I am overwhelmed by work. But I find myself visiting www.un.org and reviewing Annan's personal statements. This is what I found (and fortunately very quickly as well):

July 30
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2006/sgsm10580.doc.htm
"Meanwhile, over 50 Israelis have died, including 19 civilians, and the population of northern Israel has been subjected to intense and continuous rocket fire, and thousands are now in shelters. "

July 26
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2006/sgsm10578.doc.htm
"First and most urgent, we need an immediate cessation of the hostilities that began on 12 July with Hizbollah's reckless attack across the Blue Line and the abduction of two Israeli soldiers.

"We need a cessation of hostilities because we face a grave humanitarian crisis. The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, has just visited Lebanon, and reports that some 800,000 people are being affected in one way or another, whether through displacement, injury, trauma or other fallout. Meanwhile, rockets continue to fall on Israeli cities, taking lives and instilling deep fear among hundreds of thousands of people. Some 400 Lebanese have been killed, and many thousands wounded. Several dozen Israelis have been killed, and hundreds wounded.
...
"
Therefore, I call on Hizbollah to stop its deliberate targeting of Israeli population centres.

"And I call on Israel to end its bombardments, blockades and ground operations."

======== END ANNAN'S STATEMENT

I imagine there are other, similar comments in press releases, comments to the media, and so on. It seems pretty clear to me that Annan did, indeed, mention all the things that Foxman claims Annan did not. From the brief review I performed, it also seemed rather clear that Annan was very consistent in condemning all violations of international law, and in particular the use of violence against civilians.

It just so happens that the Israel Defense Forces are inflicting orders of magnitude more violence against Lebanese and Palestinians than Hezbollah and Hamas are inflicting on Israelis.

As a result, there are many more deaths to condemn, much more destruction of civilian infrastructure, vastly more refugees and a full-blown humanitarian crisis -- all the direct result of Israel's attack on Lebanon. Whether you consider this attack justified or not, there is no doubt about whose bombs are doing what, and to whom.

The conclusion should be patently clear to all:

Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League have defamed Kofi Annan and the United Nations. He should immediately offer an apology (I am sure he can find some intern assigned to do the research to take the fall) or he should resign from his position in the ADL.

Execute DDL statement from file

I was thinking the other day that I have written so many little utilities that I imagine many PL/SQL developers would appreciate. So I am going to post them occasionally on this blog, in the hopes that that code I wrote will be more widely used.

The exec_ddl_from_file program will execute the contents of your file as a DDL statement. This means that you may not use any bind variables, nor may you return information from the statement that is executed dynamically. But you can use this program to read in a file (using UTL_FILE) that contains, say, the CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE definition of a package, and create that package. Hopefully you will find such a utility handy, but I wrote it mostly to demonstrate how you can use DBMS_SQL.PARSE to execute arbitrarily large dynamic SQL strings. EXECUTE IMMEDIATE of Native Dynamic SQL fame is limited to 32K characters. Not so with DBMS_SQL. So here are the files in the download:

exec_ddl_from_file.sql - creates a procedure that executes the contents of a file. You will need to have UTL_FILE configured to get this program to run properly.

exec_ddl_from_file2.sql - creates a procedure that executes the contents of a file and includes the logic required to verify that you are indeed running under invoker rights.You will need to have UTL_FILE configured to get this program to run properly.

invdefinv.sql - a script that demonstrates how when a definer rights program calls an invoker rights program, the current user for that invoker rights program is set to the owner of the definer rights program. It also shows the usefulness of the DBMS_UTILITY.FORMAT_CALL_STACK, which reveals the PL/SQL call stack.

Death of a Child

I am placing in my blog something I wrote several years ago. It is hidden away at www.stevenfeuerstein.com.

12/13/98 - I played Pitch, a very interesting card game with numerous levels of strategy, several times today with Eli (my youngest son, 13 yrs old at this time). He has a sharp mind. I sat there looking at him, his long, hairy legs, his ever-lengthening feet, his expanding chin, and I saw:

Eli in motion -- even as he just sat there: growing, growing, growing.

It was such a wonderful feeling and then I thought to myself: "How awful it would be to have the death of a child on one's hands."

So many men in this world (sure, and some women , too) have directly caused the death of a child; hell, some men have caused the deaths of thousands of children. Try to imagine it yourself (no, Henry Kissinger, you have to skip this step): because of something you did, or a decision you made from a position of authority, a little boy or girl stopped breathing.

Maybe you ordered a bomb to be dropped on a village. You didn't want to, but the General made it clear that this entire sector had to be clear of enemy forces within two weeks, and you just didn't have the time or the men to check every population center individually.

