Thanks for the question, Ramesh.

Asked: December 02, 2004 - 9:14 pm UTC

Last updated: November 17, 2010 - 7:52 am UTC

Version: 8.1.7

Viewed 1000+ times

You Asked

Hi Tom,
Just some general non-technical questions.
Your home page gives the following statistics :
"In the last 4 weeks, I've taken 149 new questions, read 1,413 followups, and responded to 1,118 of the followups"

I have been looking at the First Asked Column on the page and I see that most of the questions were from 2002-2003. Are most of the questions being asked now just repetition of earlier questions that you do not want to publish? Also, are the followups you read related only to questions that were published?

Thanks

Ramesh

and Tom said...

you are looking at the last 10 updated questions there, there are:

Answered, Do not publish 16881
Answered, Publish 8611

over 25,000 questions in there all together. So your sample was a bit small.

But, unfortunately for every question you see, there are 2 you do not -- because they are not worth printing typically. They violate the policy for posting that I have (i'm copying that policy below so all can see it clearly) most of the time or are so "been there, done that" that the answer is "well when I searched this site using your subject, I saw .... what did you see?"

the followups are generally on "published" content -- although if I answer but don't publish it -- the original poster can followup on it -- but those die out fast.

But the fact is that the number of NEW questions is going down over time because the number of FOLLOWUPS is going way way up over time.

Questions by year:

TO_C COUNT(*)
---- ----------
2000 5586
2001 8008
2002 5854
2003 4090
2004 1974

Followups made by me by year:

TO_C COUNT(*)
---- ----------
2001 1347
2002 6792
2003 10942
2004 12648

The followups take as much time, if not more sometimes, than a new question.

This is what people see when they post a new question:

New Questions Policy

READ THIS, REALLY, it'll save us all time and you have all of the time you need to read it!(the fact you are on this page means you will get to ask a question, take your time)....

This is not Oracle support. Repeat: THIS IS NOT Oracle support. Questions that are obviously support questions, for example:

* I'm getting an ora-600, ora-3113, ora-7445 are *support* questions
* I'm not able to install "X"
* I'm trying to configure "Y"

Questions posted here should be "how to" in nature, that is what I do best. Ask a support question and you will get the answer "that is a support question, please use support"

Here is my policy/procedure regarding new questions to Ask Tom:

1. I am not afraid to respond with RTFM at all. A question like "how do i delete an outline i don't need anymore" will be responded to with "read that fine documenation -- we actually document that stuff". Or "how do I use tkprof" -- it'll get the same (read the DOCS). Please take a minute to make sure you don't have a simple "documentation" question. All docs are available on otn.oracle.com for *FREE*. Get them, read them. Really, you won't be sorry.

2. I do not program using forms or reports. questions about forms and reports will get a canned response that basically says "i don't use those, please goto otn.oracle.com -> discussion forums". Really (not kidding). The last time I used forms was March 1995, and I've *never* used reports. If you have a database question -- great. Questions specific to forms/reports -- not a chance.

3. All questions that need a create table with some sample data should include the SIMPLIEST create table statement (no tablespaces, no storage -- just create table t ( smallest number of columns possible )) along with INSERT INTO statements. Eg: DON'T put this in a question:

I have a table with columns A, B, and C. Here is some data that is in it:

ops$tkyte@ORA9IR2> select * from t;

A B C
---------- --------- ------------------------------
1 01-JAN-04 hello
2 15-JAN-04 world

But DO put the following into the question -- this is what I need:

I have a table:

create table t ( a int, b date, c varchar2(30) );

with this data in it:

insert into t values ( 1, to_date( '01-jan-2004'), 'hello' );
insert into t values ( 2, to_date( '15-jan-2004'), 'world' );

Satisfying this simple request will save me hours of time each week! If you do not do this, I will send the question right back to you asking your to do this!!

4. Please include your definition of "it doesn't work". I will need all error codes, messages and a complete description of the failure. When you drop your car off to be fixed, you don't just say "it doesn't work". I cannot answer a "it does not work" question without additional information.

