Recently in General interest Category

Well it has taken me sometime to get around to it, but finally I've added the Google WEB 2.0 Search API to this site. So now you can directly continue your search for anything Oracle specific or otherwise from here. As a default you get anything current in the way of Oracle news from other sites and blogs.

If you are interested in this facility supplied by Google then check out the documentation on their website. There is nothing to install but you do have to register with Google by opening an account to get a site specific key but that is pretty painless.

Oracle continues its endeavours to provide vertical solutions buy the fraud experts at Bharosa. Their leading fraud software is expected to help re-establish confidence in online web-based transactions.

The deal is expected to close in August - Lets wait and see how Oracle packages that.

Having suffered some what at the hands of my previous provider Lunarpages, it comes as a welcome change to have arrived at a professional address. Thanks to everyone at Webmasters - it's nice to be here.

Hunting for some online documention on alter database and co. I stumbled across a site http://www.ss64.com which had an article on the subject. Refering the problems with views it stated:

"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."- Doctor Who

Thanks for all the comment spam I have been receiving over the past few months. I have now decided it's time to generally disallow comments on all entries. Sorry to all of you who seriously use the web, but we seem to be out numbered by the idiots.

Oracle has now joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner program. In doing so, Oracle hopes to continue to supply developers with a high level of support and integration between Windows based client software and the Oracle database environment. You can read the full story from the Oracle Press Release.

Are you already using Oracle compressed tables or thinking about the implications of adopting this technology?

This article by Sanjay Mishra goes into the pros and cons of this feature which has been available since Oracle 9 (Rel. 2). If you are running a Data Warehouse you should be considering the implications of using compressed tables in your system. But be wary it is not a solution to saving space all over your database!

Row-level control which enables different users to be restricted in the data (rows) they are allowed to see, has been available to the Oracle world since version 8. On row-level access it is possible to define rules which validate to users identity and thus restrict the data (rows) which can be seen or changed. This is sometimes referred to as a Virtual Personal Database - VPD. This security article describes how that works.

Since the introduction of Oracle 8i (not 9i / thanks Kai) it has been possible to define so called "Materialized Views" in the database. The idea is quite simple, namely to pre-generate all the data which a view would return before it is first needed. You can also define indexes and partitioning for the view. It becomes difficult to manage, however, when the underlying data changes frequently.
The following pdf contains all the background information and some examples for getting started.

If you ever wondered what the Oracle Headquarters looks like then this should give you some idea. They are situated right on a lake.