Maybe you dropped the bomb on that village. You didn't want to, but the alternative was court-martial, and maybe there were Viet Cong down there, just like the Lieutenant said.

Maybe you ran over a little girl crossing the street because you were drunk - or just picking your nose (after all, anything can happen).

Maybe you're the CEO of an extremely profitable corporation that laid off 3,000 workers just before Christmas to increase the value of the stock. Joe, a seriously depressed, 27-year employee, shoots his wife and two kids, and then himself.

Kids die all the time; some times it's the result of an "honest" accident. You still have to figure out how to live with the results of your action, but at least it wasn't your intention. So many children are killed each year, however, by people who went ahead with their action or decision, even though they knew that children would, as a result, die.

So here is my idea: create a website, called www.deathofachild.com, which would be used to propose individuals who are responsible for the death of a child. We would then have an open debate on the Internet about whether or not that individual is responsible or if the charge was unwarranted (the death was, for example, "justifiable" - whatever that might mean - or truly an accident).

Visitors would submit a name and history; those names would be researched by an independent group. If they recommended that there is sufficient evidence, the name and situation would be posted on the website, and let the debate commence. What do you think?

Back when I was young and much less mature

I can still recall with shame that when I was young and much less mature, I rationalized PLO attacks on school buses. My argument went something like this: "Their children die and no one cares. So in desperation they commit these acts of terrorism to get the world's attention."

I am deeply ashamed of those kinds of statements now. They demonstrated a callousness and also a sort of defensiveness. I understand now that, deep down, I knew that what the PLO was doing was wrong, but I was not confident enough in my beliefs and understanding to take a more nuanced position (the Palestinian people have been hurt grievously by the Israeli Defense Forces over the years, but that never justifies the wielding of violence against innocents). I was also rebelling against any number of things, which had little to do with Israel....

Whatever the explanation, saying things like that not only insulted those who died and grieved, but also degraded me. I was a caricature of a living, feeling, compassionate human being.

When I talk to fellow Jews now and hear them oh so blithely dismiss Israel's devastating attacks on an entire nation (Lebanon), the killing of scores, maybe even hundreds of innocent children, and simply blame it on Hezbollah, never Israel, I hear an echo of my earlier pathetic and immature stance.

When I talk to fellow Jews who are unable to admit that the vaunted Israeli Air Force can do anything wrong, who believe that anything the government of Israel does is, by definition, correct and moral (for example, "The IDF is the most moral military force in the world"), I feel very sad and depressed. I can almost sense their soul going gray, their moral edge going dull, their ability to celebrate all life and all people diminished, their humanity seeping out of them....

Prime number generator for PL/SQL

Well, it's been a little while since I blogged about PL/SQL!

I have been heads-down, coding and documenting, documenting and coding -- working furiously to meet deadlines that would allow my unit testing tool, code-named Qute (the Quest Unit Test Engine), to go production in October. Wow...what a brain drain.

One of the features offered by Qute is the ability to select test data values from pre-defined groups. And I thought that, what the heck, I would provide a set of prime numbers between 1 and 100, as one of those groups.

To do that, I built a little prime number generator package. It is definitely not anything fancy and I include it below. The generator tries to divide into a given number every integer between 2 and one less than that number. In none of the divide evenly, I've got a prime.

Hey, what can I say? I've got a Bachelors Degree with High Distinction in Mathematics, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Rochester, 1980. This kind of brute force algorithm comes to me naturally.

Anyway, I also added the ability to generate text that contains the prime number. Here is an example of using the program to generate code that I needed to insert into my Qute install script:

BEGIN
prime_numbers.show_primes (
prefix_in => 'intval_insert ( ''$prime - a prime number'', '''
, suffix_in => ''', is_expression_in => qu_config.c_no);'
);
END;

The code (sorry about the formatting; sometimes I hate HTML - but I have no time to fix this. Use the Toad or SQL Navigator formatter to make it look nice).

Hope you find it useful!

