Last month I wrote about “Why Reverse Engineering is Always Worthwhile.” So the logical next issue to examine is forward engineering – its different approaches and its many comparative benefits. The best way to do this is via an analogical example

Oracle’s Oracle10g requires more memory than was ever required before. If you utilize any of the new features such as automatic storage management (ASM) and automatic shared memory management (ASMM) then you really need to pay attention to what memory is doing in 10g.

When an exception is raised, one of the most important pieces of information a programmer would love to get hold of is the line of code that caused the exception to be raised.  Before Oracle 10g came long, the only way to get this information was to allow the exception to go unhandled and then view the error stack. The following chain of program calls shows you what I mean.

With each new release of a database, be it Oracle or one of their competitors, we hear the cry that this release will make DBAs as we know them obsolete. We hear again and again how this automated feature set or that new GUI interface will automate the DBA job. So far, all of these claims of DBA obsolescence have been for naught, to mis-quote Samual Clements “The reports of the DBAs death are greatly ex ...

Welcome to my Toad World blog! I will offer on this blog a wide variety of tips and incredibly deep and surprising insights on the Oracle PL/SQL language (the object of my obsessive personality for the last 10+ years).  I look forward to your responses and critiques. That is: I hope you will engage with these ideas and feel perfectly comfortable with disagreeing with me, offering other, perhaps better, i ...