Oracle Zone - Expert Discussion #1

And a SQL Injection joke if you haven't seen it:

http://blog.colinmackay.net/archive/2007/10/11/512.aspx

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me 2
what's a oracle that don't wanna start ?

a horable

Based on the restrictions on the topics and the permanent misusage
of the "administrative comments" in the Oracle zone (I do not know
who gives this right to the Experts????!!!!! And also why!!!!)
I will be  rather reader (in very rear cases) of this "showing work"
club.

I guess an example of "misuse" could be considered criticizing a specific member though.  If there is a pattern I would suggest contacting customer service and/or the "Request Attention" link, or email somebody like NetMinder directly with your concerns.  And of course, you can try emailing the offender directly of your concerns, perhaps it's just a misunderstanding of intent.

I would like to promote a movement to eliminate the following zones....

Oracle CRM
Oracle HCM
Oracle SCM
Peoplesoft

and instead consolidate those questions and points into the Oracle Product Info zone or the Oracle parent zone..  The vast majority of questions in those zones are NOT related to the named product.  For the tiny minority that are product related, I feel a tag or the question text itself would be sufficient to identify the product information.

Currently I'm the only person with a certificate in any of those zones and I'm more than willing to give up those certificates in favor of more appropriate question assignment.

I support the idea of a 'club', but have some objections.

1. I think that mrjoltcola trying to restrict the topics is introducing censorship in the the club. I am very sensitive to any form of censorship because I know better methods to eliminate nonrelevant posts. As an example in the last 10 days i was invited from mrjoltcola to take part in a 'private discussion' as answer of my position to some technical topic and my criticism to some experts. I found a solution - not to answer to a flagrant nondequate postings of the participants and to reveal the background of the problem. Using many technical articles. So you see - even in case of nonrelevant behaviour of some experts the censorship is not the best choice. To be honest i have to methods to censor postings here, because I declined to achive administrative rights here. I began and will finish my work at EE as ordinary member, not as "administrator". But everybody who is trying to use censorship will have big troubles with me. Also believe me that the case of  the NOT NULL problem is not closed from my side. The involved know what I mention. It is shame for the participants and for the moderator ... I have some questions to the moderator, who asked me to expres excuse.

2. I do not think that this club should be opened for everybody here.

3. I agree with Mr. Sean Stuber that the topics in the Oracle thread are too much. I warned Netminder and he assured me that EE knows that the Oracle zone is  "a disaster". I do not agree the Zone is a desaster, but needs some concentration on the most important topics. So thanks to Mr. Sean Stuber for the very good proposals.

1 -  I see a difference between setting topics of focus and censorship.  If this thread turned into a discussion of Excel, Adobe, Routers or Philosophy it would be appropriate to curtail that discussion and bring it back to the requested topics.  Much as with any question, the author gets to pick what is relevant.  This thread isn't requesting a correct "answer" per se, but it's mrjoltcola's choice as to what he wants to discuss here.    If you would like to discuss some other topics separate from the listed ones above, please open your own thread.  I'm sure any interested parties will respond.

2 - On the contrary I would encourage everybody to participate.  Anything to help remove elitism.

3- Thanks, as a temporary measure I guess the advisors can help by moving some of the open questions to more appropriate zones and guiding new users.   It's not just a matter of helping the PAQ by putting things in better categories, but it also helps the original asker as more people monitor the Oracle and PL/SQL zone than the Oracle CRM zone.  So the authors can get more and quicker help if their questions are in the other zones.

Everybody can participate or not partricipate.
But under censorship I mean not topics like Adobe or Excel, I mean what could be written and what NOT.
Definitelly we (possibly!) need such kind of a club, but there are more elegant methods to filter the not wanted posts.

I had the feeling that this will be an official club of the Oracle zone, but thnaks to Mr. Stuber I understood that this is a privite discussion thread of Mr. mrjoltcola. This was a very important clarication for me. No, I will not open mine. Thank you!

>>1. I think that mrjoltcola trying to restrict the topics is introducing censorship in the the club

@schwertner

Why must it always be like this?