5. I do not handle installation questions. They are best dealt with by support or by if you have trial software by emailing to web-sup@us.oracle.com. I just have not installed every dot release on every platform personally, nor do I have the time to do so. It would be best if you do not post installation questions here (it will prevent others from asking questions I can answer)

6. Please try the SEARCH feature.... it really works. About 1/3 of the questions on AskTom are answered by ME searching AskTom and sending you a link to an existing answer. If I can do it -- so can you!

7. Do not submit multi-part questions. If you ask more then 3 or 4 separate questions in a question -- I will not answer it. The reviews on big multi-part questions indicate others do not like them (too hard to follow) and they take lots of my time to answer (preventing me from answering other questions). I will not answer large multi-part questions.

8. Do not submit 5 or 6 questions at once. Give others a chance. Be fair.

9. I am mostly a database guy. I do not, have not worked with every possible Oracle tool. I have limited Forms experience (some), I have never used reports, I've done Java, lots of Pro*C, some OCI. I never have (nor will) use VB, ODBC, ASP's or any related technologies. I use open systems. Don't be surprised (or mad) if I send you to </code> http://otn.oracle.com/ <code>to the discussion groups for questions specific to a certain development environment. I'll try to answer but if I can't -- its that simple -- I can't.

Rating

(37 ratings)

Is this answer out of date? If it is, please let us know via a Comment

Comments

Please prevent me from doing what I'm about to do...

Randy, December 03, 2004 - 9:37 am UTC

What I'm doing is using the review to ask another unrelated question. I think it's fine for people to submit followup questions, but it seems like some original questions don't warrant any followups or a review even. This question would be one of them. Maybe add some functionality that allows you (Tom) to mark a question as "No feedback required" or something, so the Review portion is not presented to us.

I read your questions every day, I (as I'm sure you do) get overwhelmed with unrelated questions tacked onto the original. Thanks and sorry for breaking my own guideline here, but since you were on the topic of "rules".

December 03, 2004 - 10:03 am UTC

I agree, I'm going to have them add a popup message box that says:

<quote>
In order to permit NEW questions on this site, I am taking the firm stance
that anything deemed a "new question" asked here will be ignored. Please
think about what you are going to put into here and unless it is very
relevant to the existing thread -- a true FOLLOWUP or REVIEW or
CLARIFICATION, please do not post it.

This will allow me to accept new questions (I took 2,000 less in 2004 than
2003, but only because I followed up to 2,000 more 'reviews' that were actually
new questions).

This is by popular demand -- we need "fresh blood" in there. Thanks for
taking this into consideration.
</quote>

and just make it a change in policy.

David Aldridge, December 03, 2004 - 10:51 am UTC

>> ... popup message box ...

No problems -- Firefox'll just block that for me ;)

December 03, 2004 - 11:02 am UTC

a javascript "message box", they pop up even in firefox....

A reader, December 03, 2004 - 12:06 pm UTC

What about followups relevant to a followup which was not relevant to the original question ;-)

December 03, 2004 - 1:27 pm UTC

ignored.

;)

common gate

Alberto Dell'Era, December 03, 2004 - 2:59 pm UTC

>The followups take as much time, if not more sometimes, than a new question.

So why not putting them behind the "sorry i have a large backlog..." gate, letting the lucky one that gets behind the gate choose between following up or posting a brand new q ?

That way, you may control your workload with a much greater granularity - very important especially when busy writing 2cnd editions ;)

And - very often i turn many followups of mine to new q, because i feel that following up with an "heavy" request is stealing your time. Better ethically, but that separates related topics, so somewhat makes harder using asktom as a knowledge base - this ethical dilemma would disappear using a "common gate".

December 04, 2004 - 10:21 am UTC

I'm just going to get the reviews back on track. they were intended to

a) clarify the original question, add "yeah buts" to them
b) point out mistakes
c) add caveats (times when things might not work)

so I don't want to queue them or restrict them -- don't want to prevent someone from pointing out a mistake.

