ODC Appreciation Day : The ever growing toolbox

October 11, 2018

ODC Appreciation Day : The ever growing toolbox

It's ODC Appreciation Day 😃 !

The day initiated by Tim Hall where Oracle bloggers worldwide make a blog post to show appreciation of the Oracle Developer Community.

This year I won't dive into a specific technical thing in SQL or PL/SQL, but rather I'm appreciating how much my toolbox grows all the time with new bits coming in a steady flow.

I've met database developers that learned SQL-92 20+ years ago and still today use only that.

To me that is like having bought a professional level toolbox with all the powertools a handyman can wish for... and then only use a single hammer and a single screwdriver.

Especially when the toolbox keeps growing and adding new bits with every release. Just take a look at the New Features part of the SQL Reference Manual over time:

We're talking about the most stable language for working with data, and yet it is still growing, enabling developers like me to solve more and more complex tasks more and more efficiently right inside the database where business logic belongs.

I couldn't imagine working with SQL like it was a stale, dusty language that hadn't evolved since '92. I'd grow dusty and stale myself, and my code would suffer terribly. I'm thrilled by the arrival of features like analytic functions, native XML and JSON support in SQL, full outer join, row pattern matching, analytic views, and the list is endless.

The continual evolvement of SQL makes me evolve as a developer, making me produce better applications. And so does fellow developers in the community. That we each try out new features and share what we discovered and how we use these features is a god-send for a developer trying to improve himself.

So thanks, Oracle Developer Community, for being a sharing community where I can evolve as fast as SQL does 🙏.

#ThanksODC