I'm not restricting anything. I'm not censoring anything. I don't own this thread or this zone. These topics are a suggestion that I took from the Excel zone which does a similar expert thread. I created this thread to give the Oracle experts a place for more free discussion without censorship. Do you have different suggestions for topics? There needs to be some description above so people know what the thread is for. If you have other suggestions for the wording please provide them, I think most here prefer not to spend our time criticizing other members of the zone. Though I see I am being criticized already. :(

It seems there is nothing I can do here to improve comradery that will not be misinterpreted.


@sdstuber:

>>it's mrjoltcola's choice as to what he wants to discuss here

Actually, no, this is not my thread and will not be censored by me. This was created for the whole zone. Any zone advisor or page editor can close this one and create #2, #3, etc.

>>I had the feeling that this will be an official club of the Oracle zone, but thnaks to Mr. Stuber I understood that this is a privite discussion thread of Mr. mrjoltcola

No, schwertner is right! This is not a private thread. This is for all experts in the Oracle zone. So it is not up to me only to set the topics.

Please, if you disagree with the topics let us take suggestions from each and make the topic list and I'll edit the above and we can use it as a template for ongoing ones. Or do you think there should be no topic list at all?

My idea was when this thread gets long, say 75 - 100 messages, then we can cose it and open #2, #3, etc. with links to previous ones.

I feel sorry that my idea of a good, lighthearted thread is giving offense.

Nothing wrong, no ofense, only considerations.
The problem is that you can not even imagine
what is the final result of the censorship.
You are lucky, guys!

So lets discuss, these were the original suggestions for topics:

- Issues, announcements, and discoveries related to Oracle.
- Recognition of new Experts, amazing posts, and accomplishments.
- Asking for assistance with specific questions.
- Discussing Experts Exchange features and functions.
- Getting to know your fellow Experts.
- And, importantly, some humor!


This is not a complete list of all allowed topics, just suggestions.



And these were recommended as off-topic, discouraged:

- Criticizing specific members
- Suggesting that any specific member needs to change their behavior.
- Suggesting that others blacklist any Asker for any reason.


Do you have any suggestions for changing, rewording or removing these? I think the "no criticizing members" just means if someone does have criticism, it is better kept to private threads or email.

I think these 'restrictions' should be avoided:
- Criticizing specific members
- Suggesting that any specific member needs to change their behavior.
- Suggesting that others blacklist any Asker for any reason.

What I mean? To avoid the feeling of restrictions.

I prefer to get suggestions to change my own (schwertner's) behaviour directly.
There is nothing wrong. I wrote this to Stuber but will repeat again:
Once I made a mistake to say 'backup the DB' using Export. Markgeer wrote the he didn't expect from me such .... sentences. I should know that backup could be done only on physical level.

It was not polite, but reasonable. I do not open a special question to cry, to ask excuse, I only appologize saying the truth - was tired, sorry.

I say that there are other ways to avoid rude unappropriate, emotioanal postings - no answer or (if somebody has time) to explain in details where is the rude and unacceptable statement.

If we write:
And these were recommended as off-topic, discouraged:

- Criticizing specific members
- Suggesting that any specific member needs to change their behavior.
- Suggesting that others blacklist any Asker for any reason.

that the impression possibly will be that we do this every time and so often that it should be explicitelly mentioned.

Ok, so you are saying that you prefer we "police" this thread on an as-needed basis, rather than stating the restrictions in the headlines.

I have no problem with that, its reasonable to assume if anyone misbehaves we can point it out if it becomes a problem.

I also want to discourage non-experts from posting in this thread too, but again, I think your idea is a good one. Rather than put it in the headlines, we just explain to any offender if it happens.

schwertner, refresh your page and read the new headline, see if it is to your liking. :)

the discouraged topics are very reasonable as they promote a friendlier atmosphere.  There is no restriction that one can't criticise others through other venues.    That's not censorship, it's simply a matter of establishing a theme for the thread.  Which is entirely reasonable.  Just as an offtopic discussion of Adobe threads wouldn't be conducive to the Oracle zone.   If mrjoltcola wants to open up discussion and relinquish ownership that's fine too but the idea behind the thread is "let's talk constructively and in a friendly manner"  
If a sub-discussion on one or more of the discouraged topics arose, it might be helpful but it would also possibly hurt others, so why bother?  That's not censorship, it's simply not what we're trying to talk about here.  Particularly when there are plenty of other methods for doing so.  There would be no value at all in creating a new public venue to spread ill-will toward or about others.