Followups

Bob B, December 03, 2004 - 10:13 pm UTC

By keeping followups open, Tom can have new content on his site without having to do anything at all. Sometimes the user posted followups answer the "questions" posted in followups.

On a side note, I think it would be cool if the followups that were question-worthy were queued up to the "Submit A Question" feature. When it was answered, Tom's followup to that followup could be a link to the answered question.

December 04, 2004 - 10:55 am UTC

the reason for the queue for new questions is so I can control the size. If I queued up all of the questions within a question -- the queue would become infinitely long and response time would go from hours to weeks.

I prefer to keep the queue of new questions to 10 or less.

Further ...

Bob B, December 04, 2004 - 12:34 pm UTC

I was speaking about the followups where you tell the person to post the followup as a question the next time it opens up. I don't see that many times, but when I do see it, its often a very long time before the question gets asked (if at all).

On the topic of the new followup policy, personally, I think its easier to find relevant information scanning a few long threads than a bunch of smaller threads focusing on a particular topic. Sometimes, although a particular followup isn't directly related to the topic (but is related to a prior followup), the information it brings to the thread helps one think of some of the subtleties involved with the original Q&A.

Also, maybe an option could be added to followups that the user would have to choose it in order for the followup to enter the queue for your review. Then you can set up reviewable followups in the same sort of queueing mechanism as the questions. This should allow you to control exactly how many followups you review at a time.

December 04, 2004 - 1:44 pm UTC

Oh, I knew where you were going with the idea -- problem is, it would make it impossible for anyone to ever ask a new question the "right way". The queue of questions would be infinitely long fed from the 'review' system

Miscommunication

Bob B, December 04, 2004 - 1:48 pm UTC

It would only get infinitely long if you chose to make it infinitely long. A review queued into the question would only happen when, after reading a followup, you thought the followup should be a question.

December 04, 2004 - 1:55 pm UTC

that is an interesting idea, i'll play with it next week.

delete + email

Alberto Dell'Era, December 04, 2004 - 2:02 pm UTC

>(snip) it would make it impossible for anyone to ever ask a new question the
>"right way". The queue of questions would be infinitely long fed from the
> 'review' system

You may delete+email the reviewer (obviously automatically, with a button) inviting him/her to "ask this as a new q later"; if you include the original review text in the e-mail to avoid re-typing, that would be absolutely zero-hassle on the (presumably innocent until proven guilty) reviewer.
That way, you get a single queue, and fairness on "right way" question askers ...

No followups

g, December 16, 2004 - 3:04 pm UTC

Hello,
I've been using this site for 3 years now and I think that it is one of the great tools at the disposal of the people using Oracle.
I am a bit dissapointed by the new turn of events where no "new followups" are allowed. First of all it is kind of shady if an issue is a followup or new question. Would a new query that is misteriously using full table scans be allowed as a followup in the thread of full table scans or will it have to be a new question (just an example). Will we have then one thread for each new sql submitted? There is no real measure of relevancy to a thread, is there?
From the fact that 2000 less questions were answered and 3000 follow-up questions were answered I can only see 1000 extra Oracle clients satisfied, nothing else...
I've been trying to post a new question for the last two days without succedding

Thank you,

December 16, 2004 - 3:49 pm UTC

it really isn't shady.

If you came to a page talking about rollback segments -- a specific question "how do I size them" for example and asked me:

o how can i make this query go faster
o i'm getting this ora-1000, why

that obviously isn't related whatsoever.

I'm asking people to use common sense. I've said "no" only a few times (and the number of followups has gone down, whereas the number of new questions has gone up)...

so, use common sense, thats all I'm asking. If you cannot logically in your mind put together your followup with the original question -- don't put it there.

I'm human, I'm one person. Something has to give sometimes.

