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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 1h

The #SQL analysis report in Oracle AI Database 26ai shows potential problems in a query

Cartesian products
UNION
Non sargable filters (can’t use indexes)

You can use this to find queries in the cursor cache which you may be able to improve

Using the SQL analysis report to find queries in the cursor cache which can’t use indexes

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 2h

Run natural language queries against Oracle AI Database with

SELECT AI

e.g.

SELECT AI what are the top 10 movies

Michelle Malcher demos and gives example use cases for it #AIWorld

Example using select AI to find the top 10 streamed movies after 2010

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

Mike Dietrich @mikedietrichde.com · 1d

Oracle AI Database 26ai replaces Oracle Database 23ai

Read more here:
mikedietrichde.com/2025/10/14/o...

Oracle AI Database 26ai replaces Oracle Database 23ai

Larry Ellison announced Oracle AI Database 26ai today in his keynote at Oracle AI World conference in Las Vegas. And I am pretty certain you may want some clarification on what this means exactly.…

mikedietrichde.com

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

Markus Winand @winand.at · 1d

Oracle 26ai¹ was released yesterday.

From the SQL standpoint it's worth mentioning that is has got the QUALIFY clause:

I bet this starts an avalanche (there are already PostgreSQL patches).

modern-sql.com/caniuse/qual...

¹ 26ai is the marketing version, 23.26.0 is the technical version.

QUALIFY clause (window functions)

QUALIFY: filter rows based on window functions

modern-sql.com

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 2d

Get your desks of #SQL tips at #AIWorld from the swag-as-a-service or Oracle AI Database booths

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

Monika Lewandowska @monikalewandowska.bsky.social · 9d

speed sql - I love it!
Speed SQL results for quiz on 07-OCT-2025
Attempt #1: 10 correct in 43 seconds
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
#SpeedSQL devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...

devgym.oracle.com

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 6d

That's FAST!

Great work :)

Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 8d

Lots struggled with yesterday's #SQuizL!

Recognizing the first transaction on the Helsinki stock exchange, the solution was

SET TRANSACTION READ WRITE NAME q'[Helsinki Stock Exchange]'

This names the db transaction

Can you guess today's statement from the clue?

devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...

SQuizL (aka SQL Wordle) for 8th Oct 2025. Complete the SQL statement from the clue provided (hospital_id) using the fragments below

Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 9d

In this month's SQL Ask TOM Live session, Ric Van Dyke is joining me to discuss how to

Use the WITH clause
Optimize #SQL queries using WITH

Join us at Tues 21ct Oct, 2pm UK time asktom.oracle.com/ords/r/tech/...

Getting WITH it
Using CTEs for better performance (Short Course)
October 2025

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 10d

Congrats to the Oracle Dev Gym Weekly DB winners for Sept 2025:

1st Stelios Vlasopoulos
2nd Andrey Zaytsev
3rd mentzel.iudith

🍾🏆👏

This dedicated trio are also the top-3 ranked players for Q3 2025

See the full rankings at devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...

devgym.oracle.com

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

Gerald Venzl @gvenzl.bsky.social · 10d

📚 New Reading List is out!

🤓 This week, we got a lot of geeky blog posts to read through!

Happy reading!

Reading List – October 2025 #1

📰 rowlen surprise - Jonathan Lewis explains the avg_row_len and num_rows columns in user_tables 📰 Oracle DB 23ai supports external Apache Iceberg tables - Bryan Grenn shows how you can query Apache Iceberg files with Oracle Database 23ai 🏆 Governor Hochul Announces $218 Million Investment to Improve Patient Care - The NY State Office of Mental Health awards Oracle Health the funding to create a comprehensive statewide electronic health record system…

www.geraldonit.com

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · 22d

#SQL is second in the IEEE Top Programming Languages for jobs in 2025

Good going for a language that's over 50 years old!

spectrum.ieee.org/top-programm...

IEEE top programming languages for jobs in 2025
The top three are
Python
SQL
Java

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

oracleugs.bsky.social @oracleugs.bsky.social · 27d

Join the Oracle Dev Gym (FREE!) and build your Oracle technology muscles by taking workouts, quizzes, and even entire classes on SQL, PL/SQL, database design, logic and more. 💪 social.ora.cl/6019AE8VJ

social.ora.cl

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 16

This also covers various issues you may hit

ORA-30926 => updating the same row twice
ORA-38104 => updating join columns in merge
ORA-01779 => changing non-key preserved tables in 19c and earlier
ORA-00934 => using aggregate functions

Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 16

Oracle Database 23ai added direct join syntax for updates

UPDATE t1
SET t1.col = t2.col
FROM t2
WHERE

My latest post looks at this and other methods for updating one table from another

Update only merge
Updating a query
Correlated subquery update

blogs.oracle.com/sql/post/how...

