Martin Bach

The benefit of staying up to date is tangible: I haven’t used git worktrees until very recently and I paid a price of inconvenience. Worktrees can address lots of common problems working with many branches and they are easy to use. You really should give them a try, they are awesome 🙌

DOAG e.V. "Dafür habe ich keine Zeit, lass uns das automatisieren". Klingt einfach. Ist es aber nicht. 😉 Martin Bach @martindba.bsky.social schaut sich 3 Werkzeuge an, mit denen sich typische Aufgaben aus Cloud-, System- und DB-Administration automatisieren lassen. ➡️ scomp.ly/VjpxbyR #DOAG2026

💡 An unexpected use case for Oracle's VALUES clause: building SQL scripts! Instead of maintaining strings or repetitive UNION ALL queries, VALUES lets you create inline tables and turn them into SQL commands. A fun little SQL trick using GRANT statements: martincarstenbach.com/2026/09/25/g...

Oracle Database 19c is supported on OL/RHEL 10 Many of you did wait for this - and since (I think) two weeks it is official. Oracle Database 19c is supported on OL/RHEL 10. Furthermore, I am going to show you how to find the certifications for Oracle AI Database 26ai since your search attempts may…

𝗟𝗼𝘄-𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝗿. 𝗔𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘁, 𝘄𝗲𝗻𝗻 𝗞𝗜 𝗱𝗮𝘇𝘂𝗸𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘁? Genau darum geht es beim German Low-Code Day in Hannover. Ich bin vor Ort und spreche am 24. September über das Thema „𝗩𝗼𝗻 𝗟𝗼𝘄-𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘇𝘂 𝗟𝗼𝘄-𝗔𝗜-𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲“ #orclapex

I was today <n> years old when I finally noticed the much enhanced markdown editor in Visual Studio Code. This sure will come in handy!

Life hack: I'm used to emacs-style navigation in my terminal, and finally got around to configuring iterm2 to use this. The change is very simple: - open preferences - click profiles - switch to keys/key bindings Select "natural text editing" from the "presets" drop-down, and you're at home again

🚀 Blog post update! A recent conversation inspired me to refresh a post on deploying MLE/JavaScript with SQLcl & Liquibase. New coverage includes: ✨ SQL-format Liquibase changelogs 🛠️ SQLcl Projects for Database CI/CD Useful if you are on Oracle AI Database: martincarstenbach.com/2024/08/15/c...

FreeSQL is the easiest way to get started with Oracle SQL, PL/SQL & JavaScript. All you need is a browser. 🖥️ It's also behind the new interactive "Run" buttons in the Oracle AI Database 26ai docs. Curious? More details 👇 martincarstenbach.com/2026/07/01/o...

After introducing the modern AI development stack for data-centric apps it was time to put that stack to good use: analysing workloads captured in AWR reports. Does a coding agent understand them? Find out more 👉 martincarstenbach.com/2026/06/26/r... #AI #Oracle #Performance #AWR

Found another practical use case for AI: help me fix the discrepancy between inline code and regular text on my blog. Took me 2 minutes to fix what would otherwise meant a lot of internet searching 🎉

Don’t let database startup delays break your CI pipeline. I wrote a short post how to use health checks in Docker and Podman to ensure database dependent calls don’t fail unnecessarily: martincarstenbach.com/2026/06/10/u...

Hardcoding passwords into scripts always feels like a temporary solution… …right until it ends up in Git 😅 I wrote a short post on handling secrets more safely in SQLcl projects and completing admin tasks without creating a security nightmare: martincarstenbach.com/2026/05/25/c...

Kurze Frage für die deutschsprachige Bubble: kennt ihr Clever & Smart und/oder Spy vs Spy? Frage für einen Freund …

Funny typos #42: $ gut pull It certainly feels like that sometimes 🤣 Maybe I should create a shell alias …

Tell me you have been in IT for a long time without telling me you have been in IT for a long time: $ set -o vi Now I’m trying to find out how to enable Emacs key bindings in zsh…

🚀 New post: JavaScript precision isn’t as safe as you might think 🤔 I break down how numeric precision loss happens in JavaScript, and how to avoid it. Especially for financial data and large numbers. The post applies to both node and MLE/JavaScript. 👇 martincarstenbach.com/2026/04/13/a...