(and I think you'd find it was far fewer than 1,000 customers -- It was 1,000 followups, but probably closer to maybe 100/200 people)

1 select trunc(created_on,'yy'), count(distinct email), count(*),
2 count(*)/count(distinct email)
3 from WWC_ASK_QUESTION_REVIEWS$
4* group by trunc(created_on,'yy')
ask_tom@ASKUS> /

TRUNC(CRE COUNT(DISTINCTEMAIL) COUNT(*) COUNT(*)/COUNT(DISTINCTEMAIL)
--------- -------------------- ---------- -----------------------------
01-JAN-01 776 4484 5.77835052
01-JAN-02 2255 10514 4.66252772
01-JAN-03 2626 16210 6.17288652
01-JAN-04 2773 17547 6.32780382

and then there is the fact that in the last 6 months -- 3 people accounted for over 10% of the followups.... (they write almost as much as I do :)

so, it was getting a bit unbalanced (those three more than account for the increase year to year -- in six months!)

will the real slim shady please stand up ...

Gabe, December 16, 2004 - 4:54 pm UTC

Never would've guessed that many reviewers leave an email address! 3 people doing 10% of reviewing ... we need to find a name for this syndrome :) ... don't they have real jobs or something?

Oh ... and that pop-up is really annoying (especially when repeatedly doing "Preview Review" like I most often do) ... to the point that I doubt people are actually reading it ... do you think (or see evidence) that the _annoying_back_ strategy is working?

For this one I'm not going to do another "Preview Review" ... idiosyncrasies and typos? ... well, I'll just commit them for posterity 'cause the strategy is working on me.

Alberto Dell'Era, December 16, 2004 - 5:29 pm UTC

Just FYI "customer" feedback: i've noticed that, when discussing variations on the same subject, i prefer "n" new q instead of "n" followups - everything looks tidier and more focused. Especially if the q title is expressive enough.

to Gabe: you've probably read
</code> http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:::::P11_QUESTION_ID:7913917986287#29616123002958


but missed the clarification below

http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:::::P11_QUESTION_ID:7913917986287#29690662984828 <code>

so Tom doesn't really want to annoy us to death - it's just a little bug ;)

It could be worse

Mikito, December 16, 2004 - 7:48 pm UTC

I have a table with columns A, B, and C. Here is some data that is in it:

<table>
<row><col>A</col><col>B</col><col>C</col></row>
<row><symbol>-</symbol><symbol>-</symbol><symbol>-</symbol><symbol>-</symbol><symbol>-</symbol><symbol>-</symbol><symbol>-</symbol></row>
<row><col>1</col><col><date><month>JAN</month><day>17</day></date></col><col>hello</col></row>
<row><col><integer>2</integer></col><col>15-JAN-04</col><col>world</col></row>
</table>

December 16, 2004 - 9:17 pm UTC

hahaha

10 questions vs 10 reviews

Bob B, December 16, 2004 - 11:33 pm UTC

I agree that 10 questions seems tidier than 10 reviews; however, I think 10 reviews is more practical (or 8 reviews and 2 questions or whatever).

Reason 1:
When people search, they aren't going to pore over many results before giving up or trying a different search criteria. The more reviews on a question (assuming they are somewhat relevant) the more likely a Q&A that relates to the users wants will be at the top of the list.

Reason 2:
Increasing this hit ratio (the likelihood that clicking any of the first 10 links in a search yields a desired result), decreases the chance that the person will attempt to post an already answered result. I think this is a factor in why the number of questions has gone down (although there are some ligitimate new questions being posted on random topics).

Reason 3:
People have different ideas of what is "related". As long as people give some consideration, most of the time things will be at least a little related. Any more than that would require intervention on Tom's part, either sorting followups from one topic to another (or just deleting/hiding them) or somehow limiting the ability to add followups.

At the end of the day, the site is well designed both in look and useability. As for cutting down on the number of already answered questions ... if there were a way to pump the Question subject into the search engine and display the first 10 results (clicking links on these would open new windows so that the user wouldn't have to worry about losing their new question), this might cut down on the amount of times you'd have to write:

Search for <xxx> on askTom.

