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• From Bluehost to WP Engine, My WordPress Story

  - by thatjeffsmith

  This is probably the longest blog post I’ve written in a LONG time. And if you’re used to coming here for the Oracle stuff, this post is not about that. It’s about my blog, and the stuff under the hood that makes it run, AKA WordPress. If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, then use these shortcuts: My Site Slowed Down How I Moved to WP Engine How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me Why WP Engine? I started thatJeffSmith.com on May 28th, 2010. I had been already been blogging for several years, but a couple of really smart people I respected (Andy, Brent – thanks again!) suggested that I take ownership of my content and begin building my personal brand. I thought that was a good idea, and so I signed up for service with bluehost. Bluehost makes setting up a WordPress site very, very easy. And, they continued to be easy to work with for the past 2 years. I would even recommend them to anyone looking to host their own WordPress install/site. For $83.40, I purchased a year’s worth of service and my domain name registration – a very good value. And then last year I paid $107.40 for another year’s services. And when that year expired I paid another $190.80 for an additional two year’s service in advance. I had been up to that point, getting my money’s worth. And then, just a few weeks ago… My Site Slowed to a Crawl That spike was from an April Fool's Day Post, I think Why? Well, when I first started blogging, I had the same problem that most beginner bloggers have – not many readers. In my first year of blogging, I think the highest number of readers on a single day was about 125. I remember that day as I was very excited to break 100! Bluehost was very reliable, serving up my content with maybe a total of 3-4 outages in the past 2 years. Support was usually very prompt with answers and solutions, and I love their ‘Chat now’ technology – much nicer than message boards only or pay-to-talk phone support. In the past 6 months however, I noticed a couple of things: daily traffic was increasing – woohoo! my service was experiencing severe CPU throttling – doh! To be honest, I wasn’t aware the throttling was occuring, but I did know that the response time of my blog was starting to lag. Average load times were approaching 20-30 seconds. Not good when good sites are loading in 5 seconds or less. And just this past week, in getting ready to launch a new website for work that sucked in an RSS feed from my blog, the new page was left waiting for more than a minute. Not good! In fact my boss asked, why aren’t you blogging on Blogger? Ugh. I tried a few things to fix the problem: I paid for a premium WordPress theme – Themify’s Grido (thanks to @SQLRockstar for the heads-up) I installed a couple of WP caching plugins I read every WP optimization blog post I could get my greedy little eyes on However, at the same time I was also getting addicted to WordPress bloggers talking about all the cool things you could do with your blog. As a result I had at one point about 30 different plugins installed. WordPress runs on MySQL, and certain queries running via these plugins were starving for CPU. Plugins that would be called every page load meant that as more people clicked on my site, the more CPU I needed. I’m not stupid, so I eventually figured out that maybe less plugins was better, and was able to go down to just 20. But still, the site was running like a dog. CPU Throttling, makes MySQL wait to run a query Bluehost runs shared servers. Your site runs on the same box that several hundred (or thousand?) other services are running on. If you take more CPU than they think you should have, they will limit your service by making you stand in line for CPU, AKA ‘throttling.’ This is not bad. This business model allows them to serve many, many users for a very fair price. It works great until, well, until it doesn’t. I noticed in the last week that for every minute of service, I was being throttled between 60 and 300 seconds. If there were 5 MySQL processes running, then every single one of them were being held in check. The blog visitor notice this as their page requests would take a minute or more to be answered. Bluehost unfortunately doesn’t offer dedicated server hosting, so there was no real upgrade path for me follow and remain one of their customers. So what was I to do? Uninstall every plugin and hope the site sped up? Ask for people to take turns on my blog? I decided to spend my way out of the problem. I signed up for service with WP Engine and moved ThatJeffSmith.com The first 2 months are free, and after that it’s about $29/month to run my site on their system. My math tells me that’s a good bit more expensive than what Bluehost was charging me – to the tune of about 300% more a month. Oh, and I should just say that my blog is a personal blog even though I talk about work stuff here. I don’t get paid for blogging, I don’t sell ads, and I don’t expense the service fees – this is my personal passion. So is it worth it? In the first 4 days, it seems to be totally worth it. Load times have gone from 20-30 seconds to less than 5 seconds. A few folks have told me via Twitter that they notice faster page loads. I anticipate this will indirectly lead to more traffic as Google penalizes you in search results if your site is too slow, and of course some folks won’t even bother waiting more than 5-10 seconds. I noticed right away that writing posts, uploading pictures, and just using the WordPress dashboard in general was much more responsive. So writing is less of a chore now, which means I won’t have a good reason not to write How I Moved to WP Engine I signed up for the service and registered my domain. I then took a full export of my ‘old’ site by doing a FTP GET of all my files, then did a MySQL database backup, exported my WordPress Theme settings to a .zip file, and then finally used the WordPress ‘Export’ feature. I then used the WordPress ‘Import’ on the new site to load up my posts. Then I uploaded the theme .zip package from Themify. Then I FTP’d the ‘wp-content’ directory up to my new server using SFTP (WP Engine only supports secure FTP – good on them!) Using a temporary URL to see my new site, I was able to confirm that everything looked mostly OK – I’ll detail the challenges and issues of fixing the content next – but then it was time to ‘flip the switch.’ I updated the IP address that the DNS lookup tables use to route traffic to my new server. In a matter of minutes the DNS servers around the world were updated and it was time to see the new site! But It Was ‘Broken’ I had never moved a website before, and in my rush to update the DNS, I had changed the records without really finding out what I was supposed to do first. After re-reading the directions provided by WP Engine and following the guidance of their support engineer, I realized I had needed to set the CNAME (Alias) ‘www’ record to point to a different URL than the ‘www.thatjeffsmith.com’ entry I had set. Once corrected the site was up and running in less than a minute. Then It Was Only Mostly Broken Many of my plugins weren’t working. Apparently just ftp’ing the wp-content directory up wasn’t the proper way to re-install the plugin. I suspect file permissions or file ownership wasn’t proper. Some plug-ins were working, many had their settings wiped to the defaults, and a few just didn’t work again. I had to delete the directory of the plug-in manually via SFTP, and then use the WP Dashboard to install it from scratch. And here was my first ‘lesson’ – don’t switch the DNS records until you’ve completely tested your new site. I wasn’t able to navigate the old WP console to review my plug-in settings. Thankfully I was able to use the Wayback Machine to reverse engineer some things, and of course most plug-ins aren’t that complicated to setup to begin with. An example of one that I had to redo from scratch is the ‘Twitter @Anywhere Plus’ plugin that I use to create the form that allows folks to tweet a post they enjoyed at the end of each story. How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me I actually signed up with another provider first. They ranked highly in Google searches and a few Tweeps recommended them to me. But hours after signing up and I still didn’t have sever reyady, I was ready to give up on them. They offered no chat or phone support – only mail and message boards. And the message boards were rife with posts about how the service had gone downhill in the past 6 months. To their credit, they did make it easy to cancel, although I did have to do so via email as their website ‘cancel’ button was non-existent. Within minutes of activating my WP Engine account I had received my welcome message and directions on how to get started. I was able to see my staged website right away. They also did something very cool before I even got started – they looked at my existing site and told me by how much they could improve its performance. The proof is in the web pudding. I like this for a few reasons, but primarily I liked their business model. It told me they knew what they were doing, and that they were willing to put their money where their mouth was. This was further evident by their 60-day money back guarantee. And if I understand it correctly, they don’t even take your money until after that 60 day period is over. After a day, I was welcomed by the WP Engine social media team, and was given the opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter and follow their account on Twitter. I noticed their Twitter team is sure to post regular WordPress tips several times a day. It’s not just an account that’s setup for the sake of having a Twitter presence. These little things add up and give me confidence in my decision to choose them as my hosting partner. ‘Partner’ – that’s a lot nicer word than just ‘service provider,’ isn’t it? Oh, and they offered me a t-shirt. Don’t ever doubt the power of a ‘free’ t-shirt! How awesome is this e-mail, from a customer perspective? I wasn’t really expecting any of this. Exceeding expectations before I have even handed over a single dollar seems like a pretty good business plan. This is how you treat customers. Love them to death, and they reward you with loyalty. But Jeff, You Skipped a Piece Here, Why WP Engine? I found them on one of those ‘Top 10′ list posts, and pulled up their webpage. I noticed they offered a specialized service – they host WordPress installs, and that’s it. Their servers are tuned specifically for running WordPress. They had in bolded text, things like ‘INSANELY FAST. INFINITELY SCALABLE.’ and ‘LIGHTNING SPEED.’ And then they offered insurance against hackers and they took care of automatic backups and restores. The only drawbacks I have noticed so far relate to plugins I used that have been ‘blacklisted.’ In order to guarantee that ‘lightning’ speed, they have banned the use of the CPU-suckiest plugins. One of those is the ‘Related Posts’ plugin. So if you are a subscriber and are reading this in your email, you’ll notice there’s no links back to my blog to continue reading other related stories. Since that referral traffic is very small single-digit for my site, I decided that I’m OK with that. I’d rather have the warp-speed page loads. Again, I think that will lead to higher traffic down the road. In 50+ days I will need to decide if WP Engine is a permanent solution. I’ll be sure to update this post when that time comes and let y’all know how it turns out.

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• How Do You Make Your Animated GIFs?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  I get this question a lot. The question tells me a few things: you LIKE the animated GIFs here on thatjeffsmith – cool, I’ll keep doing more you want to make your own – awesome, I’m helping make the world a more animated place that’s pretty much it, I should have said a couple of things, oh well I use Camtasia Studio 7 from TechSmith A gif of me making a gif If you want a more official ‘answer’ to this question, the cool folks at Techsmith have their own blog post on the subject.

