Turning On Pivot Tables - A discussion on generating "missing" rows in SELECT statements.

Sophisticated Mining with Oracle Text - One of the key advantages of Oracle Text is that it allows you to implement full-text search functionality against data in your Oracle database without the introduction of additional companion/ third-party tools. Its tight integration with the database has allowed me to help clients bring that functionality to their applications in ways that they manage and customize in-house.

Programming at Multiple Levels - In Oracle9i Database, you can now nest collections within collections, also referred to as creating multilevel collections. This latest development removes one of the few remaining barriers to using collections for very complex data manipulation. This article offers several examples of multilevel collections, highlighting the new syntax needed.

Which Table, Which Column?—On the importance of always using table aliases in SQL queries.

Does PL/SQL Implicitly Close Cursors?—The first of a series of articles resulting from a readers question about whether PL/SQL implicitly closes cursors that you inadvertently leave open. Getting the answer involved a grand collaberation between myself, Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl, and Bryn Llewellyn (Oracle's PL/SQL Product Manager). You can link to all the articles from this one.

Oracle9i External Tables and Bad Files—Learn important information about how the semantics of "bad input record" differ between SQL*Loader and Oracle9i's new external table mechanism.

Lock the Door with Connection Manager—Learn how I used Oracle's Connection Manager to allow a fellow author to access my Oracle9i database via the Internet.

Using Oracle Global Database Links—Explains how to define global database links in Oracle Names, and how to configure your Oracle instance to use them.

How Do I Become a DBA?—How do I become a DBA? How do I learn about PL/SQL? What books should I read? What websites should I visit? Readers often email me asking one or more of these questions. This article is my answer.

LDAP and the Oracle Internet Directory—I wrote this for the Fall/Winter O'Reilly Oracle catalog. It appeared in the catalog, and ran on the O'Reilly web site as well.

A Real-life Tuning Experience—A short article about a recent experience tuning a slow SQL query.

Returning the Days in a Month—This is an article I wrote for fun after answering a question posted in a newsgroup. It shows a couple techniques for writing a query that returns one row for each day of a month.

Goodbye Server Manager—This is a short piece I wrote for an O'Reilly & Associates catalog titled "O'Reilly has the buzz on Oracle8i" that came out in the latter part of 1999. It appeared on page 12 of that catalog.

Managing Database Objects in Groups—This is a short piece that I wrote in the spring of 1999. It was originally intended for an O'Reilly catalog, but they wanted an 8i topic instead, so this never got used.

Extract Synonyms—When you export a user's objects, one thing you don't get in the export file are any public synonyms (which aren't owned by any one user) that reference the user's objects. In this article, I share a script to extract those public synonyms, so you can recreate them on another database.

Comparing Data Sets with SQL—Learn how to use SQL to compare two sets of rows, from either the same or different tables.

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