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE prime_numbers
IS
TYPE primes_aat IS TABLE OF VARCHAR2 ( 32767 )
INDEX BY PLS_INTEGER;

FUNCTION is_prime (
number_in IN INTEGER
)
RETURN BOOLEAN;

PROCEDURE show_primes (
start_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 1
, end_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 100
, prefix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, suffix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, placedholder_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT '$prime'
);

FUNCTION primes (
start_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 1
, end_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 100
, prefix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, suffix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, placedholder_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT '$prime'
)
RETURN primes_aat;
END prime_numbers;
/

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY prime_numbers
IS
FUNCTION is_prime (
number_in IN INTEGER
)
RETURN BOOLEAN
IS
c_limit INTEGER := ABS ( number_in );
retval BOOLEAN DEFAULT TRUE;
divisor INTEGER := 2;
BEGIN
WHILE ( divisor < c_limit AND retval )
LOOP
retval := MOD ( number_in, divisor ) <> 0;
divisor := divisor + 1;
END LOOP;

RETURN retval;
END is_prime;

FUNCTION primes (
start_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 1
, end_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 100
, prefix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, suffix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, placedholder_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT '$prime'
)
RETURN primes_aat
IS
retval primes_aat;
BEGIN
FOR indx IN start_in .. end_in
LOOP
IF is_prime ( indx )
THEN
retval ( retval.COUNT + 1 ) :=
REPLACE ( prefix_in, placedholder_in, TO_CHAR ( indx ))
|| TO_CHAR ( indx )
|| REPLACE ( suffix_in, placedholder_in, TO_CHAR ( indx ));
END IF;
END LOOP;

RETURN retval;
END primes;

PROCEDURE show_primes (
start_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 1
, end_in IN INTEGER DEFAULT 100
, prefix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, suffix_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
, placedholder_in IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT '$prime'
)
IS
l_primes primes_aat
:= primes ( start_in, end_in, prefix_in, suffix_in, placedholder_in );
BEGIN
FOR indx IN 1 .. l_primes.COUNT
LOOP
DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ( l_primes ( indx ));
END LOOP;
END show_primes;
END prime_numbers;
/

Is IKEA totally insane?

What are these people thinking?

I opened up my Chicago Tribune (which means I took out of not one, but two separate plastic bags an enormous pile of paper, some of which is news and most of which are ads) and found within it the 370-page 2007 IKEA catalogue. Glossy, heavy paper, full color, etc.

The Chicago Tribune has a Sunday circulation of 950,582.

So about 1,000,000 people received this very-expensive-to-print catalogue. And what will most of them do with it?

OK, honestly, I don't really know. Perhaps 950,582 Chicagoans have a strong attachment to IKEA (just one "Chicago-area" locations out in the Northwest suburbs) and will treasure this catalogue. Realistically, I've got to think that hundreds of thousands of these catalogues will be thrown away, not even recycled (Chicago's recycling program is a joke, a travesty, very pathetic).

What an awesome waste of money and disgusting addition to the region's landfills.

PS: If you don't have a 2007 IKEA catalogue, would like one, and live in the US, I will send mine to you. Please let me know (include address).

Profoundly distasteful

I watched Match Point last night (most recent Woody Allen movie). A very mediocre film; as I watched it, I thought to myself: "Surely, Woody Allen can write more interesting and original dialogue. And haven't I seen this movie before? Yes! The Talented Mr. Ripley!"

Anyway, the main, pschotic character marries into a rich family and gets his own chaffeur. And as I watched the driver open the limo door for this character and other members of the family, I found myself squirming uncomfortably.

What was making me uncomfortable? Ah, yes, the fact that this guy had a personal servant. That got me thinking about various things that I find profoundly distasteful.

So I thought I would share them with you (you are so lucky!). Here goes:

Personal servants: I am not a history major, but my understanding/belief is that part of what the colonists rebelled against in their war for independence was the ariostcracy that sucked the lifeblood out of British subjects. We don't officially have a inherited-wealth aristocracy anymore (though we will soon, if the estate tax is fully repealed), but it seems to me that the best way to define an aristocrat is a person who has personal servants. I find this really bothersome. I don't like to have people taking care of my personal needs. I am pschologically unable to let someone shine my shoes for me, for example. I am not convinced that there is a qualitative, rather than quantitiative, difference between personal servants and slaves. I sense that hiring someone to dress you, buy things for you, drive you around, etc., is a corrupting process. [ Having said all that, we pay a woman named Walentyna to visit our house weekly and clean up for us. So I am a hypocrite. Isn't that a part of being a human who is not a saint? ]

Commercials: I like to watch television programs -- way too much. So perhaps I am fortunate that I have close to zero tolerance for TV commercials and advertisements generally. I see it as a kind of bargain with the devil: we will give you "free" programming if you will subject yourself to our propaganda. I continue to be totally amazed that companies will pay billions of dollars to produce and distribute/present advertisements. I have probed deep within and truly believe that ads have a very minimal influence on my decision-making. But obviously ads do work -- companies would not throw away their money. Which makes me feel very sad for those whose minds are twisted around to follow the trail of compulsion to make purchases that they would otherwise not make. BMW makes a cool car ad, so I should then want to buy a BMW? Why would you trust or let yourself be influenced by anything you see in an ad? [ If you do not already know about Consumer Reports, visit www.consumerreports.org and join this wonderful organization! Then you can skip the commercials, visit this website, and obtain an objective, thorough review and recommendation of things you want to buy. If millions of people joined CR, we could band together and publicly reject commercials...]

