Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with oracle

Oracle Text (CTX) - Front end for thesaurus queries

NailsTheCat — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:46:50 -0800

My company system has an application that uses Oracle Text for querying large text fields in a natural query language -- I'm a big fan. Oracle Text supports the use of structured thesauri for queries too. This works well but I'm not sure what the best way to implement this is. I can perform a query using this hierarchy thus: $RELATION_OPERATOR($SEARCH_STRING, $THESAURUS_NAME, %DEPTH_OF_SEARCH)

E.g. NT(Felines,Animals,2) searches for text within which the word "felines" appears or any words that are up to two levels beneath "felines" in the hierarchy of the animals thesaurus. Tigers, Lions etc.

I'm mulling over the easiest way to present this functionality to users. I'm concerned that entering search terms such as NT(Felines,Animals,2) OR BT(Tabby,Animals,1) is overcomplicated for the user. But I think a GUI based query builder would be even worse (and be too restrictive).

Has anyone used Oracle Text thesauri and devised a simpler front end? Note that need to be able to query using multiple thesauri so I can't omit the thesaurus term and rely on default.

One table to rule them all?

urbanwhaleshark — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:12:52 -0800

Can you help structure my oracle database appropriately? I'm writing an helpdesk application that supports n types of call. A call is logged with the system through an HTML form.

There are certain properties common to each calltype (ID, datelogged, dateclosed, owner, status, for example), but beyond that each calltype has a completely different form. Calltype1 may just have a notes field. Calltype2 may have a notes field plus 10-15 other fields that allows the user to add in more specific information particular to that calltype.

My question is: should I have one table for the common call information and a separate table for each calltype, or one big table that contains all the call information covering the fields of all calltypes? I guess my concern is that I'm adding extra complexity to the database by using many calltype tables to spare what I see as wasted space in the big calltype table.

Is my concern justified?

Wich cert for certain?

Slap*Happy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:52:01 -0800

I have a month to cram for a vendor certification.... any vendor certification. Which one should I go after? As part of an agreement with my best beloved, I've agreed to go for a certification test by April 12. She doesn't care which one, or even if I pass, just so long as I do it, and make a good faith effort to get it.

My question, which one should I shoot for?

I have deep experience with Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and Linux, and some exposure to Oracle and Cisco (I have a way out of date CCNA cert). At the moment, I'm out of the Unix admin game, and working with industrial-grade security appliances: Netscreen, Sidewinder, Pix and Checkpoint on Nokia.

Since this is a good-faith effort, I'm going to avoid the "gimme" exams - A+, CCNA, etc, and go for one that would "wow" a hiring manager.

Should I stick with what I know, and go for a Unix cert? Are there any Linux certs that mean anything to anyone? Is this a good opportunity to learn Oracle, or is a month too short to cram for something new? Should I go for a Checkpoint or Netscreen cert, even if I may not be with this job this time next year?

I'm leaning towards AIX - but I'm not actually an AIX admin at the moment, and haven't been in a few years. I'd like to go with Oracle, but it may be too much to tackle. Yay, indecision!

Best DBA certification?

davar — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:26:53 -0800

What DBA certification should I pursue? MS, Oracle, something else? I am a stay at home mom. Before the birth of my daugther, four years ago, I worked in various simple IT jobs. I made a few websites with Postgresql backends and I think I would like to be a DBA.

I want to stay home for at least another year, and would like to get some certifications or diploma's in the meantime, to show prospective employers that I am motivated to learn and understand at least the basic concepts to hire me as an entry level database person. I understand that there is no substitute for experience, but I do have my websites and (at least where I live) people with completely unrelated college educations are hired in these positions as well, so it does seem possible. Unfortunately, I do not have a college degree, so I will have to work a little harder to convince prospective employers that I am smart enough.

My budget for these certifications or diploma's is about 1000 euro's for both exams and course materials (I study well through self study), which unfortunately rules out an Oracle OCP certification, because they require a hands-on course that is expensive (even the online instructor led courses are very expensive).

I consider the following options and would like to hear your opinion about them. If there is another option I should consider I would like to hear it too, but please realise that the budget limit is not very flexible at the moment and that it is very important that the certificate impresses potential employers at least enough to want to talk to me. I thought about Brainbench, but I don't think they are well known enough with HR people at the moment. There are no community colleges with inexpensive options where I live.

- Get an Oracle OCA Certifaction and take the exams for the OCP, just not the hands on course. I could mention on my CV that I passed the 1Z0-042 and 1Z0-043 exams. Knowledgeable HR persons will hopefully see the value in this and understand that all they have to do is send me to a course and I'll be an OCP.
- Get an MCITP: Database Developer (the successor of MSDBA) certificate. This would allow me to get a full "real" certificate by self study.
- Get entry level certificates for both. OCA (exam 1Z0-042) for Oracle and MS Certified Technology Specialist for SQL Server (exam 70-431). This would hopefully show prospective employers that I am able to and like to learn new technologies and that they could have me get further certificates.

