Skip to main content

Planning for trouble: comments on my latest Oracle Magazine article.

In my November/December 2014 article for Oracle Magazine, Planning for Trouble, I urge developers to realize that regardless of best intentions, not everything related to our apps is under our control, and we need to assume that trouble might be coming our way.

I received today, the following comments from Gary Malandro, which I thought you might enjoy reading:

 Enjoyed your article in Oracle Magazine, and I have a few comments.

1.       You mentioned “Documents that spell out naming conventions…fit very nicely inside desk drawers”.  On our team, we have a number of policies that include the requirements for a technical design document, a software change request, source control, and some regarding style.  First thought upon hearing that is probably what-a-load-of-bureaucratic-nonsense.  Well, there are reasons for creating and enforcing these standards.  Compliance for one.  Another is we had code going into production systems that performed poorly, contained logic errors, was difficult to understand, already existed, no exception handling, etc.  With standards, we are able to peer review designs and code to make sure it is understood.  These are necessary when doing reviews otherwise it is a matter of style between developers – what 1 developer thinks is cool another finds difficult to understand.  Anyway, since we’ve implemented these policies our defect rate to test and error rate to production has improved considerably.  Besides PLSQL, we also develop in Java and .Net.  I’ve heard all the excuses as to the evil of standards and documentation (and probably said them many times myself), but the people who say this typically have to rework their code multiple times.  So pay now or pay later. 

2.       In my previous role I was supporting/developing a large volume of PL/SQL code.  I created a separate package (XXSA_DEBUG) which contained procedures to output data in various ways (a very, very, very poor man’s log4j).  In procedures I would include a way to get a debug variable and could either decide to call the output package, or just directly call it and let it decide where/how to output.   Production access is limited, so being able to change the debug flag using an application, or even running with a stub program, greatly aided when troubleshooting was required.

3.       Another thing we enforce is exception handling with clear messages.  If it’s something going to a log file or table (aimed for the developer) it should contain the procedure name and where the error occurred.  This allows any developer to trace where the error occurred.  Too many times we had log files loaded with “Failed”, and no explanation.  And thousands of lines of code that contained “Failed” for the output message. 

Thanks, Gary, for taking the time to share your experience. I would be very happy to hear from others!

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 6, 2014 at 1:19 AM

    its really nice and awesome story i visited..so nice informative ,thanks for sharing for this Chicago Public Relations

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE should not be in your application code

A database developer recently came across my  Bulletproof PL/SQL  presentation, which includes this slide. That first item in the list caught his attention: Never put calls to DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE in your application code. So he sent me an email asking why I would say that. Well, I suppose that is the problem with publishing slide decks. All the explanatory verbiage is missing. I suppose maybe I should do a video. :-) But in the meantime, allow me to explain. First, what does DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE do? It writes text out to a buffer, and when your current PL/SQL block terminates, the buffer is displayed on your screen. [Note: there can be more to it than that. For example, you could in your own code call DBMS_OUTPUT.GET_LINE(S) to get the contents of the buffer and do something with it, but I will keep things simple right now.] Second, if I am telling you not to use this built-in, how could text from your program be displayed on your screen? Not without a lot o...
4 comments
Read more

The future of Oracle PL/SQL: some thoughts on Sten Vesterli's thoughts

Sten Vesterli published a very thought-provoking post on his blog: Please stop reading this post, and read that one. When you are done, come on back here for my thoughts on Sten's thoughts. OK. You read it. Here we go. First, thanks, Sten, for being such an interesting, wise, sometimes provocative voice in our community. Next, Sten writes: Now, on the one hand, I certainly agree that the vast majority of young developers are currently caught up in the modern version of a Gold Rush, which is: "Build an app using JavaScript, pay no attention to that database behind the curtain." But I can assure you that I still do meet young PL/SQL programmers, regularly, when I am at conferences and doing onsite presentations at companies. So, young person who writes PL/SQL: do not be afraid! You are not alone! And you are super-smart to have made the choice you did. :-) Next, Sten offers this advice to managers: I agree that PL/SQL is a "spec...
46 comments
Read more

Table Functions, Part 1: Introduction and Exploration

Please do feel encouraged to read this and my other posts on table functions, but you will learn much more about table functions by taking my Get Started with PL/SQL Table Functions class at the Oracle Dev Gym. Videos, tutorials and quizzes - then print a certificate when you are done! Table functions - functions that can be called in the FROM clause of a query from inside the TABLE operator - are fascinating and incredibly helpful constructs. So I've decided to write a series of blog posts on them: how to build them, how to use them, issues you might run into. Of course, I am not the first to do so. I encourage to check out the  documentation , as well as excellent posts from Adrian Billington (search for "table functions") and Tim Hall . Adrian and Tim mostly focus on pipelined table functions, a specialized variant of table functions designed to improve performance and reduce PGA consumption. I will take a look at pipelined table functions in the latter part...
31 comments
Read more