Spontaneity

It was Firday 11 AM when the phone rang. It was my sister suggesting that we go to Aqaba to check our "Never-have-seen" apartment at Tala Bay, and return back to Amman on the same day.
When I was younger, I was an easy going, easy to please, and spontaneous guy. As I grew, I became a bit stubborn, hard to please and less spontaneous. Yesterday, I was profoundly impressed by my Spontaneity. At 11:30, me, Jumana, My sister Luma and her husband Zaher where cruising in their 4 wheel drive to Aqaba! To be a bit more honest, what drove towards this venture was not really my urge to see Tala Bay, rather, I was aware of the fact that there was an unstable weather system. The nature of such system is Jordan manifests itself more explicitly in the southern and eastern desert lands of Jordan. It was exactly what I expected. At around 1:30 we were at the highest point on the Desert highway, Ras Al-naqab, rising some 1500 Meters above Sea Level (of course I used my watch to verify that http://oraclejo.blogspot.com/2006/12/my-new-watch.html).And Heaven have mercy, Wadi Rum was not the rocky desert area you would expect to see. It was all hidden behind a huge mass of spectacular cloud formation touching the ground, typical to those formed when a cold air front meets a warm air mass; Lightening was occurring at an intriguing rate of almost once every 30 seconds and pouring rain with a drop size reaching the size of a bean.

Rare phenomenon indeed.

At 2:00, we were approaching Aqaba, the skies were almost clear with rain reminiscent. At 2:30 we reached Aqaba, the weather was fascinating, a cool breeze under sunny skies. We immediately went to Floka (fish restaurant) reserved a table for 4 to be readu at 3:45 and ordered the food, so it would be ready at 3:45. we immediately headed to Tala Bay, lcoated at the southern tip of aqaba (10 Km north of the Saudi Borders). To be honest, Tala Bay looks better than I expected, it is a glamorous place; Good size Marina filled with Yachts, Jest Skies etc ..Laguna in between buildings, walk ways etc.. In 45 minutes we were back at the restaurant, where we found the dishes almost ready. We had a nice see food meal (of course paying a hefty price tag for it). At 4:30, we left the restaurant to the Movenpick and had a delicious banana split as appetizers. At 5 PM, we left to what is called "city center" duty free mall right at the northern tip of Aqaba,. We shopped, I bought a Clarks shoes, and at 6:05 we started our journey back to Amman. Wadi Rum, Ras Al-Naqab was all soaking wet with Water, but was not raining any more. However, someplace far to the east, we could also see lightening breaking the eternal darkness.At around 9:15, we were back home. The only thing we did not do in Aqaba was what appears to have become a ritual for Jordanians who visit Aqaba; namely, Buy Cashew nuts, bottles of Rani Juice and 7 Kg of Bananas (these items sell a bit cheaper in Aqaba).
Ammar Sajdi
Amman - Jordan
April 13, 07

Thank God it is Thursday (TGIT)

I need no reason to be euphoric on Thursdays, how about when there is a reason
Today, I will complete a very rich course to FASTLINK IT members about database centric development techniques covering features up to and including 10g. There are lots and lots of topics that span a wide array of technologies. And just to name a few

• Exposing Oracle stored procedures as Web Services,
• Exchanging Database record in XML format.
• Doing Interprocess communication using PIPES and Queues, Sending and receiving
• packets using TCP sockets from PL/SQL.
• Demystifying Analytical Function used in DW OLAP
• Configuring Heterogeneous Service for distributed access
• Data Encryption
• Row Level Security
• many more
• It took me hours and hours of preparation and testing.
• Many more

Thank God it is Over, now we can hit the movies with a fairly un-pre-occupied-mind

Ammar sajdi

Ammar Sajdi

Bonsai - An ancient Art

Bonsai is the art of cultivating miniature trees. The pine, a tree that grows many meters tall in wild nature, is the most typical plant used for bonsai, but many other tree species can be used.
To achieve miniaturization, the tree is frequently transferred into new pots, and on that occasion its roots are cut a little bit. Bonsai skills include the knowledge of when and how much to cut the roots, how much fertilizer and water is ideal, and which branches should be pruned to give the plant an aesthetic look.

Join the Bonsai Society

http://www.absbonsai.org/

I hate single-quotes

When you use SQL, you must enclose string values with Single-Quotes.

This sounds fair and square.

