German Weekday

The big problem of the date-conversion "to_char (sysdate, 'D')" is, that depending on the NLS you get different results:

Sunday is the first day in the US
Monday is the first day in Germany

For the Green-Thursday of 2000 you get:

Green_Thursday := to_date ('23.03.2000', 'DD.MM.YYYY');
America: to_char (Green_Thursday, 'D') = 5
Germany: to_char (Green_Thursday, 'D') = 4

this is sub-optimal, because it's a format-mask, which is based on the underlying NLS and not on a strict rule.

My solution in this case is: The function German_Weekday

FUNCTION German_Weekday (P_Date IN DATE)
RETURN NUMBER IS
  V_Delta NUMBER;
BEGIN
  -- Reference-Day: Green Thursday 2000 = Day 4 in Germany
  V_Delta := TO_NUMBER (TO_CHAR (TO_DATE ('23.03.2000',
                                          'DD.MM.YYYY'),
                                 'D')) - 4;
  RETURN (TO_NUMBER (TO_CHAR (P_Date-V_Delta, 'D')));
END;

and American_Weekday

FUNCTION American_Weekday (P_Date IN DATE)
RETURN NUMBER IS
  V_Delta NUMBER;
BEGIN
  -- Reference-Day: Green Thursday 2000 = Day 5 in the US
  V_Delta := TO_NUMBER (TO_CHAR (TO_DATE ('23.03.2000',
                                          'DD.MM.YYYY'), 
                                 'D')) - 5;
  RETURN (TO_NUMBER (TO_CHAR (P_Date-V_Delta, 'D')));
END;

this function always returns the correct german 'D'-formatmask, indepent of the NLS.

have fun and use it
Gerd

Forms 11g Release Date

Nobody knows the day, when Forms 11g will be released.

But the newest official news about "when" and "where" is:

"Version 11 of Forms will be in the production version of Application Server version 11 which is currently scheduled for fiscal year 2008."

Read the post in the OTN-Discussion Forum

Oracle Develop in Munich

The start of the week I attend at the Oracle Develop in the Arabella Sheraton Munich. Nice place, but we had to run between the presentation from one hotel to another. And the coffee machine was only in the hotel, where only one slot from five slots were...

Day 1:

Monday morning I started with Frank Nimphius presentation about Forms, the future of Forms and the integration into Java, SOA, ...

Marc Sewtz and his "SQL Developer Features" was nice, because we saw a bunch of new features in the actual release.

After lunch the famous Bryn Llewellyn started his "PL/SQL Performance: Debunking the Myths". Gorgeous! Next time I hope he gets 2 hours for all the tips and tricks he explained

Parallel to the presentations Oracle served us 3 labs. Monday evening I went into the APEX 3.0 Lab, where we learned, how to work with the new version of Application Express.


Day 2:

Bad news at the coffee-front. We had to get our coffee in Hotel A and run some 100 meters down the road to Hotel B...

Tuesday I started with the next lab: "Developing and Deploying Oracle and PHP". Interesting to see, how easy it can be, working with PHP

After that Bryn presented the new PL/SQL-Enhancements of the new Oracle DB 11g. I love compound triggers ! And all the other stuff too. Accessing sequences without selecting against DUAL !!

Post-Lunch Frank explained "Building Rich UI using JavaServer Faces and AJAX. That was another highlight too me at the conference.

Interesting, how much Microsoft-Stuff was presented through many slots. The "Microsoft Interoperability with Oracle Fusion Middleware" showed the SOA-integration made by the Office-Toolstack. Nice to see a different world to Oracle.

Summary:

Presentations and labs: TOP
No Coffee: FLOP