To Alberto

Gabe, December 17, 2004 - 1:27 am UTC

My review was a bit of tongue-in-cheek Im not actually getting upset or anything (not that it would matter of course) Ill click thru 20 popups if that is what it takes to get to the content just genuinely curious if the stats show any behavioral changes.

Tom built the temple, wrote the books, word spread out and more people are coming people of various levels some just dont get it, some have their own interpretation of what _related_ means (I have my own barometer), some dont have the time and will just gamble, some will be unlucky. My point is, maybe the increase in the incidence of _unrelated_ reviews has something to do with the increase in the number of visitors that is, the root cause is increased popularity. I would imagine the "will be ignored" stance will result in a higher number of questions but also in threads where Toms _retreat_ will be quickly filled up by others (3 _known_ people doing 10% of reviews are they going to go quiet as well?). Hence there will likely be more of this type of chitchat over Toms head (like we are doing right here) Im wondering how is it going to affect the overall content quality of the site.

There likely was a vision for how this site should function how is actually functioning may not necessarily precisely fit that vision, but it does reflect how people behave and _react_ to the site. Well watch and see how it unfolds kind of doubt the _required_ self-discipline improvement will ever materialize ... it might just be as good as it gets.

Truncate and sublinks to long reviews?

Duke Ganote, December 17, 2004 - 5:29 am UTC

Tom-- One of my pet peeves is the LOOOONG review (many of which seem to fetch your "ask a new question" rejoinder). Can long reviews (not your followups) be truncated to the initial 25 or 50 lines with a hyperlink for those of us interested in reading the reviewer's full text? (I noticed Computerworld's Shark Tank feature has gone to this format in daily email). Specifically, I find pages and pages of horrible queries with EXPLAIN PLAN output annoying to scroll over, and I can sometimes anticipate your reaction on them! :)

December 17, 2004 - 2:31 pm UTC

now that is an excellent idea....

what do others think, that I could do easily I think.

Yes!

A reader, December 17, 2004 - 2:56 pm UTC

Definitely go for the short display!

Bill Schwartz, December 17, 2004 - 2:59 pm UTC

It will help keep things looking neat, and speed up those of who troll threads for info!

Yes!

Bob B, December 17, 2004 - 3:01 pm UTC

That's a great idea. Would it be a link to the whole page expanded out or just that one section? I'd prefer a link to the whole thing.

YES

g, December 17, 2004 - 3:02 pm UTC

Also Tom,

I don't know if this is currently in use but maybe the usefullness of a thread as rated by the readers can be incorporated in the searching feature such that threads with better rating show up higher in the result set. This would be an addon to the way threads are ranked right now which is I think based on the number of occurences of search words...
And as far as the super reviewers are concerned, the people that keep asking lots of questions or followups can't you set up a quota based on the email address? That would benefit the whole community.

Thank you

emphasys on reviews

Alberto Dell'Era, December 17, 2004 - 4:10 pm UTC

To ease scrolling, you may as well make the pages open on the "Tom's latest followup" when clicked from the home page - 99% of the times it's your latest followup that i'm interested in (the new daily material).

Similarly, when clicking on a search result, it would be nice to have the page open at the "most relevant review" - the one most ranked (conceptually, "repeat the same search in the selected page"). Presently i patiently ctrl-f again after searching - that would be automating the process and, of course, using Oracle Text instead of ctrl-f is vastly superior.

