<Not sure if this got posted so am trying again> I am having a problem
with a stored procedure where I am inserting values selected from
another table and am using a case statement
(case--when--then--else--end) on the select.  oracle 10g, 9i and 8i all

Is calculations on an indexed column make index unused? is there any
solution?
Does UNION better than OR? what about NOT EXISTS and HAVING
Is LIKE make index unused too? what we can do for that?

Firstly please forgive any mistakes I make when asking my questions I'm
new to all this :-)
I've installed Oracle 10g (10.1.0) on FC4 no problem and the dabtabase
works fine (much to my surprise :-)

From a general viewpoint, what is the best way to search a db for
someone's name? Using a Function Based Index on UPPER(Last_Name) or
using a trigger to insert data into a Shadow Column, i.e. on INSERT or
UPDATE :new.Shadow := UPPER(Last_Name)?

We need to identify the SQL query a process is executing that's
creating a lock contention; how do we do that? For example, with MSS
one can do 'DBCC INPUTBUFFER(spid)'
tia

I am trying to figure out why all indications show the job is done, but
the blasted data does not show in its_jobcost for 1 to 3 hours!  I
don't see any locks on the table or suspect sessions. Server load is
very light.  I have a job that uses 10 cursors to do one insert and 9

Have a table that i need to populate with 1 record of an identical type
from another table in an after insert using a trigger. Usually no
problem at all except am forced into using and keeping a field which is
a LONG RAW type that now generates an ORA-00997 error. It is all text

Hi, I know this error has been posted many times before but I really
couldn't find anything that helped. I'd really appreciate any help in
tracking down and resolving my problem:
I put the 10_1 instant client on a Win2k server. I added the path to

Hello ORACLE GURU's
I have a simple problem.
would like to access oracle table without prefixing  schema owner name
for the read only user. (please look at step 6 for the error)

 I'm migrating posts between two forum applications. The source stores
messages in a LONG field while the destination uses UTF16 stored in a
BLOB field. I managed to find info on part of this problem - converting
from LONG to BLOB in a PL/SQL procedure that essentialy does this:

I can log on to the database as sys ( sysdba ) with not problem and the
session is created fast.
I attempt to connect via another account and sometimes it will very
quickly and sometimes it will just hang.

Hi, All,
  I noticed for this parameter optimizer_features_enable , oracle
document says:
Syntax

I wanted to use the partition exchange feature from Oracle in order
to update a production warehouse on a monthly basis.
Now I came across a problem which I cannot resolve (either it's
due to me or due to a bug in Oracle).

The manual says the COPY command is going to be obsoleted.  I am just
wondering what else we can use
to achieve the same function.
Thx

HI, I know that I can specify that when a column in the flat file of my
external table is missing, the column will have a null value. Is it
possible to issue a NVL(NULLCOLUMN, '000000') on that column at table
creation so the column instead of containing null values would contain