Oracle doesn’t make it terribly easy to run operating system commands from within a PL/SQL block. I suppose that’s understandable, given that PL/SQL is an embedded database-oriented language. Still, developers do ask me on a regular basis about how they can do this.

Collaborate08, annual conference of the International Oracle User Group, and several other national and international user groups, will be held in Denver this year, from April 13th to the 16^th. I am going to present three papers, including (for the first time) Weird PL/SQL. I thought you might enjoy reading about some of the weirdnesses of PL/SQL in my ToadWorld blog, so here’s an excerpt from the beginning of my whitepaper.

Just how popular is PL/SQL? And how many PL/SQL developers are there “out there”? These are surprisingly hard questions to answer. Officially and even unofficially, Oracle Corporation’s point people on PL/SQL do not have any idea (or refuse to say) how many PL/SQL developers there are.

You will find below an excerpt from my latest publication: the 2^nd edition of Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices. This edition is a complete rewrite of the 1^st edition. I decided that since software is still, for the most part, written by humans, I would create a cast of characters who write the software I reference and critique in this book.

Winter is descending on Chicago; we had our first snow (flurries, really) on Thanksgiving Day, and the sun is weak. For many, this is a depressing time – and I mean that the lack of that and cold actually does make people feel depressed. Perhaps that is why I found myself thinking negatively – that is, about exceptions in PL/SQL.

So I thought I would share with you some of the features and functions available in PL/SQL, especially those introduced in recent versions of Oracle, which will help you trap and log error information.

Winter is descending on Chicago; we had our first snow (flurries, really) on Thanksgiving Day, and the sun is weak. For many, this is a depressing time – and I mean that the lack of that and cold actually does make people feel depressed. Perhaps that is why I found myself thinking negatively – that is, about exceptions in PL/SQL.

So I thought I would share with you some of the features and functions available in PL/SQL, especially those introduced in recent versions of Oracle, which will help you trap and log error information.

Would you like to increase productivity, improve code quality, and ensure that standards are being followed? Of course you would! And one of the best ways to do that is to rely heavily on Toad’s Code Templates (similar functionality exists in SQL Navigator as well).

Code Templates are chunks of code that you can assign a name and description. You then use the name to quickly copy the associated code into your editor. I showed in a previous blog (Don’t start with a blank slate!) how you can create a template of your own inside Toad.