There are a variety of methods to extract, transform and load (ETL) data in and out of an Oracle database. This short article provides an overview of some of the basic options that are supplied with Oracle. L is for Load Firstly, we need a table to load data into. This SQL script creates a table called PERSON. create table person (person_id number(12), forename varchar2(200), surname varchar2(200), title varchar2(10), email varchar2(100), gender varchar2(1), ni_number varchar(30), address1 varchar2(100), address2 varchar2(100), town varchar2(100), county varchar2(100), postcode varchar2(10), country varchar2(100), phone varchar2(100), mobile varchar2(100), salary number(12), date_of_birth date); The following PL/SQL procedure may be used to populate this table with an arbitrary amount of data. ...

Buy one of these for 10 GBP. Give to partner as early Valentine present. Jot down following notes as contingency in case navigator happens to be asleep during crucial section around Antwerp ring road. Folkestone. Eurotunnel to Calais E40 Ostende E40 Bruges E40 Gent E17 Antwerp E34 Eindhoven If you note the time and zero the trip-o-meter, you can even get statistics on your journey.

It’s easy to get carried away with all this Web 2.0 nonsense. So while you are trawling the blogosphere, desperately looking for invites to CoComment and seeing whether 30 Boxes does indeed live up to all the hype, pause for a moment and look at two of my favourite blogs that offer a slightly different perspective on Web 2.0. Go Flock Yourself - Witty, incisive, opinioniated comment. Always worth reading. The blog title alone still brings a smile. ...

Had a drink in The Plough in Hemel Hempstead last night. Conveniently located for the Buncefield Oil Refinery, The Plough offers fine ales and traditional English fare. Bad news: Guinness was off. Good news. Bitter and lager looked and tasted just like Guinness Food: Sausages and mash with black pudding. Gravy was greasy, a little oily in fact.

Thanks to AtariBoy, we now know what it takes to feature on ‘Top WordPress.com blogs today’. 11,706 hits (at least). Hmm. Way to go. As our American friends say.