You might know Martin Bach from his current role of talking about the new JavaScript engine in Oracle Database 23ai. But long before that, Martin has been a well respected professional in the Oracle community, with many a DBA being in debt to his knowledge and assistance. In the final part of this 3 part series, Martin and I talk about working for …

You might know Martin Bach from his current role of talking about the new JavaScript engine in Oracle Database 23ai. But long before that, Martin has been a well respected professional in the Oracle community, with many a DBA being in debt to his knowledge and assistance. In this episode, Martin and I talk about the role of social media (blogs, vid…

You might know Martin Bach from his current role of talking about the new JavaScript engine in Oracle Database 23ai. But long before that, Martin has been a well respected professional in the Oracle community, with many a DBA being in debt to his knowledge and assistance. In this episode, Martin and I talk about the beginnings of his Oracle career …

A common theme in my 30 years of using Oracle technology is that people love to label any and all things Oracle as "cool tech but way too expensive". But this argument is a reflection of a very dated view of Oracle, because times have changed. Nowadays there is a plethora of tools, platforms and initiatives provided by Oracle that are 100% free to …

A common theme in my 30 years of using Oracle technology is that people love to label any and all things Oracle as "cool tech but way too expensive". But this argument is a reflection of a very dated view of Oracle, because times have changed. Nowadays there is a plethora of tools, platforms and initiatives provided by Oracle that are 100% free to …

Login to a customer's Oracle Database and there are all sorts of permutations of how tablespaces are being used. Sometimes there is one giant tablespace for everything. Other times there are multiple tablespaces for different schemas, or different object types. The thinking on how tablespaces should be used has evolved over many years, and in this …

There's a reason we don't just lump all of our data into Excel, Word and other such tools. Databases exist to give rigour to our data. They are the "statement of record" - the proof that our applications are meeting any business and/or regulatory requirements. The data stored in the database is typically the evidence that we provide to auditors and…

If you are the only person using a PC, then the concept of having to lock information is totally foreign, because all of the data is yours and yours alone. But databases were built for the multi-user world, where concurrent access to the data is the norm. To handle this, we sometimes need to lock the data to ensure it is controlled and updated in a…

Known for many years as "the optimizer lady", there are very few people that can throw down with tech ubergeeks in the Oracle community whilst at the same time nonchalantly stroll into a meeting with Larry Ellision, but Maria Colgan is one of the select people that can do so. Maria has nearly 3 decades of experience with the Oracle Database, coveri…

Known for many years as "the optimizer lady", there are very few people that can throw down with tech ubergeeks in the Oracle community whilst at the same time nonchalantly stroll into a meeting with Larry Ellision, but Maria Colgan is one of the select people that can do so. Maria has nearly 3 decades of experience with the Oracle Database, coveri…

Known for many years as "the optimizer lady", there are very few people that can throw down with tech ubergeeks in the Oracle community whilst at the same time nonchalantly stroll into a meeting with Larry Ellision, but Maria Colgan is one of the select people that can do so. Maria has nearly 3 decades of experience with Oracle, covering performanc…

Known for many years as "the optimizer lady", there are very few people that can throw down with tech ubergeeks in the Oracle community whilst at the same time nonchalantly stroll into a meeting with Larry Ellision, but Maria Colgan is one of the select people that can do so. Maria has nearly 3 decades of experience with Oracle, covering performanc…

In the high energy world of modern IT, it has become commonplace to float between companies on a regular cadence, which can result in diluting your skillset across an ever broadening landscape. But occasionally you'll have the good fortune to encounter someone who has expanded their breadth of skills almost entirely within a single organisation, gi…

In the high energy world of modern IT, it has become commonplace to float between companies on a regular cadence, which can result in diluting your skillset across an ever broadening landscape. But occasionally you'll have the good fortune to encounter someone who has expanded their breadth of skills almost entirely within a single organisation, gi…

In the high energy world of modern IT, it has become commonplace to float between companies on a regular cadence, which can result in diluting your skillset across an ever broadening landscape. But occasionally you'll have the good fortune to encounter someone who has expanded their breadth of skills almost entirely within a single organisation, gi…

Databases are incredibly sophisticated pieces of software, and hence as they mature, the algorithms and logic behind what at first glance would seem to be trivial functionality are often amazing in their cleverness and cunning. In this episode we'll explore the complexity and sophistication around what would seem to be the simplest of questions: Wh…

It is easy to be "too close" to things that you are familiar with, and thus become jaded and disenchanted with all of the minor frustrations one encounters over a long period of time. Frequent travellers revel in grumbling about the delayed take-off, the size of the plane seat, the annoying passenger, the slow arrival of baggage etc, at the same ti…

It is easy to be "too close" to things that you are familiar with, and thus become jaded and disenchanted with all of the minor frustrations one encounters over a long period of time. Frequent travellers revel in grumbling about the delayed take-off, the size of the plane seat, the annoying passenger, the slow arrival of baggage etc, at the same ti…

It is easy to be "too close" to things that you are familiar with, and thus become jaded and disenchanted with all of the minor frustrations one encounters over a long period of time. Frequent travellers revel in grumbling about the delayed take-off, the size of the plane seat, the annoying passenger, the slow arrival of baggage etc, at the same ti…

I first met Jackie McIlroy a few years back where she was an attendee at a pre-covid conference. Since then she has gone from strength to strength in the Oracle community, being a much-sought after speaker, an Oracle Ace, ODTUG committee member and chair for the Kscope APEX program. I caught up with her at the Kscope22 conference in Dallas Texas to…