If your concern is one over impression that the Oracle contributors are an unruly, rude bunch that need extra rules I wouldn't worry about that at all.

Most newgroups, clubs, forums,etc  I'm a member of have guildlines such as these and post them regularly.  Doing so is not indicative of fault of any contributor it's simply a statement of direction, repeating it from time to time re-emphasizes it and introduces it to new members that may join in.

I would recommend the list of encouraged and discouraged topics be included in the starter-question for each new issue of the thread.


I'm not sure about the intentional exclusion of "non-experts"  personally I try to refrain from that title.  I prefer to call all members either "contributors" or "volunteers"  If a private forum is wanted, then I suggest using private discussions  instead

If this thread is going to establish some qualification needed in order to post here,  what would that qualification entail?

Answer one question?  Get a certificate?  Does it matter which zone or are any Oracle related zones ok?  If Oracle does that mean a genuine MySQL "Expert" would not be welcome simply because that person may not have points in one of the approved zones?

I'd REALLY prefer any form of elitism in the thread be abolished.   The EE community is successful more from the willingness of its members to contribute than from the expertise of those members.  Of course, an army of imbeciles wouldn't succeed no matter how hard they tried but I think anyone willing to contribute their time and thoughts to the thread should be welcomed.

Now that I've said my piece an the thread about the thread, I'll try to introduce a topic, maybe of more entertaining and maybe helpful interest.

SQL Boolean data types.

Oracle does not support them, even though they are part of the SQL standard going back to SQL99 (was it in SQL92 also? not sure)

There's no "good" reason I can think of to not allow them.  Anyone interested in starting a petition for their support?

I will agree they are not explicitly needed, but neither are the umpteen different numeric types Oracle has chosen to support but are really just "number"

----> I'd REALLY prefer any form of elitism in the thread be abolished.

My answer: Often answering questions a very bad thoughts sits inside my had:
"Is this guy the personall programmer of Ossama Bin Laden, that is programming the intrussion in the American Elictricity Control System? Why he asks me how tho hack databases?"

What I say you isn't joke.

My friend, professor in University of Hamburg was visited by FBI (german of course) oficcers and asked what exactly he works with a doctoral student from that countries in the field of encryption. After that he was warned ....

Do not be naive. Not everybody is idiot like me to publish who he is and where he works.

 

So is everyone happy with the wording of the headline now?

>>SQL Boolean data types.

Yes, why is BOOLEAN a PL/SQL type but not a column type. I often create a BOOLEAN domain object in my data modeller for this.

Also I see projects where one developer uses Y/N and another uses T/F so having a BOOLEAN type would eliminate the mapping inconsistency.

that's not elitism.  That's profesional and ethical responsibility.

If someone asks how to hack a database.  It doesn't matter if it's mere curiosity or for malice of intent  I don't answer the question.

By elitism I mean separating one group from another based on one group deciding the technical merit of the other.

If a contributor is a "bad" person then I don't want to talk to them but I don't make that judgement based on questions asked.

If the contributor is someone that different skills than me then I have no reason to exclude that person.  Even if someone were to prove with 100% certainty that I had superior knowledge and skills than another person in all respects ( which can't be done, everybody has some knowledge that others lack) that person is still entitled to contribute his or her own insights.

If a neophyte makes a mistake (or an "expert" makes a mistake) I will attempt to correct it, but that mistake shouldn't  make that person ineligble to contribute.

@mrjoltcola,
per 24788405

I can live with it, I think a list of "discouraged" anti-social topics is a good idea but I won't boycott simply because they are removed.  Unless, of course, their absence is taken as license to disparage others.

Also for multi-lingual databases... Y/N  or T/F  may not make sense.
If I'm working on a Canadian database  should I support O (oui) and Y (yes) for postives and only "N" for no?  If not,  why does one language win?  What if I'm in another language where the words are completely different?

Mapping 1 and 0 to True and False doesn't make sense to me either.  I understand the internal representation will likely fall to something that simple but why should my external api logic be based on an internal representation?

Why can't I store a "true" or "false" value as is without mapping it?
Seems dumb to me, especially with external languages supporting them and sql standards a decade old do too.

