(Steve Callan) To secure sensitive data, Oracle provides developers with the DBMS_OBFUSCATION_TOOLKIT. This supplied PL/SQL package, available in both the Standard and Enterprise editions, is the industrial strength version of the DBMS_RANDOM package. Upon reading Oracle’s documentation about th

Oracle Spatial is an integrated set of functions, data structures, and tables that aid in storing and retrieving spatial data. That data describes shapes and their geometric relationships in two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or four-dimensional space. (R)

(Mark Rittman) recently looked at some code written in Oracle7-style PL/SQL, and compared it with what is considered best practice with Oracle8i and 9i. The more up-to-date code generally runs around 3-5 times faster than the old style code, and, as part of understanding where the changes to PL/SQL

(Steve Callan) Connecting with Oracle can be quite a challenge for new users and DBA’s. Once you’ve learned the ins and outs of configuration files and Oracle Net, connecting via SQL*Plus or another Oracle application is a piece of cake. However, as a new Oracle DBA in a small to medium sized busine

(Blane Warrene) Recently, Apple posted information about an international “road show” designed to publicize Mac OS X Server’s compatibility with Oracle’s 10g database platform. The road show will feature executives from both Oracle and Apple and will run in five cities: London; Paris; Tokyo; Res

(Marco Gilbert) When you are working with UNDO (instead of ROLLBACK), there are two important things to consider: –The size of the UNDO tablespace –The UNDO_RETENTION parameter (R)

(Amar Kumar Padhi) Do you know how to auto generate random numbers or strings in Oracle? Generating random numbers is required when there is a need to create a lot of data for testing purposes, or when we simply need to use a number to temporarily tag a process. It may also be necessary to generate

With each new Windows OS release, the command prompt gets further away from the user. Oracle still ships most of its main server utilities as command-line utility programs, so it’s becoming increasingly difficult to perform simple tasks. (R)

(Shawn Ellinger) Each transaction will be put in the v$transaction table. This query will give you which rollback segment they are using and how much. It will also show how much temp space they are using. If the column STATUS shows up "ACT" the statement is currently running, if it shows up "INA" th

(Mir Mirhashimaali) Here’s a function to calculate the number of seconds elapsed in a given period of time.