Laugh tracks: Even if I can make it past the ads to watch a TV program, if it has a laugh track, those sounds are like fingernails scratching a blackboard. I cannot abide being told when to laugh, what to find funny. It is a very subversive, low-level form of coercion.

"He (she) is such a good baby." I shudder every time I hear someone say this (especially if it is the parent of the baby). How can a baby be anything but good, wonderful, incredible, beautiful, astonishing? Really, babies aren't good or bad, they are just sponges soaking up the world, responding to stimulation.

Miss Congeniality 2006

I know, I know. It's been ages since I last posted.

It's because I am super, tremendously busy, and I should tell you all about that.

And because I am so super, over-the-top busy, I have to stay very focused.

But here I was just a moment ago staring at Miss Congeniality 2006.

What is my excuse and why am I telling you about it? Okay, you said you wanted to know.

I zipped over to MyYahoo to check the latest headlines, see how many more innocents had been killed by Israel's ferocious, unconscionable bombing of Lebanon, and by Hezbollah's own set of war crimes: shooting missiles at Israeli towns.

And there, the word Puerto Rico caught my eye:

Miss Puerto Rico crowned Miss Universe, collapses

A few years ago, we bought an old coffee farm (derelict, really just a small out of the way mini rain forest) on the western side of Puerto Rico. So I am interested in all things PR.

Well, I followed the link, eventually ending up at missuniverse.com. I noticed the Miss Congeniality prize and, having enjoyed Sandra Bullock tremendously in Miss Congeniality 1 and been horribly disappointed in Miss Congeniality 2 (a perfect example of a movie which definitely does not warrant a sequel!), I had to take a look at Miss Congeniality 2006.

As one might expect, Angela Asare of Ghana is absolutely stunning.

But I must admit to you, she doesn't look all that congenial. I find it very amusing that the Miss Universe entity would use this photo for her Miss C award....

Anyway, back to work, tell you about it soon!

Oh and congratulations to Zuleyka Rivera! You are welcome to visit my old finca any time....

Report from ODTUG, Washington DC 2006

ODTUG 2006 was held in Washington, DC, this year and it was, as usual, a great conference, even if I didn't win any awards. Ah, well, maybe next year....I had a treat on arrival to the Washington National airport (I'd really rather not use the newer, more distasteful name of the airport). Coming out of the gate area I faced a small gift shop that showcased "Three more years" t-shirts and paraphenalia. I found it very refreshing that one of the main gateways into the capitol would offer for sale such blatantly and mockingly anti-Bush stuff. Ah, the wonders of capitalism! If they buy it, we will sell it.

Well, back to ODTUG. I was very fortunate that my wife, Veva, came with me. As a result, I stayed longer and was in a better mood than usual. See, when I go to conferences, I mostly just want to go back home as soon as possible, to be with my family and get back to my comfort zone of programming and writing. With Veva around, however, I actually attended some of the social events!

Here are some PL/SQL-related ODTUG highlights:

1. Quest announced that it had acquired my two tools, Qnxo and Qute. We are now working hard to prepare Qute, a revolutionary unit testing tool for PL/SQL developers, for general availability at Oracle Open World 2006 (October 2006). You can download, try and give feedback on Qute by visiting www.unit-test.com.

2. The ODTUG board of directors announced on Monday that it would henceforth be sponsoring and organizing an annual PL/SQL training conference, chaired by, well, me. I held the first PL/SQL conference, Oracle PL/SQL Programming 2005, last November. Attendees enjoyed it greatly and immediately clamored for another in 2006. We are not yet sure of the date and location for this event, but I am very pleased to be working closely with ODTUG for future PL/SQL events. More news to come.

3. Lots of well-attended PL/SQL sessions. As Lucas Jellema of AMIS mentioned at the start of his Wednesday presentation, he has discovered the secret to a successful ODTUG session: put "PL/SQL" in the title. Not only were there a goodly number of PL/SQL presentations, but there were some new and very interesting ones, including: "PL/SQL for Dummies" by Paul Dorsey and Michael Rosenblum, authors of a new book by the same name; "Design Patterns in PL/SQL: Pre-inventing the Wheel" by Lucas, a fascinating look at how we in the PL/SQL world can leverage the concept and power of design patterns in our work; . Oh, and I gave two talks, one on "SQL games we can play in PL/SQL" and "Six simple steps to unit testing happiness"— I think they went well. I guess I will find out when I see the evaluations!