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• SQL Developer Q&A from ODTUG Tips & Tricks Webcast

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Another great webcast yesterday – if you’re a paying member of ODTUG you can watch the show for yourself in their archives. If not, you can get my slide deck off of SlideShare. About 150 of you brave souls sat through an entire hour of me talking and then 10 more minutes of Q&A. We went through everything rapid-fire style, so I thought I would post the questions and my refined answers here for your perusal. In the order in which I received them: You showed the preference to choose between resultsets in same tab or ain a new tab. I understand that we can not have it both using different hotkeys? For example: F5 run and resultset to same tab, ctrl-f5 same but to new tab? Sometimes you want the one other times the other. The questioner is asking about this preference, Tools Preferences Database Worksheet ‘Show query results in new tabs.’ This is an all or nothing proposition. But, there’s another, perhaps better way: the document PINs. If you have a result set you don’t want to lose, ‘pin it.’ Pin multiple result sets or plans for review and comparisons. You mentioned that sometimes it’s hard to remember where a certain preference is. I agree. So enhancement request: add a search-box to the preferences window. Maybe like in, for example, UltraEdit. It shows you all preferences containing your search criteria. Actually, we do have a search mechanism type the search string, we auto-filter the preferences Is there a version of SQL Developer that will connect to an 8i database (Yes, I realize how old that database version is!) Sorry, no. We also don’t have a version that will run on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups…probably. How do we access your blog? Carefully, and with much trepidation. When you’re ready, go to http://www.thatjeffsmith.com Is there a way to get good formatting with predefined settings? I believe the questioner is referring to the script output a la SQL*Plus formatting commands. Yes, there is. You can build your formatting commands into your login.sql script, and those will be applied for your script execution sessions. Example here. Why this version 4.0 doesn’t support external plugins? It does, it just requires the plugin developer to re-factor it for OSGi. This came about when we updated the JDeveloper framework to the later 11g/12c stuff. Any change in hookup with SVN? The only change with Subversion is that internally we’re using 1.7 stuff now. You can use SQLDev to work with a 1.8 SVN server, but if you get a working copy with a 1.8 client SQLDev won’t be able to do anything with it… Command line utilities ? improvements Yes! The long answer is here. Is that a Hint or a Comment?? /*CSV*/ It’s a comment – the database won’t recognize it, but SQLDev does when it goes through our statement pre-processor. We’ll redirect the output through our CSV formatter before displaying the results in the Script Output panel. That’s why this will ONLY work in SQL Developer. Are you selecting “”Run Script”" to get that CSV or HTML output, rather than “”Run Statement”"? Yes, the formatter hints like the CSV one mentioned above only make sense in a script output panel vs a grid. How do you save relational models once they’re defined? I’ve had trouble with setting one up, “”saving”" it, then the design work I did is longer there when loading it later. File – Data Modeler – Save. If you’re running the Modeler inside of SQL Developer, the menu’ing interface can get a bit tricky. That’s why I recommend using the stand along if you’re doing anything with a model that takes more than 5 minutes. See how the Data Modeler menus are folded up under the SQL Dev menus? Can u unplug and plug into another container in a database with only sqldeveloper? Yes, you can ‘Detach’ a multitentant 12c Database ‘pluggable’ and plug it into another instance. You have the option to copy or move the files. This isn’t a trivial operation, pay attention Can you run APEX code directly on the adopter? No, at least not as I understand your question. Give me an example and I can give you a better example. Is there a way that when u click on a particular table it wouldn’t show the table with the info but just to see the columns underneath clicking on the node? Yes, another one of my tips! Disable Tools Preferences Datbase ObjectViewer ‘Open Object on Single Click.’ Is there a patch to allow a double click on a procedure on an open package body to take you to that procedure in the editor? This has been fixed for EA3 – to be released soon. Can you open the spec with the body? You can open the spec or the body, and then also open the other. But you can’t open both with a single click. So if you want you can set it to CSV but can you also see it as a regular result set in rows and then click in the results to export to excel? If you run your query as a statement with Ctrl-Enter, you can send the data to Excel via the Export dialog. Will it do intellisense like using the alias and pop up the column, object names? Yes! You can select more than one column… Can a DBA turn off items from a high level for users so the only thing they can perform would be selects? A DBA should turn things ON, not OFF. Create a user with only CONNECT and required SELECT privs and you’re good to go, regardless of which application they are using. I use PL/SQL Developer from allround automations and was SQL Developer illiterate and now I like this for myself as a DBA. Now I get to train developers on this tool since they have been asking how to use this tool. Thank you. No, THANK YOU! Can you run multi queries in the worksheet after you added it to the worksheet? Yes, highlight what you want to run, and hit Ctrl-Enter. Can you export the result sets to excel, etc. Yes. In version 4.0 and going forward, I recommend you use the XLSX option for exports. It will run faster and consume much, much less memory. Will this be available after the webinar? If you are a ODTUG member, check out the webinar recordings in the archives. That’s worth the $99 right there. Ask your boss if they have $99 in their training budget for you. If not, maybe time to look for another job? Can you run command lines from this tool? Like executes without issuing a command line prompt? Ok, I’m stumped on this one. Not sure what you’re asking. You can setup external tools under the Tools menu, and from there you could probably rig what you’re looking for, but I’m not sure what you’re looking for… This maybe?Where and when to put the program Is there any way to save a copy database command set (certain tables/views etc) in a script? Yes! Create a cart with the objects you want to be used in the Copy. Then use the new command-line interface to kick off SQL Developer to do the copy of those said objects. How can we export the preference and then import them into different or same version of SQL Developer ? Today, there’s no interface for this. But you could copy the files around manually…Kris Rice has a cool idea where you can set your preferences to be saved to your local drop box folder and then you can use SQL Developer from anywhere with the same preferences What happens to SQL*Plus commands like COL & BREAK Nothing. Those are not currently supported. Is there a place where all “”hotkey”" functionality is listed? thanks Yes. Tools – Preferences – Shortcut Keys. And you can change them! Any tips for the DBA side of things? will the SQL generated for objects have more information (e.g. user privileges) in v4? You can get this now. In Tools – Preferences – Database – Utilities – Export, check ‘Grants.’ Voila! You now have the code necessary to recreate your object privileges Is there a limit on the number of rows that could be imported / exported from/to excel ? The only hard-coded limit lies in Excel. For best performance, use v4 and XLSX formats for Exports. Is there a way to see/watch active sessions to see current SQL and the explain plan being used, etc. Kind of like that frog product. Cough, yes. Tools – Monitor Sessions. Click on session, see SQL and plan. The plan was added in v4. If you’re not in version 4, use the Reports – Active Sessions to get the plans. In the DBA section is there a way to manage say tablespaces to add data files, shrink, edit profiles, etc. Yes, we support all of that. View – DBA. Connect, go to the Storage node. Are you (Jeff) available for a live presentation at our Oracle User Group here in Indiana? Maybe. Email me and we’ll see, [email protected] Where do I go to download sql developer 4.0? The Internet of course! Can you directly edit query results? Nope. But what I think you’re asking is, can I edit the data in the tables that are reflected in my query results? You can change the query results by changing your query of course. Or this. Can you show html example? Sure. I’d embed the HTML here, but it’s a lot of code, try it for yourself! How can I quickly close many SQL worksheet windows, but not all? Window – Documents. Multi-select, hit the ‘Close Document(s)’ button. What does the vertical red line denote? That’s the margin. Tells you when you’ve typed too far and it’s time for a carriage return. Did DBA/Database Status/Instance Viewer make it officially into 4.0? It was sort-of included in the first EA. I have NO idea what you’re talking about, WINK-WINK. No, it’s not in v4.0. Is there a “”handy”" way to debug trigger code? Yes, open your trigger. Hit the debug button. Works great as long as it’s a DML trigger. Will you make your presentation file available for us ( in PPT and/or PDF format ) ? It’s on SlideShare. How do you get SqlDeveloper to escape ‘ correctly when you use the wizard to export data as insert statements? If it’s not doing that, it’s a bug. I’ll take a look at that scenario ASAP.