Things get messy when your strings themselves contain single-quote. A new technique has been introduced by Oracle to circumvent the hurdles. However, before describing that solution, let me describe the problem and its classical solution before showing the enhancement

Example (let me start with the normal straight forward case)
If I am using Oracle SQL and I want to display the following text

The Customer said YES

Then

SQL> SELECT ' The Customer said YES ' AS title from dual;

TITLE
-----------------------
The Customer said YES

Now, if the output should read

The Customer said 'YES' -- The difference her is that YES is surrounded with single-quotes

In this case, you cannot simply expect to just add a single quote around YES and pray that things shall work fine. You will be confusing the hell out of the parser because it cannot tell which quotes are to be displayed or the quotes that end the string

I mean the following SQL is a NO NO situation

SQL>SELECT 'The Customer said 'YES' ' AS title from dual;

*ERROR at line 1:ORA-00923: FROM keyword not found where expected

Traditionally, we could use two consecutive single-quote around YES to tell the parser that this is not the end of the string but rather an actual single quote character that needs to be displayed

1* SELECT ' The Customer said ' 'YES' ' ' AS title from dual;

TITLE
------------------------
The Customer said 'YES'

This will become even messier, if the entire string needs to be surrounded by single quotes

'The Customer said 'YES' '

New Approach, The Q-quote mechanism
In this approach, you can define your Single-Quote character which enables you to specify q or Q followed by a single quote and then another character to be used as the quote delimiter.

i.e. I want to define a character that indicates the beginning of the string and the terminator of the string.
If, for example, you want to utilize # as the single quote mark, then this is what you need to do when you encounter the beginning of the string, write the letter q followed by a single-quote followed by # and when the string is finished you just add # followed by ' as shown below

AMMAR>SELECT q'# The Customer said 'YES' #' as TITLE from dual;

TITLE
-------------------------
The Customer said 'YES'

Ammar Sajdi

Push the button, and feel the power!

Because I am so in loving with last minute packing, I almost always forget something. It could be anything, but I never miss what I forgot on the last trip, cuz my mind is so alert to packing what I missed the last time.
a few days back I flew to Oman for a two day business trip, and while on transit at Bahrain Airport, it flashed to my mind that I did not pack my traditional Gillette razor. While looking for a Gillette razor I found something new "A Gillette M3Power razor"

It is a manual razor with normal blades, but is equipped with a battery. What the hell is a battery for? If I still need to move my hand up and down to shave??
This is the charm of the 21st century,, The tip of the razor (where the blades are) vibrates.
I do not know what value this is adding to the shaving process?? the process is for sure a bit ticklish, noisy and feels weird!! As for the quality for shave, i am not decided.
It is also event driven, there is a push button that can trigger the vibration or stop it!
I don’t get it, Generation of shaving techniques since i started shaving and i can hardly note any difference!! What next! Laser guided shaving machine?

Ammar Sajdi

Salary Theorem

This theorem stipulates that the less you work, the more money you make

read on

Sunset

Ammar Sajdi

Dont miss this place

Jal3ad Again!


I visited Jal3ad again two weeks back with the company guys. This is the second visit, I wrote about my first visit to Jalad in my third blog post back in August 14th, 2005 http://oraclejo.blogspot.com/2005/08/blog-post.html . I liked it this time more because of the greenery that this area enjoys during spring, really breath taking views. I had to reduce the resolution to make the size of the images, which resulted in deterioration of image quality. The actual images and the acual scenes are much nices, but this should give you an idea

That is me by the way, Ammar

Warm! Warm! weather coming up!!

Be careful,

The three coming days are going to be really warm. Temperature could be toping 27 Degree in Amman

Jennifer Aniston on Oprah winfrey

born on February 11, 1969 Sherman Oaks, California, USA

Her father (Ioannis Anastassakis) is Greek and was born in the island of Crete. He was an actor himself. Jennifer Anastassakis spend her child in Greece and N.Y.

Tonight and on Oprah Winfrey Show, Jennifer put an end to all rumors and declared that she did not undergo any cosmatic surgical procedure of any kind (Jobs). Still, nevertheless, and at age of 38, looking as good as ever. (Brad Pitt must have gone out of his mind)

recently in 2007, she received People's Choice Award: Favorite Female Movie Star, The Break-Up

Most expensive ITEM on Amazon

Mohamad a friend of mine sent me a link to Amazon, could anybody find an item more expensive than this item
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NL8210/downandoutint-20