Month: August 2007

August 30

I started my IT career some years ago (1993/1994) with a company called “Cairo Information Systems”. This company made very smart software to optimize container haulage. Think about stuff like optimal trips (real time) for imports, exports and inland moves, covering containerized and closed-trailer equipment for cargo types. Optimizing, among others, inland container transportation (empty mileages).

Anyway, just the other day, I received an e-mail of an old colleague (Hans Rabouw). Contrary to our believe that the firm had been taken over and the software stopped to exist; It still exist. Currently a company called LINE is (still?) selling the system under the name “Paris” (once chosen after “Paris” from Greek mythology). Seeing the screens brings back a lot of good memories. The technology apparently has been upgraded. It looks like regular technical stuff nowadays, regarding the interfacing (web pages, application servers, multi-tier, etc.), although the look and feel still looks the same.

August 28

Sometimes I forget the stuff I have learned… And sometimes someone, I am lucky enough (in this case on the OTN XMLDB Forum), is so friendly to point out how silly I am 😉

Last Friday I was testing Binary XMLType Tables in combination with use of an XMLIndex; Both using / being based on an XML Schema. The objects both used namespace references to the, for binary use, registered XML Schema. Whatever I did, it didn’t react as was described in the manuals.

It doesn’t help, that I know now that I should have been more observing to see what XMLSpy had generated as an example XML Instance document, nor the fact that I pinpointed to much on syntax and storage statements.

Luckily, in my mind, always conspicuous on stuff related to namespaces, I was so “smart” to not create a Oracle Support Request, but addressed it via the XMLDB OTN Forum… I was very embarrassed to read about (and afterwards had a good laugh about my mistake) as “Chandra” showed me my failure to see the simplest mistake…

August 28

In this post I wanted to share some methods you can use while manipulating XML data. My XMLType Table example is based on my last posts about XMLIndex and (binary) XML Storage. So if you want some more information I suggest reading up on those as well.

Triggered by a great example from Jonathan Gennick (“Faster, Safer, and Smaller LOBs”) in the September issue of Oracle Magazine.

I used this as a base, manipulating XMLType tables and see what happens if I would do the same, but now on XML objects.