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• Grandparent – Parent – Child Reports in SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  You’ll never see one of these family stickers on my car, but I promise not to judge…much. Parent – Child reports are pretty straightforward in Oracle SQL Developer. You have a ‘parent’ report, and then one or more ‘child’ reports which are based off of a value in a selected row or value from the parent. If you need a quick tutorial to get up to speed on the subject, go ahead and take 5 minutes Shortly before I left for vacation 2 weeks agao, I got an interesting question from one of my Twitter Followers: @thatjeffsmith any luck with the #Oracle awr reports in #SQLDeveloper?This is easy with multi generation parent>child Done in #dbvisualizer — Ronald Rood (@Ik_zelf) August 26, 2012 Now that I’m back from vacation, I can tell Ronald and everyone else that the answer is ‘Yes!’ And here’s how Time to Get Out Your XML Editor Don’t have one? That’s OK, SQL Developer can edit XML files. While the Reporting interface doesn’t surface the ability to create multi-generational reports, the underlying code definitely supports it. We just need to hack away at the XML that powers a report. For this example I’m going to start simple. A query that brings back DEPARTMENTs, then EMPLOYEES, then JOBs. We can build the first two parts of the report using the report editor. A Parent-Child report in Oracle SQL Developer (Departments – Employees) Save the Report to XML Once you’ve generated the XML file, open it with your favorite XML editor. For this example I’ll be using the build-it XML editor in SQL Developer. SQL Developer Reports in their raw XML glory! Right after the PDF element in the XML document, we can start a new ‘child’ report by inserting a DISPLAY element. I just copied and pasted the existing ‘display’ down so I wouldn’t have to worry about screwing anything up. Note I also needed to change the ‘master’ name so it wouldn’t confuse SQL Developer when I try to import/open a report that has the same name. Also I needed to update the binds tags to reflect the names from the child versus the original parent report. This is pretty easy to figure out on your own actually – I mean I’m no real developer and I got it pretty quick. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <displays> <display id="92857fce-0139-1000-8006-7f0000015340" type="" style="Table" enable="true"> <name><![CDATA[Grandparent]]></name> <description><![CDATA[]]></description> <tooltip><![CDATA[]]></tooltip> <drillclass><![CDATA[null]]></drillclass> <CustomValues> <TYPE>horizontal</TYPE> </CustomValues> <query> <sql><![CDATA[select * from hr.departments]]></sql> </query> <pdf version="VERSION_1_7" compression="CONTENT"> <docproperty title="" author="" subject="" keywords="" /> <cell toppadding="2" bottompadding="2" leftpadding="2" rightpadding="2" horizontalalign="LEFT" verticalalign="TOP" wrap="true" /> <column> <heading font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" rowshading="-1" labeling="FIRST_PAGE" /> <footing font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" rowshading="-1" labeling="NONE" /> <blob blob="NONE" zip="false" /> </column> <table font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" userowshading="false" oddrowshading="-1" evenrowshading="-1" showborders="true" spacingbefore="12" spacingafter="12" horizontalalign="LEFT" /> <header enable="false" generatedate="false"> <data> null </data> </header> <footer enable="false" generatedate="false"> <data value="null" /> </footer> <security enable="false" useopenpassword="false" openpassword="" encryption="EXCLUDE_METADATA"> <permission enable="false" permissionpassword="" allowcopying="true" allowprinting="true" allowupdating="false" allowaccessdevices="true" /> </security> <pagesetup papersize="LETTER" orientation="1" measurement="in" margintop="1.0" marginbottom="1.0" marginleft="1.0" marginright="1.0" /> </pdf> <display id="null" type="" style="Table" enable="true"> <name><![CDATA[Parent]]></name> <description><![CDATA[]]></description> <tooltip><![CDATA[]]></tooltip> <drillclass><![CDATA[null]]></drillclass> <CustomValues> <TYPE>horizontal</TYPE> </CustomValues> <query> <sql><![CDATA[select * from hr.employees where department_id = EPARTMENT_ID]]></sql> <binds> <bind id="DEPARTMENT_ID"> <prompt><![CDATA[DEPARTMENT_ID]]></prompt> <tooltip><![CDATA[DEPARTMENT_ID]]></tooltip> <value><![CDATA[NULL_VALUE]]></value> </bind> </binds> </query> <pdf version="VERSION_1_7" compression="CONTENT"> <docproperty title="" author="" subject="" keywords="" /> <cell toppadding="2" bottompadding="2" leftpadding="2" rightpadding="2" horizontalalign="LEFT" verticalalign="TOP" wrap="true" /> <column> <heading font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" rowshading="-1" labeling="FIRST_PAGE" /> <footing font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" rowshading="-1" labeling="NONE" /> <blob blob="NONE" zip="false" /> </column> <table font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" userowshading="false" oddrowshading="-1" evenrowshading="-1" showborders="true" spacingbefore="12" spacingafter="12" horizontalalign="LEFT" /> <header enable="false" generatedate="false"> <data> null </data> </header> <footer enable="false" generatedate="false"> <data value="null" /> </footer> <security enable="false" useopenpassword="false" openpassword="" encryption="EXCLUDE_METADATA"> <permission enable="false" permissionpassword="" allowcopying="true" allowprinting="true" allowupdating="false" allowaccessdevices="true" /> </security> <pagesetup papersize="LETTER" orientation="1" measurement="in" margintop="1.0" marginbottom="1.0" marginleft="1.0" marginright="1.0" /> </pdf> <display id="null" type="" style="Table" enable="true"> <name><![CDATA[Child]]></name> <description><![CDATA[]]></description> <tooltip><![CDATA[]]></tooltip> <drillclass><![CDATA[null]]></drillclass> <CustomValues> <TYPE>horizontal</TYPE> </CustomValues> <query> <sql><![CDATA[select * from hr.jobs where job_id = :JOB_ID]]></sql> <binds> <bind id="JOB_ID"> <prompt><![CDATA[JOB_ID]]></prompt> <tooltip><![CDATA[JOB_ID]]></tooltip> <value><![CDATA[NULL_VALUE]]></value> </bind> </binds> </query> <pdf version="VERSION_1_7" compression="CONTENT"> <docproperty title="" author="" subject="" keywords="" /> <cell toppadding="2" bottompadding="2" leftpadding="2" rightpadding="2" horizontalalign="LEFT" verticalalign="TOP" wrap="true" /> <column> <heading font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" rowshading="-1" labeling="FIRST_PAGE" /> <footing font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" rowshading="-1" labeling="NONE" /> <blob blob="NONE" zip="false" /> </column> <table font="Courier" size="10" style="NORMAL" color="-16777216" userowshading="false" oddrowshading="-1" evenrowshading="-1" showborders="true" spacingbefore="12" spacingafter="12" horizontalalign="LEFT" /> <header enable="false" generatedate="false"> <data> null </data> </header> <footer enable="false" generatedate="false"> <data value="null" /> </footer> <security enable="false" useopenpassword="false" openpassword="" encryption="EXCLUDE_METADATA"> <permission enable="false" permissionpassword="" allowcopying="true" allowprinting="true" allowupdating="false" allowaccessdevices="true" /> </security> <pagesetup papersize="LETTER" orientation="1" measurement="in" margintop="1.0" marginbottom="1.0" marginleft="1.0" marginright="1.0" /> </pdf> </display> </display> </display> </displays> Save the file and ‘Open Report…’ You’ll see your new report name in the tree. You just need to double-click it to open it. Here’s what it looks like running A 3 generation family Now Let’s Build an AWR Text Report Ronald wanted to have the ability to query AWR snapshots and generate the AWR reports. That requires a few inputs, including a START and STOP snapshot ID. That basically tells AWR what time period to use for generating the report. And here’s where it gets tricky. We’ll need to use aliases for the SNAP_ID column. Since we’re using the same column name from 2 different queries, we need to use different bind variables. Fortunately for us, SQL Developer’s clever enough to use the column alias as the BIND. Here’s what I mean: Grandparent Query SELECT snap_id start1, begin_interval_time, end_interval_time FROM dba_hist_snapshot ORDER BY 1 asc Parent Query SELECT snap_id stop1, begin_interval_time, end_interval_time, :START1 carry FROM dba_hist_snapshot WHERE snap_id > :START1 ORDER BY 1 asc And here’s where it gets even trickier – you can’t reference a bind from outside the parent query. My grandchild report can’t reference a value from the grandparent report. So I just carry the selected value down to the parent. In my parent query SELECT you see the ‘:START1′ at the end? That’s making that value available to me when I use it in my grandchild query. To complicate things a bit further, I can’t have a column name with a ‘:’ in it, or SQL Developer will get confused when I try to reference the value of the variable with the ‘:’ – and ‘::Name’ doesn’t work. But that’s OK, just alias it. Grandchild Query Select Output From Table(Dbms_Workload_Repository.Awr_Report_Text(1298953802, 1,:CARRY, :STOP1)); Ok, and the last trick – I hard-coded my report to use my database’s DB_ID and INST_ID into the AWR package call. Now a smart person could figure out a way to make that work on any database, but I got lazy and and ran out of time. But this should be far enough for you to take it from here. Here’s what my report looks like now: Caution: don’t run this if you haven’t licensed Enterprise Edition with Diagnostic Pack. The Raw XML for this AWR Report <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <displays> <display id="927ba96c-0139-1000-8001-7f0000015340" type="" style="Table" enable="true"> <name><![CDATA[AWR Start Stop Report Final]]></name> <description><![CDATA[]]></description> <tooltip><![CDATA[]]></tooltip> <drillclass><![CDATA[null]]></drillclass> <CustomValues> <TYPE>horizontal</TYPE> </CustomValues> <query> <sql><![CDATA[SELECT snap_id start1, begin_interval_time, end_interval_time FROM dba_hist_snapshot ORDER BY 1 asc]]></sql> </query> <display id="null" type="" style="Table" enable="true"> <name><![CDATA[Stop SNAP_ID]]></name> <description><![CDATA[]]></description> <tooltip><![CDATA[]]></tooltip> <drillclass><![CDATA[null]]></drillclass> <CustomValues> <TYPE>horizontal</TYPE> </CustomValues> <query> <sql><![CDATA[SELECT snap_id stop1, begin_interval_time, end_interval_time, :START1 carry FROM dba_hist_snapshot WHERE snap_id > :START1 ORDER BY 1 asc]]></sql> </query> <display id="null" type="" style="Table" enable="true"> <name><![CDATA[AWR Report]]></name> <description><![CDATA[]]></description> <tooltip><![CDATA[]]></tooltip> <drillclass><![CDATA[null]]></drillclass> <CustomValues> <TYPE>horizontal</TYPE> </CustomValues> <query> <sql><![CDATA[Select Output From Table(Dbms_Workload_Repository.Awr_Report_Text(1298953802, 1,:CARRY, :STOP1 ))]]></sql> </query> </display> </display> </display> </displays> Should We Build Support for Multiple Levels of Reports into the User Interface? Let us know! A comment here or a suggestion on our SQL Developer Exchange might help your case!

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• SQL Developer Quick Tip: Reordering Columns

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Do you find yourself always scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to get to the column you want to see when looking at a table or view’s data? Don’t do that! Instead, just right-click on the column headers, select ‘Columns’, and reorder as desired. Access the Manage Columns dialog Then move up the columns you want to see first… Put them in the order you want – it won’t affect the database. Now I see the data I want to see, when I want to see it – no scrolling. This will only change how the data is displayed for you, and SQL Developer will remember this ordering until you ‘Delete Persisted Settings…’ What IS Remembered Via These ‘Persisted Settings?’ Column Widths Column Sorts Column Positions Find/Highlights This means if you manipulate one of these settings, SQL Developer will remember them the next time you open the tool and go to that table or view. Don’t know what I mean by ‘Find/Highlight?’ Find and highlight values in a grid with Ctrl+F

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• Using DEBUG Mode in Oracle SQL Developer to Log SQL

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Curious how we’re getting the data you see in SQL Developer when you click on something? While many of the dialogs provide a ‘SQL’ panel that shows you the SQL ABOUT to be generated, I’d rather see the SQL AS it’s executed. True, you could set a TRACE or fire up a Monitor Sessions report, but both of those solutions leave me hungry for more. Did you know that SQL Developer has a ‘debug’ mode? It slows the tool down a bit and spits out a lot of information you don’t care about, but it ALSO shows you ALL the SQL that is sent to the database, as you click around the tool! See ALL the SQL that SQL Developer sends to the database on your behalf Enable DEBUG Mode When you see the splash screen as SQL Developer fires up, frantically hit Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, SELECT, Start. Wait, wrong game. No, all you need to do is go to your SQL Developer directory and navigate down to the ‘bin’ directory. In that directory, find the ‘sqldeveloper.conf’ file. Install Directory - sqldeveloper - bin - sqldeveloper.conf Open it with a text editor. Find this line IncludeConfFile sqldeveloper-nondebug.conf And replace it with this line IncludeConfFile sqldeveloper-debug.conf Save the file. Start up SQL Developer. Observe the Logging Page – Log Panel for the SQL There’s going to be more than just SQL here. You’ll actually see a LOT of other information. If you’re having general problems with the tool and you want to see the nitty-gritty of what’s going on, then this is a good place to satisfy your curiosity and might help us diagnose your issue if you post to the forums or open a ticket with My Oracle Support. You’ll find ‘INFO’ entries that look a little something like this - This is the query used to populate your Tables list in the connection tree. You can double-click on the sql text and get a pop-up window that’s much easier to read. See all that typing we’re saving you? I don’t recommend running in DEBUG mode all the time. Capturing this information and displaying it is more expensive than not doing so. And it provides a lot of information you don’t normally need to see. But when you DO want to know what’s going on and why, this is an excellent way of getting that information. When you’re ready to go back to ‘normal’ mode, just close SQL Developer, go back to your .conf file, and add the ‘nondebug’ bit back.

