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Still Testing Your PL/SQL Manually? STOP-RIGHT-NOW. |
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JeffSmith
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6/30/2008
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Anyone who develops, supports, or uses PL/SQL at some level also tests the PL/SQL. It may not be a formal testing environment, but there is a time where you will probably ask yourself, “Does this program actually do what it is supposed to?” I think this is something we can all relate to as computer users.
This type of testing ...
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DB2 LUW Autonomics |
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JimWankowski
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Monday, June 30, 2008 6:21 AM
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Last week I did an IDUG sponsored webcast on the topic of autonomic computing. I wil be excerpting these features over the next few blogs. If you wish to view a recording of the webcast here is the link: http://www.quest. ...
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Toad and Oracle Licensing – What’s the Story ? |
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JohnPocknell
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Thursday, June 26, 2008
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Toad for Oracle may use, but is not dependent upon, Oracle database options such as RAC, Partitioning and Spatial and Enterprise Management (OEM) Packs such as Tuning and Diagnostics depending on various factors. Such Toad features include (but not limited to) ADDM/AWR Reports and AWR Browser which are part of the optional DB Admin module add-on.
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When Prevention Fails, What’s Next? |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, June 26, 2008
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Okay, we’ve already learned the prevention is the best medicine. But what do we do when we cannot put preventive controls in place? This article answers that question and more, with more examples and data architecture considerations.
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Making Toad Do What You Want |
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Bert
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008 8:55 AM
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A lot of times people will ask Quest tech support or via our Yahoo discussion groups how to make the editor run SQL commands and do stuff more like SQL*Plus or how to better control the output look and feel (i.e. behavior). Along those lines and another very popular question is where one can set an option in Toad for the editor to do something specific (e.g. turn off feedback, etc) – because they have ...
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Always Bulk Collect |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Monday, June 23, 2008 7:34 AM
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You learn something new every day, right? Well, I certainly do (more or less). Even about PL/SQL, about which I am sure many people think I already know everything. Far from it.
In fact, I learned just last week from the PL/SQL Product Manager, Bryn Llewellyn, that his recommendation regarding cursor FOR loops and bulk collect is different fro ...
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Writing Better Queries Starts With Understanding |
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dnorwood
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6/23/2008 6:52 AM
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For those of you who may not come from a super-technical background, the term “ER Diagrammer” may sound strange or unfamiliar. Well, for the record, the term “ER Diagrammer” stands for “Entity Relationship Diagrammer” – a fancy name for a tool that displays the relationships between objects (like tables) in the ...
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ODTUG Post Mortem |
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Bert
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Thursday, June 19, 2008 5:22 AM
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There are quite a few blogs out there about what happened or what’s new from this week’s ODTUG conference in New Orleans. So rather than restate what many others are reporting, I thought I’d try a slightly different approach – to instead report more on what was noticeably absent or different this year. J
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Automated Process Auditing |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, June 19, 2008
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In this article, we discuss the importance of understanding your “Really As-Is” process, and the big mistake companies make when building process documents. Then, we explore a data architecture for continuously auditing your process in an automated fashion.
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Does a German Toad blog make sense? |
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ToadWorldAdmin
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6/18/2008 10:39 AM
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Aufgrund der großen Anzahl Toad Anwender im deutschsprachigen Raum stellt sich die Frage, ob ein deutscher Toad Blog sinnvoll ist. Wir denken hier zum einen an Themen, die uns im Umfeld Internationalisierung interessieren aber auch an technische Detailfragen, die z.B. übersetzt und so einer größeren Benutzergruppe verfügbar gemacht werd ...
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Toad World Blogs |
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ToadWorldAdmin
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6/18/2008 10:38 AM
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As the Admin for Toad World I want to welcome you and thank you for checking out the Toad World blog. This “experts corner” is a collection of blogs by some of the most respected names in the database community. Their blogs will cover a wide range of topics ranging from product insights to new technology developments to requests for your i ...
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A New Intelligent Test Run Function is under Research |
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RichardTo
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Friday, June 13, 2008 3:20 AM
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A problem in the area of SQL optimization that has been around for a long time is the inaccuracy of the cost estimation of a SQL statement. A lot of people have the wrong conception that inaccurate cost estimations generated for a SQL statement by the database optimizer are caused by outdated statistics; whereas in fact, outdated or incorrect statistics is only one o ...
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Prevention over Intervention |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
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In today’s article, we discuss the different types of controls, the best type of control, and considerations for how these controls can be worked into the data architecture of your company.
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The Database “Big Easy” |
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Bert
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008 5:43 AM
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Next week the annual ODTUG conference will be held in New Orleans. I’ll be attending sessions and visiting vendor booths in order to stay current with the database DBA and development markets (more developer oriented at this particular show). I’ll report my findings and things of interest next week. I especially hope to corner some Oracle folks on the 11g R2 beta – which I&rsqu ...
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How about a free copy of Toad DBA Suite for Oracle? |
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Bert
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Friday, June 06, 2008 5:20 AM
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I’m working with our product team to develop a novel idea – and need feedback from you, our customer base. So here comes what may seem like a silly question: How would you like to win a free copy of the Toad DBA Suite for Oracle?
