HTML DB

Today I had one of those minor buzzes of excitement when I started to play around with Oracle’s hosted HTML DB environment.

Without wanting to go into my current feelings about work, you could say things are a little quiet. I’m trying to find things to do but I’ve joined just when there’s a serious lull in work, a lack of communication from my new colleagues and my boss has just gone on holiday. So, rather than sit around surfing the net in someone else�s time, I thought I should keep building my knowledge of Oracle in the hope that it helps the company down the line. When some real work comes up, I�ll drop this activity.

Anyway, I don’t have access to a database yet (!) so I thought I would combine improving my knowledge of HTML DB with creating a test environment that I can access from anywhere. Oracle answered both questions with it’s hosted HTML DB environment. All you have to do is apply for an account here

You supply a few details, including a reason for your request, and Oracle review the request and then create you a workspace, which includes an associated schema. That process took a couple of hours.

Next, you go to login and there’s a sample application along with a few schema objects that it’s based on and good old EMP and DEPT. However, what I wanted to do was play around with the supplied SH (Sales History) schema that comes with the database > 9i so I picked up the sh_cre.sql script from here, uploaded it and ran it. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to work first time as I didn’t bother reviewing it in any great detail but it worked perfectly and created all the tables and indexes I was looking for. Cool!

I still need to load some data, but at least the objects are there. Next I tried creating some surrounding objects – MVs (worked fine) and Bitmap Indexes and so on. Eventually, I ran out of schema space, but when I was looking for some space I could recover, I realised that most of these objects were partitioned because they’re intended to simulate some of the Data Warehousing features. I don’t really need that, so I’ve just converted them to be non-partitioned which will save space for my small tests.

I’m really surprised at the functionality level on offer for nothing 😉

So now I have a 10.1.0.3 play schema that’s available at home, work, in a hotel, from the downstairs bedroom …

I’ve started playing around with one of the examples from my upcoming CASE paper and the first thing to notice is that it doesn�t allow SQL*Plus formatting commands, which is understandable.

By the way, while I’ve been typing this, I just had my request for an extra 10Mb approved in 5 minutes! I can’t promise that the service will always be this good, but I’d recommend it unreservedly at this stage. It’s proving to be excellent fun and very useful into the bargain.

Cheers,

Doug