Chris Saxon
chrisrsaxon.bsky.social
Chris Saxon
@chrisrsaxon.bsky.social
Oracle Developer Advocate for SQL. Lover of quizzes and games of all kinds. Any views expressed belong to me.

chrissaxon.co.uk
Reposted by Chris Saxon
Calling #OracleACE: we want your assertion use cases!

We’re opening a bounty for creative, real-world solutions using assertions

Submit your blog post, video, script or slide deck the contribution app by the end of 15 March

Full details at buff.ly/fNgDHQv
February 13, 2026 at 3:05 PM
Great work by the top 3 players in the Weekly DB comp on Oracle Dev Gym for January

1st mentzel.iudith
2st Mahamoutou
3rd Andrey Zaytsev

👏🏆

Thanks to all who took part

See the full rankings at devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...
devgym.oracle.com
February 9, 2026 at 5:04 PM
In Feb's Ask TOM Live we're looking at fourth normal form:

"A table is in 4NF if and only if, for every one of its non-trivial multivalued dependencies X ↠ Y, X is a superkey"

To help you understand this, would you prefer

A description of these technical terms?
Something more informal?
February 6, 2026 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
New in Oracle Database #26ai - Aggregation Filters using the FILTER clause in #SQL.
db-oriented.com/2026/02/06/a...
@oracleace.bsky.social @sym42.bsky.social
Aggregation Filters - @DBoriented
New in Oracle 26ai: the FILTER clause allows to restrict the rows considered by aggregate functions
db-oriented.com
February 6, 2026 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
Use Oracle FreeSQL.com as a remote test database

FreeSQL.com lets you use a free, hosted Oracle AI Database instance right from your browser. But, FreeSQL can also be used as a remote database for testing, POCs, and more! In this article, we'll walk though how to connect to a FreeSQL database from…
Use Oracle FreeSQL.com as a remote test database
FreeSQL.com lets you use a free, hosted Oracle AI Database instance right from your browser. But, FreeSQL can also be used as a remote database for testing, POCs, and more! In this article, we'll walk though how to connect to a FreeSQL database from your local machine, no database setup required. Login to FreeSQL.com To use FreeSQL as a remote database, you'll need to login using your Oracle account.
andersswanson.dev
February 4, 2026 at 8:02 PM
Preventing overlapping start-end dates in history tables is a common challenge

Oracle AI Database gives you two ways to do this:

Guarantee consecutive ranges with foreign keys
Stop overlapping ranges with assertions

Find out how in my latest post blogs.oracle.com/sql/how-to-s...
February 5, 2026 at 10:17 AM
Congrats to the winners in the Oracle Dev Gym championships!

1st Andrey Zaytsev
2nd mentzel.iudith
3rd whab@tele2.at

🏆🍾

👏 to all competitors; we hope you enjoyed the challenge

Thanks to @kibeha.dk and @anthony-harper.bsky.social for writing & reviewing quizzes

blogs.oracle.com/sql/announci...
blogs.oracle.com
February 2, 2026 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
Exciting news, Oracle AI Database 26ai Container image now available container-registry.oracle.com @oracleace.bsky.social #ACED #oracle #26ai
January 29, 2026 at 10:45 PM
...aaaaand we're done!

Great effort to all who took part; we'll review the results, tally up the scores, and announce the winners in the coming days
The Oracle Dev Gym annual championships are due to start soon!

Best of luck to all competitors 🤞
January 29, 2026 at 2:49 PM
The Oracle Dev Gym annual championships are due to start soon!

Best of luck to all competitors 🤞
January 29, 2026 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
For those unfamiliar, this arrived in 26ai
January 28, 2026 at 2:43 PM
With assertions in 23.26.1 you can define cross-table constraints

Answers can only be submitted while a question is live
Every question must have at least one choice
Only one choice can be true for single-choice questions

Find out how in my latest post blogs.oracle.com/sql/how-to-d...
January 28, 2026 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
It’s there – Oracle AI Database 26ai is available for download

This was a long wait - and finally, it's there - Oracle AI Database 26ai is available for download on-prem. And as you may remember our announcement from Oracle AI World, Oracle AI Database 26ai replaced Oracle Database 23ai. What is…
It’s there – Oracle AI Database 26ai is available for download
This was a long wait - and finally, it's there - Oracle AI Database 26ai is available for download on-prem. And as you may remember our announcement from Oracle AI World, Oracle AI Database 26ai replaced Oracle Database 23ai. What is available? You can download now the Linux version of Oracle AI Database 26ai Enterprise Edition, 23.26.1.0.0, from the usual sources as a Gold Image include the RU or as a separate RU.
mikedietrichde.com
January 27, 2026 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
It's here.

Oracle AI Database 26ai On-Prem

www.oracle.com/database/tec...
January 28, 2026 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
📣 26ai is now available for download, x86-64 bit Linux distributions.

www.oracle.com/database/tec...
www.oracle.com
January 27, 2026 at 5:52 PM
It's here at last!

Oracle AI Database 26ai (23.26.1) Enterprise Edition for Linux x86-64 on premises is GA

Once again, there's a host of #SQL updates in this RU. Here are a few to get you started:
Oracle AI Database New Features
This book describes the new features in Oracle AI Database 26ai.
docs.oracle.com
January 27, 2026 at 5:10 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
OMG ... I can't believe it. It is really gonna happen! #ComingSoon
January 22, 2026 at 4:27 AM
I'm working on diagrams to visualize how #SQL works

Here are examples comparing different options for FETCH FIRST

The table at the top is the input

Below it are the rows returned for different options for the dots in

ORDER BY NUMBER FETCH FIRST ...

Which diagram do you prefer? Other comments?
January 7, 2026 at 10:41 AM
Congrats to 2025's top 3 players in the Oracle Dev Gym Weekly DB quiz

1st Stelios Vlasopoulos
2nd Andrey Zaytsev
3rd mentzel.iudith

🏆🎉

They & the rest of the top 50 players qualify for the annual championships, scheduled for

Thurs 29th Jan at 2pm UTC

blogs.oracle.com/sql/announci...
blogs.oracle.com
January 6, 2026 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
Learning #SQL for your 2026 New Year's Resolution?

Head to Oracle Dev Gym

This has FREE classes to take you from

Your first SELECT & CREATE TABLE statements
On to recursive WITH and window function queries
And learning how to make these fast

Join at buff.ly/7gWfOdq
January 5, 2026 at 12:01 PM
It's been a busy year on Oracle Dev Gym!

We've had

430,000+ answers
by 14,500+ people

Thanks to all who've taken part especially

@kibeha.dk & @anthony-harper.bsky.social for writing the Weekly DB quizzes

Rajesh Vora for creating Groovy quizzes

See you in 2026

devgym.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p...
December 22, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
Oracle SQLcl Version 25.4 is available, NOW.

Improvements for both 👩‍💻 and 🤖!
December 17, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Add key-value metadata to

Tables
Views
Columns

in Oracle AI Database with annotations

ALTER TABLE ... ANNOTATIONS ( an1 'val1', an2 'val2' )

These are like comments but better

Want to convert existing comments to annotations?

Here's a script to do it blogs.oracle.com/sql/how-to-c...
December 9, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Chris Saxon
🎉 We’re live! The #OracleACE Apprentice program is officially open—welcome to everyone who pre-registered (check your inbox soon!) and all new applicants.
Ready to start your advocacy journey? Learn more & register here 👉
ace.oracle.com/apprentice
December 8, 2025 at 4:59 PM