But as wonderful as all of the above happenings were, for me by far the absolute highlight of ODTUG 2006 was Bobert Dorsey. Bobert is 6 months old, the son of renowned author and teacher, Dr. Paul Dorsey, and his wife, Illeana Balcu. Bobert's real name is Robert, but he goes by Bobert (as well as "What a cute baby!"), he has wonderfully big round cheeks, and an incredibly friendly disposition. We got along famously.

As you well know, I enjoy PL/SQL greatly, but I would much rather hold, play with, and talk to babies any and every time. After all, who and what can be more important to humanity than its children? When I see a baby, I am totally shameless about asking his or her parent if I can hold him/her. Just ask Paul when you see him next. Thanks, Paul and Illeana, for being so generous and trusting!

For some additional commentary on the ODTUG show check out:

http://www.rittman.net/archives/2006/06/odtug_day_2_keynotes_bi_presen.html

http://technology.amis.nl/blog/?p=1233

And I strongly encourage you to read Lucas' (and other Amis consultants') recent writings on PL/SQL, which do a great job at getting us to think about different ways to use PL/SQL.

The sidewalks of Prague

From May 17-20, 2006, I visited the city of Prague, in the Czech Republic. It is a truly drazzling city with countless buildings of great beauty. I also found myself captivated, however, by the sidewalks of Prague. Click here to views the photos I took of a number of the sidewalks. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I think the sidewalks caught my attention so dramatically because my views on ornamentation in architecture and public space generally have been changing. I used to be a "form follows function" kind of guy: I appreciated the clean lines of modern design and scorned elaborate designs that didn't seem to really do anything. If it isn't "doing" anything, then why waste time, effort and money building it?

Then I came across the writings of the architect Christopher Alexander. Alexander has developed a healthy dislike for modern architecture and believes that it is possible to come up with a "pattern language" that is universal and can help us design and build structures that improve our quality of life on multiple levels.

Alexander has in recent years published his "Nature of Order" series of books, which argue for the place of ornamentation in our architecture and other aspects of human creativity. I have come to agree and urge you to check out his writings, especially: The Timeless Way of Building and the Nature of Order series.

These sidewalks not only reflect a wonderful aesthetic, but also a very smart practicality. In Chicago and many/most US cities, the sidewalks are slabs of concrete. Very dull and in many ways not all that functional. With the extreme temperatures of Chicago, the concrete usually cracks shortly after it is laid in place. And in the many tree-shaded sidestreets of Chicago's numerous neighborhoods, roots cause the most delightful disruptions in the straight surfaces of the sidewalks.

Prague has similar problems with tree roots and wide fluctuations in temperature. Their "mosaic" sidewalks offer something of a solution. As temperature changes cause movement in the ground, the individual cubes will shift and sometimes pop out, but they are easily repaired, since the damage is much more localized.

KUMU: the sparkling new Kunst (Art) Museum of Estonia

On Friday, I finished five days of straight training: talking for almost 6 hours each day, repeating the same seminar (and jokes....just hilarious!). I spent Saturday wandering around Tallinn, the capitol of Estonia. It is a beautiful city, with a large, incredibly well-preserved Old Town that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I started the day by heading to KUMU, the sparkling new Kunst (Art) Museum of Estonia. It is a remarkable building with an excellent array of creativity. Whenever I visit a city for the first time, I always seek out the main art museum/gallery. I believe that one of the most human (that is, beyond mammalian) acts is to create, and art (a creation that is generally not tied to concrete purpose or objective, as compare to, say, an automobile or microwave machine) is the most direct expression of the mind (of course, functional objects often are works of art as well). I feel so fortunate to have been able to visit places like the Prado, London's National Gallery, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, and many more over the years.

The most striking of all the works I saw at KUMU was Ever is Over All by Pipilotti Rist. Here is a description of the work: "In Ever Is Over All, a young woman in a light blue dress merrily walks along the street with a huge, colorful, long-stemmed tropical flower in her hand. She smashes the flower into the windows of parked cars as she passes them."

That sort of captures a part of the work. At KUMU, it was projected onto two walls of a large room (each wall perhaps 25 feet in length). One wall shows the woman strolling down the street and occasionally and clearly with great exuberance smashing a car window. The other wall shows a field of the flowers the woman is holding (not that it could really be one of those flowers, as it pretty smoothly breaks through car glass). As and after she breaks a window, the woman is enraptured. A policewoman walks by at one point and salutes her. And rolling over all the action is very melodic, slightly haunting music.