I don't have a personal preference for either Oracle or MS SQL server. I am comfortable with command line tools and both Windows and Linux. If money wasn't a problem, I think I would choose Oracle, perhaps because I somehow (perhaps unfairly) think that MS certifications aren't worth all that much. The most important consideration for me is what will get me a good job. It seems that Oracle DBA's are more in demand than MS DBA's, but I wonder if just getting those two exams would be enough to get me hired. I will of course also start using the database I end up studying for in some projects so that I have at least some experience with that database to show.

I searched and read these previous ques tions

I am in the Netherlands, but I would like my certificates to be valuable in the rest of the world as well.

How do I do billing for a small consulting firm?

GeckoDundee — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:00:54 -0800

Can a total newbie very quickly teach himself to do (all of the) Billing for a small consulting firm? Easy, right? I don't know what system they use. I've never used Oracle, but I've done everything except Billing on SAP. Do I need to know things about sales taxes and such? Or link my data to Financial concerns? Can you point me to reliable tutorials online or elsewhere?

I'm asking for a friend, so don't be surprised if he chimes in with more details, answers your questions, etc.

Where is this batman panel from?

John Kenneth Fisher — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:18:37 -0800

There's a Batman panel I have a clear, but possibly flawed memory of.. where is it from?

Likely written well after, but taking place shortly after The Killing Joke, I have a clear image of Barbara Gordon, in the hospital, talking to Batman (or possibly Bruce Wayne), realizing she'll never walk again, never be batgirl again, that this incident has derailed her entire planned existence, and essentially saying something to the effect of "I've heard when the police pulled up, you were standing there laughing with the man who did this to me, and I wanted to know.. were you laughing at me?" Where is this from? It can't just be in my head, can it?

Could I design databases for a living?

argybarg — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:43:05 -0800

Can I, should I, make a career change into database design? I'm a teacher, former graphic designer and amateur computer nerd. I've found that in building a backside for my classroom projects (using FileMaker) I've gotten way into database design. I find constructing a data model and making it talk to be strangely thrilling -- great mind food. I even like the theoretical side, data normalization and all that, without fully understanding it yet.

On my hardest teaching days I wonder if, at 37 and without IT experience, I could become a data architect for a living. Some questions:

-- Is it typically an interesting job? I know most people would find all of it painfully dull, but I'm wondering if people who start out finding data modeling interesting wind up hating the work. Is it all writing routine queries or are there big, juicy problem-solving projects to be had?

-- Is there a career path aside from years of entry-level work followed by slowly collecting new job titles? Can I teach myself and hope to work before I'm 50?

-- I assume FileMaker is a peashooter in a world of big guns like Oracle and SQL. Is this correct? What should I be learning? What about PHP?

-- Am I nuts?

Thanks in advance.

Does taking on mysql after 10 years of Oracle make sense?

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:24:19 -0800

Career-wise, is it a smart move to take a mysql position after building up ten years of Oracle experience? A promising local startup is offering me a job to manage and develop their mysql databases. They may or may not move to Oracle. I have over fifteen years experience working exclusively with databases, ten of those years on Oracle. This company fully understands that I have no experience whatsoever with mysql but they are interested in training me. They want to hire me on the merits of my overall experience with databases and my ability to troubleshoot and solve problems. They assured me that I will receive all relevant training. Other job functions are not necessarily platform dependent-BI, report writing, data modeling - I'm comfortable with those aspects; it's the administrative side of things that makes me a little nervous. For example I would figure that scaling a mysql database is much different than scaling an Oracle database. I've spent a long time learning Oracle's nuances; I would be starting at ground zero with mysql.

My link to this company is a coworker from many years ago - he was impressed enough with my abilities and my professionalism to recommend me to this company. I'm not concerned about my ability to learn the platform-it is more along the lines of setting myself up to fail. I would be coming in with high expectations and would be expected to get up to speed quickly. They assure me that they understand all of this and have utmost faith in my abilities and my aptitude.

This is not an Oracle vs mysql thing, its a career-move thing. I have a LOT of respect for the mysql platform and what's being done on it. I would imagine that Oracle jobs generally pay better than mysql positions. A quick dice search across multiple regions indicates more demand and better pay for Oracle than mysql. I wouldn't normally be in a situation like this but this company seems special. I believe in this company's direction, its management, and potential. I would be getting in early enough to receive options. Their product is very, very impressive and with the right execution, things could go quite well.

