http://twitter.com/stevefeuerstein
Oracle PL/SQL expert, evangelist, author and trainer
Areas of Expertise:
- PL/SQL
- Oracle
- stored procedures
- consulting
- speaking
- training
- writing
Steven blogs at:
http://feuerthoughts.blogspot.com
http://www.toadworld.com/sf
Join me at ODTUG's Kscope12 in June
May 23 2012
From June 24 through the 28th, hundreds of Oracle technologists will gather in San Antonio, Texas, for the ODTUG Kscope12 conference. As ODTUG says and I agree completely, "ODTUG Kscope12 is the place to be for the Oracle technical community in 2012. If you are a developer, architect, technical… read moreHigh Performance PL/SQL + 11g New Features Training in Colorado
May 23 2012
11-12 June 2012 will find me in Broomfield, Colorado, training PL/SQL developers and Oracle DBAs.This two-day training, sponsored by RMOUG, covers the most critical features you need to know about if you are going to write PL/SQL programs that fully utilize the capabilities of PL/SQL, including the most important enhancements… read moreSchema-level Procedure or Package with one Procedure?
May 17 2012
I received this question from a PL/SQL developer:Dear Steven, I'm an Italian Pl/Sql developer who often follows your precious advices.As you always say, it's useful to modularize your business logic through procedures and functions inside a package, and I always do that way. My question is this. If I have to write… read moreAre PL/SQL Programmers Social?
May 16 2012
Or are they just sociable? Social Media has taken the world by storm, primarily through Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, LinkedIn, etc. And now everyone expects to have access to a network of "friends" wherever they are, through whichever device they are using. This raises an interesting question for those us… read moreIf I Were Governor of California (or Illinois or....)
May 15 2012
Governor Brown today announced the need for an additional $8B in cuts to state spending, on top of some $15B of cuts over the last three years. These cuts will slash funding for education, health care for children, welfare programs, etc.And California is not alone. Many states face drastic shortfalls… read moreReal Developers Follow Standards
May 14 2012
We software developers are a very privileged bunch. We don’t have to work in dangerous environments, and our jobs aren’t physically taxing (though carpal tunnel syndrome is always a threat). We are paid to think about things, and then to write down our thoughts in the form of code. This… read moreMay 11 2012
Finally after many years of being complicit in the poisoning of our own bodies, many people are coming to realize that lots of the food products (as opposed to food) that we buy in supermarkets are bad for us, make us sick. Thanks, Michael Pollan and others for your impact!This… read moreMay 05 2012
My older son, Chris Silva, is an artist in many media: mural, painting, mosaic, music, video.He is included in a massive and quite beautiful book titled "Raw+Material=Art".If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive, high production value "coffee table book" that will delight your visitors and yourself, or if you are… read moreLoey and her Dad: Stars at 1871 Grand Opening
May 03 2012
Chris won a commission to create a mural, in collaboration with his friend Dan Ezra Lang, at 1871, a new "incubator" for startups here in Chicago (1871.com). Very high profile initiative and big feather in Chris's cap to have gotten the commission.CONGRATULATIONS, CHRIS!1871 threw a big grand opening celebration last… read moreError Management: Criticism from Abroad
April 24 2012
I write a PL/SQL 101 column for Oracle Magazine and the March/April 2012 issue focused on Error Management. I received the following letter from a reader; we couldn't fit the whole thing in Oracle Magazine's Q&A section, so I decided to publish it here. Hello Steven, I've very much enjoyed… read moreApril SQL Quizzes at the PL/SQL Challenge by AMIS
March 31 2012
I am very pleased to announce that the SQL quizzes at the PL/SQL Challenge for the month of April are provided by Lucas Jellema and Patrick Barel of AMIS (you will find at the end of this post a description of AMIS). Patrick is a longtime player at the PL/SQL… read moreGood Deeds - It's All Relative
March 25 2012
A "news analysis" piece in the Sunday New York Times, titled "Text to Driver: That’s My Space," that explores a growing phenomenon of "parking rage." That's when you sit in your car in your parking spot and do some texting or emailing or twittering or facebooking or....anything that involves having… read moreOracle Open World 2012 - Time to submit papers!
March 23 2012
OOW is the big (enormous, really) blast of a conference/party that Oracle hosts each year in San Francisco. I've been attending these conferences since the late 1980s, and each year it seems to get bigger. Fortunately, Oracle offers a "conference within a conference": Oracle Develop, for those of us developing… read moreOhio and New York High Performance PL/SQL Trainings
March 08 2012
I will be doing one day trainings on high performance PL/SQL and Oracle Database 11g new features in Columbus and Manhattan (NY) in April:April 16 - Columbus more infoApril 18 - Manhattan more infoThese are one day, whirlwind explorations of the many ways you can get those PL/SQL programs running… read moreRecursive Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome
March 04 2012
The Republican primary contest has offered many examples of the well-known Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome, whereby candidates say things that cause them, at a minimum, some embarrassment and, even worse for them, lost votes.Today while reading the Chicago Tribune, I discovered a rare variation of the syndrome, Recursive Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome (RFIM), in… read moreThe Insanity of Stock Trading in the 21st Century
February 21 2012
As anyone who's read my blog or otherwise knows me is aware, I have more than my share of criticisms of capitalism. I am not sure it is possible to come up with a better economic system than one that is market-driven. I am very certain, however, that our political… read moreFebruary 21 2012
Consider the following block: DECLARE l_date DATE; BEGIN l_date := '15-FEB-2011'; END; I declare a date variable and then assign a string to it. Will this block raise an error? Hard to say. It depends on the NLS settings for the default date format – for the database as a whole or for my… read more
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