Skip to main content

Oracle Dev Gym gets a facelift - and more!

Over the weekend of April 21, we upgraded the Oracle Dev Gym site to v3 (code name: ORANGE). Here's the v2 home page:


and now v3:


Now you see the reason for the code name. It's orange!

Here are the key changes you will find on the Dev Gym:
  • Orange theme: all that red was hurting our eyes, but the main reason to switch to orange was to make it visually clear that this site, as with AskTOM, is part of the broader Oracle Developer initiative.
  • Site search: type in a keyword, such as "FORALL" or "listagg" in the search bar on the home page, and we will find all quizzes, workouts and classes that match your criteria. You can further hone your search on the results page.
  • The tournament quizzes are now offered on the home page; no need to click on the Tournaments tab to see them. These quizzes are produced fresh each week, and often focus on the latest features in SQL, PL/SQL and Oracle Database.
  • Your recent activity on the site is available on the home page so that you can more easily continue your workout or class, or check the results of a recently-completed quiz.
  • Improved performance on the Tournament Archive (formerly Library) page, the Quizzes Taken page and more.
  • Redesigned workouts and classes page to make it easier to find and take these exercises at the gym.
Other, smaller changes you might notice:
  • The Trivadis class (which consisted of a single workout) is now a workout. All classes on the Dev Gym henceforth will consist of multiple modules. If you were in the middle of taking that class, visit the Workouts page to continue via the workout.
I hope you like the new, clean UI as much as I do. Many thanks to UI/UX guru and Application Express wunderkind Shakeeb Rahman for guidance. Who did he guide? Eli Feuerstein, the primary APEX developer for the Oracle Dev Gym, who did a fantastic job of rendering Shakeeb's design into CSS and JavaScript, SQL and PL/SQL. Thanks, Eli!

Looking ahead, we will be announcing at least two new classes on the Dev Gym over the next several months (Databases for Developers: Next Level by Chris Saxon and SQL Analytics for Developers by Connor McDonald). And in June we plan to launch a brand-new weekly Java quiz!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Running out of PGA memory with MULTISET ops? Watch out for DISTINCT!

A PL/SQL team inside Oracle made excellent use of nested tables and MULTISET operators in SQL, blending data in tables with procedurally-generated datasets (nested tables).  All was going well when they hit the dreaded: ORA-04030: out of process memory when trying to allocate 2032 bytes  They asked for my help.  The error occurred on this SELECT: SELECT  *    FROM header_tab trx    WHERE (generated_ntab1 SUBMULTISET OF trx.column_ntab)       AND ((trx.column_ntab MULTISET             EXCEPT DISTINCT generated_ntab2) IS EMPTY) The problem is clearly related to the use of those nested tables. Now, there was clearly sufficient PGA for the nested tables themselves. So the problem was in executing the MULTISET-related functionality. We talked for a bit about dropping the use of nested tables and instead doing everything in SQL, to avoid the PGA error. That would, however require lots of wo...
4 comments
Read more

How to Pick the Limit for BULK COLLECT

This question rolled into my In Box today: In the case of using the LIMIT clause of BULK COLLECT, how do we decide what value to use for the limit? First I give the quick answer, then I provide support for that answer Quick Answer Start with 100. That's the default (and only) setting for cursor FOR loop optimizations. It offers a sweet spot of improved performance over row-by-row and not-too-much PGA memory consumption. Test to see if that's fast enough (likely will be for many cases). If not, try higher values until you reach the performance level you need - and you are not consuming too much PGA memory.  Don't hard-code the limit value: make it a parameter to your subprogram or a constant in a package specification. Don't put anything in the collection you don't need. [from Giulio Dottorini] Remember: each session that runs this code will use that amount of memory. Background When you use BULK COLLECT, you retrieve more than row with each fetch, ...
4 comments
Read more

PL/SQL 101: Three ways to get error message/stack in PL/SQL

The PL/SQL Challenge quiz for 10 September - 16 September 2016 explored the different ways you can obtain the error message / stack in PL/SQL. Note: an error stack is a sequence of multiple error messages that can occur when an exception is propagated and re-raised through several layers of nested blocks. The three ways are: SQLERRM - The original, traditional and (oddly enough) not currently recommended function to get the current error message. Not recommended because the next two options avoid a problem which you are unlikely  to run into: the error stack will be truncated at 512 bytes, and you might lose some error information. DBMS_UTILITY.FORMAT_ERROR_STACK - Returns the error message / stack, and will not truncate your string like SQLERRM will. UTL_CALL_STACK API - Added in Oracle Database 12c, the UTL_CALL_STACK package offers a comprehensive API into the execution call stack, the error stack and the error backtrace.  Note: check out this LiveSQL script if...
5 comments
Read more