Timothy E. Archer

One common piece of framework I have always needed when writing Oracle based applications is the ability to execute a host command in line with my PL/SQL code. Sometimes I do something as simple as echo a value to a file, to more complex shell scripts for calling programs to render PDF’s, send emails, etc. One requirement of executing host commands on the database server is to also get the return code from the process I just called so my PL/SQL program can take an appropriate course of action.

To do this, I use a simple oracle external procedure. The example I’m presenting below has been tested and used on Oracle 10gR2 and RedHat Linux AS3.

Here’s how it works: continue reading…

Are you a Sungard HE customer using the Banner ERP Software?
Have you ever wanted to know how to easily select a student’s account balance?

Well, all of a student’s charges and payments are held in the tbraccd table. Banner defines the tbraccd table as the “Account Charge/Payment Detail Table”. Furthermore, each entry in the tbraccd table has a specific detail code defined in the tbraccd_detail_code column. This column relates to the tbbdetc table, which Banner defines as the “Detail Charge/Payment Code Definition Table”.

Essentially, the tbraccd table stores the type of transaction, and the transaction amount. The tbbdetc table tells us whether that transaction type is a charge or a payment. continue reading…