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• Importing Multiple Schemas to a Model in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Your physical data model might stretch across multiple Oracle schemas. Or maybe you just want a single diagram containing tables, views, etc. spanning more than a single user in the database. The process for importing a data dictionary is the same, regardless if you want to suck in objects from one schema, or many schemas. Let’s take a quick look at how to get started with a data dictionary import. I’m using Oracle SQL Developer in this example. The process is nearly identical in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler – the only difference being you’ll use the ‘File’ menu to get started versus the ‘File – Data Modeler’ menu in SQL Developer. Remember, the functionality is exactly the same whether you use SQL Developer or SQL Developer Data Modeler when it comes to the data modeling features – you’ll just have a cleaner user interface in SQL Developer Data Modeler. Importing a Data Dictionary to a Model You’ll want to open or create your model first. You can import objects to an existing or new model. The easiest way to get started is to simply open the ‘Browser’ under the View menu. The Browser allows you to navigate your open designs/models You’ll see an ‘Untitled_1′ model by default. I’ve renamed mine to ‘hr_sh_scott_demo.’ Now go back to the File menu, and expand the ‘Data Modeler’ section, and select ‘Import – Data Dictionary.’ This is a fancy way of saying, ‘suck objects out of the database into my model’ Connect! If you haven’t already defined a connection to the database you want to reverse engineer, you’ll need to do that now. I’m going to assume you already have that connection – so select it, and hit the ‘Next’ button. Select the Schema(s) to be imported Select one or more schemas you want to import The schemas selected on this page of the wizard will dictate the lists of tables, views, synonyms, and everything else you can choose from in the next wizard step to import. For brevity, I have selected ALL tables, views, and synonyms from 3 different schemas: HR SCOTT SH Once I hit the ‘Finish’ button in the wizard, SQL Developer will interrogate the database and add the objects to our model. The Big Model and the 3 Little Models I can now see ALL of the objects I just imported in the ‘hr_sh_scott_demo’ relational model in my design tree, and in my relational diagram. Quick Tip: Oracle SQL Developer calls what most folks think of as a ‘Physical Model’ the ‘Relational Model.’ Same difference, mostly. In SQL Developer, a Physical model allows you to define partitioning schemes, advanced storage parameters, and add your PL/SQL code. You can have multiple physical models per relational models. For example I might have a 4 Node RAC in Production that uses partitioning, but in test/dev, only have a single instance with no partitioning. I can have models for both of those physical implementations. The list of tables in my relational model Wouldn’t it be nice if I could segregate the objects based on their schema? Good news, you can! And it’s done by default Several of you might already know where I’m going with this – SUBVIEWS. You can easily create a ‘SubView’ by selecting one or more objects in your model or diagram and add them to a new SubView. SubViews are just mini-models. They contain a subset of objects from the main model. This is very handy when you want to break your model into smaller, more digestible parts. The model information is identical across the model and subviews, so you don’t have to worry about making a change in one place and not having it propagate across your design. SubViews can be used as filters when you create reports and exports as well. So instead of generating a PDF for everything, just show me what’s in my ‘ABC’ subview. But, I don’t want to do any work! Remember, I’m really lazy. More good news – it’s already done by default! The schemas are automatically used to create default SubViews Auto-Navigate to the Object in the Diagram In the subview tree node, right-click on the object you want to navigate to. You can ask to be taken to the main model view or to the SubView location. If you haven’t already opened the SubView in the diagram, it will be automatically opened for you. The SubView diagram only contains the objects from that SubView Your SubView might still be pretty big, many dozens of objects, so don’t forget about the ‘Navigator‘ either! In summary, use the ‘Import’ feature to add existing database objects to your model. If you import from multiple schemas, take advantage of the default schema based SubViews to help you manage your models! Sometimes less is more!

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• SQL Developer Database Diff – Compare Objects From Multiple Schemas

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Ever wonder why Database Diff isn’t called Schema Diff? One reason is because SQL Developer allows you select objects from more than one schema in the ‘Source’ connection for the compare. Simply use the ‘More’ dialog view and select as many tables from as many different schemas as you require Now, before you get around to testing this – as you should never believe what I say, trust but verify – two things you need to know: I’m using SQL Developer version 3.2 On the initial screen you need to use the ‘Maintain’ option Maintain tells SQL Developer to use the schema designation in the source connection to find the same corresponding object in the destination schema. Choose ‘maintain’ if you want to compare objects in the same schema in the destination but don’t have the user login for that schema. So after you’ve selected your databases, your diff preferences, and your objects – you’re ready to perform the compare and review your results. The DIFF Report Notice the highlighted text, SQL Developer is ‘maintaining’ the Schema context from the two databases. Short and sweet. That’s pretty much all there is to doing a compare with SQL Developer with multiple schemas involved. You may have noticed in some posts lately that my editor screenshots had a ‘green screen’ look and feel to them. What’s with the black background in your editors? In the SQL Developer preferences, you can set your editor color schemes. I started with the ‘Twilight’ scheme (team Jacob in case you’re wondering) and then customized it further by going with a default green font color. You could go pretty crazy in here, and I’m assuming 90% of you could care less and will just stick with the original. But for those of you who are particular about your IDE styling – go crazy! SQL Developer Editor Display Preferences

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• Top 10 Reasons SQL Developer is Perfect for Oracle Beginners

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Learning new technologies can be daunting. If you’ve never used a Mac before, you’ll probably be a bit baffled at first. But, you’re probably at least coming from a desktop computing background (Windows), so you common frame of reference. But what if you’re just now learning to use a relational database? Yes, you’ve played with Access a bit, but now your employer or college instructor has charged you with becoming proficient with Oracle database. Here’s 10 reasons why I think Oracle SQL Developer is the perfect vehicle to help get you started. 1. It’s free No need to break into one of these… No start-up costs, no need to wrangle budget dollars from your company. Students don’t have any money after books and lab fees anyway. And most employees don’t like having to ask for ‘special’ software anyway. So avoid all of that and make sure the free stuff doesn’t suit your needs first. Upgrades are available on a regular base, also at no cost, and support is freely available via our public forums. 2. It will run pretty much anywhere Windows – check. OSX (Apple) – check. Unix – check. Linux – check. No need to start up a windows VM to run your Windows-only software in your lab machine. 3. Anyone can install it There’s no installer, no registry to be updated, no admin privs to be obtained. If you can download and extract files to your machine or USB storage device, you can run it. You can be up and running with SQL Developer in under 5 minutes. Here’s a video tutorial to see how to get started. 4. It’s ubiquitous I admit it, I learned a new word yesterday and I wanted an excuse to use it. SQL Developer’s everywhere. It’s had over 2,500,000 downloads in the past year, and is the one of the most downloaded items from OTN. This means if you need help, there’s someone sitting nearby you that can assist, and since they’re in the same tool as you, they’ll be speaking the same language. 5. Simple User Interface Up-up-down-down-Left-right-left-right-A-B-A-B-START will get you 30 lives, but you already knew that, right? You connect, you see your objects, you click on your objects. Or, you can use the worksheet to write your queries and programs in. There’s only one toolbar, and just a few buttons. If you’re like me, video games became less fun when each button had 6 action items mapped to it. I just want the good ole ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘SELECT’, and ‘START’ controls. If you’re new to Oracle, you shouldn’t have the double-workload of learning a new complicated tool as well. 6. It’s not a ‘black box’ Click through your objects, but also get the SQL that drives the GUI As you use the wizards to accomplish tasks for you, you can view the SQL statement being generated on your behalf. Just because you have a GUI, doesn’t mean you’re ceding your responsibility to learn the underlying code that makes the database work. 7. It’s four tools in one It’s not just a query tool. Maybe you need to design a data model first? Or maybe you need to migrate your Sybase ASE database to Oracle for a new project? Or maybe you need to create some reports? SQL Developer does all of that. So once you get comfortable with one part of the tool, the others will be much easier to pick up as your needs change. 8. Great learning resources available Videos, blogs, hands-on learning labs – you name it, we got it. Why wait for someone to train you, when you can train yourself at your own pace? 9. You can use it to teach yourself SQL Instead of being faced with the white-screen-of-panic, you can visually build your queries by dragging and dropping tables and views into the Query Builder. Yes, ‘just like Access’ – only better. And as you build your query, toggle to the Worksheet panel and see the SQL statement. Again, SQL Developer is not a black box. If you prefer to learn by trial and error, the worksheet will attempt to suggest the next bit of your SQL statement with it’s completion insight feature. And if you have syntax errors, those will be highlighted – just like your misspelled words in your favorite word processor. 10. It scales to match your experience level You won’t be a n00b forever. In 6-8 months, when you’re ready to tackle something a bit more complicated, like XML DB or Oracle Spatial, the tool is already there waiting on you. No need to go out and find the ‘advanced’ tool. 11. Wait, you said this was a ‘Top 10′ list? Yes. Yes, I did. I’m using this ‘trick’ to get you to continue reading because I’m going to say something you might not want to hear. Are you ready? Tools won’t replace experience, failure, hard work, and training. Just because you have the keys to the car, doesn’t mean you’re ready to head out on the race track. While SQL Developer reduces the barriers to entry, it does not completely remove them. Many experienced folks simply do not like tools. Rather, they don’t like the people that pick up tools without the know-how to properly use them. If you don’t understand what ‘TRUNCATE’ means, don’t try it out. Try picking up a book first. Of course, it’s very nice to have your own sandbox to play in, so you don’t upset the other children. That’s why I really like our Dev Days Database Virtual Box image. It’s your own database to learn and experiment with.