As long as I'm on a rant about standards compliance...

Why don't Oracle JDBC drivers support SQL92 outer join syntax yet?
Even as of 11g  they still don't.  You must use (+) syntax which is not merely a syntax difference.  Oracle outer join syntax is limited functionality vs standard outer join syntax.

even the left join don't allways work right in oracle

try and write this with oracle (+) syntax

select A.*, B.*
from tableA A left join table B on B.Id = 1

and then try the solution with 2 left joins with (+) syntax

that's the limited functionality I meant.

you can't outer join a table to more than one other table with (+) syntax.

and there's no concept of full outer join, you have to do unions to solve these problems

While the CRM, HCM and SCM zones may be well-intended, in practice 99% of the questions are generic Oracle questions that have been misplaced by the wizard. I don't even monitor all of those zones.

The problem, I think, is when the asker is creating the question, the suggested zones are listed by the "short name" and they are all "Oracle".

I feel we should petition EE to either rename the short names of the zones, or to remove them altogether. They make no sense in practice and would consolidate more questions under the main database zone.
 

It appears that we have 3 in agreement (schwertner, sdstuber, mrjoltcola) that the CRM/HCM/SCM zones are wrong. What is the suggested alternative?

boolean data type: agreed, should really be implemented

full outer joins: they do exist, but I run regularly into problems with them, especially when using WITH statements before doing the full outer join.

(+) outer join: my honest opinion: crap. I know of some oracle people who tell the same from the (outer) JOIN syntax, but they cannot convince me, for sure.

zones: I agree that the zones' question should be moved to the oracle 3rd party zone, if not to the main oracle zone.

zones bis: while I think the "version" zones are good (and I am not the only one), more people think that a "tag" replacement for that "zoning" would be better, especially in terms of "getting the question answered".
any comments on that?


>Do not be naive. Not everybody is idiot like me to publish who he is and where he works.
I don't really see how that comes are argument for the "elitism" discussion?

anyhow, what do you want to do? stop the internet? stop tv? stop education?
seriously, you can't do that, unless you want to get us back into middle age! (although some people would say it would really better in many aspects of living, life, earth etc...)

btw, from where you come from, I understand what you mean be "censorship". in your regions, there is far more "censorship" (maybe less these days) than what he have in the west-europe or usa, just to mention those. however, there is censorship also in our countries, although much better hidden. I know some stories ...
so don't think your are the "only" one, or the one worst hit by censorship. if everybody knows that there is censorship, you can easily read between the lines. if it's not really know, well, who would think that you need to read between the lines.

have a good night!

@AngelIII:

1. About the censorship. I exogorate in fact. But this was a reaction against the attempt to introduce rules. Everybody knows the rules and there are big problems here. I am not hitted by persons in EE, I do not complain,
I am only laughing on the reaction of some Experts and the naive moderator (not you! do not understand me wrong. I highly respect your efforts here). But speaking personally I can live without EE, without answering questions, without wasting time and efforts.
2. About the I am speaking seriously. I havent send you the article about and the letter of my later American friend.
But if you read this documents you will understand that the comfort of living in Luxemburg is one thing and the hard live to be programmer in the States is something different. And do not speculate about Bulgaria, I am only physically there. I am working for other countries. Also do not speculate with the words " stop the internet? stop tv? stop education?". Four of the criminals that attacked on 9.11.2001 were educated in Germany, University Hamburg-Harburg. I have nothing against somebody. But after the attacks I strongly believe that there are also other candidates to do such criminal acts.
These are common toughts, but I think they are reasonable.

I think we should be careful on both sides on how we interprete language. Sometimes you misread our English terms and our American style as "censorship" or "harsh wording" or read "imperative" meaning where there is "optional" meaning, and also foreigners often assume Americans have no International awareness, which is also not true. I travelled the world and spent a good bit of time outside of the USA. I understand many cultural differences. My family has relatives in Germany, Poland and Italy.

You must also understand sometimes your choice of English words may not communicate the idea or the tone that you think it does.

My original wording was not to censor, but simply to encourage use of this thread for good things. In America we appreciate the freedom of speech, but we do not encourage rude or insensitive behavior, there is a difference, as we all know.

