Introduction The Old meets the New ChatGPT's impact on our daily lives has been surprisingly significant in the short time since its release. Reshaping work practices, OpenAI's ChatGPT is expected to drive further change, even disruption in the coming years. Meanwhile, relational databases, the workhorses of data storage for decades, have survived countless attempts to make them redundant. Can the old and the new work together? About OpenAI API OpenAI offers a versatile API that grants access to a variety of AI models. While many focus on text processing and generation, others are tailored fo ..read more

Creating a stack in OCI will also create a range of underlying resources needed to support the stack. If you no longer require the stack it's important that you clean up all of the associated resources as well as deleting the stack. Deleting unused resources can save you cash. This can be easily done by “destroying” the stack before you delete it, in the steps I show below.  Navigate to Developer Services → Resource Manager → Stacks, change the compartment to correspond to where the stack is located. Click on the stack to be deleted.  You can identify the ..read more

As you may already know, Oracle APEX is a fully supported, no-cost feature of the Oracle Database across all its versions, including Enterprise, Standard, and Express (XE). If you hold an Oracle Database maintenance agreement, you're covered for Oracle APEX support and eligible for patches too. Considering that the Oracle APEX team ensures full backward compatibility to the earliest releases of APEX, a pertinent question arises: why do many enterprises still utilise older versions of APEX, even on public sites? Based on our vast experience with upgrading APEX, we confidently recommend the pro ..read more

Streamlining ETL Migrations with Sql2Odi I have previously blogged about Rittman Mead's Sql2Odi tool, which translates SQL statements (SELECT or WITH) into Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) Mappings. After years of use, we recently put Sql2Odi to the test during a large ETL migration project. Our goal was to convert Informatica PowerCenter Mappings, which often embed data join and transformation logic in SQL, to ODI Mappings. The beauty of Sql2Odi lies in its ability to leverage existing SQL code, without having to re-implement all legacy ETL logic by hand. With minimal modifications, we fed query ..read more

We all aim for visually appealing interfaces and accurate data in our reports. However, the reality is that sometimes our application data originates from sources beyond our control. It's risky to assume that this data is clean and trustworthy. When users input data into a web form, there's always the potential for it to be malicious or improperly formatted. ⚠️ Never trust user input! This is why developers should never blindly trust user input. Instead, they must validate and sanitise it to ensure it aligns with expected criteria and is safe for use within the application. Failure to adher ..read more

We’ve recently been focusing on how data is presented to various audiences using different methods. The audiences can vary greatly by subject knowledge and can be thought of in terms of: Subject matter experts: These individuals have a deep understanding of the topic and want to explore the data to generate new insights Subject data users: This group requires data to accessible and understandable with the aim of staying informed and making data driven decisions Knowledge seekers: These individuals want to understand the subject in more detail to either learn something new or change their cur ..read more

For data engineers working in the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a suite of powerful functions designed to simplify data manipulation and analysis. Amongst these are three functions that stand out for their ability to handle structured data in different formats: json_table, xml_table, and the lesser-known unnest. Let us take a look into each of these functions and explore how they can aid in any cloud-based data workflows. json_table: JSON to Relational Tables The json_table function allows you to convert JSON data into a relational table format by extracting specified JSON d ..read more

Data type hints in Python, introduced in PEP 484 and enhanced in subsequent PEPs, provide a way to specify the expected types of variables, function parameters, and return values. While Python remains dynamically typed, type hints allow developers to add optional static typing to their code for documentation, readability, and tooling support. Here’s an overview of how data type hints work in Python: Type Hinting for Variables: # Specify the expected type of a variable name: str = "Jon" age: int = 30 price: float = 12.5 is_valid: bool = True Type Annotations for Function Parameters and Re ..read more

I have recently been working on an Oracle APEX upgrade project. As part of this upgrade, we undertook a migration that involved transitioning from the PL/SQL Gateway to Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS). Given the time gap since I last worked with on-premises systems (a non-cloud environment, if you will), I've been actively researching the optimal methods for initiating and halting ORDS. 1️⃣ The proper way If you deploy ORDS using a package manager, as well described in thatjeffsmith's blog here, the stop and start functionality should will already be available for you to enjoy. In this scena ..read more

I have recently been working on an Oracle APEX upgrade project. As part of this upgrade, we undertook a migration that involved transitioning from the PL/SQL Gateway to Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS). Given the time gap since I last worked with on-premises systems (a non-cloud environment, if you will), I've been actively researching the optimal methods for initiating and halting ORDS. 1️⃣ The proper way If you deploy ORDS using a package manager, as well described in thatjeffsmith's blog here, the stop and start functionality should will already be available for you to enjoy. In this scena ..read more