By Alorie Gilbert – Oracle came out swinging Tuesday, disputing claims that it sold the state of California more software than it needed–and warning that if that state cancels a $95 million contract, it could create problems for agencies already using the software.

By Ed Parry – Wanna stop being a DBA ASAP?Do one of the twenty things seasoned DBA and Oracle expert Rachel Carmichael of Dragonfly Consulting LLC listed in her presentation last month at the Oracle user event IOUG Live!, and your IT death wish might come true.

By Douglas Scherer – I often get asked if Oracle Text can replace full-blown document management systems, but I don’t see Oracle Text as a competitor to these systems. When combined with other Oracle database features such as Internet File System (Oracle9iFS) and the new XML datatype (XMLType), Orac

The Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) features optimized data access to the Oracle database from a .NET environment. Unlike OLE DB .NET and ODBC .NET, ODP.NET is a native driver and does not use a data access bridge, which can reduce performance.

by Ahbaid Gaffoor – Description: This script (fnwhoami.sql) creates a public function (whoami) that allows a user to see the database and user he/she is connected to.

(Kevin Nicholson) This procedure will allow you to give a user the ability to kill any session other than SYS, SYSTEM, DBSNMP, REPADMIN, OUTLN and the background processes without giving them the alter system privilege. (R)

by Boris Milrud – Learn how to write, load, and run a SQLJ stored procedure on an Oracle database, and see how its results compare with PL/SQL’s.

by Sanjay Mishra, Alan Beaulieu – If you write programs to run against an Oracle database, you spend a lot of time and mental energy writing queries to return the data your programs need. Knowledge of SQL, and particularly of Oracle’s implementation of SQL, is the key to writing good queries in a ti

By Chris Eaton – This was posted on the forum (comp.database.oracle.server) and I have tried it on my test system and it is a real problem: Any user can access any table using 9i. Someone on the forum posted that there is a TAR 2121935 open stating that it will be fixed in 9iR2 and not in 9.0.x. I s

By David Baum – Leveraging the internet to improve business communications and processes is still referred to as “e-business,” but these Oracle customers say e-business will soon become the standard for all business.