As Published In November/December 2003

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.

Does This Match?

In the September/October 2003 issue of Oracle Magazine, Jonathan Gennick's article on regular expressions in Oracle Database 10g is very good, but it fails to mention that long before Oracle 10g, one could use the OWA_PATTERN package to do pattern matching and replacing. Since this is a little-known yet powerful package, I have an article at www.stormloader.com/yonghuang/computer/OracleRegExp.html. I'm sure most readers not yet using Oracle 10g would appreciate this information.
Yong Huang
yong321@yahoo.com

Yong Huang's online article on OWA_PATTERN is excellent. However, there are limitations and problems with that package. OWA_PATTERN does not support alternation, does not support grouping, is limited to ASCII, doesn't correctly implement some metacharacters, and is relatively slow because it's written in PL/SQL. OWA_PATTERN may suffice in some situations, if you can work around the issues just listed.
Jonathan Gennick
jonathan@gennick.com

Make Online Content Reader-Friendly

Recently I have been frustrated by the layout of the online version of Oracle Magazine. The magazine has some top-class articles by respected practitioners, some of which I would like to print for future reference. I know this may sound old-fashioned, but for some purposes, paper is simply the best technology around.

Unfortunately, the layout of the Oracle Magazine Web site makes it very difficult to print out these articles. Of course, HTML is a pretty poor technology for printing, but many other sites manage to offer a printable version of their articles. Why can't Oracle Magazine? In addition, if you could provide a Zip of all the listings, that would be really neat.
Andrew Clarke
Andrew.Clarke@ra.gsi.gov.uk

Not long ago, we relocated the current online Oracle Magazine files to Oracle Technology Network (OTN), started using HTML stylesheets, and began to better integrate our content with the rest of the content on OTN. We are working on better printing from HTML files, but we currently have no plans to post PDFs or Zip files of the Oracle Magazine content.

Award Quality

I found an old copy of Oracle Magazine (November/December 2002) in the coffee room at work and read the article on developer awards.

I would like to know why you stopped your awards at developers. As a quality assurance analyst, I have spent many years testing and analyzing Oracle financial products for various clients.

It seems that you have either forgotten or haven't yet realized that behind every good developer stands a quality assurance analyst/team that has spent countless hours finding bugs and getting them fixed.

Next time you do your awards, take the time to recognize quality assurance and how this sector makes developers, managers, and, yes, even CIOs successful.
Marie Richardson
mrichards@shaw.ca

Please check the awards in this issue. We have expanded our awards from 7 in 2002 to 20 in 2003. This year, we have included a Beta Tester award and an Early Adopter award. We expect to add new awards in 2004, and we will consider adding a QA award at that time.

Requests for the Rest

Send Mail to the Editors Send your opinions about what you read in Oracle Magazine, and suggestions for possible technical articles, to opubedit_us@oracle.com. Or click on the Write the Editors link on our Web site, otn.oracle.com/oraclemagazine. Letters may be edited for length and clarity and may be published in any medium. We consider any communications we receive publishable.

I am regular reader of Oracle Magazine. I would like to read more technical articles on Oracle9i Database on Linux and Solaris and on Developer 2000.
Nimish Mehta
nimishmehta8779@hotmail.com

I am a student. Please provide useful content for students, such as articles covering new technologies, new techniques, useful tips, and how to create a simple database.
Rama Subra Manian
nrs_raja@rediffmail.com

Certifying Accuracy

I am an Oracle DBA in Brazil. In the July/August 2003 Oracle Magazine, the headline on page 105 is "Certifying DBA Fundamentals II." However, the article that follows discusses DBA performance-tuning certification.
Yves A. Russo
yves.a.russo@hsbc.com.br