The “best” tool
I had a question the other day that constantly pops up on my feed whether it’s on social media or people asking Q&A at a conference etc. And that...
2026-07-15 (first published: 2026-07-13)
22 reads
Connor McDonald
Tip: Expanding a SQL statement
In all recent versions of the database you can call DBMS_UTILITY.EXPAND_SQL_TEXT to get the “true” version of a SQL that the database will run. It takes your SQL as...
2026-07-03 (first published: 2026-07-02)
30 reads
WITH clause gets a 26ai boost!
By way of background, a while back I did video called “My New Favourite Join” on the LATERAL clause. The reason I like it is that it lets you...
2026-07-13 (first published: 2026-07-01)
566 reads
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I’d like to apply the Goldilocks principle to a database object-namely, a materialized view. You...
2026-06-30
26 reads
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation project. We were replacing an existing non-Oracle system with an entirely new Oracle database application...
2026-06-27 (first published: 2026-06-26)
39 reads
Keeping your tech ego in check
In my usual twitter doom scrolling, I came across this post the other day Now it’s pretty obvious to me that this is one of the standard “engagement bait”...
2026-06-07
15 reads
First dabblings with APEXlang
Obviously there are plenty of folks in the Oracle APEX team with waaaayy more experience in APEXlang than I have, so this isn’t an in-depth expose into all of...
2026-05-27
13 reads
Vanishing objects; hello ORA-08103
In the previous post we saw that even though we had done an exchange partition mid-flights through a query execution, the query kept on running to successful completion. The...
2026-05-13
10 reads
A very robust query
Some times I’m blown away by how the database will try very hard to save you from yourself :-). Consider the following example: I’ve got a table called T....
2026-05-12
8 reads
The secret APEX performance hack
Here’s a little secret APEX performance hack if you are running on the Autonomous database. As background, I’m running an Autonomous database with six CPUs and a terabyte of...
2026-05-08
12 reads
Blogs
Claude finds two cryptographic weaknesses (but the sky isn’t falling)
By Brian Kelley
If you haven't seen the announcement, Anthropic was able to utilize Claude (Mythos Preview)...
Generate Embeddings in SQL with Aurora and Bedrock
Most embedding pipelines on AWS have the same shape: a job reads rows out...
Resolving SQL Server Transaction Log Issues Efficiently
By Arun Sirpal
Transaction log issues are one of the quietest ways a healthy database turns into...
Forums
Symmetric Key Encryption
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The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why Your Login Auditing Strategy Might Be Hurting Your Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why...
Building Your Own Software
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Your Own Software
Question of the Day
Symmetric Key Encryption
If I run this statement in SQL Server 2025, how is the password encrypted?
CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY MySymmetricKey WITH ALGORITHM = AES_256, KEY_SOURCE = 'My secret key source passphrase', IDENTITY_VALUE = 'My secret identity value' ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'S&perS#cretP@ssword7'; GOSee possible answers