Tonight for a project I was working on I realized I could simplify my PL/pgSQL code a lot if I had functions which would take a list of dates and give me the first or the last date chronologically. Then I found out, thanks to VARIADIC and a new built-in, how easy that is in PostgreSQL 8.4.2:

From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology March 1-7 is National Procrastination Week (NPW). Happy NPW! I meant to write about it last week. But I was celebrating it instead. ;-) LewisC

Don't get lost in the mix or mired in the details

Yup, batch. The stuff that has been around on the mainframe a lot longer than I have. It's the process many of us love to hate and it seems to fit the old adage "can't live with it, can't live without it". So, here's my question.

Well, it's Friday and continuing on with my latest tradition, it's once again time to publish Kathy's guest blog post covering the latest and greatest Optim news... Enjoy!!!!

I have been learning, in "crash course" mode", about creating CLR UDF's this last week. I have known for some time now that SQL can't do everything . . . even if it can do an awful lot of things. ;-) However, working with CLR languages (in my case, C#) and building UDF's or SP's, while on my list, was not at the top of my list of things to do . . . however, that changed

Yup, you read that correctly. It's never to early to start planning for your upgrade to the bigger and better DB2 for z/OS. There is another new release of DB2 on the horizon, DB2 10 for z/OS. With every new DB2 comes you migration/fallback PTFs; that stuff you apply to your existing system so everyone plays well together.

The silence is deafening

I would have named it the DB Horcrux. Think about it.

Organizations can master the challenges of documenting business processes and capturing organizational knowledge with Oracle Tutor. They can also solve the documentation challenges they face during an implementation/upgrade and satisfy business process regulatory compliance initiatives. Oracle Tutor can help project teams lay the foundation for a successful application rollout or compliance audit by quickly and consistently creating and sustaining employee process documentation throughout the business lifecycle.

Every time I visit the Qantas Club lounge in an Australian airport and switch on the wireless internet I get an IBM URL error.

Cleverbot is a Learning Artificial Intelligence AI software program that cannot learn how to use IBM InfoSphere DataStage. Cleverbot at www.cleverbot.com.  I put it through the DataStage Certification sample questions. User: Wh...

My latest column is "WHY WE RESIST PLANNING" - two answers, one long and one short.

Let's continue on with this premise of controlled coincidence. There is a rule that I follow and I want to share it with you then put it in business terms. The rule was stated by Oberon Zell: Rule: "Be watchful of what you do and say." Why: Magic happens all the time. The reason for the rule is to refrain from setting a set of unintended consequences into

From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology First, they announced that you could go to the full day symposium without paying for a full conference pass and now they are giving away a free pass to

From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology First, they announced that you could go to the full day symposium without paying for a full conference pass and now they are giving away a free pass to

As a data architect, the data model makes me vomit just a little in the back of my throat. I can see many hands, much time and little discipline.

IBM is the biggest submitter of US patents and they are a mixed bag of obvious patents, confusing patents and genuine inventions.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

So, I was getting bad estimates resulting from using a rule-of-thumb selectivity function designed for a different datatype and intended to force the use of an index regardless of the actual data. Query problem identified. But could I solve it?