Additional followup to careerquestion@gmail.com

Hysterical ordering of data

blue_wardrobe — Fri, 11 May 2007 21:12:18 -0800

I am currently dealing with an Oracle-based application that on many of the screens returns data in what I call "hysterical order" (seemingly random to the casual observer). In fact, the application applies no ORDER BY logic to the underlying data, which ORACLE returns in an undefined order (actually the order the data was entered). This is useless in practice. I don't have the ability to change the application in any way, but I do have access to the database. I am aware that it is non-standard in relational database theory to be able to specify a default ordering for tables, but in Oracle, are there in practice, any modifications I could make to the underlying tables that will not cause the app to break, but will allow me to specify the default order of the data when there is no ORDER BY used? I can identify a column in each table which should be the default order. It is a long time since I was a DBA, so I am a little rusty on current Oracle practice and capabilities.

Does Oracle 10g knowledge transfer to EBS?

pivotal — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:48:13 -0800

Can a person experienced in Oracle Forms 10 easily move to Oracle EBusiness Suite? OK, I'm a hiring manager with bugger-all Oracle knowledge. Say I have a customer with a requirement for Oracle EBusiness Suite development and support, and an employee with heaps of Oracle 10g Form Builder experience, can I stick these two together fruitfully?

I guess I need a bit of a canned education of what makes up EBS, but I'm presuming the PL/SQL knowledge is transferable between the two? Does the whole Oracle Forms thing go out the window with EBS, or is there some other transferable knowledge there?

Would I be better off sending them a Java programmer?

The wisest way to do ERP?

rongorongo — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:12:07 -0800

What is the wise way for a medium or large businesses to implement ERP software? By 'wise' I mean most likely to boost business performance and avoid pitfalls. What organisations have done this really well?

I ask this as somebody who has recently ventured a little way into the world of Oracle and SAP development having previously worked on less exalted (and often open-source) web technologies. At first site the ERP solutions seem to be a good way of dealing with the complexity and need for reliability. On closer inspection, however, they seem awfully prescriptive, inflexible, brittle and costly. Also some of the common management processes surrounding implementation (such as throwing many consultants onto a project to try to deliver it to a given deadline) seem a little dubious. This may well just be my inexperience - is it better to have a monolithic solution or something more customised and flexible?

Business Systems

Frasermoo — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:01:48 -0800

SAP / Oracle, these are the big expensive systems I want to avoid in a new business system. What other options are there for a small to medium sales comapany? We buy/sell about 40 lines, have a medium sized warehouse and all the typical accounting / marketing / sales people/functions that need integrating. I have seen SAP go in at my last company (huge company) and I think it is too much and too expensive for us here in a small company. We currently run a UNIX system from years ago which works, but is unweildy and dated.

Oracle 10g Administrator exam: which book?

bingo — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 19:20:46 -0800

Oracle 10g Administrator self-study: this book or this one?

SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE CLUE > 0

furtive — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:58:57 -0800

I'm playing (oracle) DBA for a day over the next two weeks and need to create public synonyms for all tables in a schema. How would I go about doing so? I'm a developer and don't usually do more than basic DML and stored proc stuff. I am familiar with the following syntax:

CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM employees
FOR hr.employees@sales

But I need to do it for all tables in the schema and don't feel like doing it by hand for the 4000 tables we've got. Google just gives me a lot of reference material :-( There must be a way to use a select with the data dictionary and then generate all the sql required, or something built in. Any suggestions? P.S. I have access to the Enterprise Manager.

Ok, I switched, now help me out!

neilkod — Fri, 13 May 2005 08:29:00 -0800

This switcher is looking for OS X equivalents of two can't-live-without Windows apps. I'd like the closest available OS X equivalent to BreezeBrowser. I'm looking for fast navigation and the ability to quickly spit out HTML galleries(proofs) ala
these self links. If you've ever used BreezeBrowser, you'll know what I'm talking about!

The DBA in me is looking for something similar to Toad for Oracle. So far I've evaluated SQL4XManagerJ, Aqua Data Studio, and a few others and, while they're nice, they don't match the robustness and maturity of Toad.

Question number 12954

the cuban — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:01:14 -0800

Any resources, online or print, that can give me a good grounding in Oracle databases - admin/design.

Need to gen up for an electronic records management system that my company wants to buy.

Question number 6856

adoran2 — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:55:06 -0800

How easy is it to get Movable Type to work with Oracle? I would like to use this at work but it wouldn't be acceptable with a MySQL or Berkeley DB. How difficult would it be? Should I just wait and hope that it's supported with Movable Type version 3?