I just read that 90% of all organisations who responded to the DORA 2025 survey adopted platform engineering. Ninety percent 🤩 That’s a pretty significant number. I’d love to hear from you how you/the team adopted platform engineering, in particular wrt Oracle database.

Do you use SQLcl in GitHub Actions? If so, you might like the latest update to gvenzl/setup-oracle-sqlcl. Release 1.3.0 allows you to pin a specific release to your pipeline. This is particularly useful for anyone using SQLcl Projects. Details 👇 martincarstenbach.com/2026/03/17/u...

Using Codex to generate unit tests for Oracle REST Data Services gave me a real productivity boost 🤖 Curious? I recorded a short video 📽️ showing my approach, with running commentary: martincarstenbach.com/2026/03/05/r... Do you have an internal platform? Use CI/CD? Let me know in the comments 🙏

Here's a short "life hack", allowing you to use utPLSQL in your CI pipeline. OK, right, you could do that before, but this time, if there are failed unit tests your pipeline run will abort. No need for any other software, just SQLcl to run the tests. martincarstenbach.com/2026/03/04/l...

Kaum zu glauben, dass die DOAG K+A schon wieder eine Woche her ist. So viele inspirierende Gespräche, starke Sessions und kleine, lustige Momente – höchste Zeit für einen Blick zurück! 😃 Ob auf der #DOAG2025, #LowCodeCreator oder #KINavigator – was waren eure Highlights? 😊 #DOAGDevs

I started an experiment and let AI write my unit tests. What used to take me 1 hour now takes 10 minutes. Here’s how I used Codex with Oracle AI Database 26ai to generate tests for my ORDS endpoints 👇 martincarstenbach.com/2026/03/04/r...

Finally finding some time to dig deeper into the DORA 2025 Report. The recording of this webinar is very insightful in my opinion. For example, just throwing in AI without having thought about a platform might not provide the productivity gains you hoped for. www.thoughtworks.com/insights/rep...

🚨New Blog post 🚨 Does your application receive JSON via REST calls? If so, how do you make you don't receive garbage data? Using JSON Schema is a neat way to do that. Here's an example using ORDS and Oracle AI Database 26ai (incl. server-side JavaScript)👇 martincarstenbach.com/2026/03/01/u...

🚀 New Blog Post 🚨 A recent forum question provided inspiration 💡 If you ever found yourself in the situation where you had to provide additional detail in a JSON Relational Duality View this post shows one way to do it 👉 martincarstenbach.com/2026/02/23/a...

🚀 New post: Handling query parameters in JavaScript-based Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) endpoints Covers: • How ORDS exposes query parameters • Safe access & validation patterns • Pitfalls (implicit type conversion!) • Making endpoints more predictable 👉 martincarstenbach.com/2026/02/20/h...

With #JSON duality views in Oracle AI Database you can build a JSON interface over database tables These come with lost-update detection via ETags @martindba.bsky.social shows how this prevents conflicting writes for REST calls by using the if-match header

D’oh! Scratched my head for 10 minutes asking myself why microdnf doesn’t find the local rpm. Turns out microdnf as it ships in Oracle Linux 9 simply can’t install local RPMs. Switching to the not quite as slim image helped.

Wait, what? In 2023 I bought 64GB DDR5-5600 for 210€. Today, if I wanted to get 64GB DRAM (identical spec) I have to part with 879€ 🤯 <insert your favourite combination of swear words here>

Looking at my posting insights in Wordpress and I thought ... wouldn't it be fun to post "Tetris" style? Nearly did that in January 🤣

Optimistic locking with React, ETags, @OracleREST endpoints, and JSON Relational Duality Views in Oracle AI Database — but shown in a UI that people actually want to use. I recorded a short demo video to prove it. Blog post & video here: martincarstenbach.com/2026/02/05/o...

