Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

Yesterday, I looked at
collections, an evolution of PL/SQL tables that allows us to manipulate many
variables at once, as a unit. Collections, coupled with two new features
introduced with Oracle 8i, BULK_COLLECT and FORALL, can dramatically increase
the performance of data manipulation code within PL/SQL.
As a reminder, we were looking at a piece of code that implemented
collections, BULK […]

Slashdot reports a

squabble between Sun and Eclipse:

"CNET news is reporting on a
potential spat
between Sun and Eclipse: ‘Sun Microsystems has sent a letter to members of
Eclipse, urging the increasingly influential open-source project to unify
rather than fragment the Java-based development tool market.’ Although Sun’s
letter says it wants interoperability, and a ‘broad base’ for java tools, it
then insists […]

Yesterday I looked at some code written in Oracle 7-style PL/SQL, and compared it with what is considered best practice with Oracle 8i 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 […]

"While much has been talked and written about regarding the return on
investment of business intelligence initiatives, little has been discussed
concerning the barrier to entry that many small and medium-size businesses (SMB)
face when staring straight in the eyes of a business problem that requires a BI
solution." writes Joe
Luedtke in this DMReview.com article entitled "BI
for the Masses: […]

A couple of people recently asked the question on the OTN Discoverer Forum:

"I am new to
Discoverer tool as such. Therefore I have this question, pl pardon me if it very
basic.
When I use the desktop edition of Discoverer to make a connection to the Oracle
db. One the database side, it creates 2 dedicated connection for that […]

Yesterday I looked at
some code written in Oracle 7-style PL/SQL, and compared it with what is
considered best practice with Oracle 8i 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 have […]

"While much has been talked and written about regarding the return on
investment of business intelligence initiatives, little has been discussed
concerning the barrier to entry that many small and medium-size businesses (SMB)
face when staring straight in the eyes of a business problem that requires a BI
solution." writes Joe
Luedtke in this DMReview.com article entitled "BI
for the Masses: […]

Once in a while, I read something about Oracle that stops me in my tracks and makes me really think about how I approach
my job. Recent examples include starting to work with 9iAS, and slowly becoming
aware of how much I’m going to have to get my head around the role Java and
middleware is going to […]

“As data warehouse designers, you know how important a business executive sponsor is to your initiative. After focusing on data warehousing for the past two decades, I’m convinced that strong business sponsorship is the leading make-or-break indicator of data warehouse success. Having the so-called right sponsor can overcome a multitude of shortcomings, such as difficulties […]

I recently came across a couple of articles on
adtmag.com that are probably worth taking a
look at.
First up is an article by Jack Vaughan entitled
"Dash on real-time, BI and
the road ahead". Mainly an interview with Jnan Dash, ex-Oracle and IBM and
now an advocate of the ‘real time enterprise’. According to the article;

"Dash tells technologists discerning risk-reward […]