There are many ways to display spatial data, but when exploring a new data set in SQL Developer I think the built in Map View is practical. For this demo I used a list of nuclear power stations in the world, found via http://freegisdata.rtwilson.com/. The Google Fusion Table can be exported to CSV format, and it includes the longitude and latitude which makes it easy to convert to SDO_GEOMETRY. After importing the file with SQL Developer into a table called NUCLEAR, I did this to add native…

The previous post showed how to import a file in GPX-format into a table that uses the XMLType. This post shows how to import the waypoints from the GPS logger into a table with the native SDO_GEOMETRY type.

I have been using SQL Developer since it required some goodwill to work. Some of the motivation came from an annoyance with Toad sessions in the database. Iremember that I back then googled “how to block Toad users from the database”.  

In SQL Developer Data Modeler you have Libraries under the meny Tools -> Design Rules and Transformations. But when you select that one you may have seen this error message:

Here the other day I came across this package in a PL/SQL procedure written by someone else. From the name I reckoned it was a standard package from Oracle, but I had never seen it before. It is not mentioned in the manual Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference, and I could not find much about it at My Oracle Support either. Anyway, with SQL Developer you’ll get what you need by hitting Shift-F4 (with the cursor at the name of the package). The API is pretty good documented in the…

I like great tools. An efficient tool will help you do a piece of work faster than when you are on your own. If the tool is made by someone who is close to the material chances are the tool is efficient. The tool I use most is SQL Developer. It is easy to use and I promote it to any developer where I work, especially if they only need a quick access to the data dictionary, run some simple (or complex) SQL statements. It is not invasive, contrary to other tools it does not provide all the DBA…