A few of the latest…

What do you call a belt made of watches?

A waist of time

Oracle Open World is done and dusted for 2018. There’s still time to register for the UKOUG Conference and Exhibition in Liverpool this year. 3rd – 5th December – have a look here.

In the meantime – have a look at these blogs.

Blogs of the week

UKOUG Tech 18

Jonathan Lewis blogs about his agenda for UKOUG Tech 18!

2. PL/SQL quiz

Julian Dontcheff says, “Years ago, I saw this quiz on dbasupport. Below, we have 2 PL/SQL blocks, have a look…”

He questions what happens after you run the blocks.

Are the loops above both finite, both infinite or is it so that one of them is finite and the other one infinite?

3. Data Guard Broker 19c

This blogger writes, “If your broker is simple, this is not a huge request. Actually, you could follow “Step By Step How to Recreate Data Guard Broker Configuration (Doc ID 808783.1)”
But in my case, using Active Data Guard with Far Sync, with many fine-tuned configurations, it was not so convenient. So I had to find out some other ways trying to be more efficient.”

4.FIRST_ROWS_10 CBO Is Hopeless, It’s Using The Wrong Index !! (Weeping Wall)

Richard Foote says, “There’s an organisation I had been dealing with on and off over the years who were having all sorts of issues with their Siebel System and who were totally convinced their performance issues were due directly to being forced to use the FIRST_ROWS_10 optimizer. I’ve attempted on a number of occasions to explain that their issues are not actually due to some unexplained deficiency with the FIRST_ROWS_10 CBO, but due to a number of other root issues, sadly to no avail. I recently found out they’re still struggling with performance issues, so I thought it might be worth looking at a classic example of where it looks simplistically like a FIRST_ROWS_10 CBO issue, but the “real” underlying problem(s) are actually quite different.”

5. Simple Performance Diagnostics in APEX

Sean D Stuber shares how, “recently I received a call that an APEX application was experiencing poor performance. They asked me to investigate what was happening on the database or in APEX itself.”

6. Ranges with NULLs 03: Gaps

Stewart Ashton says, “When I wrote “Gaps in Date Ranges: when are you free?“, I handled NULLs using “magic” values. This time I’ll try not to cheat!!”

7. First thoughts about Oracle 18XE db

Sven says, “On the 20th October the new free Oracle database version 18XE (Express Edition) was announced.”

He gives his thoughts on its restrictions, what’s included and what’s missing and general thoughts.

He concludes by saying:

“I’m very excited that 18cXE finally made it. I’m also happy that a lot of EE features are available. For demos, talks and presentations I will probably stay with the preconfigured Developer-VM and an EE version of the database. For long-running small side projects, I consider to setup one or two XEs. Additionally it is a great counter argument for all those “Oracle DB is (too) expensive” opinions.”

8. My First Oracle Open World Experience

Aura Player shares their very first experience of Oracle Open World.

9. Oracle XE 18 Docker Image

Martin Giffy D’Souza writes, “Last week Gerald Venzl announced on his blog that Oracle XE 18c was available. You can download Oracle XE here.

Since it was announced Adrian Png created a Docker image and I’ve been working with him help ensure that the data files can be preserved even when the container is destroyed.”

10. Query Builder: Where Are My Joins?

Jeff Smith asks How it Was, Pre 18.3?

He asks: Can we do better?

He concludes this blog by saying, “We could try to refactor the 3rd party vendor’s bad SQL, but every time we do that, upgrades get much trickier. I’d like to have our cake and eat it too, but I also need to make game-time decisions and try to make for the best user experience. I think we’ve found a good compromise here…especially if my assumption that many folks will use the Query Builder for existing queries.

If I’m wrong, here’s your chance to tell me.

The good news is, we have a new release every 3 months now, so tweaks, fixes, and improvements are never that far away.”

11. Oracle Tidbits – October 2018 #oratidbit

Biju Thomas shares some of the #oratidbit published during October on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ during October in the hope that these helpful tips help others to learn something new or to remind you of its existence and use.

12. Un-documented Beta OAC 18.3.3 Feature : Configuring Synonyms for ASK Interface

This blog begins by saying, “The ASK interface in with OAC is a very simple and direct way to gain insight about your data in seconds. Just type (or pronounce) phrasal questions, OAC will interpret your question, match it with most likely measures and attributes exist in any indexed dataset you have access to, and return visualizations that best meet your question. Simple and efficient, this works both in the web based OAC UI and via the mobile interface in Day by Day Application.”

They also share this short video: