James Koopmann

Whether they are called hierarchical structures, trees, or self-referencing tables they often pose quite a challenge to traverse in any simple manner. But Oracle has a solution. It is not a question as to whether or not hierarchical models are good or bad. We will all come across them no matter where we go. However, […]

A pseudocolumn is a column that looks like a column but really is not a column. What! Stick around and find out what a pseudocolumn really is. The best way to describe what a pseudocolumn is would be to take two of Oracle’s most popular pseudocolumns, ROWID and ROWNUM, and explain their use. While use […]

How many do I have? Do I have at least one? What is the greatest? What is the least? Give me the top 5 rows. These are just some of the types of questions that are often asked when trying to evaluate table data. Many of the problems I see in answering reporting questions, and […]

As your database grows so will the need to get information from more than one table. This article shows you the different join options and some simple examples to raise your familiarity. Wouldn’t it be nice if every piece of data were stored in one table? Well this is obviously never going to happen. The […]

We do not always want to SELECT everything from a table. The matter of finding the information required is a function of implementing the optional WHERE clause of the SELECT statement. In the previous Part of this series we looked at the ‘simple SELECT’ statement. This involved the four required pieces of a SQL statement. […]

At the core of most queries is an underlying table structure. Part II discusses how we can issue the most basic of SELECT statements to extract information from a database table. A Database Table Most often, we query information from a database where that information is stored inside a table structure. Most explain a table […]

How many of you have asked yourself what SQL is all about anyway? Join me as I begin a venture down the road of understanding SQL and how to take advantage of this language. SQL The spelling is so easy and even rolls off our lips with simplicity. The fact of the matter is this […]

In Part I of this series, a methodology was given on how to create a user. If you did not get a chance to read Part I, please do so now before continuing with Part II, as Part II builds upon Part I and requires an understanding of how a basic user is created. In Part I […]

Before any schema objects can be created, you must first create a user that will own these objects. This somewhat simple procedure is often overlooked and it can open wide holes in security and portability. How much thought do you put into creating an Oracle user? Have you ever looked within your database after you […]

What are the performance implications for the globalization of your Oracle database? This article takes a look at indexing requirements when using NLS_SORT <> BINARY and using an ORDER BY clause. First, I would like to put to bed a myth that I am sure will sprout up as more and more individuals venture down […]

UNIX comes to Oracle in the form of regular expressions to increase the power of searching. In the last article, I wrote on case insensitivity I made the point that the only way to extend an application to be completely case insensitive was to get away from the LIKE comparison and begin to use regular […]

How to take advantage of globalization techniques to perform case insensitivity in Oracle. Up to now in this series on globalization, we have discussed how to set particular environment variables or database parameters. This was done to get our client machines configured in such a way that they truly represented their true locale and for […]