Contacting players in the PL/SQL Challenge

Just fielded this question:

Hi, Is there any option to drop messages to different user? I would love to take help from all the top users from here.

Yes, I am sure you would love that! Hundreds of really sharp Oracle Database developers answer quizzes on the PL/SQL Challenge.

Wouldn't it be great if you could get in touch with them, with a question?

And the answer is: "You can! But only if they have enabled that option."

For example, the top player in the PL/SQL Challenge in terms of overall points is Stelios Vlasopoulos. He has also taken over 2,000 quizzes - no, wait a minute! over 3,100 quizzes! Wow, Stelio!

And if you click on his name in the Player tab (or anywhere else in the site where his name appears as a link), you will see:

The clue "Contact" link is there because in Stelios' Public Profile Settings, he has enabled contact:

So you can go right ahead and get in touch with Stelios. Of course, if many players abuse this privilege, he and others can turn off the setting.

But in the meantime, do feel encouraged to reach out to other PL/SQL Challenge players and ask for help!

Comments

Quick Guide to User-Defined Types in Oracle PL/SQL

A Twitter follower recently asked for more information on user-defined types in the PL/SQL language, and I figured the best way to answer is to offer up this blog post. PL/SQL is a strongly-typed language . Before you can work with a variable or constant, it must be declared with a type (yes, PL/SQL also supports lots of implicit conversions from one type to another, but still, everything must be declared with a type). PL/SQL offers a wide array of pre-defined data types , both in the language natively (such as VARCHAR2, PLS_INTEGER, BOOLEAN, etc.) and in a variety of supplied packages (e.g., the NUMBER_TABLE collection type in the DBMS_SQL package). Data types in PL/SQL can be scalars, such as strings and numbers, or composite (consisting of one or more scalars), such as record types, collection types and object types. You can't really declare your own "user-defined" scalars, though you can define subtypes from those scalars, which can be very helpful from the p

The differences between deterministic and result cache features

EVERY once in a while, a developer gets in touch with a question like this: I am confused about the exact difference between deterministic and result_cache. Do they have different application use cases? I have used deterministic feature in many functions which retrieve data from some lookup tables. Is it essential to replace these 'deterministic' key words with 'result_cache'? So I thought I'd write a post about the differences between these two features. But first, let's make sure we all understand what it means for a function to be deterministic. From Wikipedia : In computer science, a deterministic algorithm is an algorithm which, given a particular input, will always produce the same output, with the underlying machine always passing through the same sequence of states. Another way of putting this is that a deterministic subprogram (procedure or function) has no side-effects. If you pass a certain set of arguments for the parameters, you will always get

How to Pick the Limit for BULK COLLECT

This question rolled into my In Box today: In the case of using the LIMIT clause of BULK COLLECT, how do we decide what value to use for the limit? First I give the quick answer, then I provide support for that answer Quick Answer Start with 100. That's the default (and only) setting for cursor FOR loop optimizations. It offers a sweet spot of improved performance over row-by-row and not-too-much PGA memory consumption. Test to see if that's fast enough (likely will be for many cases). If not, try higher values until you reach the performance level you need - and you are not consuming too much PGA memory. Don't hard-code the limit value: make it a parameter to your subprogram or a constant in a package specification. Don't put anything in the collection you don't need. [from Giulio Dottorini] Remember: each session that runs this code will use that amount of memory. Background When you use BULK COLLECT, you retrieve more than row with each fetch,

Obsessed with Oracle PL/SQL

Search This Blog