Let me explain. I’m proposing that we sponsor an Oracle ...
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Solving for Data Privacy |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, June 05, 2008
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In this article, I scratch the surface on the growing concern of data privacy. We’ll discuss how the industry has reacted to the concern, and how you might start to solution for it.
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How to Run an OS Command from PL/SQL |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Wednesday, June 04, 2008 7:11 AM
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Oracle doesn't make it terribly easy to run operating system commands from within a PL/SQL block. I suppose that's understandable, given that PL/SQL is an embedded database-oriented language. Still, developers do ask me on a regular basis about how they can do this.
As I understand it, there are basically three ways to do this:
- Invoke a Java method from wit ...
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How to Deal with Chronic Weakness |
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JohnWeathington
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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
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What do you do when your company consistently has compliance weak points that don’t seem to go away? This article explores this condition, and provides the steps that your company will need to go through – and how you will support it.
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DB2 Autonomics |
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JimWankowski
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Monday, June 02, 2008 8:16 AM
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Obtaining optimal performance from your DB2 LUW applications requires that you not only ensure your SQL is written efficiently and is properly tuned, but one must be sure that the DB2 instance itself is properly tuned. Too many people make the mistake of focusing all their efforts on tuning SQL and do not take a look at the big picture. Think of your DB2 installation as an ecosystem, where memory, phys ...
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Database Benchmarking Preparatory Checklist |
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Bert
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008 4:20 AM
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There have been several papers and blogs from Quest on the issues of benchmarking successfully, however the condition persists where people experience trying issues with Benchmark Factory and obtaining satisfactory benchmark results. I still maintain that it’s primarily attributable to a lack of proper and complete precursory work. But people generally seem to need more than a notice to prepare more, ...
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Code Insight in 9.6 – Not seeing your Data Dictionary Views? |
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JeffSmith
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5/22/2008
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The Code Insight feature rewrite for version 9.6 is perhaps the most dramatic change as it will affect every Toad user who writes SQL or PL/SQL.
In a nutshell, for the 9.6 release, users can now start at the schema level, and use the ‘Dot Lookup’ feature to see all tables, views, synonyms, snapshots, PL/SQL objects etc. You can then dr ...
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How to Survive an Agile Project as a DBA |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, May 22, 2008
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For years now, agile development has been an extremely efficient way to get results while keeping the customer happy. However there are perils, especially for the database people. This article gives you a primer for what to expect, and how to succeed.
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ODTUG is just around the corner |
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Bert
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008 3:50 AM
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It’s that time of year once again. The Oracle Developer Tool Users Group (ODTUG) is quickly approaching (June 16th-19th in New Orleans – see below). For Quest, this is a really great show. It’s very well attended by and representative of our Toad customer base. It’s not uncommon for a vast majority of this show’s att ...
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Changing the look and feel of Toad for Data Analysis |
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dnorwood
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5/20/2008 1:44 AM
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We’ve done a lot in Toad© for Data Analysis to make it user friendly and intuitive. Naturally, what’s user friendly to one person may be a bit confusing to someone else. This post will show you how Toad for Data Analysis can be changed to something more comfortable or familiar.
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How to Keep Dead People Out of Your Database |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
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If dead people are accessing your database, data breach is right around the corner. In this week’s blog, we discuss database access management concerns, and how to architect a compliance system to handle them.
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Toad Saves Mucho Dinero |
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Bert
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008 4:15 AM
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Sometimes people will compare Toad against low cost competitors or freeware (remember, Toad offers a freeware version as well). The idea being that one can save money by going with a lesser product. That seems fiscally responsible – until you do the math that is. So, let’s work a simple exam ...
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Batch Optimizer Part 4 – Options Settings for the Batch Optimizer |
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RichardTo
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Friday, May 09, 2008 5:53 AM
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Written by Rene Woody
This blog is a continuation of a series about the Batch Optimizer in Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle. It covers the execution options settings for determining the criteria for selecting the best alternative, for terminating longer running SQL, and eliminating the effect of caching on the comparison ru ...
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To Write, or Not to Write? Good Question! |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, May 08, 2008
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Here we take a look at end users sending data back to the database. Is it a good idea? What are some of the reasons why your end users would want to do this? And, four key tips to consider when designing in this functionality.
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Yet another Little Toad Gem |
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Bert
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008 5:23 AM
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There are so many useful little make or break features inside Toad, it’s very often difficult to pick one to highlight. A few weeks ago I started to divulge some things coming in Toad 9.7 (and already in the beta). One item I ment ...
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Keep It Under Control With SOD |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
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For the last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about controls. Here we round out our series by talking about Segregation of Duties ( SOD ) as a way to keep things in control. Here are some key tips for designing systems that demonstrate control with SOD.
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Working With Date Ranges in Toad for Data Analysis |
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dnorwood
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4/30/2008 10:13 AM
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Often when writing a query you need to get data from a range of dates; when you start thinking about automating the SQL query it’s even more important. In this post I’ll show you a quick trick to let Toad for Data Analysis figure it out for you!
