Oct/070
Remove Case-Sensitivity in Oracle
Oracle is a great RDBMS, but the fact that searches against the database are case-sensitive can be a pain in the butt. Here’s how you can make searches case-insensitive…
Oct/070
MySQL 4.X to Oracle Notes
Stumbled across this useful page full of examples and notes on how MySQL 4.x and Oracle differ, and how you can avoid complications if you want to migrate a database between the two…
About once a year I need to migrate a medium-sized web application using MySQL to Oracle.
Usually it’s to prepare a successful intranet application for a move to a formally supported production environment - and in Silicon Valley, that usually means Oracle.
I was apologizing to Monty at OSCON this year about my latest migration project away from MySQL.
His surprising response was, “It’s not a bad thing. I don’t mind hearing about conversions because successful migrations demonstrate that people don’t have to worry about database lock-in.”
Here’s some notes on doing migrations.
Oct/070
Log/Audit Tables in Oracle
One of the useful things that i’ve been asked to set-up lately is automatic logging of changes to several of our database tables.
My first thought was to do this in Perl (as the rest of the system is in Perl), but this would mean adding extra methods and calls in the Perl code to update the database (both the original tables and the new log tables). That seemed like a solution - a pain in the arse to implement, but a solution.
Thankfully one of the helpful chaps in my department suggested doing it all in the database with triggers as this is quite common in banks and the like. What a damn fine idea! Only a little SQL to write and no extra Perl.
Oct/070
Auto-Increment ID’s in Oracle
This is old news to most people who have been using Oracle for a while, but to me this is something new that I learnt today. How to have MySQL like “auto-increment” id’s for your tables in Oracle. 
Here’s an example…