As Published In September/October 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.

Regarding your editorial "Edgar (Ted) Codd, 1923-2003" in the July/August 2003 issue of Oracle Magazine, a couple of points should be made in the interest of accuracy in journalism, which should certainly be an objective in any obituary regarding Codd.

First, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" was first published in 1969, not 1970.

Second, Codd did not issue "even more detailed guidelines" soon after publishing the paper. The 12 principles were first published in the 1980s. They were not more detailed, but a gloss. Indeed, he often said he regretted ever having published them.

Third, IBM did not leave it to "other companies and entrepreneurs to figure out how to further develop Codd's ideas." Both IBM and the University of California, Berkeley, established research programs to do so in the early 1970s. Both Codd and Chris Date consulted on IBM's efforts.

I hope you will find some way to correct these errors, if for no other reason than out of respect for Codd. He was a professional friend and will be missed.
David McGoveran
mcgoveran@alternativetech.com

Where Is 9.0.4?

Page 27 in the July/August 2003 issue of Oracle Magazine clearly states that Oracle9i Application Server 9.0.4 is available for download. When I searched, however, it was not available anywhere. I have been waiting for this version for some time.
Stephen Windsor
swindsor@wesleyan.edu

Page 27 of the July/August 2003 issue of Oracle Magazine states that Oracle9iAS 9.0.4 can be downloaded from OTN. However, I cannot seem to locate it. If it is available, what is the URL?
Charlie Mengler
Charlie_Mengler@HomeDepot.com

You can download a developer preview of Oracle9iAS Containers for J2EE 9.0.4 on OTN at /software/products/ias/preview.html. Please note that this download is for development purposes only. It is not certified for production use.

The Oracle9iAS 9.0.4 point release has been removed from the production schedule. All of the features planned for the Oracle9iAS 9.0.4 point release, and many more, have instead been incorporated into the upcoming major application server release: Oracle Application Server 10g.

Additional Linux

Send Mail to the Editor 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, /oraclemagazine. Letters may be edited for length and clarity and may be published in any medium. We consider any communications we receive publishable.

Ed. note—The "Enterprise Security for Linux" section in the May/June 2003 issue of Oracle Magazine omitted mention of Oracle's announcement to submit Oracle9i Database Release 2 on the Linux operating system for a Common Criteria (ISO 15408) evaluation at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4. For details on this announcement, see the press release at oracle.com/corporate/ press/1623353.html.

Still Correcting

I had written a long letter to Oracle Magazine, of which only the initial text was published in "From Our Readers" on page 7 of the May/June 2003 issue. My letter included the code correction printed in the issue, but there was another error created when the code was printed. The correct code is

SELECT Min(Col1) FROM (SELECT col1 FROM
   (SELECT DISTINCT col1 FROM Tab1
      ORDER BY col1 DESC)

    WHERE RowNum<=&N) 

The closing parenthesis after DESC was left out of my correction in the magazine. In my original letter, I also proposed two very interesting improvements to this same code that were not published.
Aníbal Gayo
agayo@bse.com.uy

Oracle Magazine apologizes for the error we introduced into your code correction when we printed it. We also thank all other readers who sent the closing-parenthesis correction for this code. Please note that the space in our letters page is limited and corrections are our first priority. All letters, including those with corrections, may also be edited for length.

Globally Incorrect

Ed. note—Several readers wrote in about an error in the "Globablize with Character Semantics" article in the March/April 2003 issue of Oracle Magazine. The steps that describe the process of converting an existing schema and its associated data from byte semantics and a single-byte character set to character semantics and a multibyte character set have been corrected in the online article at /oramag/oracle/03-mar/o23sql.html.