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Lord of the stickies - (c) Littlefoot [message #261720] Thu, 23 August 2007 07:35 Go to next message
Maaher
Messages: 7065
Registered: December 2001
Senior Member
Table of contents


Introduction

How to format your post?

How to get a quick answer to your question?

Useful sites

Posting guidelines

Performance Tuning

All about braindumps

Marketplace

You have an SQL Question but you don’t use Oracle?

Thanks awfully, old boys!




[Updated on: Thu, 23 August 2007 12:03] by Moderator

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Re: Lord of the stickies - (c) Littlefoot [message #261721 is a reply to message #261720] Thu, 23 August 2007 07:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Maaher
Messages: 7065
Registered: December 2001
Senior Member
Introduction

Welcome to OraFAQ Forum! Please, read this document before you start to actively participate in it. Here are guidelines of how to behave on the Forum in order to make it a cozy place to stay.

Some of the most important instructions are:
  • Be polite
  • Use English language in the main forum
  • Provide all relevant information about your problem, including Oracle software version (4 decimal places) and operating system version
  • Format your code and make sure that lines do not exceed 80 characters

[Updated on: Thu, 23 August 2007 07:36]

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Re: Lord of the stickies - (c) Littlefoot [message #261722 is a reply to message #261720] Thu, 23 August 2007 07:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Maaher
Messages: 7065
Registered: December 2001
Senior Member
How to get a quick answer to your question?

Quote (a Chinese proverb) :
"He who asks a question may appear to be a fool, he who does not ask will remain a fool forever"

Before you decide to open a new topic, you should ask yourself:
  • First of all: did I try myself? Or am I just hoping that someone else is willing to do my work?
  • Did I read the documentation? A lot of questions are answered there. Really.
  • Have I checked the FAQ page?
  • Did I search the board properly? Have I also tried the Site Search Engine? A large group of questions posted here are just a déjà -répondu of the past.
  • Did I use Google? Even if your question hasn't been answered here, chances are that on other websites someone already has posted an answer.
  • Is my question specific to the Oracle database? Now, that may seem obvious since this site is called Oracle FAQs, but we get quite a few questions about Access and MS SQL Server here - and SQL between databases is not always compatible - so please ask any non-Oracle questions elsewhere. It will be to your advantage.
Ok, so you didn't find an answer yet. No sweat, you're welcome to post it here and a lot of people are happy to answer. They can, however, answer only if enough info is provided.
Re: Lord of the stickies - (c) Littlefoot [message #261723 is a reply to message #261720] Thu, 23 August 2007 07:37 Go to previous message
Maaher
Messages: 7065
Registered: December 2001
Senior Member
Posting guidelines

Theory

  • Have the courtesy to write in plain English; it is not the first language of most of the participants to this forum, but that is no excuse for poor or nonexistent punctuation.
    • If everyone used standard punctuation, like spaces between words and sentences, capitals for the first word of a sentence, a full-stop (period) to mark the end of a statement or a question mark to terminate a question then your requests will be more easily understood and your questions answered more clearly and quickly. Got it? Try it, it isn't that hard.
    • Also, stop putting every phrase in a new paragraph, it makes entries deep and hard to read.
  • People don't feel encouraged when they have to decipher some gobbledygook. Abbreviations like "U", "Ur", "U r", "Plz", "prb", "qry" especially tend to get on people's nerves.
    IM speak
    is not appreciated:
    • It is hard to read.
    • It is unprofessional.
    • It doesn't show much respect towards your fellow forum members.
    If you don't take time to write in proper English, how can you expect that others would answer properly?
  • Always spell check and proof read your messages before posting them.
  • As a rule of thumb: be polite. No one is paid for answering your question. The least you can do is show some respect to those who are willing to dedicate some of their spare time to look at your problem.
  • If you feel that a message is not admissible for some reason (offending language/opinions, personal attacks, ...), you can report it to the moderator staff. But if you want extra attention for your topic, reporting will act contra productive.
  • Don't use uppercase only. It's harder to read and gives the impression you're shouting.
  • Choose a topic title that makes sense. A good title might be "ORA-1555 during pl/sql loop" A less fortunate choice might be "URGNT PLZ!!!!!!!!!!!!" Avoid the following keywords: urgent/please/help/now/immediately (and derivatives)
  • Choose the appropriate forum. If in doubt, don't worry - moderators can always move it
  • Don't cross-post. Duplicates will be removed.
  • Commercial posts are admitted only in the Marketplace Forum.
  • Post exact Database (4 decimal places, please) and OS version. By doing so, you'll avoid reactions using features you can't use.

Praxis

  • Show us what you did (if you tried it yourself), including errors and/or why the result is not what you want.
  • Provide DDL (CREATE TABLE, etc.) as appropriate instead of listing the table structure. It'll help people setting up a test set (yes, some people really do that)
  • Provide INSERT statements for sample data instead of pasting in or mocking up the results of a SELECT statement.
  • Provide your expected result set.
  • If you want to post error codes or SQL*Plus output, just copy everything that is on your screen when the error occurred, for instance:
    SQL> insert into t2 values (t2_s.nextval, x1) returning id into :x2;
    insert into t2 values (t2_s.nextval, x1) returning id into :x2
    *
    ERROR at line 1:
    ORA-00984: column not allowed here
  • Do not describe your problem and/or solution in MS Office Word, Excel or similar files and attach them to your message. Some people can not, some do not want to download them.
  • Be patient. A lot of people here are just browsing the board once a day.
  • Don't think you have more chance if you PM individual members. Just post your question in public: more people can see/answer them that way. Most PM'ed questions are posted to the forum anyway.
  • Again, forum members are not here to do your work for you nor to do your homework assignment for you. If you are stuck, we will gladly help you out.
  • Don't "wild post", i.e. post a reply that has nothing to do with the original thread.
  • If you found an answer yourself, post it. That way we know the issue is resolved and we might learn from it.
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