A common task when selecting data from a database is to take a set of values a query returns and format it as a comma delimited list. Another task that’s almost as common is the need to do the reverse: Take a comma delimited list of values in a single string and use it as a table of values. (R)

(Jeff Spicer) The words “Web services” first appeared on the cover of this magazine a little more than two years ago. Before that, we had written short, technically focused articles on the topic, but we hadn’t yet profiled businesses that were developing, deploying, or leveraging Web services in

Many developers do not specify a precision for NUMBER columns. This may be in order to minimize the work that would be needed to increase that precision should the application’s requirements change, but it is often just a matter of habit. And although it is possible using the undocumented (*,scale)

(Mark Rittman) A while ago I worked on an Oracle Portal project, that was based around a menu calling a number of Discoverer workbooks and other reports. The menu was a portlet that was located on the left-hand side and took up around a quarter of the page. The right-hand side was a portlet that con

When you create a database table, you have the option to specify a DEFAULT value. Using default values on database columns helps to insulate database design issues from application code. (R)

(Alan Joch) By tying together massive amounts of server, application, and storage components into a collective whole, enterprise computing grids can create cost-effective virtual “computers” of unmatched power and speed, where the negative effects of spikes in demand become a thing of the past.

(John K. Waters) Oracle Corp. unveiled what it called “the industry’s first and most complete” Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform. Based on technology acquired with its recent purchase of Collaxa Inc., Oracle’s new BPEL Process Manager features what the company claims is the first native B

It is common practice to allow columns for which the corresponding attribute value may sometimes not be available to contain a null. Null is not a value as such, but represents the absence of a value. Columns that may contain nulls are sometimes called nullable columns. Instead of allowing a col

Part one discussed using SQL to solve directed graph problems. Another kind of directed graph is a state machine. In a state machine, each node is called a state and represents the current status of a system, object, or variable. There are vectors between each state that represent a change in state

(Boris Milrud) Oracle databases provide a powerful mechanism for enforcing business rules, called referential integrity (RI), which is implemented either via a declaration of foreign key (FK) constraints ("declarative RI") or via triggers. It is almost impossible to find an Oracle database with no d