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> 

ODTUG KScope Preview bij AMIS

Ook dit jaar, namelijk op dinsdag 14 Juni, organiseert AMIS de ODTUG Preview. Het jaarlijkse congres van de ODTUG, de Oracle Development Tools Users Group, vind dit jaar plaats in Longbeach, California van 26 tot en met 30 juni. Het is niet voor iedereen weggelegd om daar naar toe te gaan. AMIS biedt, alweer voor het vijfde achtereenvolgende jaar, aan geïnteresseerden de kans om een selectie van de presentaties die daar te zien zijn bij te wonen. Een aantal Europese sprekers zal tijdens de AMIS ODTUG preview presentatie laten zien die ook in de Verenigde Staten worden gehouden.
Tijdens de AMIS ODTUG Preview zullen er drie keer drie parallelle sessies worden gehouden met verschillende onderwerpen zoals APEX, database development, ADF, JHeadstart en SOA.

Programma:

Tijd	Track 1	Track 2	Track 3
16:30	Welkom en Registratie
17:00	XFILES, the APEX 4 Version: The Truth is in There... Marco Gralike & Roel Hartman	ADF Developers - Make the Database Work for You Lucas Jellema	Pipelined Table Functions Patrick Barel
18:00	Dinner
19:00	APEX Face/Off - Designing a GUI with APEX Templates and Themes Christian Rokitta	BPMN: The New Silver Bullet? Lonneke Dikmans	Oracle JHeadstart: Superior Productivity in Developing Best-practice ADF Web Applications Steven Davelaar
20:15	Who's Afraid of Analytic Functions? Alex Nuijten	Overview of Eventing in Oracle SOA Suite 11g Ronald van Luttikhuizen	...and Thus Your Forms 'Automagically' Disappeared Luc Bors

Dit evenement is met name bedoeld voor ontwikkelaars.
Uiteraard zijn er aan dit event geen kosten verbonden, maar het aantal plaatsen voor dit evenement is beperkt, wacht niet te lang. Vol is vol.
Inschrijven via www.amis.nl

Planboard DBA Symposium: Registration Opened

The 6th Planboard DBA Symposium is opened for registration. I'm very pleased to be presenting again at this "For DBA by DBA Symposium". Especially since I'm not really a DBA... :)
Guess the organization committee was pleased with the presentation I did for the fourth Symposium. That time I was scheduled opposite Harald van Breederode, this time it's Frits Hoogland. Hopefully someone will show up for my session... or should I say: "Sorry Frits, too bad nobody showed up at your session". :)
This time I'm doing one of my favorite presentations: "SQL Holmes: The Case of the Missing Performance". Looking forward to it. Hope to meet you there.

Should you expose a Stored Procedure via XMLType?

When you want to expose your Stored Procedure to the "outside world", should you do this using XMLType? As always, the correct answer is "it depends".
For this example I will use a Package containing two functions, the signature of the package is as follows:

create or replace package emps_pkg
is
   function get_department_xml (p_department_no in number)
      return xmltype;

   function get_departement_ot (p_department_no in number)
      return all_departments_ot;
  
end emps_pkg;

Creating an XMLType based on Object Types

Sometimes it is necessary to create a Stored Procedure which returns an XMLType, like when you want to expose the Stored Procedure to the "outside world", like via a Mediator. There are several options to create an XMLType. In this blogpost I will show you two ways of doing this. First the "regular" way using XMLElement, XMLForest and XMLAgg. Second using Object Types which are being converted to XMLType.

Using DBMS_UTILITY to aggregate strings

In my presentation "Analytic Functions Revisited" there is a section on how to string together some columns, string aggregation. Why? There is a new function in Oracle 11g Release 2, called LISTAGG which allows you to do this. This LISTAGG function also has an Analytic counterpart and that's the reason it is in the presentation.
At the UKOUG TEBS conference I did this presentation and someone approached me after wards to talk about these techniques. It boiled down to "Why do it the hard way when there is a built in package that allows you to do this for you?"
The built in package he was referring to is, note the title of this blog entry, DBMS_UTILITY. There are some downsides of using DBMS_UTILITY, more than I initially thought.

My First UKOUG - day two and three

Why can I never find the time to write my blogs?... Anyway, long overdue, here is my report from my first UKOUG conference. If you want to know what I did the first day, check out this link.
As I mentioned before the program is awesome, lots of very good speakers and very interesting subjects. It's quite hard to pick and choose the sessions. So what did I do the second and third day there?