I found it very exhilarating. I hope at some point it will be fully viewable from the web; do check out her website to see some of her other pieces. I took a fifteen second clip of the piece, but I don't want to post it without her permission.

OK, it is now 7:45 PM, and the sun is still very high in the sky. Time to venture forth once again from the Radisson and wander the Old Town.

Letter from Scandinavia and the Baltics

I write to you from Tallinn, Estonia, Room 1818 of the Radisson SAS looking out over the Old City, as the sun sinks over the Baltic Sea. Very nice....

I am on a whirlwind sweep through Scandinavia, doing Best Practice PL/SQL seminars for Oracle Corporation in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Riga and Tallinn (Estonia). Then I have two days off and head over to London to give a two day, "Best of PL/SQL" training, followed by two days in Prague (same seminar) – both also for Oracle. I stay an extra day in Prague to see at least a little of this city, and finally after a bit less than two weeks I head back to Chicago. It is the longest I will have been away from family and home for years, and I don't much like that....

Interest in PL/SQL in northern Europe remains strong; attendance at these seminars exceeds any I have done in these countries in recent years. In Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Riga, I presented to a combined audience 340 developers and DBAs!

I had a bit of a rough start, though. I boarded the 10 PM SAS flite to Copenhagen on Saturday night and expected to fall asleep immediately. After an hour or so, I realized that sleep wasn't coming because I was feeling sick. Turns out, I had caught a stomach flu. Not the most delightful way to travel 8 hours over the Atlantic. Well, two days and zero solid foods later, I am feeling fine, eating and exercising as usual. Whew. Glad that is put behind me.

I wasn't sure what telephone service back to the US from the former Soviet Union would be like, so I decided to finally sign up for Skype service. I bought myself a PC headset, and one for my somewhat technophobic wife, Veva. I installed the software on each of our computers and tested it before we left. It works great! I have since called her each night (her mid-day) through my laptop. Incredible technology. The sound quality is astounding, both computer to computer and using SkypeOut, which allows me to call her cell phone at a ridiculously low cost. And I just in the airBaltic magazine that Skype was developed largely by four Estonians. Perhaps I will run into them in Tallinn....

Another big step for me on this trip is that I finally broke down and bought an MP3 player. First, I tried the Sony Bean. I love its compact form, but its one-line screen (yes, that is not a typo. Just one visible line of text at a time) was beyond the capabilities of this middle-aged programmer. So I traded that for a Creative Zen Microphoto. 8GB capacity and a slide bar that I still have lots of trouble with, but is at least manageable. I loaded up some 50 CDs, added Shure e3c noise canceling headphones, and I was so ready to liven up by hours at the airport and on planes (I am, after all, traveling on nine different airplanes in 10 days) with my favorite music.

But then reality set in: I don't really like having anything stuffed into my ears or even covering them (those Bose noise cancelling headphones work very well, too, but they make my head ache). So I haven't been using my wonderful gadgets at all....I now plan to return them all when I get back to Chicago. Ah well....at least I have managed to load up my music collection on my computer. I find that I am perfectly satisfied to play my music through the relatively "tinny" speakers of my Thinkpad T42. Listening to Clapton's Unplugged right now.

By the way: for those who are not able to attend my lectures in Scandinavia, you can still download and check out the presentation by clicking here.

Obsessive, compulsive me

I have little doubt that I "suffer" from a mild case of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). What other explanation is there for the TEN BOOKS I have published on the Oracle PL/SQL language?

[ Note: I put "suffer" in quotes because pretty clearly I haven't actually suffered, in fact, I have benefited from my obsession. I also use quotes because I generally find objectionable the tendency of medical professionals to give names to behaviors and medical conditions they don't necessarily really understand or are outside the norm. ]

And then there is my attitude towards GUIDs. I talked about these "Globally Unique Indentifiers" earlier in my blog. A GUID is a long sequence of characters that are supposed to be globally unique -- that is, the likelihood of a particular sequence of characters appearing (returned by the GUID generating function) more than once on any computer running on our globe is miniscule. Thus, you can use GUIDs when you need unique values that span, say, database instances or multiple networks.

I just ran into the need to generate about a dozen GUIDs for new assertions I have defined in Qute, the Quick Unit Test Engine. Unfortunately, I forgot to enable output to the screen for my block of code, so I could not use those GUIDs.

And I found myself feeling sad, a sense of loss. I found myself thinking: I just wasted those GUIDs. They will never reappear (as I would ever know!), they are gone forever.

Worrying about "losing" or "wasting" GUIDs? Now, that's surely a bit obsessive!

