If you're working with Oracle database (and not using just tools with GUI), you surely know sqlplus i.e. a console-based SQL client for Oracle. A very spartan tool (forget about history of commands, auto completions, advanced editor etc.) but very effective and often used if all you have is access through SSH. But it has some quirks - one very nasty password-related hit me recently.
In the previous article, I've briefly demonstrated creation of a very simple unit test using a tool built-in to the SQL Developer. Let's see what issues you'll have to face when using this tool in a real-world project - not just traditional bugs (fixable) but consequences of decisions made when designing the system (thus inherent, not easily fixable, problems).
When writing PL/SQL procedure or function, you may want to create a unit test - something that tests the piece of code automatically. There are several projects intended for writing unit tests of a PL/SQL code, e.g. the well-established utPLSQL or a newer PLUTO, but since version 2.1 the SQL Developer contains it's own unit testing solution. As we have used it for several months on a real project, I'll take the liberty to present my experiences - maybe you're considering using it on a project too.
We all know than once a project passes the initial hectic phase when the design is tuned (and before it reaches the the phase "we have to deliver it to the customer and it's not ready"), the development is a rather boring experience. Occasionally you'll learn something new, you'll solve some unexpected problem, but in general it's quite monotonous work. Some vendors obviously are aware of this "issue" and obviously decided to take heed to make the development much more fun, as their representatives obviously think that bore is a killer disease.
Installing Oracle 11g (R2) on an unsupported distribution (currently there are three supported ones - Oracle Enterprise Linux, Red Hat and SuSe) may be a bit of a problem - especially if the distribution is "progressive" i.e. contains fresh versions of different tools (compiler, libraries) and is not based on RPM packages. And both of these are true for Gentoo, so lets see what problems may occur during the installation (and how to solve them).
In contrast to the previous articles focused on technology, this one is a short reasoning about hints in Oracle. My approach to hints is somehow ambiguous - from time to time I do admit hints may be useful, but most of the time I just hate them ...
Last week I've posted a first puzzler related to generating random numbers or rather selecting random rows in PostgreSQL, believing that it's first and maybe the last puzzler for a long time. Well, today I've found a similar feature in Oracle - so lets begin!