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• SQL Developer Blitz at ODTUG Kscope12

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) puts on an outstanding event, and I enjoy that the content comes FIRST. Yes, the after-event parties and entertainment are first class, but I look forward most to sitting in on some excellent sessions. For Kscope12 one would expect Oracle to have a large presence, and you would be absolutely correct! The APEX team will be there in full force, and we’ll have sessions on JDeveloper, ADF, and .NET. But what I want to talk about today is our awesome line-up of coverage for Oracle SQL Developer (Surprise!) DB and Developer’s Toolbox Symposium Kris Rice or @krisrice, Product Development Manager for SQL Developer, will speak at 10AM Sunday about SQL Developer Data Modeler. Our free data modeling solution allows one to reverse engineer a data dictionary to a model, modify it, and create a script of the changes. Collaboration is an important part of any development team; with built-in subversion support, the modeler makes collaboration easy, not just possible. After the morning break, I’ll be talking about SQL Developer’s PL/SQL support. From creating your code, to debugging, tuning, testing, and documenting PL/SQL – SQL Developer fits the bill. Since I have a full hour, I should have time to do a little riff on using source control to version and manage your revisions too! At 3:15 Jagan Athreya will talk about the new integration between SQL Developer and Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. Enabling developers to define changes in SQLDeveloper and allowing DBAs to promote these changes to Test and Production via Enterprise Manager will reduce errors, accelerate productivity, and help eliminate unplanned downtime. Get your SQL Developer groove on at ODTUG Kscope12! Presentations SQL Developer Tips and Tricks Monday June 25, Session 5, 4:15 pm – 5:15 pm I’ll take you through my favorite keyboard shortcuts, top 10 preferences every user should tweak, and spotlight features that the average user probably hasn’t discovered yet. My goal for this session is for everyone to take 1-2 tips they can implement immediately to save mucho time. I enjoy interacting with the audience so no two versions of this presentation are the same. Oracle SQL Developer and Data Modeler New Features When: Tuesday June 26, Session 6, 8:30 am – 9:30 am Ashley Chen, my PM-partner-in-crime, will be covering all the new features from our two latest updates. So if you’re new to SQL Developer, or you’ve been using an older version, stop by and see what new toys you have to play with. I also have a bet with Ashley that she will have more attendees than me, so be sure to show up so I can collect. Debugging PL/SQL With SQL Developer When: Wednesday June 27, Session 16, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Me again – sorry. This time I have an entire hour to JUST talk about PL/SQL and debugging! Should you use a watch with a break condition, or a breakpoint with a passcount? How does external debugging with a Perl script work? Can I just debug an anonymous PL/SQL block. So if debugging to you is just a DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE() call, stop by and see how our IDE can help you take things to the next level! Or is that level++? Hands-on-Training SQL Developer Soup to Nuts When: Tuesday, 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM If you learn by doing, this is the session for you. Bring your own laptop or use one of the lab machines. We’ll give you a VirtualBox OEL image running 11gR2 EE Database with all the fixin’s (that’s Southern speak for Partitioning, Advanced Compression, Tuning & Diagnostic Packs, etc), TimesTen, APEX and much more. All you have to do is login and run through our lab exercises. You can start with a model and work your way up to debugging and testing your own appliction, or you can pick and choose your lessons to suit your needs. We’ll have people on hand to help you out and answer your questions. Booth Hours We’ll be in the vendor area and have our very own ‘demo pod’ for SQL Developer. Between Kris, Ashley, and I we should be able to answer your questions or show you how to ‘do that thing’ in the tool. Or just stop by and say hello! We’ll be around the following hours’ish: Sunday, June 24, 2012 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Monday, June 25, 2012 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM Tuesday, June 26, 2012 9:30 AM – 3:30 PM Wednesday, June 27, 2012 10:15 AM – 2:00 PM No Excuses – If You Have Questions, This is Your Chance to Get Your Answers! We’re doing just about everything outside of a scavenger hunt to bring information and value to our users. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like, and we’ll do our best to do more of the former and less of the latter!

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• SQL Developer at Oracle Open World 2012

  - by thatjeffsmith

  We have a lot going on in San Francisco this fall. One of the most personal exciting bits, for what will be my 4th or 5th Open World, is that this will be my FIRST as a member of Team Oracle. I’ve presented once before, but most years it was just me pressing flesh at the vendor booths. After 3-4 days of standing and talking, you’re ready to just go home and not do anything for a few weeks. This time I’ll have a chance to walk around and talk with our users and get a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. Of course it will be a great opportunity for you to find us and get to know your SQL Developer team! 3.4 miles across and back – thanks Ashley for signing me up for the run! This year is going to be a bit crazy. Work wise I’ll be presenting twice, working a booth, and proctoring several of our Hands-On Labs. The fun parts will be equally crazy though – running across the Bay Bridge (I don’t run), swimming the Bay (I don’t swim), having my wife fly out on Wednesday for the concert, and then our first WhiskyFest on Friday (I do drink whisky though.) But back to work – let’s talk about EVERYTHING you can expect from the SQL Developer team. Booth Hours We’ll have 2 ‘demo pods’ in the Exhibition Hall over at Moscone South. Look for the farm of Oracle booths, we’ll be there under the signs that say ‘SQL Developer.’ There will be several people on hand, mostly developers (yes, they still count as people), who can answer your questions or demo the latest features. Come by and say ‘Hi!’, and let us know what you like and what you think we can do better. Seriously. Monday 10AM – 6PM Tuesday 9:45AM – 6PM Wednesday 9:45AM – 4PM Presentations Stop by for an hour, pull up a chair, sit back and soak in all the SQL Developer goodness. You’ll only have to suffer my bad jokes for two of the presentations, so please at least try to come to the other ones. We’ll be talking about data modeling, migrations, source control, and new features in versions 3.1 and 3.2 of SQL Developer and SQL Developer Data Modeler. Day Time Event Monday 10:454:45 What’s New in SQL Developer Why Move to Oracle Application Express Listener Tueday 10:1511:455:00 Using Subversion in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Oracle SQL Developer Tips & Tricks Database Design with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Wednesday 11:453:30 Migrating Third-Party Databases and Applications to Oracle Exadata 11g Enterprise Options and Management Packs for Developers Hands On Labs (HOLs) The Hands On Labs allow you to come into a classroom environment, sit down at a computer, and run through some exercises. We’ll provide the hardware, software, and training materials. It’s self-paced, but we’ll have several helpers walking around to answer questions and chat up any SQL Developer or database topic that comes to mind. If your employer is sending you to Open World for all that great training, the HOLs are a great opportunity to capitalize on that. They are only 60 minutes each, so you don’t have to worry about burning out. And there’s no homework! Of course, if you do want to take the labs home with you, many are already available via the Developer Day Hands-On Database Applications Developer Lab. You will need your own computer for those, but we’ll take care of the rest. Wednesday PL/SQL Development and Unit Testing with Oracle SQL Developer 10:15 Performance Tuning with Oracle SQL Developer 11:45 Thursday The Soup to Nuts of Data Modeling with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler 11:15 Some Parting Advice Always wanted to meet your favorite Oracle authors, speakers, and thought-leaders? Don’t be shy, walk right up to them and introduce yourself. Normal social rules still apply, but at the conference everyone is open and up for meeting and talking with attendees. Just understand if there’s a line that you might only get a minute or two. It’s a LONG conference though, so you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with everyone. If you’re going to be around on Tuesday evening, head on over to the OTN Lounge from 4:30 to 6:30 and hang out for our Tweet Meet. That’s right, all the Oracle nerds on Twitter will be there in one place. Be sure to put your Twitter handle on your name tag so we know who you are!

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• Oracle Open World 2012: SQL Developer Recap

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Last week was the ‘big show’ in San Francisco. I was very happy to meet many of you in person. And many of you had questions – lots of questions! We had full or overflowing rooms for our sessions and hands-on-labs. The SQL Developer ‘booths’ were also slammed several times. So exciting to see so many of YOU excited about SQL Developer. It’s very cool to hear the stories of our tools saving you and your organizations so much time (and money!) Instead of doing a Day 0 – Day 9 recap, I thought I’d share with you the questions that I heard more than once. And just for giggles, I’ll throw in some answers as well So in no particular order… What’s the difference between Oracle SQL Developer & Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler? Mathematically speaking – two words. But as far as the actual modeling features go, there’s no difference between the two applications. The same ‘code’ or features as it pertains to data modeling and design are in both tools. However, in SQL Developer you have all of the OTHER features fighting for real estate in the UI. So I have a general rule of thumb – if you spend MOST of your time in the database, use SQL Developer. And if you spend most of your time in the data model, run the separate and dedicated program, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Here’s a couple of screenshots to drive home the UI point: Oracle SQL Developer Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler running INSIDE of SQL Developer. Notice how the Modeler menu items fold under the file menu? Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Easier to navigate and manipulate your models with the stand alone modeler. Just no worksheet to run your ad-hoc queries, etc. Don’t forget you can disable the Data Modeler inside of SQL Developer via the Extensions preference page. How can I model my table partitions? Partitioning is defined via the Physical model. So after you have finished your relational model, you need to generate a physical model. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Physical Model and Partitioning Open the properties for your physical model table. Enable the ‘partitioned’ property. Once you do so, the ‘Partitioning’ page will activate. Lots and lots of partitioning support and options here But what about Interval Partitioning? An extension of range partitioning in 11gR2, we don’t currently support this partitioning scheme in SQL Developer. But we’re working on it! Can SQL Developer ignore column order when comparing models? Yes! After you start a model compare, one of your options is to disregard the order of an attribute or column definition. Tell SQL Developer you don’t care when your column shows up, just as long as it DOES show up. Wow, you got a lot of questions around modeling! Is that normal? Yes! While we appreciate that many folks inherit their applications and associated designs, new applications are being ‘born’ every day. Since both of our tools are free for anyone to design their new Oracle applications with, we attract a fair amount of attention I want to do a Hands On Lab. How do I get your software and instructional guides? Go here. Download VirtualBox. Then download the VB image. Import the appliance. Start it. Connect oracle/oracle on the OEL VM. Click on ‘Start Here’ in the desktop. Follow the instructions. If you need help, ask away! You went too fast in your Tips & Tricks session. Do you have cliff notes? Yes! And you’re SO close to finding them! Just go to my SQL Developer resources page. All of my tips are documented on this blog somewhere. I’ve indexed the most popular ones on the resource page. You can use the Search dialog on the right to find the rest. Or just send me a comment or question, and I’ll do my best to answer them as they come in.

