Me and Technology

SQL Loader

2011-03-08T09:03:00.001+11:00

A very nice document to understand SQL Loader
http://www.oracle-dba-online.com/sql_loader.htm

SOAPUI through command line and Maven

2009-01-16T14:49:00.003+11:00

I have always been working with SOAPUI for my testing of webservices but never once thought of looking at running it through command line or in a java class.

I was amazed when I found this site which tells me that I can not only run SOAPUI test cases through command line but I can integrate it into JUnit as well.
This sounded just great
http://www.soapui.org/userguide/commandline/testcaserunner.html

To add to my excitement...it has a maven plugin as well...yippeeee!!
http://www.soapui.org/plugin/maven2/index.html

2008-04-15T17:07:00.003+10:00

Oracle CHAR(10) and Hibernate

Had a problem today with the Oracle database where the table was defined with a column of datatype CHAR(10) . The application was connecting to the database through hibernate and the hibernate mappings had a definition of String for this column

<class name="blah" table="BLAH_IN">
<property name="test" type="string" column="TEST">
</property>
</class>

where the table was
CREATE TABLE BLAH_IN
( "TEST" CHAR(10 BYTE));

Searches using the Criteria in hibernate for this field would not return a result because of the type difference. hence I had to create a UserType

The creation of this is well documeted in

http://www.hibernate.org/90.html

Saved my day

XMLTypes in Oracle 10g

2008-03-26T13:13:00.013+11:00

I had a chance to make use of XMLType in the Oracle Database and was really annoyed at the restrictions put in by the database. I did encounter a forum which indicated that these issues would be fixed in 11g. I hope that is true.

ISSUES with XMLType in Oracle 10g
1. When registering a schema for the XML data the element name should be restricted to less than 30 characters. This is because, as I understand it, tables are created for each of those elements and the table names in Oracle cannot be greater than 30 characters.

2. Each element node cannot have data whose size is greater than 64kb.

SOLUTION:
store XML data in the database as CLOB's - which is what we ended up doing. or wait for the next release and upgrade.

HANDY NOTES WHEN USING XMLTypes
creating a table of XMLType

CREATE TABLE Example1 ( 
 KEYVALUE  varchar2(10)  primary key, XMLCOLUMN xmltype);

Stored Procedure to register a schema
BEGIN

declare
doc CLOB =sample XSD
begin
      dbms_xmlschema.registerSchema('test1.xsd', doc,false,true,false,true);
end;

privileges required in order to register an XML SCHEMA:

I understand from the dba person here that the following privileges are required
create session
alter session
create table
create type
create trigger

If the XML SCHEMA is to be registered globally, 
the following role is required:
xdbadmin

TO view the XML data in the table

select a.col1.getStringVal() from Example1 a;

If using clobs - create a XMLType from the clob
xmlMessage := sys.xmltype.createXML(clobmessage);

extract an element in the xmlMessage
xmlTest := xmlMessage.extract(xpath, xmlnamesp)

xmlnamespace eg: urn:blah

or
xmlTest := xmlMessage.extract(xpathExtract) if the XML has no namespace defined

append a child node to the XML data

update Example1 SET XMLCOLUMN=(
appendChildXML(sys.xmltype.createXML(XMLCOLUMN),
xpathInsert,
xmlTest,
xmlnamesp)).getClobVal() WHERE KEYVALUE = 1;

Referred Documentation
XML DB Developers Guide

ASP

2006-10-06T16:12:00.000+10:00

Hey..what fun..I am a Java programmer and I get to work on ASP.Yeay!!!!. Anyway, that i not what I am here to talk about. I got a chance to work on AJAX for one of the screens. Thought it might be a monster that I am encountering...but it was not as bad. I could successfully finish one screen with AJAX in a day. w3schools website really did help. What ever be your language...w3schools has a tutorial for it..

I did encounter a small issue when working with AJAX(remember it is all within my ASP application). Getting back to the problem...once I had a screen with components being populated through AJAX and then went on to the next screen from there...if I hit the back button on the browser I could not get these components back...scratched my head for a day,pulled my hair for another couple of days and wallah...found the solution....remember I still am talking of an ASP application...
The url when you hit the back button would hold the information of that page when you last visited it...and you can call back your AJAX method to re-populate it...
Was not really that great a problem afterall.