January 2008 Issue

PIPELINE is the monthly newsletter for members of Toad World and Quest Pipelines communities. Toad World is your one-stop for all things Toad. The Pipelines is your portal for useful tips and information on Oracle, DB2 and MySQL.

Toad World Events

Gain valuable insight through webcasts, seminars, trade shows and user group meetings held around the world.

Click here for a full list of worldwide events

Work Smarter, Not Harder with the New Toad® DBA Suite for Oracle!

Released this month, the Toad DBA Suite for Oracle simplifies common database administration tasks through a systematic approach. It helps you become more proactive in solving performance issues before end users are impacted.

  • Manage, synchronize and deploy schema changes
  • Administer databases - users, roles, infrastructure, utilities, and more
  • Diagnose and resolve database performance issues in real time
  • Identify problematic SQL statements directly from source code or execution in Oracle
  • Optimize SQL statements automatically through SQL rewrite and indexing
  • Manage database space effectively
  • Perform database instance health and security checks
  • Replay database workload to simulate production environment in development or test databases
Get more information
From the Pipelines

Oracle: Draw a Map of Variables and Subprograms Using PL/Scope
by Arup Nanda

You just inherited a complex piece of code and you are trying to understand how the calls are made from and to various subprograms, between variables and variables and sub-programs. If there are a handful of them, you can probably examine them by manual analysis and determine the hierarchy; but that will be pretty much impossible for a long and complicated program. In Oracle Database 11g, the answer is really simple. A new feature called PL/Scope makes it easy. >Read full article

DB2: Table Spaces And Locking Levels, Part 1
by Bonnie Baker

While I was talking with a programmer about locking contention and overhead one day, I mentioned table and table space locking. She looked at me and in all innocence said, "Oh, we don't ever use table space or table locking here. We only use page locking." Buried in that response was the seed of an article. >Read full article

Software Development Tips & Techniques: Prepare Properly for Systems Implementation
by Tom Mochal

The implementation phase is where you ask the hard question - "are you ready?" Ideally, you have completed much of the hard work in the prior project phases. At this point, you should have an approved solution, an implementation plan, implementation activities in your schedule and a project team that is ready to go. You should also have already completed the appropriate documentation, including a user's manual. >Read full article

New Puzzler from Steven Feuerstein

Test Your PL/SQL Knowledge

Answer the following multiple choice question to see how well you understand the nuances of PL/SQL:

Which of the following do not help you execute multiple PL/SQL programs simultaneously?

  • Oracle Advanced Queuing
  • DBMS_JOB
  • DBMS_SQL
  • Pipelined Functions

Please send your responses along with your name, city and country, to Puzzler@toadworld.com by January 22, 2008. We will randomly select four winners who submit the correct answer, and each winner will receive a Toad World t-shirt!

December's Puzzler:

Answer: (c) Dynamic SQL is always slower than static SQL.

Winners:

  • Edith Shaw
  • Mark Hammingh
  • Estuardo Ruiz
  • Allan F Barr

Click here to review December's puzzler.


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