Archive for November, 2005

From previous posts, you may have understood that I have been using VPD policies – Virtual Private Database or Fine Grained Access Control – quite extensively in my current project. Since the data visibility is dependent on quite complex conditions, we use VPD Select policies to govern which records are retrievable by a certain user given a specific context. For DML operations, an even more restricive set of policies is required, as it is quite common that a user may see more records than he or she is allowed to updated. In the spirit of VPD, I made liberal use of VPD DML policies on Insert, Update and Delete operations to control which modifications were allowed to users.

The Unit-tests I performed using utPLSQL sailed through successfully: no records were DML-ed that were not allowed and the DML operations that should complete were completed as expected. So everything looked hunky dory, and I happily submitted my work and went on to greener pastures.

Unfortunately Read the rest of this entry »

The next edition of the yearly reunion of the best (and nicest) Oracle Developers in the world is going to be held from June 17th to June 21st, in Washington DC – the closest to home they have ever been. ODTUG (Oracle Development Tools User Group) conferences are always interesting and enjoyable. AMIS has presented over 15 papers and presentations at ODTUG. I have been to ODTUG conferences 10 times, starting in 1997 San Diego and visiting Fort Lauderdale, Scottsdale, Miami, Palm Springs, St Louis, Las Vegas and last year New Orleans. So next year, Eastern Time again in Washington DC.

Abstracts for presenting at this entertaining conference need to be submitted very early this year: already by December 12th 2005. See for instructions the ODTUG Conference Site.

A little while ago I wrote the article Oracle Designer Check In – synchronize P_VERSION argument on this weblog. In it, I discuss the desirability of having Oracle Designer apply the version label of a Module that it receives during Check In to the Module Argument p_revision. This parameter is used in the About Window of the Application, to show to the end user what the version is of the Form he is working with.

Now I have realized that you want the same thing to happen during Check Out of the Module: if you start making changes to the checked out module and you generate it again, it will still display the same version label it had when it was checked in. That is clearly wrong, as the Form is now a different one. So the challenge discussed in this article is: how to have Oracle Designer apply the value of the Version-Label-after-Checkout to the module’s parameter.
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On my current project, we had a request from the customer to produce an overview of all the (Database) Roles in the Application with a list of Modules, Screens and Reports, that are assigned to those Roles. Since I could not find this overview in shipped Repository Reports, and I know I did not implement it in the Repository Object Browser, I quickly wrote the following SQL Query, that you can execute as any Designer (Repository) User: Read the rest of this entry »