Time to enable output, run my script again, grab those GUIDs, and get on with my life!

Soduku and PL/SQL

In my continuing series of "Isn't it amazing what you can do with PL/SQL?" I offer below an email I received from a very clever fellow named, Phillip Lambert:

Hello Steven,

I'm not sure how much Sudoku puzzles have caught on in the US, but they are fairly big in the UK, particularly in all of the daily papers. Well I've probably been using PL/SQL much too long or probably am well due for retirement out of computers, but I was presented with a challenge the other day which some might consider quite sad. I wrote a Sudoku puzzle solver in SQL and PL/SQL which solves most puzzles presented to it.

The proud thing about it is that a colleague of mine who gave me the idea wasn't able to get his MS Excel VBA solution to work properly. Another colleague also took up the challenge, and again could not get his Java solution to fully work and has spent weeks compared to my days programming it. I'm not sure whether this is saying something for SQL and PL/SQL, but in any event I thought you might be interested. This could be a great opportunity to see whether anyone can use an alternative language to write a solution in less lines of code than a PL/SQL solution - now that would be a challenge!!

To check out Phillip's implementation of a Sudoku puzzler, click here.

PL/SQL + PDF = PL/PDF - PDF docs from PL/SQL programs!

I am, as most who read my books and my blog must know, quite obsessed with the Oracle PL/SQL langauge. So I am always on the lookout for new and amazing things peoplea re doing with PL/SQL. I recently came across...

PL/PDF - http://plpdf.com

"Generate dynamic PDF documents from data stored in Oracle databases using the PL/PDF program package. PL/PDF is written exclusively in PL/SQL. It is able to either store the generated PDF document in the database or provide the results directly to a browser using MOD_PLSQL. No third-party software is needed; PL/PDF only uses tools provided by the installation package of an Oracle Database (PL/SQL, MOD_PLSQL). Use PL/PDF to quickly and easily develop applications with dynamic content but also quality presentation and printing capabilities."

Sounds like fun! I have only played around with PL/PDF a little bit, but it looks like they have put together a very nice, clean API to the underlying functionality, making it extremely easy to use PL/PDF. To give you a sense of that, check out the explanation of their approach.

You can trial PL/PDF by downloading the software and specifying 'TRIAL' word as the certification key. Limitations: max. 5 pages, watermarked pages.

My compliments and best wishes to Laszlo Lokodi and others at PL/PDF for showing how useful and flexible PL/SQL can be!

Some gotchas with Oracle XE

Oracle recently announced production/general availability of Oracle Express Edition (XE). Generally a very exciting development: a totally free, almost fully-functioned version of Oracle Database 10g that downloads and installs in minutes (well, assuming you've got broadband!).

I ran into a couple of glitches, however, that I thought I would share:

1. UTL_FILE is not available. Usually, when you install Oracle, the UTL_FILE package (used to read/write files within PL/SQL) is installed, EXECUTE is granted to PUBLIC, and a public synonym is created. With XE, the package is installed and the synonym created, but the GRANT EXECUTE has not been run.

To fix this problem, connect to a SYSDBA account and run the $ORACLE_HOME/RDBMS/Admin/utlfile.sql file, or simply execute this command (from a SYSDBA account):

GRANT EXECUTE on SYS.UTL_FILE TO PUBLIC
/

2. Oracle XE does not include a Java Runtime Environment. I have been using some Java classes, installed in the database, in my unit testing product, Qute. Here is an example of a call to this Java code:

PROCEDURE parse_package (
owner IN VARCHAR2
, package_name IN VARCHAR2
, program_name IN VARCHAR2
)
AS
LANGUAGE JAVA
name 'quPlSqlHdrParser.parsePackage(
java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String)';

In pre-production versions of Oracle XE, the code compiled, but then raised runtime errors, sometimes ORA-00600, which are not trap-able with an exception section.

The production version still does not include a JRE and even worse, if you install the Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Western European; " Oracle Database 10g Express (Western European) Edition - Single-byte LATIN1 database for Western European language storage, with the Database Homepage user interface in English only.") then the above code will not even compile. Very strange. Oracle seems to actually be looking at the literal string and attempting to validate it at compile time.

Yet if I install the Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Universal; Multi-byte Unicode database for all language deployment, with the Database Homepage user interface available in the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish), then I do not get a compilation error.

Ah, the good old days of high mileage vehicles....

