Changes to Oracle Dev Gym Tournaments in 2021

The more things change, the more they stay the same?

Or is it: No matter how much we want things to stay the same, they inevitably must change?

Or perhaps it's: 2020's been such a horrible year in many respects, let's change things up in 2021 in every way we can!

Whichever platitude or desire fits best, at the Oracle Dev Gym, things are about to change.

From 2010 to 2014, this website (then known as the PL/SQL Challenge) offered daily quizzes on PL/SQL, plus SQL, Logic, database design, APEX (on and off), Java (for a while). In 2014, when I rejoined Oracle, the PL/SQL quiz also went to a weekly cadence.

For 2021, we are going to switch things up a bit more. Starting January 9, the SQL, PL/SQL and database design quizzes will be "converged" into a single weekly Oracle Database quiz.

I know that this change may not be very popular with the many players who have, with incredible dedication, taken pretty much every single one of those quizzes over the years.

I hope, though, that everyone who visits the Dev Gym will benefit from the wider scope of topics covered in the new quiz, the focus on newer features, and the additional workouts and classes that will be offered on the site.

You can read more of the details about this change on Chris Saxon's SQL blog.

Comments

Why DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE should not be in your application code

A database developer recently came across my Bulletproof PL/SQL presentation, which includes this slide. That first item in the list caught his attention: Never put calls to DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE in your application code. So he sent me an email asking why I would say that. Well, I suppose that is the problem with publishing slide decks. All the explanatory verbiage is missing. I suppose maybe I should do a video. :-) But in the meantime, allow me to explain. First, what does DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE do? It writes text out to a buffer, and when your current PL/SQL block terminates, the buffer is displayed on your screen. [Note: there can be more to it than that. For example, you could in your own code call DBMS_OUTPUT.GET_LINE(S) to get the contents of the buffer and do something with it, but I will keep things simple right now.] Second, if I am telling you not to use this built-in, how could text from your program be displayed on your screen? Not without a lot o...

How to Pick the Limit for BULK COLLECT

This question rolled into my In Box today: In the case of using the LIMIT clause of BULK COLLECT, how do we decide what value to use for the limit? First I give the quick answer, then I provide support for that answer Quick Answer Start with 100. That's the default (and only) setting for cursor FOR loop optimizations. It offers a sweet spot of improved performance over row-by-row and not-too-much PGA memory consumption. Test to see if that's fast enough (likely will be for many cases). If not, try higher values until you reach the performance level you need - and you are not consuming too much PGA memory. Don't hard-code the limit value: make it a parameter to your subprogram or a constant in a package specification. Don't put anything in the collection you don't need. [from Giulio Dottorini] Remember: each session that runs this code will use that amount of memory. Background When you use BULK COLLECT, you retrieve more than row with each fetch, ...

PL/SQL 101: Three ways to get error message/stack in PL/SQL

The PL/SQL Challenge quiz for 10 September - 16 September 2016 explored the different ways you can obtain the error message / stack in PL/SQL. Note: an error stack is a sequence of multiple error messages that can occur when an exception is propagated and re-raised through several layers of nested blocks. The three ways are: SQLERRM - The original, traditional and (oddly enough) not currently recommended function to get the current error message. Not recommended because the next two options avoid a problem which you are unlikely to run into: the error stack will be truncated at 512 bytes, and you might lose some error information. DBMS_UTILITY.FORMAT_ERROR_STACK - Returns the error message / stack, and will not truncate your string like SQLERRM will. UTL_CALL_STACK API - Added in Oracle Database 12c, the UTL_CALL_STACK package offers a comprehensive API into the execution call stack, the error stack and the error backtrace. Note: check out this LiveSQL script if...

Obsessed with Oracle PL/SQL

Search This Blog