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• I have Oracle SQL Developer Installed, Now What?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re here because you downloaded a copy of Oracle SQL Developer and now you need help connecting to a database, then you’re in the right place. I’ll show you what you need to get up and going so you can finish your homework, teach yourself Oracle database, or get ready for that job interview. You’ll need about 30 minutes to set everything up…and about 5 years to become proficient with Oracle Oracle Database come with SQL Developer but SQL Developer doesn’t include a database If you install Oracle database, it includes a copy of SQL Developer. If you’re running that copy of SQL Developer, please take a second to upgrade now, as it is WAY out of date. But I’m here to talk to the folks that have downloaded SQL Developer and want to know what to do next. You’ve got it running. You see this ‘Connection’ dialog, and… Where am I connecting to, and who as? You NEED a database Installing SQL Developer does not give you a database. So you’re going to need to install Oracle and create a database, or connect to a database that is already up and running somewhere. Basically you need to know the following: where is this database, what’s it called, and what port is the listener running on? The Default Connection properties in SQL Developer These default settings CAN work, but ONLY if you have installed Oracle Database Express Edition (XE). Localhost is a network alias for 127.0.0.1 which is an IP address that maps to the ‘local’ machine, or the machine you are reading this blog post on. The listener is a service that runs on the server and handles connections for the databases on that machine. You can run a database without a listener and you can run a listener without a database, but you can’t connect to a database on a different server unless both that database and listener are up and running. Each listener ‘listens’ on one or more ports, you need to know the port number for each connection. The default port is 1521, but 1522 is often pretty common. I know all of this sounds very complicated Oracle is a very sophisticated piece of software. It’s not analogous to downloading a mobile phone app and and using it 10 seconds later. It’s not like installing Office/Access either – it requires services, environment setup, kernel tweaks, etc. However. Normally an administrator will setup and install Oracle, create the database, and configure the listener for everyone else to use. They’ll often also setup the connection details for everyone via a ‘TNSNAMES.ORA’ file. This file contains a list of database connection details for folks to browse – kind of like an Oracle database phoneboook. If someone has given you a TNSNAMES.ORA file, or setup your machine to have access to a TNSNAMES file, then you can just switch to the ‘TNS’ connection type, and use the dropdown to select the database you want to connect to. Then you don’t have to worry about the server names, database names, and the port numbers. ORCL – that sounds promising! ORCL is the default SID when creating a new database with the Database Creation Assistant (DBCA). It’s just me, and I need help! No administrator, no database, no nothing. What do you do? You have a few options: Buy a copy of Oracle and download, install, and create a database Download and install XE (FREE!) Download, import, and run our Developer Days Hands-on-Lab (FREE!) If you’re a student (or anyone else) with little to no experience with Oracle, then I recommend the third option. Oracle Technology Network Developer Day: Hands-on Database Application Development Lab The OTN lab runs on a A Virtual Box image which contains: 11gR2 Enterprise Edition copy of Oracle a database and listener running for you to connect to lots of demo data for you to play with SQL Developer installed and ready to connect Some browser based labs you can step through to learn Oracle You download the image, you download and install Virtual Box (also FREE!), then you IMPORT the image you previously downloaded. You then ‘Start’ the image. It will boot a copy of Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL), start your database, and all that jazz. You can then start up and run SQL Developer inside the image OR you can connect to the database running on the image using the copy of SQL Developer you installed on your host machine. Setup Port Forwarding to Make It Easy to Connect From Your Host When you start the image, it will be assigned an IP address. Depending on what network adapter you select in the image preferences, you may get something that can get out to the internet from your image, something your host machine can see and connect to, or something that kind of just lives out there in a vacuum. You want to avoid the ‘vacuum’ option – unless you’re OK with running SQL Developer inside the Linux image. Open the Virtual Box image properties and go to the Networking options. We’re going to setup port forwarding. This will tell your machine that anything that happens on port 1521 (the default Oracle Listener port), should just go to the image’s port 1521. So I can connect to ‘localhost’ and it will magically get transferred to the image that is running. Oracle Virtual Box Port Forwarding 1521 listener database Now You Just Need a Username and Password The default passwords on this image are all ‘oracle’ – so you can connect as SYS, HR, or whatever – just use ‘oracle’ as the password. The Linux passowrds are all ‘oracle’ too, so you can login as ‘root’ or as ‘oracle’ in the Linux desktop. Connect! Connect as HR to your Oracle database running on the OTN Developer Days Virtual Box image If you’re connecting to someone else’s database, you need to ask the person that manages that environment to create for you an account. Don’t try to ‘guess’ or ‘figure out’ what the username and password is. Introduce yourself, explain your situation, and ask kindly for access. This is your first test – can you connect? I know it’s hard to get started with Oracle. There are however many things we offer to make this easier. You’ll need to do a bit of RTM first though. Once you know what’s required, you will be much more likely to succeed. Of course, if you need help, you know where to find me

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• How to Collect Debug Info for Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  In a perfect world, there would be no software bugs. Developers would always test their code. QA would find any scenarios and bugs the developers hadn’t already thought of. Regression tests would be complete and flawless. But alas, we can only afford to pay mere humans here, so we will have bugs from time to time. Or sometimes you are trying to do something the software wasn’t designed for, or perhaps your machine has exhausted it’s resources trying to build the un-buildable. When you run into problems, you will need help. Developers need your help so they can help you. Surprisingly enough, feedback like this isn’t very helpful: Your program isn’t working. How can I make it work? When you are ready to work with us on the SQL Developer OTN forum, you will most likely be asked to run SQL Developer and capture the output from the command console. In case you need help with this, ere’s a step-by-step process you can follow in Windows 7 (should work in XP too.) Open a windows command window Start – Run – CMD Once it’s open, click on the window icon and select ‘Defaults.’ Change the default buffer size to be something bigger, much bigger. Set the CMD window default buffer size HIGHER Note: you only need to do this once. Navigate to your SQL Developer Installation Folder Instead of running the ‘sqldeveloper.exe’ file in the root directory, we are going to go several sub-directories down. Find the ‘bin’ sub-directory and run the ‘sqldeveloper.exe’ there. When you do this, a CMD window will open, and then you’ll see the SQL Developer application load. The SQL Developer bin directory - run the tool from here and get a logging window Use SQL Developer as normal, until it ‘breaks’ or ‘hangs’ Now, you are ready to grab the nitty-gritty information that MIGHT tell the developer what is going wrong or happening in your scenario. Click back into the CMD window Send a Ctrl+Break or a Ctrl+Pause. If you on a newer laptop that doesn’t have this key, be sure to check the ‘Fn’ subset of keys. If you need to map the BREAK or PAUSE buttons, this article might help. You can also try the on-screen keyboard in windows – just type ‘OSK’ in your START – RUN prompt. Copy the logging information from the command window – all of it We need this information, help us get it! Open a case with Oracle Support or Start a Thread on the Forums Or email me. If you’re on my blog reading this, it’s the least I can do to help Now, before you hit ‘Send’ or ‘Post’ or ‘Submit’ – be sure to add a brief description of what you were doing in the application when you ran into the problem. Even if you were doing ‘nothing,’ let us know how many connections you had open, what windows were active, etc. The more you can tell us, the higher your odds go up to getting a quick fix or at least an answer as to what is happening. Also include the following information: The version of SQL Developer you are running The version of the JDK you are using The OS you are using The version of Oracle you are connected to Now, don’t be surprised if you get asked to upgrade to a supported configuration, say ‘version 3.1 and the 1.6 JDK.’ Supporting older versions of software is fun, and while we enjoy a challenge, it may be easier for you to upgrade your way out of the problem at hand.

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• Oracle SQL Developer is for Oracle Database

  - by thatjeffsmith

  What is Oracle SQL Developer? Well, according to this document on OTN… What is SQL Developer? Date: May 2014 Oracle SQL Developer is the Oracle Database IDE. A free graphical user interface, Oracle SQL Developer allows database users and administrators to do their database tasks in fewer clicks and keystrokes. A productivity tool, SQL Developer’s main objective is to help the end user save time and maximize the return on investment in the Oracle Database technology stack. Ok, sounds pretty straightforward. Where does the confusion lie then? Some People Use SQL Developer to Connect to 3rd Party Databases SQL Developer allows you to register 3rd party database JDBC drivers. The 3rd party being a company OTHER than Oracle that makes a database product. You know who they are (SAP, MSFT, IBM, etc.) Registering 3rd party JDBC drivers in SQL Developer But maybe you don’t understand why we support these types of connections? It’s for one driving reason. To Help You Migrate to Oracle Database Yes, you get a worksheet and a tree to query and browse those systems. But, the real meat and bones there are around our migration projects and our translation scratch editor. At the end of the day, it’s there so you can move your data from say Sybase ASE to Oracle Database. On a side note, the migration technology was previously available in a separate application, the Migration Workbench. The technology and the awesome people behind it were folded into SQL Developer. So when asked what SQL Developer is, I say it’s the Database IDE and the official 3rd party database migration to Oracle platform. So anyways, when you ask for better support for another 3rd party provider, we deliver that support based on that business driver. If another 3rd party database jdbc driver is introduced, it’s because we have a lot of customers migrating from that platform. We’re not adding it to make it easier for you to work with SQL Server on your Mac. But, if you find that useful – that is cool. It’s just not why we’ve got the support for SQL Server connections in SQL Developer.

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• Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler: What Tables Aren’t In At Least One SubView?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Organizing your data model makes the information easier to consume. One of the organizational tools provided by Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is the ‘SubView.’ In a nutshell, a SubView is a subset of your model. The Challenge: I’ve just created a model which represents my entire ____________ application. We’ll call it ‘residential lending.’ Instead of having all 100+ tables in a single model diagram, I want to break out the tables by module, e.g. appraisals, credit reports, work histories, customers, etc. I’ve spent several hours breaking out the tables to one or more SubViews, but I think i may have missed a few. Is there an easy way to see what tables aren’t in at least ONE subview? The Answer Yes, mostly. The mostly comes about from the way I’m going to accomplish this task. It involves querying the SQL Developer Data Modeler Reporting Schema. So if you don’t have the Reporting Schema setup, you’ll need to do so. Got it? Good, let’s proceed. Before you start querying your Reporting Schema, you might need a data model for the actual reporting schema…meta-meta data! You could reverse engineer the data modeler reporting schema to a new data model, or you could just reference the PDFs in \datamodeler\reports\Reporting Schema diagrams directory. Here’s a hint, it’s THIS one The Query Well, it’s actually going to be at least 2 queries. We need to get a list of distinct designs stored in your repository. For giggles, I’m going to get a listing including each version of the model. So I can query based on design and version, or in this case, timestamp of when it was added to the repository. We’ll get that from the DMRS_DESIGNS table: SELECT DISTINCT design_name, design_ovid, date_published FROM DMRS_designs Then I’m going to feed the design_ovid, down to a subquery for my child report. select name, count(distinct diagram_id) from DMRS_DIAGRAM_ELEMENTS where design_ovid = :dESIGN_OVID and type = 'Table' group by name having count(distinct diagram_id) < 2 order by count(distinct diagram_id) desc Each diagram element has an entry in this table, so I need to filter on type=’Table.’ Each design has AT LEAST one diagram, the master diagram. So any relational table in this table, only having one listing means it’s not in any SubViews. If you have overloaded object names, which is VERY possible, you’ll want to do the report off of ‘OBJECT_ID’, but then you’ll need to correlate that to the NAME, as I doubt you’re so intimate with your designs that you recognize the GUIDs So I’m going to cheat and just stick with names, but I think you get the gist. My Model Of my almost 90 tables, how many of those have I not added to at least one SubView? Now let’s run my report! Voila! My ‘BEER2′ table isn’t in any SubView! It says ’1′ because the main model diagram counts as a view. So if the count came back as ’2′, that would mean the table was in the main model diagram and in 1 SubView diagram. And I know what you’re thinking, what kind of residential lending program would have a table called ‘BEER2?’ Let’s just say, that my business model has some kinks to work out!

