2023-03-05

IslandSQL Episode 4: Expressions

Introduction In the last episode, we extended the IslandSQL grammar covering the complete lock table statement. However, the support for expressions was very limited. It was not possible to use a date literal or to_date function to determine a partition to be locked. Time to fix that. In this episode, we will have […]
2023-02-19

IslandSQL Episode 3: Lock Table

Introduction In the last episode, we extended the IslandSQL grammar to cover all DML statements as a single lexer token. Now it’s time to handle the complete grammar for one DML statement. The simplest one is lock table. A good reason to start with it and lay the foundation for the other DML […]
2023-02-07

IslandSQL Episode 2: All DML Statements

Introduction In the last episode, we build the initial version of IslandSQL. An Island grammar for SQL scripts covering select statements. In this blog post, we extend the grammar to handle the remaining DML statements. The full source code is available on GitHub and the binaries on Maven Central. Lexer Changes The […]
2023-02-04

IslandSQL Episode 1: Select Statement

Introduction An island grammar focuses only on a small part of a grammar. The island represents the small, interesting part and the sea the rest. In this blog post, I explain the components of an island grammar for SQL scripts named IslandSQL. In the first iteration, we focus on the select statement. Everything […]
2022-07-17

plscope-utils for SQL Developer 1.0 – What’s New?

Introduction PL/Scope is an SDK for source code analysis. It is available since Oracle Database 11g Release 1 and has been significantly improved in 12c Release 2. plscope-utils for SQL Developer is a SQL Developer extension that simplifies the compilation with PL/Scope, visualizes PL/Scope information under a PL/Scope node in the Connections […]
2022-01-14

Finding Wrong Hints

Introduction I have used the Oracle Database for many years. And I use hints. For experiments, but also in production code. There are cases when you know more than the Oracle Database. For example about the cardinality of a data source or the number of result rows to process or the number […]
2020-09-07

Highlight Hints in SQL Developer

Introduction In this blog post, I explain how you can configure your SQL Developer to highlight hints and distinguish them from ordinary comments. The SQL Language Reference for Oracle Database 19c defines hints as follows: Hints are comments in a SQL statement that pass instructions to the Oracle Database optimizer. The optimizer […]
2020-04-26

Syntax Highlighting With SQL Developer

Introduction A customer asked me if it is possible to show unused identifiers in SQL Developer. Since there is no PL/SQL compile warning for that, you might be tempted to say no. But you can always use PL/SQL Cop for static code analysis. Guideline G-1030 deals with variables and constants and guideline […]
2018-03-11

PL/SQL Cop for SonarQube 7.0

For the last two months, my Trivadis colleague Daniel Schutzbach and I have been working on the PL/SQL Cop plugin for SonarQube. The goal was to support the most recent SonarQube versions 5.6 LTS, 6.7 LTS and 7.0. Dani was doing the heavy lifting and my job was testing and minor bug […]
2017-12-17

How to Prove That Your SmartDB App Is Secure

If you are guarding your data behind a hard shell PL/SQL API as Bryn Llewellyn, Toon Koppelaars and others recommend, then it should be quite easy to prove, that your PL/SQL application is secured against SQL injection attacks. The basic idea is 1) that you do not expose data via tables nor views […]