PL/SQL Challenge

Steven Feuerstein started last year the PL/SQL Challenge, a quiz about…PL/SQL!
What else could one expect from Steven

The PL/SQL Challenge is an interesting quiz to test your PL/SQL knowledge and win some great prizes(up to $1000!).
Not only it’s about testing your knowledge, but also about learning a lot PL/SQL(even experienced developers can learn!).

At iAdvise and O2U we have some great PL/SQL developers and to prove that: we are the number one company in the PL/SQL challenge in the last quarter of 2010 and leading in this quarter.
We have three players in the top 100 this quarter of which one is in the top 20.  And this with over a 1000 participants each day.  Not bad I would say.

Not only the experienced players are participating and doing very well, but also our young Apex developers are doing great(one of them was in the beginners top 10 in December).

In the days of  Java, E2.0, SOA, Fusion etc… don’t forget the roots: PL/SQL is still the preferred language on the database!
So, come out and play…and maybe win some prizes at the PL/SQL Challenge.

 

Search database objects with a variable in oracle

Something I really often use is this select:

SELECT distinct type,line,name,text
FROM user_source
WHERE lower(Text) LIKE(‘%’||lower(:search_source)||’%')
UNION
SELECT distinct ‘column’ type,null line,table_name||’.'|| COLUMN_NAME name,null
FROM user_tab_columns
WHERE lower(COLUMN_NAME) LIKE(‘%’||lower(:search_source)||’%')
UNION
SELECT  DISTINCT ‘table’ type,null line,object_name name,null
from user_objects
WHERE object_type IN  (‘TABLE’,'VIEW’)
AND lower(object_name) LIKE(‘%’||lower(:search_source)||’%')
ORDER BY type,name,line

This select will show you most of the database objects in a schema(columns, table,view,code), where this ‘search_source’ string is used.

You can add this into you sqldeveloper as well, as a user defined report.
To accomplish this you will have to do the following steps:
1) Open sqldeveloper
2) go to Reports tab(If you don’t see this tab go to the Menu choose view->Reports
3) right-click ’User Defined Reports’ -> add Report -> give name and put the sql code as above into SQL input screen(you can leave the rest as default)
You can use this Search in sqldeveloper now.

Oracle Forms Modernization seminar

iAdvise organises a seminar on Forms modernization.

During this seminar we will show you how you can modernize your Oracle Forms applications, give it a rich look and feel, and adopt the latest technologies without throwing away years of investment in Oracle Forms.
We will show you how you can combine the power of an Oracle Forms application with functionality from external application (javabeans, pluggable java components, webservices,…) and how you can give a Forms application a modern “look and feel”.

Also part of this seminar is an overview of the new features in the latest Oracle Forms release(11g)

When: June 1, 2010
Where: iAdvise office, Kontich
Language: Dutch

View invitation

AL Service Bus – Oracle Enterprise Service Bus

So we have 2 flavors of a service bus, namely the ALSB en OESB which is now repackaged and relincensed into OSB = Oracle Service Bus.

If we have a look at both products we could briefly summarise the big differences in focus of both products. Which actually means, looking back into the past, when BEA and Oracle were separate vendors.

So let’s compare both products, in a really, really short summary ;o)

AL SB = stand-alone pipelining mechanism which supports messaging, other adapters and pipelining of actions (a little bit of a sequential approach)

OESB = dragging-and-dropping of different services based on webservices (SOAP Services) or adapters (file, MQ, JMS, DB, …) + focus on transformation and routing

With the 11g release we don’t talk about the ESB or Service Bus anymore but about the Mediator. The SCA Mediator, which actually is the Oracle Service Bus.

The OSB (Oracle Service Bus) = ALSB + OSB = Best of both products = Best of breed

Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer Of The Year

Congratulations to Nathalie Roman for being Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer Of The Year.

Nathalie is already Fusion Reginal Director for Belgium and has been awarded for all her delivered work.

The article in Oracle Magazine:

Flex and Oracle

Recently we have been working with Adobe Flex and Live Cycle Data Services, part from some little bugs the products seems great. The only thing that stops me from using more Flex is the fact that you need to have a license to use Adobe Live Cycle Data Services and not all customers are interested to make this investment.

So I was looking for a solution and came across this nice example of Mike Potter. He demonstrates how you can use flex with php in order to update a mySQL Database. This should also be possible in Oracle I thought, using mod pl/Sql. Let’s give it a try:

The first thing I wanted to accomplish was to display data from an Oracle database into my flex application. I will use xml to retrieve and display my data.

I started by making a new flex project with a custom component were I implemented a simple datagrid where I would display my retrieved data.

The next thing to do was to let Oracle display some xml so I could retrieve this back into my flex application. I will do this a simple as possible and just use the htp.p function in order to display some static xml:

I then called my procedure in my browser and checked of the xml is correctly generated:

This seemed correct, now I had to retrieve this data into my flex application. I will use the HTTPService tag in mxml to do this. As url property I gave the same location I typed in my browser to check the xml. Now complete your HTTPService with the right resulthandler, I used an Arraycollection to store my data and specified it as dataprovider in my datagrid. The result was what I hoped for:

This is the most simple example of course, but now I’m launched for some further research.