https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPIpaUrN1HQ&t=7s
Enjoy!
Thursday, November 6, 2025
CTE chat with Chris on Aak Tom Office Hours
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Getting WITH it on Ask Tom
Tuesday October 21st 2025, 9AM Eastern US time.
The topic will be one of my favorites in SQL Land, CTEs (Common Table Expressions). The title is “Getting WITH it, Using CTEs for better Performance”. I hope you can join in for a fun discussion on this powerful tool to improve your SQL performance.
Click here to get to the event page.
Friday, August 29, 2025
In this era of speed, we need to slow down.
It’s certainly not new, this idea of doing things faster. Working in IT as I do it has been a theme all along. Be it the speed of the CPUs or storage retrieval at the lower levels, or how fast a program compiles at a higher level. (Remember when we used to write programs?) The faster something can be done the better.
This might be true for the hardware and software of computers, but it isn’t necessarily true for us humans. Do you really want to do everything faster?
One thing I think needs to be done slower is writing emails and other types of written communication (like this blog post). To many times I find myself writing an email that is full of mistakes. Sure, the email system can check spelling, but when I spell the word correctly and it’s the wrong word, it doesn’t always know that. And there are some systems that don’t have the ability to check spelling and grammar as well as others.
(A note on wrong words, in the above I had “reliving” instead of “relying”. The word was spelled correctly but clearly not the correct one.)
There are plenty of other times we need to slow down. Many revolve around communication.
When speaking to each other, taking a moment to think about what to say can go a long way to communicate not only what you want to say but also how you want to say it. And there are times when not saying anything might really be the best choice of all.
Of course, this applies to actions as well. How many times have you done something that you immediately regret? Maybe not huge but none the less, you think to yourself “why did I just do that!?”
Life is in the pause.
Pause for a moment or two to consider what you have written or are about to say or do.
Once something is written or said or done, it will live forever.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Recording of Reading Plans
Here is a link to the reading plans talk I did with Chris Saxon of Ask Tom Office hours last week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaqdsaepmY8
If nothing else this might be good to help you get to sleep. 😴
Enjoy!
Monday, July 21, 2025
Finally! Error messages that really help!
A rather huge problem in debugging queries over the years
was the dreaded “ambiguous column” error.
It wasn’t something I ran into a lot, but when I did it always seemed to
come up in rather large queries and was unbelievably hard to figure out which
column.
Now in 23ai we finally have an error message that at least
gives a clue:
ORA-00918: CREATED: column ambiguously specified - appears
in RVD_SCALAR_ALLUSERS and RVD_SCALAR_ALLOBJECTS
Apparently other error messages have also been enhanced to
be more helpful as well. I’ve personally
not bumped into any of them just yet, but this is great news.
Well that only took about 100 years. 😏
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
I’ll be on Ask Tom Office Hours!
I’ll be discussing how to read plans in Oracle on the 15th of July 2025. Join in for a fun filled discussion about this fundamental skill for Oracle Professionals. Register Here!
See you there!
Full link here in case the hyperlink doesn't work:
https://asktom.oracle.com/ords/r/tech/catalog/session-landing-page?p2_event_id=67493840316866131103361221956880470211&p2_join_yn=&p2_prev_page=3&clear=2&session=514799324044833&cs=1M0-Xs3clx05hEC13jfdZAc-IBLW2WgJOIo8pioS6UbbAeWfNGa8KHThFPZAAXcUaM43RD9P0FkA0JtpDexy-GA
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
It's quite a year.
My father has passed away. Below is his obituary, with a link to it as well. God speed dad.
John Van Dyke, Husband, Father, Environmental Engineer, Horse Farm Manager, Scout Leader, Tree Farmer and US Air Force Airman, passed away on 10 May, 2025. He was 84. He was born in Detroit Michigan on 15 November 1940.
John was predeceased by his parents, John and Helen also his sister Barbara.
John is survived by his wife of 64 years Jean ("Squeek"), his sister Norma and his two sons, John ("Ric") his significate other Rachel, Michael ("Myke") and his wife Chris. Also, four grandchildren Andrea, Tom, Elizabeth and Maria.
John and Squeek met in college, and were married on 13 June 1961. Both their sons were born in South Carolina while John was serving in the US Air Force as a C-130 Mechanic. He completed his service with the Air Force in the fall of 1965 as an Airman 1st Class (in today’s rank structure, a Senior Airman).
John and Squeek ran the Nature's Last Stand horse and tree farm in Salem Township Michigan from the 1970s through 2000, providing horseback riding lessons, summer day camps, and horse shows to hundreds of riders young and old. The farm was well known for Dressage and 2-day Events featuring Dressage, Cross Country and Stadium jumping. The farm had approximately 50 horses and ponies at its peak.
John worked as an environmental engineer at Ford Motor Company for 30 years, ensuring as he liked to put it that Ford's factories didn't pollute "too much". His interest in caring for the environment was a prime motivation in his life, he was active in the Michigan Forest Association where he served as president and other roles.
John was an active supporter of the Boy Scout Troop "P-6" (Detroit Area Council troop 1536) while his sons were members during the 1970s and 1980s. The troop often camped at the farm; he was also a Scoutmaster.
In lieu of flowers, his sons ask that you plant a tree in memory of their father. A memorial luncheon is being planned for later in 2025.
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