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• Top 10 Tips & Tricks for Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Being a short week due to the holiday, and with everyone enjoying their Summer vacations (apologies Southern Hemispherians), I reckoned it was a great time to do one of those lazy recap-Top 10-Reader’s Digest type posts. I’ve been sharing 1-3 tips or ‘tricks’ a week since I started blogging about SQL Developer, and I have more than enough content to write a book. But since I’m lazy, I’m just going to compile a list of my favorite ‘must know’ tips instead. I always have to leave out a few tips when I do my presentations, so now I can refer back to this list to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. So without further ado… 1. Configure Your Preferences Yes, there are a LOT of options. But you don’t need to worry about all of them just yet. I do recommend you take a quick look at these ones in particular. Whether you’re new to the tool or have been using it for 5 years, don’t overlook these settings! 2. Disable Extensions You Aren’t Using If you’re not using Data Miner, or if you’re not working on a Migration – disable those extensions! SQL Developer will run leaner & meaner, plus the user interface will be a bit more simplified making the tool easier to navigate as well. 3. SQL Recall via Keyboard Access your history via the keyboard! Cycle through your recent SQL statements just using these magic key strokes! Ctrl+Up or Ctrl+Down. 4. Format Your Query Output Directly to CSV, XML, HTML, etc Have the query results pre-formatted in the format of your choice! Too lazy to run the Export wizard for your query result sets? Just add the SQL Developer output hints to your statement and have the output auto-magically formatted to the style of your choice! 5. Drag & Drop Multiple Tables to the Worksheet SQL Developer will auto-join the related objects. You can then toggle over to the Query Builder to toggle off the columns you don’t want to query. I guarantee this tip will save you time if you’re joining 3 or more tables! 6. Drag & Drop Multiple Tables to a Relational Model A pretty picture is worth a few dozen DDL scripts? SQL Developer does data modeling! If you ctrl-drag a table to a model, it will take that table and any related tables and reverse engineer them to a relational model! You can then print it out or export it to HTML, PDF, etc. 7. View Your PL/SQL Execution Output Automatically Function returns a refcursor? Procedure had 3 out parameters? When you run these programs via the Procedure Editor, we automatically capture the output and place them into one or more data grids for you to browse. 8. Disable Automatic Code Insight and Use It On-Demand Code Editor – Completion Insight – Enable Completion Auto-Popup (Keyword being Auto) Some folks really don’t like it when their IDEs or word-processors try to do ‘too much’ for them. Thankfully SQL Developer allows you to either increase the delay before it attempts to auto-complete your text OR to disable the automatic bit. Instead, you can invoke it on-demand. 9. Interactive Debugging – Change Your Variable Values as You Step Through Your PLSQL Watches aren’t just for watching. You can actually interact with your programs and ‘see what happens’ when X = 256 instead of 1. 10. Ditch the Tree View for the Schema Browser There’s nothing wrong with the Connection tree for browsing your database objects. But some folks just can’t seem to get comfortable with it. So, we built them a Schema Browser that uses a drop down control instead for changing up your schema and object types. Already Know This Stuff, Want More? Just check out my SQL Developer resource page, it’s one of the main links on the top of this page. Or if you can’t find something, just drop me a note in the form of a comment on this page and I’ll do my best to find it or write it for you.

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• How to Create Views for All Tables with Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Got this question over the weekend via a friend and Oracle ACE Director, so I thought I would share the answer here. If you want to quickly generate DDL to create VIEWs for all the tables in your system, the easiest way to do that with SQL Developer is to create a data model. Wait, why would I want to do this? StackOverflow has a few things to say on this subject… So, start with importing a data dictionary. Step One: Open of Create a Model In SQL Developer, go to View – Data Modeler – Browser. Then in the browser panel, expand your design and create a new Relational Model. Step Two: Import your Data Dictionary This is a fancy way of saying, ‘suck objects out of the database into my model’ This will open a wizard to connect, select your schema(s), objects, etc. Once they’re in your model, you’re ready to cook with gas I’m using HR (Human Resources) for this example. You should end up with something that looks like this. Our favorite HR model Now we’re ready to generate the views! Step Three: Auto-generate the Views Go to Tools – Data Modeler – Table to View Wizard. I don’t want all my tables included, and I want to change the naming standard Decide if you want to change the default generated view names By default the views will be created as ‘V_TABLE_NAME.’ If you don’t like the ‘V_’ you can enter your own. You also can reference the object and model name with variables as shown in the screenshot above. I’m going to go with something a little more personal. The views are the little green boxes in the diagram Can’t find your views? They should be grouped together in your diagram. Don’t forget to use the Navigator to easily find and navigate to those model diagram objects! Step Four: Generate the DDL Ok, let’s use the Generate DDL button on the toolbar. Un-check everything but your views If you used a prefix, take advantage of that to create a filter. You might have existing views in your model that you don’t want to include, right? Once you click ‘OK’ the DDL will be generated. -- Generated by Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler 4.0.0.825 -- at: 2013-11-04 10:26:39 EST -- site: Oracle Database 11g -- type: Oracle Database 11g CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_COUNTRIES ( COUNTRY_ID , COUNTRY_NAME , REGION_ID ) AS SELECT COUNTRY_ID , COUNTRY_NAME , REGION_ID FROM HR.COUNTRIES ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_EMPLOYEES ( EMPLOYEE_ID , FIRST_NAME , LAST_NAME , EMAIL , PHONE_NUMBER , HIRE_DATE , JOB_ID , SALARY , COMMISSION_PCT , MANAGER_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID ) AS SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID , FIRST_NAME , LAST_NAME , EMAIL , PHONE_NUMBER , HIRE_DATE , JOB_ID , SALARY , COMMISSION_PCT , MANAGER_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID FROM HR.EMPLOYEES ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_JOBS ( JOB_ID , JOB_TITLE , MIN_SALARY , MAX_SALARY ) AS SELECT JOB_ID , JOB_TITLE , MIN_SALARY , MAX_SALARY FROM HR.JOBS ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_JOB_HISTORY ( EMPLOYEE_ID , START_DATE , END_DATE , JOB_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID ) AS SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID , START_DATE , END_DATE , JOB_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID FROM HR.JOB_HISTORY ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_LOCATIONS ( LOCATION_ID , STREET_ADDRESS , POSTAL_CODE , CITY , STATE_PROVINCE , COUNTRY_ID ) AS SELECT LOCATION_ID , STREET_ADDRESS , POSTAL_CODE , CITY , STATE_PROVINCE , COUNTRY_ID FROM HR.LOCATIONS ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_REGIONS ( REGION_ID , REGION_NAME ) AS SELECT REGION_ID , REGION_NAME FROM HR.REGIONS ; -- Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Summary Report: -- -- CREATE TABLE 0 -- CREATE INDEX 0 -- ALTER TABLE 0 -- CREATE VIEW 6 -- CREATE PACKAGE 0 -- CREATE PACKAGE BODY 0 -- CREATE PROCEDURE 0 -- CREATE FUNCTION 0 -- CREATE TRIGGER 0 -- ALTER TRIGGER 0 -- CREATE COLLECTION TYPE 0 -- CREATE STRUCTURED TYPE 0 -- CREATE STRUCTURED TYPE BODY 0 -- CREATE CLUSTER 0 -- CREATE CONTEXT 0 -- CREATE DATABASE 0 -- CREATE DIMENSION 0 -- CREATE DIRECTORY 0 -- CREATE DISK GROUP 0 -- CREATE ROLE 0 -- CREATE ROLLBACK SEGMENT 0 -- CREATE SEQUENCE 0 -- CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW 0 -- CREATE SYNONYM 0 -- CREATE TABLESPACE 0 -- CREATE USER 0 -- -- DROP TABLESPACE 0 -- DROP DATABASE 0 -- -- REDACTION POLICY 0 -- -- ERRORS 0 -- WARNINGS 0 You can then choose to save this to a file or not. This has a few steps, but as the number of tables in your system increases, so does the amount of time this feature can save you!

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• On SQL Developer and TNSNAMES.ORA

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Tnsnames.ora [DOCS] is a configuration file for SQL*Net that describes the network service names for the databases in your organization. Basically, it tells Oracle applications how to find your databases. This post is just a quick overview on how to get SQL Developer to ‘see’ this file and define a connection. There’s only a single prerequisite for having SQL Devleoper setup such that it can use TNSNAMES to connect: You have somewhere a tnsnames.ora file You don’t need a client, instant or otherwise, on your machine. You just need the file. Now, if you DO you have a client or HOME on your machine, SQL Developer will look for those and find the tnsnames file for you. IF we can’t find it at the usual places, you can simply tell us where it is via this preference: On the Database – Advanced page Once you’ve done this, assuming you have a file (or 10) in that directory, we’ll read it, parse it, and list the entries in the connection dialog. The File(s) That’s right, files. Just like SQL*Plus, we’ll read any file that starts with ‘tnsnames’ – that includes files you’ve renamed to .bak or .old. Kris talks about that more here. I have just the one, which is all I need anyway. There we go! Defining the Connection Just set the connection type to TNS. This is a lot easier to do than manually defining the connections – esp as they’re likely to frequently change in ‘the real world.’ No Client or Home Required That’s right. You don’t need an Oracle Client or $ORACLE_HOME to have SQL Developer see and read a TNS file. Just so you know I’m not cheating… SQL Dev doesn’t know which client to use and won’t use it even if it DID know… I’m able to define a new connection AND connect with these preferences ON|OFF.

