UP FRONT: From Our Readers

As Published In July/August 2011

Your corrections, your opinions, and your requests: Here’s your forum for telling us what’s right and wrong in each issue of Oracle Magazine, and for letting us know what you want to read.

iPad Potential and Progress

I downloaded the iPad version of Oracle Magazine with great enthusiasm. I was a bit disappointed to see it is just the magazine content moved onto the iPad with the same format. I’m not comfortable reading with the default size.

The editors reply: We have been working to improve the user experience on our iPad application. In the current version of the Oracle Magazine iPad app, you will find a much more readable and interactive experience in portrait view. Not only is the default size larger, but we’ve broken the page elements apart for better readability. You can now zoom in on figures and code listings, too. We’ve also added more interactive elements, including animated technical illustrations. We hope this will improve your experience with Oracle Magazine on the iPad. Let us know what you think.

More Java!

I’m an enterprise architect and am well versed with the technology landscape in many industries. Given the depth of Java’s penetration in the industry and its wide adoption by customers, it seems like a good opportunity to have one to two pages in Oracle Magazine dedicated to Java.

The editors reply: We agree that Java needs more magazine coverage, but we also believe that one or two more pages per issue in this magazine is not enough. That’s why Oracle is launching Java Magazine in late July 2011. This essential source of knowledge about Java technology, the Java programming language, and Java-based applications is for people who rely on Java in their careers (or who aspire to).

The editors of Java Magazine invite you to subscribe to this free digital publication at bit.ly/javamagsub.

Are You Excellent?

Can a company submit a nomination for the Oracle Magazine Editors Choice Awards?

The editors reply: The Oracle Magazine Editors Choice Awards have been renamed the Technologist of the Year awards, and they are now part of the Oracle Excellence Awards. You may nominate individuals at your company for the Technologist of the Year awards; nominations are due by June 30, 2011. Please refer to the Oracle Excellence Awards page for more information.

Broken Blocks

I think the last block to run in the “Name Those Blocks!” section of Steven Feuerstein’s “ Building with Blocks” article (March/April 2011) has a typo. Steven asks us to create the function hello_message, creates a procedure (hello_place) that uses this function, and then says:

I can also call the function from within a SQL statement. In the following block, I insert the message into a database table:

BEGIN   
  INSERT INTO message_table (message_date, MESSAGE_TEXT)
     VALUES (SYSDATE, hello_place ('Chicago'));
END;

I think that the hello_place procedure should instead be the hello_message function, because I don’t think a procedure will work here. (I get ORA-06550|00904.) So:

BEGIN
  INSERT INTO message_table (message_date, MESSAGE_TEXT)
    VALUES (SYSDATE, hello_message ('Chicago'));
END;

Either way, keep up the great articles!
Alan Turnbull

Steven Feuerstein replies: Alan, many thanks for pointing this out. Yes, you are right; the function must be called, not the procedure.