Book Image

Developing Robust Date and Time Oriented Applications in Oracle Cloud

By : Michal Kvet
Book Image

Developing Robust Date and Time Oriented Applications in Oracle Cloud

By: Michal Kvet

Overview of this book

Proper date and time management is critical for the development and reliability of Oracle Databases and cloud environments, which are among the most rapidly expanding technologies today. This knowledge can be applied to cloud technology, on premises, application development, and integration to emphasize regional settings, UTC coordination, or different time zones. This practical book focuses on code snippets and discusses the existing functionalities and limitations, along with covering data migration to the cloud by emphasizing the importance of proper date and time management. This book helps you understand the historical background and evolution of ANSI standards. You’ll get to grips with data types, constructor principles, and existing functionalities, and focus on the limitations of regional parameters and time zones, which help in expanding business to other parts of the world. You’ll also explore SQL injection threats, temporal database architecture, using Flashback Technology to reconstruct valid database images from the past, time zone management, and UTC synchronization across regions. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create and manage temporal systems, prevent SQL injection attacks, use existing functionalities and define your own robust solutions for date management, and apply time zone and region rules.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1: Discovering Oracle Cloud
4
Part 2: Understanding the Roots of Date and Time
7
Part 3: Modeling, Storing, and Managing Date and Time
12
Part 4: Modeling Validity Intervals
17
Part 5: Building Robust and Secure Temporal Solutions
20
Part 6: Expanding a Business Worldwide Using Oracle Cloud

Validating conversions

The data to be stored in the database can originate from various sources. For example, by loading the values from CSV files, a textual representation is present, requiring the system to convert the data to the proper format and data type. Thus, before processing and storing values, it is always necessary to ensure the value can be mapped to the desired data type. Moreover, for the date and time values, the format mask (mapping) must also be applicable. To test the conversion opportunities, instead of hardcoding using PL/SQL and exception handling, the validate_conversion function, introduced by the Oracle database, can be used. It takes an expression and the output data type (output_data_type), optionally extended by the format mask (format_mapping) and NLS parameters (nls_parameters) for the date and time values. The syntax of the validate_conversion function is shown in the following code block:

validate_conversion 
  (
    ...