Summary of syntax for the ways to update one table from another in Oracle Database
Direct joins (23ai)
Update-only merge
Updating a subquery
Correlated subquery update

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 11

Why not? WITHIN GROUP has also been used for PERCENT_CONT/DISC for ages

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 11

Happy Birthday #SQuizL!

The daily Wordle-style guess the SQL statement quiz turns 2 today

We hope it makes for a fun way to learn Oracle #SQL syntax

Big thanks to Eli Feuerstein for building it

Play today at devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...

SQuizL for 11 Sept 2025. Can you guess the SQL statement using the clues provided?

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 11

Why?

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

Gerald Venzl @gvenzl.bsky.social · Sep 8

📚 New reading list is out!

🔐 #security, 🩹 #patching, 🎛️ #internals, 🏆 #customerwins and more are part of it.

Check it out! 👇

Reading List – September 2025 #1

📰 Oracle Master Encryption Key Management: Wallets, OKV, and HSM Explained - Bryan Grenn shows practical examples of Oracle Database Master Encryption Keys 🎉 Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting expands to discover 150+ new sensitive data types - Oracle adds 150+ new sensitive data types to its Data Masking and Subsetting product 📰 The Magical NVL Function - Więcej Postów demonstrates enhancements for optional SQL query parameters…

www.geraldonit.com

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 8

Congrats to the top 3 players for August in the Weekly DB tournament on Oracle Dev Gym

1 Stelios Vlasopoulos
2 Karel_Prech
3 Andrey Zaytsev

🍾👏🏆

Join them and practice your #SQL skills at devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...

devgym.oracle.com

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 6

A summary of the key commands for SQLcl project #poug2025

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Sep 6

Oracle SQLcl project is a tool for managing deployments of database objects and APEX apps

Rafal Grzegorczyk showing us how to use it to move changes from dev->test->prod

#poug2025

Exporting the database changes using SQLcl project

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

SQLDaily @sqldaily.bsky.social · Aug 29

Practice your Oracle #SQL skills with free quizzes on Oracle Dev Gym

SQuizL - complete the statement using the clues provided

Speed SQL - race against the clock to guess the missing keywords

Weekly DB - a new multiple-choice question every week

buff.ly/05p9QME

SQuizL quiz. Complete the SQL statement on the top left using the fragments provided below in six tries or less. A new statement is published every day

Speed SQL - guess the missing keyword (????) in
???? locations SET location_name = 'Carolina' WHERE meta_location = 'Mind'
From the four options:
UNION, UPDATE, MATERIALIZED, COMMENT
You have 60 seconds to guess 10 statements. A new batch is issued daily

Example multiple-choice question on Oracle Dev Gym. A new question is published every week in the Weekly DB tournament. See how your knowledge stacks up in the leaderboards or play past quizzes at your leisure in the library.

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Chris Saxon @chrisrsaxon.bsky.social · Aug 27

Get faster PL/SQL in #SQL with

alter session set sql_transpiler = on

=> database will convert eligible functions to SQL

Read my latest post for details on

What can be transpiled
Transpiler vs scalar macros
Functional differences
Impact of function-based indexes

blogs.oracle.com/sql/post/fas...

blogs.oracle.com

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Reposted by Chris Saxon

Gerald Venzl @gvenzl.bsky.social · Aug 26

🌟 The non-positional INSERT #SQL statement will hopefully change the way how we write INSERT statements forever. I'm proud that I was directly involved in this effort.

🧠 This blog post is a "brain dump" recounting that journey.

Non-Positional INSERT statement – the insider story

Oracle Database 23.9 implements the non-positional INSERT statement. In my social media posts, I called out that Oracle Database is the first and only database to support this functionality, and by that, I mean not only the SET clause but the entirety of that feature set. There is a lot that can be done now, and this blog post provides the backstory of how this feature came about, what it does, and when you should use it.

www.geraldonit.com

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