Oracle Open World 2011: Oracle Database 11g Features for Developers by Connor McDonald

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a session by Connor McDonald. I heard a lot about him, his presentation style, and I even did a book review back in 2005. Everybody I talk to who attended a session by Connor - ever - is always very positive on his presentation style. And it is very impressive, humor, technical knowledge, all the ingredients are there to keep you focused on the content. The opening slide, he put on as you walked in the room invited you to move forward as the presentation has code sample in a fontsize which he showed on the slide. The room filled up, and it was a large room. There was another benefit of being in the front of the room, apart from being able to read the slides, he handed out chocolates - starting from the front. Talking to Connor later in the evening, he told me it takes months to prepare for a presentation, and it really shows. If you get a chance to see Connor do a presentation, attend it and make sure to arrive early! Part of the presentation was on Edition Based Redefinition, and because I presented on that subject before I believed there was a flaw in his presentation. But there was not, I was mistaken. The rest of this blogpost shows you where I was mistaken, and Connor was absolutely right.

Oracle 11g Express Edition bug?

Of course you know that Oracle has released 11g Express Edition, still in Beta though. That is probably why I ran into something weird -must be a bug- while playing with it. Here is what I did:

SQL> set echo on

SQL> col "Current_Edition" format a20

SQL> col object_name format a20

SQL> 

SQL> select sys_context('userenv'

  2                    ,'current_edition_name'

  3                    ) "Current_Edition"

  4    from dual

  5  /



Current_Edition                                                                                                         

--------------------                                                                                                    

ORA$BASE                                                                                                                



1 row selected.



SQL> 

SQL> create or replace

  2  procedure hello

  3  is

  4  begin

  5     dbms_output.put_line ('Hello World');

  6  end hello;

  7  /



Procedure created.



SQL> 

SQL> begin

  2     hello;

  3  end;

  4  /

Hello World                                                                                                             



PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.



SQL> 

SQL> select object_name

  2       , object_type

  3       , edition_name

  4    from user_objects_ae

  5   where object_name = 'HELLO'

  6  /



OBJECT_NAME          OBJECT_TYPE         EDITION_NAME                                                                   

-------------------- ------------------- ------------------------------                                                 

HELLO                PROCEDURE                                                                                          



1 row selected.



SQL> 

Edition Based Redefinition and USER_OBJECTS_AE

Last week the Oracle PL/SQL Programming (OPP) and APEXposed conference took place in Brussels, Belgium.

My session was on Edition Based Redefinition, the killer feature of the Oracle 11g Release 2 database. One of my demo's showed what a procedure looks like when you override it in a newer edition from the datadictionary standpoint.
In earlier releases of the Oracle database it was not possible to have two procedures (or any other object as a matter of fact) with the same name in the same database schema.
With Edition Based Redefinition you can have two procedures with the same name, as long as they are in different Edtions.
For this demo I will use the new datadictionary view USER_OBJECTS_AE.

Oracle 11gR2: Editions and SQL Developer

I know the correct term is Edition Based Redefinition, but that would make the title of this blog post a bit too long.
Over the last weekend Oracle 11gR2 was released on the Windows platform, good news for me. On my laptop I run Windows so I could finally upgrade my demo database from Release 1 to Release 2. I had been doing demo's with a virtual machine, which was ok. Like the one I did last year during the Planboard Symposium
While I was preparing for that presentation, the support for Edition Based Redefinition was added to SQL Developer 2.1, at least that's what the New Features stated. But since March 1st there is SQL Developer 2.1.1 which does have support for Edition Based Redefinition.
This blogpost is not going to explain Edition Based Redefinition in detail, but will show you the support that SQL Developer has for Edition Based Redefinition.

Planboard Symposium, the day after.

Yesterday the Planboard Symposium, a symposium for DBA presented by DBA, took place in Driebergen, The Netherlands.
The setup of this conference is a little different from what I'm used to. Only two parallel sessions to choose from with lots of time in between the sessions, which is nice for networking.
For everybody who attended my session, a big "Thank you". For everybody who decided to attend Harald's session, you missed out on something good, and I finished on time ;)
As a consolodation price for those of you that didn't attend the Planboard Symposium, here is my presentation.

Edition Based Redefinition

View more presentations from AlexNuijten.

Planboard Symposium: Registration open

For the fourth time the Planboard Symposium will be held on November 17. This symposium is unique as it's "for DBA by DBA". This one day symposium will have 5 parallel sessions with lots of time for networking and open discussions.
I am lucky enough to be one of the presentors and my topic will be "Continuous Database Application Evolution in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 ", a mouth full.
This session will discuss a new feature of Oracle 11gR2: Edition Based Redefinition. Not just "a new feature", it's "The new feature".

You can register on the Planboard Symposium site

Oh, and by the way... don't tell anyone I'm not a DBA... ssshhh...
see you there.