Dude, Where’s My File ? Finding External Table Files in the midst of (another) General Election

It’s early summer in the UK, which means it must be time for an epoch defining vote of some kind. No, I’m not talking about Britain’s Got Talent.
Having promised that there wouldn’t be another General Election until 2020, our political classes have now decided that they can’t go any longer without asking us what we think. Again.
Try as I might, it may not be possible to prevent the ear-worm phrases from the current campaign slipping into this post.
What I want to look at is how you can persuade Oracle to tell you the location on disk of any files associated with a given external table.
Specifically, I’ll be covering :

• getting the name of the Database Server
• finding the fully qualified path of the datafile the external table is pointing to
• finding other files associated with the table, such as logfiles

In the course of this, we’ll be challenging the orthodoxy of Western Capitalism “If You Can Do It In SQL…” with the principle of DRY ( Don’t Repeat Yourself).
Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a solution that is “Strong and Stable” and yet at the same time “Works For The Many, Not the Few”…

Kicking the habit of WM_CONCAT for a delimited list of rows, with LISTAGG

I gave up smoking recently.
Among other bad habits that I need to kick is using the (not so) trusty WM_CONCAT.

The Django Fandango Farrago – Looking at Django’s Physical Data Model Design

I’m sure I’m not the only Oracle Developer who, over the years, has conjured a similar mental image during a planning meeting for a new web-based application…

…and we’re going to use an ORM

If you want the full gory details as to why this is so troubling from an Oracle database perspective, it is a topic I have covered at length previously.

This time, however, things are different.
Yes, I am somewhat limited in my choice of database due to the hardware my application will run on (Raspberry Pi).
Yes, Django is a logical choice for a framework as I’m developing in Python.
But, here’s the thing, I plan to do a bit of an audit of the database code that Django spits out.
< obligatory-Monty-Python-reference >That’s right Django, No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition ! < obligatory-Monty-Python-reference / >

Donde esta el Base de datos ?!

I know, this is a character from Blackadder and not Monty Python, but I’ve often regretted the fact that there never seems to be a vat of warm marmalade around (or some kind of gardening implement for that matter), when you enter those all important application architecture discussions at the start of a project.

As a result, one or two further Blackadder references may have crept in to the remainder of this post…

Automated Testing Frameworks and General Rule-Breaking in PL/SQL

If there’s one thing that 2016 has taught us is that rules (and in some cases, rulers) are made for breaking. Oh, and that it’s worth putting a fiver on when you see odds of 5000-1 on Leicester winning the League.

Having lacked the foresight to benefit from that last lesson, I’ve spent several months looking at Unit Testing frameworks for PL/SQL. In the course of this odyssey I’ve covered:

• Writing tests without using a framework
• SQLDeveloper Unit Testing
• utPLSQL
• Ruby-plsql-spec

This post is a summary of what I’ve learned from this exercise, starting with the fact that many of the rules we follow about good programming practice are wrong…

Testing Times – using ruby-plsql-spec for testing PL/SQL

There is method in the madness. It’s now clear that Donald Trump’s reluctance to commit to the Paris Climate Change Accord is because US methane emissions have been hugely under estimated. Yes, it turns out that there are many more Shy Trumpers in America than (almost) anyone expected.
Meanwhile, back in the UK we know that Brexit means Brexit but we still don’t know what Brexit means.
In amongst the chaos, UKIP have decided to take a fresh approach to the business of selecting a leader. This time, they’re staging a Cage Match.

Taking a leaf out of UKIP’s book I’ve decided to take a slightly unusual approach to Unit Testing my PL/SQL code.
Having looked at the SQLDeveloper Unit Testing Tool and utPLSQL, both of which utilise the database to persist objects, this time, I’m taking a look at a framework which takes a rather less database-centric approach, namely ruby-plsql-spec.

What I’ll be looking at is :

• Installation of the framework and required components
• A quick recap of the application being tested
• Writing and executing Unit Tests
• Summary and conclusions

Chasing your tail – with SQL*Plus and SQLcl

Do you remember the film Up where the dogs were always distracted as soon as anyone mentioned squirrels ?
Well, there I was, continuing my journey through the wonderful world of PL/SQL Unit Tests when suddenly, SQLcl !
Yes, Oracle have just released the first production version of SQLcl.
Since I first looked at an Early Adopter version of SQLcl there have been several enhancements. One of these, the REPEAT command, has the potential to implement functionality akin to the good old *nix tail -f command for Oracle Database tables.
It turns out that you may also be able to do something similar in SQL*Plus…

utPLSQL – We’re building the…Unit Tests!

You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m not going to talk about Brexit any more. It’s done and finished and it’s time everyone moved on.
Besides, from my current vantage point ( a small island off the coast of Europe), other people have their own problems.
In the USA for example, the nation is currently engrossed in what appears to be an exercise to find the second most unpopular person in the country…and make them President.
If the subject of this post were a Presidential Candidate, it would probably be nicknamed “The Comeback Kid”.
No, Bill Clinton hasn’t released a PL/SQL testing framework, but Steven Feuerstein has and – contrary to what you may have heard – utPLSQL is very much alive and kicking.
As the first Test framework written specifically for PL/SQL, utPLSQL is the perfect subject for my continuing testing odyssey.

To date, this has included

• a brief look at hand-crafting Unit Tests for PL/SQL
• a dive into the nooks and crannies of SQLDeveloper Unit Testing

The political analogy is rather apposite when you consider that using utPLSQL largely revolves around making a number of assertions…which may or may not be true.

What we’ll be looking at is :

• Installing the utPLSQL framework
• Your first Test and how to run it
• A quick recap of the Footie Application we’re testing with
• The utPLSQL Assert API
• Building and executing Test Suites
• Retrieving utPLSQL test execution results programmatically

But first….