Monthly Archives: May 2006

Oracle Derived Columns In SELECT Statements

It seems that using a derived column in a SELECT statement, without a table alias can cause problems. The following base statement executes error free: SELECT * FROM MyTable This statement errors with ORA-00936: missing expression: SELECT TO_DATE(B, ‘DD-MON-YYYY’) – … Continue reading

Posted in Database, Programming | Leave a comment

Transmission Restored

As you might be aware, my site has been offline for the last day or so due to bandwidth restrictions. Since March this year, something has happened and the traffic per day to my site has increased dramatically. I contacted … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Websites | Leave a comment

Dealazon, The Cheap Amazon

Last night I stumbled across Dealazon, an online shop offering all sorts of products. Dealazon is an Amazon clone, the difference is that they aren’t trying to imitate Amazon, Dealazon are actually selling Amazon products! Using Dealazon gives you an … Continue reading

Posted in Websites | Leave a comment

Oracle COALESCE Function

Oracle implements many convenient functions to handle NULL values in the database, one of which is the COALESCE function. The Oracle COALESCE function accepts a varying length list of arguments and returns the first non-NULL value in the list. If … Continue reading

Posted in Database, Programming | 4 Comments

The Cost Of Popularity

Half way through last month, I upgraded the version of WordPress that powers this site. During the upgrade process, I neglected to update the .htaccess file with additional configuration options. For those unaware, the .htaccess file is a plain text … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging | 4 Comments