Hiding portions of review

Bob B, December 18, 2004 - 9:52 am UTC

If a hiding portions of review thing is implemented, is there a way to entirely hide the reviews that you feel aren't related to the thread? (the subject would be there but a message like "unrelated to thread, click here to see everything" would replace the body)

As for going to the most recent Tom followup, that would be appropriate when no search has been done. The first ten Q&A's on the page are sorted by UPDATE_DATE DESC, so seeing the last review first would make sense. Once a search happens, it should show the first review first as it does now.

who called me

Shreelakshmi, February 04, 2005 - 3:04 am UTC

  Tom,

 I was trying How Can I Find Out Who Called Me which i got from Selected Utilities/Frequently Asked Questions i created  those procedures and functions  also but while executing the demo procedure i am getting such type of error
 
SQL> exec demo;
BEGIN demo; END;

*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character to number conversion error
ORA-06512: at "SHREELAKSHMI.WHO_CALLED_ME", line 21
ORA-06512: at "SHREELAKSHMI.WHO_AM_I", line 7
ORA-06512: at "SHREELAKSHMI.DEMO", line 3
ORA-06512: at line 1




Please replay as soon as possible .


thanks tom

February 04, 2005 - 11:37 am UTC

</code> http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:::::P11_QUESTION_ID:1529405950004#32274084908851 <code>

whats this

Shreelakshmi Nayak, February 28, 2005 - 6:44 am UTC

there are two tables inv and inv2 where in ionv there is a column named cust_code but not in inv2 but also this query is working whats the reason 

please tell me


SQL> select cust_code from inv where cust_code in ( select cust_code from inv2 ) ;

CUST_
-----
x001
p001
p003
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001
x001

19 rows selected.

SQL>

February 28, 2005 - 7:59 am UTC

select INV.CUST_CODE
from INV
where INV.CUST_CODE in ( select INV.CUST_CODE
from INV2 )

it is called a correlated subquery -- eg: find all depts with at least one emp:

select *
from dept
where exists ( select null
from emp
where emp.deptno = DEPT.deptno );

All of the columns of the outer query are available in the inner correlated subquery.

RV, April 14, 2005 - 12:20 am UTC

I tried last 3-4 days to post a new message and I have no luck.

It has been couple of months I posted a new question, so I forgot the best times to check the home page to post a new question (U used to keep that on your site)

Can I get that info please?

April 14, 2005 - 7:31 am UTC

I'm not taking any this month, just peeking at these. Trying to get the second edition of Expert One on One Oracle back on track.

Got it

A reader, April 14, 2005 - 3:28 pm UTC

Fair enough. I will wait until May.

When the 2nd edition is available in the market? Is it a modified version of your first book (to update the data to reflect 10 g) or entirely new content?

April 14, 2005 - 3:39 pm UTC

fingers crossed for sept 2005 release.

it is a fairly large rewrite, it'll cover 9i/10g only, the 8i version will be included as part of it in electronic format.

Documention of Oracle Databases

Georger, May 31, 2005 - 7:51 am UTC

hi Tom,i need to do a complete oracle documentation Audit.
1.documenting schema objects and storage objects..please give me a guideline and scripts on how to do this..thanks..George M

May 31, 2005 - 8:20 am UTC

I don't even know what an Oracle documentation Audit would be.

But there are dozens of tools that will "reverse engineer" a database schema and "document" it (sort of being done in reverse here, what happened to documentation being part of the deliverables?!?!)

Oracle Designer for example..
And many many others.

2nd the motion to Alberto's suggestion and offer another

Duke Ganote, November 21, 2005 - 5:17 pm UTC

I concur with Alberto's suggestion
"To ease scrolling, you may as well make the pages open on the 'Tom's latest followup' when clicked from the home page - 99% of the times it's your latest
followup that i'm interested in (the new daily material)."

I'd also like to be able to search for questions posed by users like Alberto. I can't easily sort through all his excellent postings and find the ones he felt worthy of originating, like this:
</code> http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:::::P11_QUESTION_ID:11504247549852 <code>

More of the most popular, please

Duke Ganote, January 03, 2006 - 2:20 pm UTC

I'd like to see more than just the top 20 "Most Frequently Accessed Questions". Can we get to scroll down further on the list?

BTW, what is the criteria for "Hot" questions? Some combo of recentness and # of reviews? Can we see some past "hot" topics?

January 03, 2006 - 2:40 pm UTC

I'll keep it in mind for the future

Hot is "recent" questions with lots of reviews sorted by rank after the count of reviews.

