Retro blog post. Bringing Multimedia back into 19c!. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2023/05/26/bringing-multimedia-back-into-19c/

Time to level up your GUID usage. connor-mcdonald.com/2026/08/05/m...

More Gooey-ness from GUIDs

I wrote a post a few years back (well, actually it was 2018!) but I’ll paraphrase briefly. There are two common schools of thought when it comes to automatic generation of values for a surrog…

connor-mcdonald.com

Previously on the blog. How to control resource usage on Autonomous. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2020/08/31/more-flexible-resource-usage-on-autonomous/

Blog greatest hits :-) . Idle banter. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2017/10/16/idle-banter/

If you're a big user of APEX Collections, you might want to consider going an "extra yard" to get even better control over the data. connor-mcdonald.com/2026/08/03/a...

APEX Collections – Taking More Control

I posted recently about the usage of APEX collections, a generic structure in APEX that lets you easily store a set of results without having to create a table in advance. It’s easy to use an…

connor-mcdonald.com

Retro blog post. Blazingly fast documentation search with APEX. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2021/05/17/blazingly-fast-documentation-search-with-apex/

Blog greatest hits :-) . Partial Indexes? Take Care With Truncate. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2018/10/05/partial-indexes-take-care-with-truncate

Previously on the blog. Plugzilla!. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2019/08/08/plugzilla

First draft of the Oracle AI World session schedule is live! Hope to see you in Vegas later this year! reg.rf.oracle.com/flow/oracle/...

What happens when data that you loaded into the database was in a format more suited to Excel instead of being sensibly modeled for a relational database. youtu.be/1orDatmUSIE

Cleaning up an Excel mess

YouTube video by SQL and Database explained!

youtu.be

Previously on the blog. Avoid orphaned Lockdown Profiles. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2020/01/13/monitor-your-lockdown-profiles/

Next time someone tells you that "all databases are the same nowadays", they've probably not really looked at what really matters to their business. connor-mcdonald.com/2026/07/30/d...

Database Features – The Bullet Point Myth

I have a presentation that I’ve given from time to time over the years and it’s called the “bullet point myth”. The main thrust of the presentation is that if you look at a …

connor-mcdonald.com

Blast from the past. More zero outage goodies. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2025/01/30/more-zero-outage-goodies/

Just a reminder that if you're still using the old SQL Developer desktop version, you should 1) upgrade to 26.2 to pick up security fixies 2) look at migrating to the VS Code extension version of the product

Ironically, if someone does this on my flight, there's a good chance I'm going to hell after what happens next :-)

Hemant Mehta@friendlyatheist.com · last wk.

Evangelist Whitney Lynn says she preaches on planes because she loves “a captive audience.” She's not alone. It's becoming a trend. If spreading your message requires listeners who can't escape, maybe it's not as compelling as you think. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/christian-...

This wouldn't be half so funny if there wasn't a lot of truth to it.

"The entire software industry needs to up its security game." Yup.

Simon Willison@simonwillison.net · last wk.

Hugging Face just published a highly detailed technical account of OpenAI's accidental cyberattack on their systems - it's wild how sophisticated this was: huggingface.co/blog/agent-i... Wrote up some of my own notes here: simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/28/...

When you're helping someone troubleshoot a problem, the absolute worst 5 words you can hear is: "Oh, I forgot to mention" ... sigh, back to square 1 and lets take it from the top

From the vault. SQL Macros complex SQL made easy. Elapsed time calculation. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2021/11/16/sql-macros-complex-sql-made-easy-elapsed-time-calculation/

The same old chestnut... just in a different guise with APEX collections connor-mcdonald.com/2026/07/28/t...

The APEX_COLLECTIONS crash puzzler…

What would you do if everything in your environment looked perfectly fine, the data looked correct and yet every time you query a table, the query crashes with some sort of error? Yes, here I am ba…

connor-mcdonald.com

It's patching day for me! "Don't delay, patch today!"

Blast from the past. Concurrency ... the path to success and the path the failure. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2018/04/13/concurrency-the-path-to-success-and-the-path-the-failure/

One of the reasons I love doing the AskTOM Live sessions... you get to stay in touch with friends you've met at conferences or similar events all over the world. Sweet to have the Oracle folks from London dropping into my latest session.

One of the great things about the Sangam conference, is that its more than just tech content, and even more than tech networking. Its a great cultural insight into India and always a highlight of the year. @aioug.bsky.social @oracleace.bsky.social

Blog greatest hits :-) . Take care with automatic indexes. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2019/04/24/take-care-with-automatic-indexes

Previously on the blog. DML error logging customising the error log table. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2019/10/31/dml-error-logging-redux/

Blast from the past. From stateful to stateless PL/SQL. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2022/11/09/from-stateful-to-stateless-pl-sql/

Previously on the blog. Much ado about (paying) nothing. https://connor-mcdonald.com/2021/04/22/much-ado-about-paying-nothing/

AskTOM Live for all of your Database questions starts in less than 2 hours. See you there! Zoom URL oracle.zoom.us/j/9835629617...

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.

oracle.zoom.us

Want to sneak a data quality disaster passed your database defences? Easy ... just don't use declarative constraints or assertions :-)