I spent a few hours trying to upgrade the default version of APEX bundled with Oracle XE to version 3.1.2 (According to the name of the ZIP file) on my trusty virtual ubuntu server. After a number of total uninstalls, reinstalls and bad language due to forgetting to back up data I finally managed it.

Probably the hard way but seems to work:

Using the registry editor, try looking in the region of:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services

E.g. you want to do this:

 ECHO >>> > c:\file.txt

ECHO ^>^>^>>c:\file.txt

This is something that I found useful just this morning. To find an AD group containing a specified string use:

net group /dom | find /i “<your string>”

The find filters the results from the net group command and the /i switch ignores case.

In Oracle, I’m used to the ed command to create scripts and the @ operator to run them. You can work in a similar way with MySQL:

To create a script from within the MySQL environment use:

\! vi test.sql

Right,

Enough faffing about! This post will just cover a few key points in getting going with MySQL. I’m going to approach it from the point of view of an oracle developer so some of the terminology might not be spot on.

Real geeks don’t read instructions so despite the fact that there’s a handy upgrade guide for wordpress, here’s how I managed to upgrade this site (or rather break it and fix it):

• First off don’t delete any files, move them to a temporary sub directory, you will find it useful to be able to retrieve the odd file later.

This is a useful oracle supplied package for easily generating random numbers and strings. The oracle documentation is here and there are some examples here.

I used the following in a PL/SQL block to generate random latitudes and longitudes:

P_LAT :=  to_char(dbms_random.value(-180,180)) ;

P_LONG :=  to_char(dbms_random.value(-180,180)) ;

I don’t know about you but there are a few useful windows applications that don’t seem to have an icon on the start menu and the only way to find them is by finding them on the help pages and starting them from there, or maybe I’m just thick!

Ok, I’ve had to do this twice in the last 2 days so thought I’d better write it down for future use. I like UTL_FILE, it’s probably been depreciated for something better as I’ve not used Oracle much for the last couple of years.