How do I submit a quesion

Rajeev, May 23, 2006 - 7:30 pm UTC

I spend like 10 minutes navigating the website and could not find any place to submit my oracle question anf finally decided to use the response feedback to let u know.

May 24, 2006 - 7:06 am UTC

did you read the home page where it says (in bold I might add!)

Sorry
I have a large backlog right now, please ask a question later

See the "other resources" tab above and to the left for recommendations of places to go to get answers to questions!

New Questions

Horace, June 14, 2007 - 12:24 pm UTC

Tom,

I have been stalking your site for 5 months, to ask you a non-trivial question, that everyone else I know has given up on.

All I see is:
"I have a large backlog right now, please ask a question later", but I can see that new questions ARE being asked!

How do these people get to post these new questions?
Is this a matter of some nepotism, or filtering out foreign IPs...

Regards,
Horace

P.S.
I bought two of you books and read them twice to no avail :(

June 14, 2007 - 4:08 pm UTC

just luck - i open up for questions when I have time to take them. there are no queues or anything - it is a binary thing

I'm either taking them, or, not.

New Questions

Horace, June 16, 2007 - 6:11 pm UTC

Tom Wrote:
just luck - i open up for questions when I have time to take them. there are no queues or anything - it is a binary thing

I'm either taking them, or, not.

And Horace replied:
After 5 months I need more luck, so I'm going to write a robot that is automatically going to poll your website (if it's open).

What is the maximum polling frequency that will not upset you?

Retrive Number

Ahmad, March 16, 2008 - 5:24 am UTC

Hi Tom,

I'have one table like dept contain the following data
DEPTNO
-------
10
20
40
50
70
80

How can i retrive (30,60) from the table.
Thank you for your cooperation and continued with us.

March 24, 2008 - 8:18 am UTC

well, obviously you cannot retrieve 30 and 60 FROM the table.

Your specification is pretty well "not fully specified here" - It seems you want to take the lowest number in this table and the highest number - and presuming "10" as being a magic number for you - find all of the 'gaps'

http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/search?p_string=finding+gaps

you'll just modify those approaches to use your magic '10' increment instead of one.

Oracle documents access

Rajeswari, November 17, 2009 - 7:39 am UTC

I am working for banking project. Due to information security most of the sites are blocked including oracle documentation website.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/index.html
If I choose any version and click on view library or download, access is restricted for us.

But I can get access specifying the URL and getting approval from IT head. It will take minimum 3-4 days.

In oracle website both docs and software downloads lead to
download.oracle.com website.

Anyway to differentiate the documentation base URLs and software downloads?
Please suggest.

November 23, 2009 - 2:12 pm UTC

... Due to information security most of the sites
are blocked including oracle documentation website.
...

that isn't information security, that is "not smart"

why don't you get an unblocked machine for a moment, navigate to the documentation and download the library.

Our machine names, IP addresses, etc - subject to change.

http://tahiti.oracle.com/

is the main documentation site, that might work for you.

Thank You

Rajeswari, November 24, 2009 - 2:15 am UTC

Thank You for the reply.

Sublinks of the specified website is blocked. We have one common machine thru which we can access internet. Using that only I am referring the docs.

November 24, 2009 - 11:13 am UTC

it is not going to work for you then, hosts change. guess you should just download the documentation and access it locally.

sqlplus is hanging

PRAKASH, November 17, 2010 - 2:54 am UTC

Hi

Oracle is handing kindly help me

November 17, 2010 - 7:52 am UTC

my car won't start

kindly please help me.

we are even.

see the other thread where you posted just about as much detail.

Here's a thought on the original topic

A Reader, November 19, 2010 - 2:53 am UTC

You know how annoying it is when posts are submitted by "A Reader" so you can't distinguish one from another? Could you reject posts from A Reader in future? I know people would just put A N Other-Reader instead, but maybe it would be possible to start a list of banned names, or just delete stuff from these unnecessarily anonymous people.

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sqlplus is hanging

Here's a thought on the original topic

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