After my last post about SQL*Net message to client wait event I had a follow-up question about what’s the difference between SQL*Net message to client and SQL*Net more data to client wait events.

In a recent Oracle Forum thread a question came up how to use SQL*Net message to client wait events for measuring network latency between server and client. The answer is that you can’t use it for network latency measurements at all, due how TCP stack works and how Oracle uses it.

I have so far avoided writing such pointer blog posts which only refer you to another article, but I have to do it with this one. Adrian Billington has written an excellent article on performance of Oracle 11g PL/SQL function result cache.

I read this post by Laurent Schneider yesterday. In the comment section Tom Kyte already explained what the issue was about, but I’ll expand this explanation a little. The question was why should the apparently invalid statement below work? I mean there is no such column nor number as “1.x”), yet the statement works ok: SQL> select [...]

Oracle has evolved over time to much more than just a plain relational database. One option is to use Oracle as an expensive calculator. When researching or demoing Oracle, it’s quite convenient to do number calculations directly on sqlplus prompt, especially if dealing with internals where lots of stuff is about addresses and offsets shown in [...]

I was once asked a question, why does Oracle change its parameter count during session lifetime? The question arose from the following observation that v$parameter shows more parameters after you adjust some hidden parameter value: SQL> SQL> select count(*) from v$parameter;