For this example I’ll be working with Oracle though it’s no different for other ...
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How Data Modeling Can Save Money |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008 4:46 AM
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It’s not uncommon to discover databases that have simply evolved over time rather than having been built according to some overall design or “master plan”. And there seem to be no shortage of answers as to why this occurs. Sometimes DBA’s are just far too busy with a myriad of other tasks. Sometimes developers are under th ...
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Why Can’t Johnny Use BMF? |
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MikeA
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008 8:05 AM
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As many of you are aware Quest provides a tool known as Benchmark Factory, BMF for short. BMF is a load generation tool that also allows you to install small databases for testing. The tools out of the box can provide TPC-B, TPC-D, TPC-H, AS3AP and many other standard benchmarks as well as allowing goal and scalability tests from your own code, either manually entered or scanned from text or, in the case of Ora ...
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Batch Optimizer Part 3 – Options Settings for the Batch Optimizer |
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RichardTo
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Friday, April 25, 2008 6:44 AM
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Written by Rene Woody
This blog is a continuation of a series about the Batch Optimizer in Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle. It covers the execution options settings that determine which SQL statements will be automatically executed by the Batch Optimizer process and the method used for their execution.
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Need Help Fixing Tables with Duplicate Values? |
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JeffSmith
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4/24/2008
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Despite the best intentions of the DBA or the person who designed the data model, the collection of primary keys, unique indexes, constraints, and triggers are not a foolproof method of keeping duplicate records creeping into your tables and views. Any business rule in the database can be disabled. An even more likely scenario is the business rule changing after the fact. So ...
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Keep It Under Control With Approvals |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
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As a follow on to last week’s blog about controlling with reconciliation, in this blog we look at another common control – approvals. Here are some key tips for designing systems that demonstrate control with approvals.
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Landmines |
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MikeA
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:20 AM
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Introduction
At the peak there were an estimated 65 million landmines planted in killing fields world wide. In the 1990’s it was estimated that while 2.5 million landmines were being deployed per year only 80,000 were being removed. According to current estimates this may have turne ...
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Toad Can Reduce Waits |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 3:46 AM
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When using either Toad’s Stats Pack Browser or AWR Browser screens (both part of the optional DBA module and/or bundle), the plethora of graphs can sometimes be a wee bit overwhelming – as shown in the screen snapshot below. So how is any DBA in an urgent situation or hurry to both successfully and expediently interpret such database activity?
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Testing and refreshing data from production |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Thursday, April 17, 2008 9:21 AM
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As many of my readers likely know by now, I have been working for the past several years on the Quest Code Tester development effort.
Code Tester is the most powerful PL/SQL test automation tool available. You describe the expected behavior of your programs and Code Tester generates your test code, which can then be run from the UI or via a script. With Code Teste ...
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Keep It Under Control With Reconciliation |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
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In the compliance world, reconciliation is more than just making sure your data loaded properly. Here are some key tips to using reconciliation as a control in your compliance data system.
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Toad Fits Like a Glove |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 5:42 AM
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I’ve seen some people on competing product discussion boards say things like Toad’s schema browser Is far too bloated – with too many tabs and images sucking up all the precious real-estate. But like anything else in Toad, if you don’t experiment with and utilize all the cool options it offers – you could very easily arrive at this quite mistaken conclusion. So ...
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Auto-formatting of templates for Toad |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Thursday, April 10, 2008 9:14 AM
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A few months ago, I posted on this blog an explanation of how to use Toad's Code Templates to standardize development and improve productivity. I included an XML document that contains over 20 templates that I thought you might find useful. I also asked my readers to produce XML transformations so that the XML document could be "output" in the format that Toad recognizes (and SQL Navigator as ...
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Prove It or Lose It! |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
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When audits are involved, you are guilty until proven innocent. Here are 4 key strategies to employ in the design of your compliance data system, that will prove your company’s innocence.
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Goal! Success through Storage |
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MikeA
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Thursday, April 03, 2008 7:29 AM
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On March 26, 2008 I gave a webcast on physical tuning named “Goal! Success through Storage.” Due to some delays starting it overran a bit so I wasn’t able to answer questions afterward as I usually do. So, here are the answers to all the questions that weren’t handled by Darren Mallet (who handles the questions online when I am webcasting, thanks Darren!)
< ...
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Toad – What Next? |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:34 AM
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Recently, my Toad World blog asking whether we needed to update the Toad Handbook generated as many or more replies than all my other past blogs combined. So it obviously seems best to ask you guys – our customers and users – for more opinions and ideas. |
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Flood of Coffee Break Byte Videos, Thanks Gretchen! |
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JeffSmith
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3/31/2008
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The Toad World visitors may have noticed a recent surge in the number of videos available for viewing in the past few days. Toad World will debut a collection of 12 or so Coffee Break Bytes (video tutorials) to highlight the new features for the 9.6 release due out on April 1.
I think these videos very nicely compliment
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