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• Oracle SQL Developer version 3.2.2 Released

  - by thatjeffsmith

  This is another maintenance release, but I don’t want to minimize the work done in either the 3.2.1 or the 3.2.2 editions. The two releases include more than 400 bug fixes. Version 3.2 should be rocking and rolling and good to go while we work on the next major release! You can find the downloads and bug fixes in the normal places: Download 3.2.2 Bug fixes Connection Names If you downloaded and used version 3.2.1 and noticed some of your connection names were no longer valid due to ‘special’ characters, we’ve loosed our restrictions a bit for 3.2.2. You can now go back to using spaces and hyphens in your connection names. periods, spaces, hyphens should now all work More Copy & Paste Stuff While fixing a bug, the developer decided to also enhance the feature while he was in the code. I love seeing this happen organically. No one is sitting over their shoulder with the red magic marker. No, I’m too far away to do that except on very special days So here’s a ‘trick’ – if you want to copy cells from your grids, just drag the selected cells to the worksheet/editor. You’ll get a comma delimited list – very handy! Select cells, drag and drop up to the worksheet – Voila! Comma separated values

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• Copying Columns from Grid to Clipboard in SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  There are several ways to get data from a query or a table|view to the clipboard. You know the tried and true, copy and paste. But what if you only want one or more columns, not every column? There are several ways to do this, let’s see if we can’t identify all of them. Write your query to only include the data you want Obvious? Yes. Needed to be said? Definitely. The best tuning tip is to only ask for the data you need, only when you absolutely need it. But let’s look at a few more practical ways to do this. Hide the unwanted columns Mouse right click on an column header. In the context menu, select ‘Columns.’ Hide the columns you don’t want. Copy and paste. WYSIWYG Grids, Hide Columns and Filter Rows Mouse select the columns Obvious, but a bit painful. For a very large dataset, you’ll be holding down the Shift and PageDown buttons – but it works. Remember to use Ctrl+Shift+C to get the column headers with the data. Use the Export Wizard This used to be called ‘Unload’ – agreed, not a great name. So, we changed it. In a grid, right mouse click on the data, and on the context menu, select ‘Export…’ Select your format – I suggest ‘delimited’ or ‘fixed’ for copying data to the clipboard. You can export to the clipboard, yes you can! Click ‘Next.’ Click in the Columns dialog, and choose the columns you want copied. Trim the columns you don't want copied Click ‘Finish.’ Alt or Ctrl tab to your window or application of choice. And Paste! "FIRST_NAME" "LAST_NAME" "Donald" "OConnell" "Douglas" "Grant" "Jennifer" "Whalen" "Pat" "Fay" "Susan" "Mavris" "William" "Gietz" "Alexander" "Hunold" "Bruce" "Ernst" "David" "Austin" "Valli" "Pataballa" "Diana" "Lorentz" "Daniel" "Faviet" "John" "Chen" "Ismael" "Sciarra" "Jose Manuel" "Urman" "Luis" "Popp" "Alexander" "Khoo" "Shelli" "Baida" "Sigal" "Tobias" "Guy" "Himuro" "Karen" "Colmenares" "Matthew" "Weiss" "Adam" "Fripp" "Payam" "Kaufling" "Shanta" "Vollman" "Kevin" "Mourgos" "Julia" "Nayer" "Irene" "Mikkilineni" ... There’s probably at least 2 or 3 more ways, but… But, try these and let me know how we can improve things. I’ve already gotten a request to be able to include the SQL text used to populate the dataset on the the copy to clipboard, and it’s now on our to-do list

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• Formatting Keywords to UPPERCASE In Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  I received this question from a customer today, and it took me more than a few minutes to remember where this preference was located in SQL Developer. This tells me that the topic is ripe for blogging How do I go FROM: select * from scott.emp where ename like '%JEFF%' TO SELECT * FROM scott.emp WHERE ename LIKE '%JEFF%' It’s all in the formatting You need to access the formatting preferences under the Tools menu. It takes a bit of navigating to get there, so bear with me: Tools Database SQL Formatter Oracle Formatting Click ‘Edit’ on the profile Other Case change: ‘Keywords Uppercase’ It’s easy to find once you know where to look? You can tell it to leave the case alone, upper everything, upper only the keywords, lower everything. Accessing the Formatter Options We allow separate formatting options for different RDBMS. You need to make sure you’re accessing the ‘Oracle Formatting’ page in the preferences. You can then choose to edit the default options OR you can do what I have done – save the defaults as a new set of options. I’ve called my profile ‘JeffCustom.’ I can now switch back and forth now through different sets of formatting options. You need to hit the ‘Edit’ button to get to the formatting options editor. A good number of people seem to miss this. Select your profile, then hit the ‘Edit’ button

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• Managing User & Role Security with Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  With the advent of SQL Developer v3.0, users have had access to some powerful database administration features. Version 3.1 introduced more powerful features such as an interface to Data Pump and RMAN. Today I want to talk about some very simple but frequently ran tasks that SQL Developer can assist with, like: identifying privs granted to users managing role privs assigning new roles and privs to users & roles Before getting started, you’ll need a connection to the database with the proper privileges. The common ROLE used to accomplish this is the ‘DBA‘ role. Curious as to what the DBA role is actually comprised of? Let’s find out! Open the DBA Console First make sure you’re connected to the database you want to manage security on with a privileged administrator account. Then open the View menu and select ‘DBA.’ Accessing the DBA panel ‘Create’ a Connection Click on the green ‘+’ button in the DBA panel. It will ask you to choose a previously defined SQL Developer connection. Defining a DBA connection in Oracle SQL Developer Once connected you will see a tree list of DBA features you can start interacting with. Expand the ‘Security’ Tree Node As you click on an object in the DBA panel, the ‘viewer’ will open on the right-hand-side, just like you are accustomed to seeing when clicking on a table or stored procedure. Accessing the DBA role If I’m a newly hired Oracle DBA, the first thing I might want to do is become very familiar with the DBA role. People will be asking you to grant them this role or a subset of its privileges. Once you see what the role can do, you will become VERY protective of it. My favorite 3-letter 4-letter word is ‘ANY’ and the DBA role is littered with privileges like this: ANY TABLE privs granted to DBA role So if this doesn’t freak you out, then maybe you should re-consider your career path. Or in other words, don’t be granting this role to ANYONE you don’t completely trust to take care of your database. If I’m just assigned a new database to manage, the first thing I might want to look at is just WHO has been assigned the DBA role. SQL Developer makes this easy to ascertain, just click on the ‘User Grantees’ panel. Who has the keys to your car? Making Changes to Roles and Users If you mouse-right-click on a user in the Tree, you can do individual tasks like grant a sys priv or expire an account. But, you can also use the ‘Edit User’ dialog to do a lot of work in one pass. As you click through options in these dialogs, it will build the ‘ALTER USER’ script in the SQL panel, which can then be executed or copied to the worksheet or to your .SQL file to be ran at your discretion. A Few Clicks vs a Lot of Typing These dialogs won’t make you a DBA, but if you’re pressed for time and you’re already in SQL Developer, they can sure help you make up for lost time in just a few clicks!

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler v3.3 Early Adopter: Collaborative Design via Excel?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  As you may have heard last week, we have a new version of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler now available as an Early Adopter release. Version 3.3 has quite a few new features and I’ll be previewing them here. Today’s topic is our new Excel integration. It builds off of last week’s lesson: Search, so you may want to go read that first. They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes a team to build a data model. You have your techie folks, your business folks, your in-betweeners, and your database geeks. Who gets to define how customers are represented and stored in your database? That data lives forever, so you better get it right from the beginning, or you’ll be living in a hacker’s paradise for years to come. Lots of good rantings, ravings, and advice on this topic in general on Karen Lopez’s (@datachick) blog. But let’s say you are the primary modeler on a project. You dutifully interview the business folks for their requirements. You sit down and start to model and think you’re pretty close. Now you need someone to confirm your assumptions and provide some feedback. Do you send your model over? Take a screenshot and blow it up on a whiteboard? Export to HTML and let them take a magic marker to their monitors? Or maybe you bite the bullet and install your modeling software on their desktops and take the hours or days required to train them up on how to use the the tool. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just mark up their corrections in Excel and let you suck the updates back in? This is what we have started to build in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Let’s say you have a new table called ‘UT_STARTUPS.’ It looks a little something like this: A table in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler What I would like to do is have my team or co-worker review how I have defined those columns. Perhaps TIMESTAMP is overkill or maybe the column names themselves aren’t up to snuff. What I am going to do is now search for all the columns in my table, then export that to Excel. So do a search for UT_STARTUPS. Search, filter, then Report With the filter set to ‘Columns,’ if I do a report I’ll be only getting the columns that are resolving to my search term. So as long as my table name is unique in the model, I should get what I’m looking for. Here’s what I see when I click on the Report button: XLS or XLSX, either format is just fine I want to decide how the Column data is exported to Excel though, so I’m going to create a report template that I can use going forward. So click the ‘Manage’ button and setup a new template. I’m going to call mine ‘CollaborativeDevelopment.’ The templates allow me to define what properties are included in the reports. Once this is set, I’ll have the XLS file generated, and get to work Now let the Excel junkies do their stuff Note that not ALL of the report properties are update-able (yes, I made up a new word there) via Excel. We’ll have the full list of properties documented going forward, but in my Excel sheet, note that I can’t change the table name or the data types for the columns. I’m going to update some column names and supply ‘nice’ comments so the database users know what’s what. Here’s my input for the designer/architect/database dude: Be kind, please rew…use comments. Save the file, email it back to your modeler. Update the model from Excel That’s right, it’s a right mouse click from your model in the tree If everything goes right, you’ll see a nice confirmation message: It’s alive! Another to-do item on tap – making this dialog more informative. We’ll be showing exactly what in your model was updated from Excel. Let’s take another look at the model now Voila! Why are we doing this again? The goal is to reduce the number of round-trips from the modeler and the business process owner. One is used to working with Excel – why not allow them to mark up their changes in the tool they already know? This is an early adopter release and I anticipate this feature getting a good bit of tuning up before we release. Why don’t you download 3.3, give it a whirl, and let us know what you think?

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler: On Notes, Comments, and Comments in RDBMS

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Ah the beautiful data model. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. And then we have our diagrams, how many words are they worth? Our friends from the Human Relations sample schema So our models describe how the data ‘works’ – whether that be at a logical-business level, or a technical-physical level. Developers like to say that their code is self-documenting. These would be very lazy or very bad (or both) developers. Models are the same way, you should document your models with comments and notes! I have 3 basic options: Comments Comments in RDBMS Notes So what’s the difference? Comments You’re describing the entity/table or attribute/column. This information will NOT be published in the database. It will only be available to the model, and hence, folks with access to the model. Table Comments (in the design only!) Comments in RDBMS You’re doing the same thing as above, but your words will be stored IN the data dictionary of the database. Oracle allows you to store comments on the table and column definitions. So your awesome documentation is going to be viewable to anyone with access to the database. RDBMS is an acronym for Relational Database Management System – of which Oracle is one of the first commercial examples If the DDL is produced and ran against a database, these comments WILL be stored in the data dictionary. Notes A place for you to add notes, maybe from a design meeting. Or maybe you’re using this as a to-do or requirements list. Basically it’s for anything that doesn’t literally describe the object at hand – that’s what the comments are for. I totally made these up. Now these are free text fields and you can put whatever you want here. Just make sure you put stuff here that’s worth reading. And it will live on…forever.

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