I must admit, I am something of a Honda bigot. Maybe that's because back in 1971, in my second year of college in Rochseter, NY, my father gave me his bright orange Honda Civic. It was a tiny little bug car, light and durable, but certainly nothing fancy. I loved it! (my father is a big fellow, just over 6 feet tall and heavyset, so it is surprising to think that back then he would shift from his usual big sedans to a Civic, but that's the way he was/is - ready to try new things)

I now own a Honda Insight, the two-seater hybrid they released in 2000. Got mine in April 2000 and since then have averaged 49.8 MPG for some 46,000 miles. I love that car, too.

Got up this morning and somehow ended up going through the backroom in our basement, clearing out old stuff (and getting lungfuls of dust in the process) and came across a reminder of another Honda Civic I leased, and how far we haven't come in the last couple of decades.

Back in 1992, I left Oracle Corporation and become a consultant. Took a job working at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook -- and suddenly I was a commuter. So I looked around at my options and found the Civic VX. The VX was a Civic coupe with a VTEC engine adapted from the early Acura Integra.

It cost $10,550, which was considered fairly pricy for a little car back then, and boasted the following mileage:

Highway MPG: 55
City MPG: 48

Of course, I didn't hit those numbers, just like I only occasionally match the EPA MPG ratings for the Insight. But I clearly remember averaging MPGs in the 40s on the highway commutes I made to BurgerLand.

That was back in 1992-93!

So while I am glad to have my Insight (I really, really enjoy driving that car, even though its suspension is, shall we say, a bit brittle), I am also disappointed that the auto companies haven't come further in 14 years.

PL/sql Experts Determined to Give their Expertise -- ???

I am distributing this idea out into the world of PL/SQL developers. Everything about it, including the name, acronym, structure, etc., is open to discussion. Please let me know what you think and if you would be interested in participating. Thanks!

PLEDGE -PL/sql Experts Determined to Give their Expertise

Let's face it: not all developers are equal. We have widely varied levels of skill, experience and communications abilities. Any such group of professionals has a tiny subset of members who are perceived as the "elders" (aka, gurus, experts, etc.) -- and age has little to do with this status. I feel strongly that those of us in the PL/SQL world who are deeply experienced should come together to make our contributions more visible and widely available to the worldwide PL/SQL community.

Disclosure: I am especially desirous of a group like this, and will benefit greatly from it, because I cannot possibly answer all the questions that come my way (either because my time is limited or the question involves how PL/SQL code interacts with technologies like XML or Java, about which I have little experience). I would like to formalize the group of people I can turn to, to assist me in such matters. But I certainly don't want to limit it just to helping me answer my questions.

What is PLEDGE?

PLEDGE is (would be) a group of highly experienced PL/SQL developers who are committed to sharing their knowledge and code with others, at no cost.

I bet you are already thinking one or more of the following:

• Should PLEDGE be a part of IOUG?
  
• Should PLEDGE be or is it the same as a PL/SQL SIG?
  

My feeling is that PLEDGE is different from a SIG. It is primarily/fundamentally a close-knit fellowship of experts, not an enormous membership community. It functions to provide high quality, free resources to the worldwide PL/SQL community.

As to whether it should be a part of IOUG, I don't have strong feelings about that right now. See my comments in the section titled Resources below. I am not sure that this would be consistent with an IOUG entity.

How would PLEDGE work?

Here are some initial thoughts/guidelines...

1. PLEDGE has members and guests.

2. A PLEDGE member is a PL/SQL expert who has agreed to contribute her or his time/effort to improve the skills, productivity and code quality of the worldwide PL/SQL community.

3. A PLEDGE guest is a developer who has registered with PLEDGE so as to take advantage of the resources offered by PLEDGE, participate in forums and so on.

4. There is no cost associated with any level of participation in PLEDGE.

5. A PLEDGE member or user can post a challenge/requirement to PLEDGE, and then a member can volunteer to implement/guide/answer that challenge.

6. All code that is posted on the PLEDGE website needs to be documented, tested and testable (preferably with a Qute harness; check out www.unit-test.com for my latest and greatest product/concept).

Resources needed

This community needs to be supported by commercial vendors who are committed to the Oracle space. I do not believe that we can make it work the way it should with only volunteer time contributed, though it is certainly a possibility....

I do believe that any number of vendors could provide a base of support, including Quest and Oracle.

Areas of expertise

We need general PL/SQL pros, but also people who have specialized in various areas of technology that commonly connect to PL/SQL, including but not limited to:

• Java-PL/SQL interface
  
• .Net-PL/SQL interface
  
• VB-PL/SQL interface
  
• Using XML in PL/SQL
  
• Oracle Applications and PL/SQL
  
• Object-Oriented development with PL/SQL

So let me know what you think of PLEDGE!