Book Review: Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g

Written by Paweł Barut
This time I would like to recommend a book Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g published by PacktPub.com. As I have some experience with XML processing inside Oracle DB (XMLDB) I was lacking the knowledge of XML manipulation in Java, especially using Oracle JDeveloper. This book is rather not for beginners - you should have basic knowledge of what is XML, at least theoretically. From the book you can learn how to manage XML Schemas in JDeveloper, then write XML documents based on those schema and finally validate them in JDeveloper or write Java code to validate it automatically. Chapters that I value much are those describing how to generate PDF documents. There are two methods described - one using Apache FOP API , and Oracle XML Publisher. As I was not generating PDF's this way so far, I found those 2 chapters very interesting. There is also chapter on generatin Excel by transformation of XML using Apache HSSF API .

Book is very practical. If you want to start with subjects described above then this book is for you. Of course it does not mean that you do not have to study documentation. However, it will be easier for you to make first steps. Beside describing Oracle JDeveloper, author also shows how to install and use Oracle Berkley XML DB to store, query and update XML Documents - using command line and XML DB API.

I especially recommend eBook version. All URLs in eBook version are active, so linking to web pages are very simple. Also coping sample code is easy. This book contains many practical and usefull tips on XML processing and tools as well. So if those XML aspects are in your interest, then it's definitelly good to invest in this book.

Keep reading,
Paweł

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Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• ORA-00904: "XMLROOT": invalid identifier
• Useful links on Oracle XML DB
• Solving ORA-22905: cannot access rows from a non-nested table item
• Oracle XMLType: exctractvalue vs. extract
• ORA-30625 and XMLType

Extracting Data to Excel using only SQL*Plus

Lately I had to quickly extract some data from Oracle DB to Excel. There are a lot of tools that can do that, ex. Toad or SQL Developer, but I had only access to SQL*Plus. Additionally I was on Windows machine and database was in UTF8. And extracted data was also using many different languages.
Here are steps I used to archive my goal:

1. start command line (CMD)
2. set NLS_LANG variable
   

   set NLS_LANG=.UTF8

3. start sqlplus and log to database
   

   sqlplus user/pwd@db

4. set long line size and avoid paging
   

   SQL> set linesize 4000
   SQL> set pagesize 0

5. set markup html in sqlplus
   

   SQL> set markup html on spool on

   
   It is important to use spool on clause, as it adds html header to spool file when spooling is started
6. start spooling
   

   SQL> spool a.html

7. run your query
   
8. turn off spooling
   

   SQL> spool off

9. open file in Excel

I've tested this procedure on Oracle 10g R2 (10.2.0.1 and 10.2.0.3) and Excel 2003

Cheers, Paweł