Oracle articles

  • Pretty PL/SQL

    September 6, 2015

    Presenting PL/SQL code snippets in web pages, complete with syntax highlighting using Google Code Prettifier.
  • PL/SQL Developer Setup, part 1

    November 10, 2012

    PL/SQL Developer is one of several integrated development environments (IDEs) that are available for Oracle, and it happens to be my favourite. One of the things I like about it is how configurable it is - you can change almost anything, and with...
  • PL/SQL Developer Setup, part 2

    October 12, 2014

    Like other database IDEs, PL/SQL Developer includes a session browser that essentially shows the contents of v$session, with some tabs for the current SQL statement, locks, waits and so on. The default settings are rather basic, but the...
  • PL/SQL Collection Types

    July 29, 2007

    In PL/SQL, the VARRAY is merely a functionally crippled version of NESTED TABLE with a LIMIT attribute you don't need. Here are what I consider the main points of the different collection types, from the point of view of a PL/SQL...
  • How to configure an NFS share from Mac OSX to CentOS

    January 24, 2007

    If you install CentOS or another free Linux on your Mac in a Parallels VM (for example as a platform for Oracle), you will notice early on that there is no way to share files between the host Mac and the VM. This functionality is provided for those...
  • How to set up SQL*Plus

    October 19, 2005

    Despite living in the era of GUI tools such as PL/SQL Developer, there are times when a simple text browser is all you want. Here's how to get the most from SQL*Plus.
  • Comma-separated output

    October 15, 2005

    What is it with comma-separated lists? Anyway, here are some techniques for generating one comma-separated list from multiple rows in SQL.
  • Comma-separated input

    October 15, 2005

    After "How do I display values from multiple columns in one comma-separated row", one of the next most-asked Oracle questions on the web is the opposite one (sort of): "I have a comma-separated list. How do I use it in SQL queries?"