Database Reference
In-Depth Information
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Do not reinvent the wheel. I've seen more than one development team get into trouble, not
only technically but on a personal level, due to a lack of awareness as to what Oracle provides
for free. This happens when someone points out that the feature they just spent the last couple
of months implementing was actually a core feature of the database all along. Read the Oracle
Database Concepts Guide—the New Features guide—the documentation that comes free with
the software!
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Solve problems as simply as possible, using as much of Oracle's built-in functionality as
possible. You paid a lot for it.
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Software projects come and go, as do programming languages and frameworks. We developers
are expected to have systems up and running in weeks, maybe months, and then move on
to the next problem. If you reinvent the wheel over and over, you will never come close to
keeping up with the frantic pace of development. Just as you would never build your own hash
table class in Java—since it comes with one—you should use the database functionality you
have at your disposal. The first step to being able to do that, of course, is to understand what it
is you have at your disposal. Read on.
And building on that last point, software projects and programming languages may come and go—but the
data
is here forever. We build applications that use data, and that data will be used by many applications over time. It is
not about the application—it is about the data. Use techniques and implementations that permit the data to be used
and reused. If you use the database as a bit bucket, making it so that all access to any data must come through your
application, you have missed the point. You can't “ad hoc query” your application. You can't build a new application
on top of your old application. But if you use the database, you'll find adding new applications, reports, or whatever to
be much easier over time.
