For the curious minded... where have I been...

Got to thinking that it would be interesting to create a Google Earth Tour of where I have been.. from birth to today. So I dragged out this old piece of paper with a list of places and dates. Having grown up in the military, I have been to a number of places. I figured I would start mostly with where I lived, then move to filling in the gaps with places visited while there. For the most part the tour file is in order, and then sporadically filled with some highlights.

If you want to run through the tour yourself, grab a copy of Google Earth and then grab this file here to walk through the tour. Its under 10 minutes right now. Who knows down the road. Guess I will see where it takes us...

Where Have I Been

Agile Development

Found these on YouTube regarding Agile Development. Found them very informative and possibly a introductory tool for business when introducing Agile methodology for the first time.

Agile Methodology is a tool like any other tool... right time and right place. Agreeably more often than not it could be the right method to engage.

You can download the videos here, both of which are under 10 minutes each.

Agile vs Waterfall : A Tale of Two Teams
SCRUM in Under 10 minutes

File Dump Utility using Dynamic SQL

Was reading through a listserver group that I am subscribed to, and a question prompted me to repost this information. It is in fact included in the Email Utility that I have here, but thought it worth posting on its own as well. I cannot remember where I found the original code of this file dump utility, however, originally it was accompanied by a dump_fixed routine as well. I later enhanced the overall into a single API call with additional features such as :

  • User Defined Separator
  • Optional Header Inclusion
  • Optional Trailing Separator
  • User Defined Maximum Line Size
  • Write and Append Modes



It provides a very easy means of writing out a flat file from data source. Much easier than making all of those UTL_FILE.PUT statements... all reduced down to a single API call... simply by passing your SQL. The SQL itself can be generated dynamically. Take note also that we include the standard, and ever important, exceptions to address key errors that may potentially occur. Depending upon your usage, you might alter the exception handler so that it raises the error and propogates it out instead of just displaying the information.

Another interesting benefit is that it provides a good example of how you can dynamically identify columns that belong to a table, and then utilize that information sourced.

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Prime example showing benefits of Analytical Functions

On the topic of analytical functions, I will be the first to say that they are not my strength. However that said, reading one article after another I am increasingly aware of what I am missing.

I stumbled upon an excellent article demonstrating significant performance gains across the board from timing to resource utilization, all due to the use of analytical functions.

I encourage you take some time and review the posting.

Analytic Functions: A Savior by ASIF MOMEN

IETester: Develop/test your site in IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 RC1

Link: http://technology.amis.nl/blog/4967/ietester-developtest-your-site-in-ie-6-7-and-8-rc1

by Emiel Paasschens

"When developing or testing your web application, you often have to support different browsers and versions. On Window machines testing for different versions of Firefox, Opera and Chrome is not a real problem as these browsers all allow you to install different versions on one machine. Only Internet Explorer (IE), is always a bit more difficult, because it’s integrated in the OS (Windows) of the machine. This mostly ends up installing multiple IE versions on multiple (virtual) machines, which is not a nice way of working when developing. Can we do this different and easier? Yes, we can!

The solution is quite easy and even easier then having multiple version of Firefox, Opera or Chrome on your machine.
How? Just try IETester. This is a free web browser that emulates IE5.5, IE 6, 7 and 8 RC1 in one browser. You can even open multiple IE 6, IE 7 and/or IE 8 tabs at the same time!"