Databases are incredibly complex pieces of software, which can come as a surprise given that anyone can throw together a few lines of C code to read and write data from a file. What differentiates a database from simple file read/write is how databases handle concurrent access to the data. For many years, the feature that has set Oracle Database ap…

Parsing is the act of preparing to execute a SQL statement on your database. It would seem to be a necessary activity - after all, that is what databases are designed to do - execute SQL. But the topic of parsing requires a more nuanced look, because a high transaction frequency database typically succeeds or fails based the amount of SQL parsing i…

No topic quite gets emotions rolling as much as the Oracle Query Optimizer. Thus you might expect that one of the least enviable jobs in the database world would be being the public face of the database optimizer. But since 2014, Nigel Bayliss has regularly fronted the community and shared the depth and breadth of his optimizer knowledge, whilst en…

No topic quite gets emotions rolling as much as the Oracle Query Optimizer. Thus you might expect that one of the least enviable jobs in the database world would be being the public face of the database optimizer. But since 2014, Nigel Bayliss has regularly fronted the community and shared the depth and breadth of his optimizer knowledge, whilst en…

No topic quite gets emotions rolling as much as the Oracle Query Optimizer. Thus you might expect that one of the least enviable jobs in the database world would be being the public face of the database optimizer. But since 2014, Nigel Bayliss has regularly fronted the community and shared the depth and breadth of his optimizer knowledge, whilst en…

No topic quite gets emotions rolling as much as the Oracle Query Optimizer. The fact that a piece of software can determine the best way to run the myriad of potential SQL statements, no matter how poorly they sometimes might be written, never ceases to amaze me. But conversely, the moment the optimizer does not meet our expectations, we're quick t…

The very name of the product - Application Express (APEX) - suggests that this is a tool solely for building applications, and thus it should belong solely in the realm of developers. But that is underselling the ability of APEX to be a perfect use case for a different IT demographic - the Database Administrator. In this episode I present my reason…

Chances are, if you have Googled for help on an Oracle problem, you have ended up on a concise yet precise solution to your problem at oracle-base.com. The site has been running for over 20 years and gets millions of hits from the Oracle community. In this episode I wrap up the three-part chat with Tim by focussing on the latest release of the data…

Chances are, if you have Googled for help on an Oracle problem, you have ended up on a concise yet precise solution to your problem at oracle-base.com. The site has been running for over 20 years and gets millions of hits from the Oracle community. In part 2 of this three-part series, I dive into how Tim got the oracle-base.com site started and how…

Chances are, if you have Googled for help on an Oracle problem, you have ended up on a concise yet precise solution to your problem at oracle-base.com. The site has been running for over 20 years and gets millions of hits from the Oracle community. In this three-part series, I catch up with the owner of the site, and good mate, Tim Hall to talk tec…

If you're an Oracle developer, what is the most important skill you need? Is it database modelling? Is it SQL coding? Its none of these. I believe the core of being a successful modern developer is something far far simpler. Most of us get into the IT field because we like solving problems, so the most difficult challenge for many of us when we hit…

With the modern trend of automated testing, it is often easy to fall into the trap of relying solely on automation, especially when emotionally as developers we hard-wired to a bias of success. If you write working code, you are valued by your team. Your remuneration and career progression are often linked to working code. Thus as motivated as we w…

SQL Tuning - It is probably the biggest topic in database technology, and it is little surprise why. There is nothing sexier than diving into the heart of the application code, making a few changes and then basking in the admiration of your colleagues as you have once again saved the day! But that very allure of getting our ego stroked can mean tha…

Pick up a reference book and there will most likely be an index at the back to help you locate particularly topics. Are database indexes the same? The goal of indexes in the database is allow rapid lookup of a known value in a table. But how do they achieve this? The secret lies on the structure used by indexes to ensure that finding a value even i…

Every database has indexes...but should they? In this episode, lets consider a different proposition. What if the indexes you have on your database are a mistake...A bug... An implementation error. Give me 30 minutes to convince you of a whole new mindset when it comes to indexes on your database. Enjoy! Catch me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/c…

Can it be done? Can you delve into the hex dumps, the byte headers, the acronyms all wrapped up in the magic that is an Oracle Database block with no slides, no code, no demos and no visuals? Who knows, but I'll give it my best shot! Don't panic, this is not an episode about digging into internals just for the sake of digging. I'll take a look at t…

The ROWID underpins many forms of data access within the Oracle Database. If you're a newcomer to Oracle, querying the rowid from a table returns a cryptic string such as "AAAhDyABAAABd0SAAA". But head back into the earlier versions of the database, and querying the rowid would return a completely different format like "0005DD12.0000.0040". In this…

A tablespace is just a logical grouping of files in your Oracle database. But behind that simple definition sits a remarkable evolution of how tablespaces are defined and managed internally. This episode covers the early days of tablespaces and the pitfalls with managing their space utilisation from within the data dictionary. Then we'll move into …

The beauty of databases is they we just throw SQL at it, and it handles all the heavy lifting of working out where your data is, and how best to find it. But even for the novice, it is useful to know the fundamental mechanisms in which data is stored. In this episode, I cover datafiles, segments, extents and how your queries translate to the data p…

On StackOverflow, I chanced upon a beginner being trolled as they struggled to get going with Oracle. "Duh! Just start the database" someone said dismissively. I called out the rudeness by replying: "You don't start a database, you start an instance". So lets go back to basics, and describe Oracle in its most fundamental terms: What is a database? …

The Spoken Nerd is all about database tech from Connor McDonald - a database tech who has spent 20+ years working with database tech! Ever being frustrated as a child with the limits of 1 KB of RAM in his Sinclair ZX80 computer, Connor has loved the challenges that come with storing data. When the infamous Y2K did not end the world as people though…