Cheers.

@mrjoltcola:
There is nothing wrong or unaceptable or rude to critize ME personally.
I accept your remarks as reasonable.
Thank you for your thoughts.
I sincere appreciate them, you are correct.

schwertner:  Very good! Now lets discuss.... when is 11g R2 going to be released??? :)

Guys, please support me here:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Community_Support/Suggestions/Q_24551571.html

I am petitioning for removal / combination of the SCM/HCM/CRM zones into the overall Oracle Database zone. Read my words in the suggestion.

Oracle claims they will decommission Metalink Classic in the coming months. Anyone else had problems with the new Metalink causing their browser to lockup if left running for an extended time? Eep, this is not good, I do not like the new Metalink that requires Flash.


Quote: "Users accessing metalink.oracle.com will no longer have a login option to choose between Classic MetaLink and My Oracle Support, but will be automatically directed to My Oracle Support. The retirement of Classic MetaLink is necessary as we upgrade our backend systems. These changes will affect your Service Request (SR) history and SR numbers. Take action now and prepare for the upcoming changes. "


Multiple mornings I arrive at my PC to find IE completely frozen and always when I had Metalink so I switched back to classic.

hmmm, hadn't noticed that but I don't think I've left a metalink window open for more than 5 or 6 hours at most.

I prefer the flash over classic.   The multi-paned search results, which don't require flash, but aren't available in classic, are a huge improvement.

I'll try to remember leaving it open overnight and see what happens.  Which browser do you use?  I usually Firefox to metalink. but I can IE if needed too

It was IE. I will try in Firefox too.

I left IE open to metalink and it simply timed out my connection.

Interesting. I am running Vista with IE7. Who knows what it could be. Thanks for trying.

I've got Vista with IE8, is your Flash up to date?  When my connection timed out I got a flash popup saying so.  
Maybe lockup occurred because the modal popup didn't appear properly; but being modal kept you from doing anything

Just a guess.  

Guys, something interesting.

I noticed in the Oracle 11.1.0.7 patchset readme file and Metalink doc 454507.1, it states:

"Conventional export is no longer supported"


However, after installing it, I can still export with regular old "exp" and it is at 11.1.0.7.0

So there is some discrepancy.

>"Conventional export is no longer supported"
not supported <> not available

in other words: the tool still exists (and if only it's to import/export from older versions, but not supported.
aka: you have a problem with it? don't both oracle with it

yes,  classic export/import is still there and "officially" unsupported EXCEPT for the purposes of importing legacy XMLTYPE data.

However, exp for 11g wouldn't apply because of traditional rules use oldest version to export and same version as target to import.    So there "should" only be imp but no exp as it wouldn't be needed.

BUT,  I also use the new exp and imp as well.  Simply haven't bothered to change legacy scripts to use expdp and impdp.    I hope they don't "really"  abandon them.  I prefer the new datapump stuff but I don't want to be forced to update old scripts that have worked perfectly for over a decade.

I doubt they will ever do away with imp, or at least for 3-4 more versions. Otherwise, Oracle will lose a long-held reputation of being able to import really old databases into new versions.

I am just puzzled by the wording in the patch. I know the stance is that exp/imp are deprecated, but the patch wording is ambiguous. Maybe by "supported" it means "calling Oracle / submitting SRs" instead of "won't work."

AH I just saw a3's comment above sean's. Yes, I think that is the answer.

Hey guys (sdstuber, angelIII, schwertner) or anyone else, see this question:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Q_24618580.html

The original answer provided "GRANT SELECT ANY TABLE ..." as a solution where a schema grant would be good practice. The original answer is no better than saying "give all users the DBA password" without explaining the dangers of it, so I re-opened the question due to this dangerous advice, and deleted the answer, and gave an explanation of why.

I asked the original expert and gave him time to post new instructions using proper grants, etc. and I would close the quesiton again, but that was 24hrs ago and no response.

Since I am the admin in that question I do not want to step in and get the points because that would not look very fair, so I'm asking one of you guys to step in.

Looks like ravindran_eee has already responded with an improved answer.

I chimed in with a minor recommendation, but looks good already

Thanks sean!

no problem!

I just got an "Expert Alert" for this thread, as if it were a new question.

What happened?