Sometimes you love you chose Oracle

The last days it’s really hot in Belgium. Working when it’s hot is not good for our brains and the computers as they get overheated.

Some people are distracted as they think about the pool all the time, some others get grumphy and some others make mistakes…

In the last couple of days I had to use the flashback feature of the Oracle database more than the last 6 months together. When you get a mail like: “I had to change something, but accidentally deleted the whole text. Can you please put it back?”

At that time you’re so glad you use an Oracle database! Can you do something like this in MySQL or MS SQL Server?

SELECT *FROM my_table AS OF TIMESTAMP TO_TIMESTAMP('2008-05-12 08:00:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS');

Another command I had to use for myself, when I dropped a table in development, but forget to look at the logic of an existing trigger of that dropped table:

FLASHBACK TABLE my_table TO BEFORE DROP;

I guess everybody already knew about flashback in Oracle (if not, Tim Hall wrote a nice compact page about flashback), but then I wonder sometimes why people ask me if APEX also runs with other databases… Oracle has to many nice features buildin, so some want to use another database I guess ;-)

I’m happy the sun is shining and I’m using an Oracle database during these days.