A little chuffed about the fact that I finished a small React app today to interact with a JSON Relational Duality view via REST. Oracle ORDS kindly provided the endpoint for me. Thanks to react-bootstrap it does look half-decent, too

Not entirely convinced of zone 2 training. It sure is fun and leisurely but I almost feel as if it made me slower. What’s your experience? This is about running but it might as well apply to cycling 🚴 🏃 #running #endurance #cycling

So far I only used the syntax highlighter block in Wordpress. I was today <n> years old when I noticed that the code block has syntax highlighting for many more languages than syntax highlighter . Plus it can do line numbers, display the language and add a copy button ☺️

Did you know you can write User Defined Functions in TypeScript for Oracle AI Database 26ai? I’ve just updated my article showing how to transpile TypeScript, apply Biome for linting, all with CI in mind — just like you would for any modern app: 👉 martincarstenbach.com/2023/07/04/l...

3-day blogging streak! 🚀 New post in my MLE/JavaScript series covering collections and record support: using nested tables to pass arguments to apex_lang.get_message 🧩📚 More on varrays & associative arrays coming soon 👀✨ 👉 martincarstenbach.com/2026/01/22/w...

The best way to get ideas for blog posts is to actively work with technology 💻. I love experimenting 🧪👨‍💻 Recently I translated a PL/SQL code unit to MLE/JavaScript. If you ever need to perform a PL/SQL calculation in JavaScript⚙️, here’s how to do it 👇 martincarstenbach.com/2026/01/21/r...

Quick question for the community: do you use shared server connections with your Oracle database? (docs.oracle.com/en/database/...). Regardless of the release…I am genuinely curious 🧐

🚀 Small update to my blog I updated my page template to finally display tags 🎉 Tags were already assigned for each article, but now they’re visible and clickable. For example, all my JavaScript posts are now accessible in one place: 👉 martincarstenbach.com/tag/JavaScri...

The method_opt parameter of dbms_stats controls histogram generation @martindba.bsky.social shows how to use it to Delete all histograms except for 1 Create this histogram using the AUTO clause With for all columns size 1, for columns data_skew size AUTO

🚀 I’m excited to share that the all-new JavaScript LiveLab for Oracle AI Database 26ai is live! If you’re curious about writing JavaScript on the server the updated LiveLab makes getting hands-on much easier No setup required, just a browser; feedback welcome: martincarstenbach.com/2026/01/06/s...

Reflecting on my blogging journey in 2025 📊✍️ Summary: I managed to blog a fair bit this year☺️and it was fun! Looking forward to more writing, more learning, and sharing practical insights. Thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to read my stuff 🔗 martincarstenbach.com

🚀 New blog post is out 🖥️ Will this one be the final one for this year 🤔 ? I investigated an unexpected parallel query execution in Autonomous Database. Turns out to be a mistake on my part, so I wrote this in case you hit this, too: martincarstenbach.com/2025/12/29/w...

🚀 New blog post is out 🖥️ I started a mini-series about Oracle's server-side JavaScript implementation, and its support for PL/SQL records and collections. Part II, out now, shows you how to return records from JavaScript to PL/SQL. Details here: martincarstenbach.com/2025/12/19/w...

🎡 #apexconn26 | 18.–20. Mai | Heide Park Soltau #LowCode, #orclapex & #PLSQL in einer Location, die genauso dynamisch ist wie die Technologie selbst. 🎤 Keynote von @cczarski.bsky.social: "Low-Code mit APEX 2026 – Der Stand der Dinge" – mit APEXlang, KI, neuen Features u.v.a.m. 😃 apex.doag.org

Schema annotations in Oracle AI Database enable you to add key-value metadata on Tables Views Indexes Domains These help document your objects @martindba.bsky.social shows how to add them to view columns with ALTER VIEW ... MODIFY ( <col> ANNOTATIONS ( ... ) )

🚀 New blog post is out 🖥️ I was recently asked if the JavaScript SQL driver used in Oracle AI Database respects Virtual Private Database (VPD) policies. I was pretty sure it did, a quick test removed all uncertainty. Spoiler: it does. Care for the details? 🔗 martincarstenbach.com/2025/12/12/d...