Author: Tim...

I wrote a summary of some of the recent security posts (Basic Security Measures for Oracle). If I’ve missed something out feel free to drop me a line.

I’ve been doing some SQL/XML again today. It’s really quite simple, but when I’m away from it for a while I manage to convince myself it’s going to be a pain. Well the XML generation was no problem, pity defining the XML Schema wasn’t as easy. It looks like I’m going to get to play with this a bit more in the next few days.

I’ve just bought another 1G of RAM for my machine at home. It makes playing DVDs at the same time as running Oracle10g on a VMware virtual machine much easier 🙂 In the next few days I should receive my NSLU2. After my recent Windows fiasco I decided to get a bit more storage and a NAS to connect them to. It seemed like a much better idea than plugging some disks into the back of my machines. Time will tell 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Just knocked together a quick run through some web scripting languages:

Web Scripting for Oracle

The examples are purposely brief and there is no mention of best practices etc. It’s simply meant to illustrate how to interact with the database.

I’m hoping this will save me having to repeatedly explain how to use bind variables.

Cheers

Tim…

I logged the issue on the relevant OTN forum and it was fixed in no time.

It’s a pity support don’t respond so quickly 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

It looks like there are some outstanding issues with the Raptor SQL formatter. It doesn’t appear to work at all when editing a package, but it will work for a procedure or an SQL statement. When it does work it appears to have some odd ideas about how PL/SQL variables should be defined. This example shows one case:

-- Before
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE dummy_proc AS
l_dummy_1 dual.dummy%type;
l_dummy_2 dual.dummy%type;
BEGIN
l_dummy_1 := 'x';
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('l_dummy_1=' || l_dummy_1);
l_dummy_2 := 'x';
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('l_dummy_2=' || l_dummy_2);
END;

-- After
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE dummy_proc AS l_dummy_1 dual.dummy % type;
l_dummy_2 dual.dummy % type;
BEGIN
l_dummy_1 := 'x';
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('l_dummy_1=' || l_dummy_1);
l_dummy_2 := 'x';
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('l_dummy_2=' || l_dummy_2);
END;

It seems to be a little confused by the declaration section of the procedure. I’ve posted this on the support forum. I hope this gets fixed before the production release.

In addition to this, the SQL formatter is a little lacking in configuration options.

Cheers

Tim…

I guess everyone knows by now that Raptor has arrived now. I downloaded it and had a little play and here are my first impressions:

• It takes an age to start up. No doubt this is due to it being based on the JDeveloper framework. The words “Java” and “Fast” are rarely used in the same sentence where GUI applications are concerned.
• Once loaded, the application is quite quick and responsive.
• The look and feel is clean and simple, not dissimilar to PL/SQL Developer. Not at all like the “junk-yard” that is TOAD.
• There are a few nice touches. When dealing with large numbers of objects, expanding the navigator does not list all of them. Instead, it lists the first few and gives you the option for more. This is much better than waiting around for ages, especially when you’ve expanded the wrong node 🙂
• I’m not totally sure the editor window deals with fonts correctly. On my installation 12pt looks really chunky, but 10pt requires a magnifying glass to read. I usually use 8pt for my regular text editor, so something is a little fishy here.
• It has all the things you would expect for a PL/SQL development tool, like syntax highlighting, debugger, PL/SQL beautifier etc. In addition it has a reporting tab that allows you to produce predefined and user defined reports. This is a nice touch for those people that have an endless array of custom scripts.

My initial impression is very positive, although it will be the New Year before I get to use the product in anger. I’m glad Oracle have resisted the temptation to build an “all things to all people” product. I find most IDEs annoying because of the shear volume of junk included. If Oracle keep it simple and keep it free this is going to be a bigtime winner.

I see no reason to pay for a product like PL/SQL Developer when you can use Raptor for free. TOAD may be a different matter though. Personally, I prefer Raptor’s clean interface to the clutter of TOAD, but if you are somebody that uses all the rubbish included in TOAD, then Raptor is probably not for you.

Over the last few months I’ve seen myself slip into a very negative frame of mind regarding Oracle products. Perhaps Raptor is a turning point. Keep up the good work!

Cheers

Tim…

Bob B continued this theme here. Just wanted to make sure nobody missed his comment on my previous post 🙂

Cheers

Tim…