SQL skills just got MORE important
There seems to be a school of thought in the tech community that a robust knowledge SQL is now optional. After all, with modern AI tools able to generate...
2026-04-22
1 reads
GROUP BY ALL – Is it ALL you ever need?
You have probably seen a couple of cool GROUP BY features that came with Oracle Database 26ai. You can check out the short video below but since you’re on...
2026-04-17
1 reads
Voxxed Days Zurich
That was my first experience at a Voxxed Days event. Obviously I like Oracle-focussed events, but that can give you a blinkered view of the world. There’s a lot...
2026-04-07
1 reads
Thank you after 21 years
Throughout my long history of working with the Oracle Database, there are some things that often just take for granted, on the assumption that they have always been present....
2026-03-12
1 reads
Bind Variables – Worse than you were told
Many of you probably know Martin Bach. He’s a colleague here at Oracle although we’ve both been good mates in the Oracle community long before either of us joined...
2026-03-09
1 reads
Where is my TNSPING?
I’m a big fan of the “instantclient” solution to Oracle connectivity. No more calls to “runInstaller”, no registry files on Windows, it is just download-unzip-go. That makes installation a...
2026-03-05
1 reads
Generate INSERTs the new 26ai way
Six years ago(!) I did an Office Hours session where I demonstrated a little routine that would let you generate more efficient INSERTs by converting a standard INSERT-VALUES into...
2026-03-02
1 reads
INSERT-VALUES – Bigger is NOT always Better!
One of the super cool features in 26ai is the ability to extend the VALUES clause in your INSERT statements to allow multiple rows per execution. If you’re unfamiliar...
2026-02-27
1 reads
SQL Macros make so many things easier
Addenda Feb 20: I had one colleague point out a mistake, then another colleague point out something else, then I thought about it a little and found other problems…sigh. ...
2026-02-19
1 reads
26ai Quick Tip for Database Links
It seems an odd thing that so many facilities on the cloud environment take advantage of the concept of stored database credentials when it comes to authenticating/authorising access to...
2026-01-29
1 reads
Blogs
Prime Day Recommendations
By Steve Jones
It’s Prime Day. A few of my recommendations, since I want to do some...
Fabric for Operational Reporting & SQL Endpoint Trap
With Fabric Mirroring, Microsoft is promoting a nice and appealing story for operational reporting...
Crawl, Walk, Run with Agentic Development of Power BI Assets
If you’ve been watching AI roll through the data community and thinking, “this seems...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level...
Spending Time in the Office
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spending Time in the Office
Question of the Day
Multiple Values Inserted
I have this code on SQL Server 2022. What happens when it runs all at once?
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Commission GO CREATE TABLE dbo.Commission (id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT CommissionPK PRIMARY KEY , salesperson VARCHAR(20) , commission VARCHAR(20) ) GO INSERT dbo.Commission ( salesperson, commission) VALUES ( 'Brian', 12 ), ( 'Brian', 'None' ) GOSee possible answers