Introduction

This is the sixth and final post in the series on the Pillars of PowerShell, at least part one of the final post. The previous posts in the series are:

1. Interacting
2. Commanding
3. Debugging
4. Profiling
5. Windows OS

PowerShell + SQL Server is just cool! You will see folks talk about the ability to perform a task against multiple servers at a time, automate implementing a configuration or database change, or just obtaining a bit of consistency when doing certain processes. I tend to use it just because I can, and it is fun to see what I can do. There are a …

This Log Buffer Edition cuts through the crowd and picks some of the outstanding blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

• Continuous Delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams keep producing valuable software in short cycles and ensure that the software can be reliably released at any time.
• Query existing HBase tables with SQL using Apache Phoenix.
• Even though WebLogic with Active GridlLink are Oracle’s suggested approach to deploy Java applications that use Oracle Real Applications Clusters (RAC), …

This Log Buffer edition transcends beyond ordinary and loop in few of the very good blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

• Variable selection also known as feature or attribute selection is an important technique for data mining and predictive analytics.
• The Oracle Utilities SDK V4.3.0.0.2 has been released and is available from My Oracle Support for download.
• This article provides a high level list of the new features that exist in HFM 11.1.2.4 and details the changes/differences between HFM 11.1.2.4 and previous releases.
• In recent …

I had an interesting conversation about table functions in Oracle’s PL/SQL; and the fact that they’re not available in MySQL. When I explained they’re available in Microsoft T-SQL User-Defined Functions (UDFs), my students wanted a small example. One of them said they’d tried to do it but couldn’t get it to work because they found the Microsoft web pages difficult to read and use. Specifically, they didn’t like the sparseness of this one on how to create a function.

Here’s a quick definition of a UDF table function that runs in the studentdb schema (created in this post for migrating SQL Server into a MySQL database). The following getConquistador function takes a single string, which acts to filter the result set …

Why should you use stored programs? Great question, here’s my little insight into a situation that I heard about in a large organization.

A very large organization is having a technology argument. In someway, like politics, half-truth drives this type of discussion. This company has hundreds of databases and they’re about half SQL Server and Oracle. The argument (half-truth) states that using T-SQL or PL/SQL yields “spaghetti” code!

It seems like an old argument from my perspective. After all, I’ve been working with T-SQL and PL/SQL for a long time. Spaghetti code exists in every language when unskilled programmers solve problems but the point here is one of software architecture, and an attempt to malign stored programming in general. Let’s examine the merit of the argument against stored programs.

First of all, the argument against stored programs is simply not true. SQL DML statements, like the …