As Published In January/February 2005

From Our Readers

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.

Asking About the End

The "What's at the End of the File?" section in Ask Tom in the September/October 2004 issue of Oracle Magazine states that the first query returns the five outermost segments in a file. The query actually returns the five outermost extents in a file.
John Coupe
JohnRCoupe@aol.com

The statement should be, "The query finds the five outermost extents in a file." The text has been corrected at oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/04-sep/o54asktom.html.

Tom on Saturday

I would like to comment on the section "The Last Saturday of Each Month" in the Ask Tom column in the November/December 2004 issue of Oracle Magazine. Line 2 of Listing 3 definitely does not work in every language out there. It's true that in other languages, SAT isn't Saturday, but it's also true that JAN isn't January in other languages (such as Spanish).

A better approach is to specify the date of a Saturday in a numeric form such as

to_date('29-01-1927','DD-MM-YYYY') 

But this is still not correct everywhere around the world. You should also specify the calendar as GREGORIAN (or use Julian date notation), as follows:

to_char( to_date( '29-01 1927',  'dd-mm-yyyy', 'NLS_CALENDAR= GREGORIAN' ), 'DAY' ) 

The article has been updated online at oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/04-nov/o64asktom.html.

Special Encouragement

I really enjoyed reading the Editors' Choice Awards article in the November/December 2004 issue of Oracle Magazine. It's very encouraging to read of the success of other companies deploying Oracle applications.

As a small to medium business, we were the first company in Spain to adopt the Special Edition of Oracle E-Business Suite for all of our business areas. We based our decision on the prestige of Oracle and references of businesses like the ones you mention in your article.

Francisco J. Mateo
informatica@pronautic.e.telefonica.net

Humanitarian Award or Nobel Prize

I nominate Tim Bunce (Oracle Magazine Editors' Choice Awards 2004 Open Source Developer of the Year) to receive the IT Humanitarian of the Year Award or a Nobel prize.

I respect his unselfish contribution and his universal mind-set to help IT brains around the world, across all countries and continents. Tim has helped lead lots of precious brain power in struggles and journeys to discover the new challenging territories that will eventually lead to the better quality of life ahead of us.
George Hsia
eh1258@sbc.com

Better Security

"Better to Best NDS," in the November/December 2004 issue of Oracle Magazine, is a very informative article.

In such an article, however, I would expect a discussion about security. The distinction between definer and invoker rights is important in dynamic SQL, but it is also important to control which SQL can and which SQL cannot be changed by the application user.
Jaromir D.B. Nemec
jaromir@db-nemec.com

That is an excellent point. See this issue's Ask Tom column for a discussion of SQL injection and references to more information on the subject.

Different and More

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. Letters may be edited for length and clarity and may be published in any medium. We consider any communications we receive publishable.

The article "Taking Abstraction One Step Further," in the September/October issue of Oracle Magazine, is very good, but other AOP frameworks are available. I request that you publish more AOP examples, using different frameworks.

I also request that you publish articles related to design patterns.
Suresh Garrepalli
suresh.garrepalli@igate.com

Oracle Technology Network is currently publishing a series of J2EE design patterns, available at oracle.com/technology/sample_code/tech/java/j2ee/designpattern.

Managing Invitations

Any articles on Oracle Enterprise Manager—including its configuration, manageability issues, and setup of Oracle Management Server—would be welcome.
Dhimant Antani
dhimant_antani@rediffmail.com