Happy New Year to all my favorite PL/SQL developers - those who play quizzes at the PL/SQL Challenge, of course!
For those of us living in the United States, 2012 was a
year full of political campaigns and way too many political advertisements. Good riddance! (well, for a little while, anyway) And
it would be nice if surviving the 2012 national elections was the worst we had to deal with. Unfortunately, here in the United States, 2012 featured Sandy, which devastated the East Coast and brought home forcefully the dangers of our changing global climate patterns. And multiple massacres by men bearing semi-automatic weapons and lots of ammunition demonstrated repeatedly the utter insanity of both U.S. gun laws and the way Americans take care of our fellow citizens, especially our children.
OK, enough of that depressing news. On a more personal and upbeat note, 2012 was the first full year of life for my granddaughter, Loey, who is beautiful, smart and funny:
Lots more pictures of Loey and her family on my Flickr page.
For Oracle technologists who concentrate on SQL,PL/SQL and APEX, it was a
bit of a waiting game of a year: Oracle Database 12c didn't quite make it to production and the Oracle Public Cloud hasn't quite got off the ground. All of which
means that 2013 is going to be a very big year for new Oracle technologies. Technologies that we will need to study, absorb, exploit and make available to our users.
At the PL/SQL Challenge, we look forward
to writing many new quizzes on Oracle Database 12c (SQL and PL/SQL), as well as new quizzes on Oracle Application Express 4.2. Of course, the delay in releasing Oracle Database 12c didn't stop us from offering hundreds of new quizzes in 2012 and
implementing many new features
on the website.
The start of a new year is also the start of a new
quarter, which means that we will be holding a championship playoff for Q4 2012. This newsletter contains the lists of participants in the playoff; we will be setting the date for the playoff
in the next week or two. We also salute the winners in
our previous 2012 playoffs.
Overall Stats for
2012
During 2012, Oracle technologists from at least 83
different countries submitted over 200,000 answers (including some 30,000 practices) to more than 1,000 different questions. The average percentage correct for all answers was 71%. That is a whole lot of "active
learning"!
My Gratitude to All of You
I have received lots of positive feedback about the
PL/SQL Challenge website and our quizzes. I built this site because I believe that the kind of active learning that comes from testing your knowledge can acelerate you along your learning curve to being an expert. It seems as though
many people agree with me.
But I also want to make sure you know that I feel an enormous debt of gratitude to all of you, our players. Without your commitment to improving your Oracle skills, without your drive to excel and, for some of you, your enjoyment of the competition, the PL/SQL Challenge would have withered away over time. Instead, it has drawn a solid core of technologists, who not
only answer quizzes but lend their expertise to review, comment on, correct, and discuss those quizzes.
I look forward to another busy, fulfilling year as we all use the PL/SQL Challenge to learn more about, and get better at writing, SQL and PL/SQL. I hope you feel the same way.
Warm regards and best wishes for
a fantastic
2013,
Steven Feuerstein
Founder, the PL/SQL Challenge
Major Player Accomplishments in 2012
The following players took every daily PL/SQL quiz in 2012:
Henry Abeska, Patrick Barel, Ivan Blanarik , Marco Erdmann, Marsel Fattakhov, Sebastian Kolski, Chad Lee, Vijay Mahawar, Iudith Mentzel, Sean Molloy, Cliff Nadler, Edgars Pampe, Jim Schmitz, Viacheslav Stepanov, Stelios Vlasopoulos, Pavel Vorontsov, Graham Wallace, Scott Wesley, Fulop Zoltan, Jan van Overveld.
These players took every weekly SQL quiz in 2012:
Henry Abeska, Ivan Blanarik , Alexey Chernyadyev, Rich Dellheim, Giedrius Deveikis, Niels Hecker, Sebastian Kolski, Naresh Kumar, Chad Lee, Bruno Martins, Iudith Mentzel, Keith Milner, Sean Molloy, Pavel Noga, Jens Petersen, Gert Poel, Thierry Poels, Hudai Polat, Zoltan Pasztor, Matthias Rogel, Martin Scholz, Tom Sullivan, Milan Vontorcik, Scott Wesley, William (Yi) Zhu, james su
Ravshan Abbasov, Alexander Andris, Rytis Budreika, Alexander Filimonov, Krzysztof Helbin, Vijay Mahawar, Chase Mei, Ugo Mirenghi, Tobias Stark, Viacheslav Stepanov, Oleg Tsibulnyak, Kostik Vasiliev, Stelios Vlasopoulos, Graham Wallace, Cor van Berkel
These players took every weekly Logic quiz in 2012:
Henry Abeska, Margit Biróné Sonkoly, Rich Dellheim, Victor Dobrovolsky, Randy Gettman, Ingimundur Gudmundsson, Niels Hecker, Sriram Iyer, Sebastian Kolski, Naresh Kumar, Chad Lee, Bruno Martins, Iudith Mentzel, Keith Milner, Sean Molloy, Jens Petersen, Gert Poel, Thierry Poels, Hudai Polat, Zoltan Pasztor, Dave Stadt, Sean Stuber, William (Yi) Zhu, james su
Rytis Budreika, Jerry Bull, Alexander Filimonov, Jason H, Krzysztof Helbin, Vijay Mahawar, Ugo Mirenghi, Juan Fernando Soruco, Tobias Stark, Viacheslav Stepanov, Oleg Tsibulnyak, Kostik Vasiliev, Brigt Olav Vik, Pavel Vorontsov, Graham Wallace, Cor van Berkel
And these players took every APEX quiz in 2012, until it
was discontinued:
Henry Abeska, Warren Capps, Rich Dellheim, Giedrius Deveikis, Bob F, Alexander Filimonov, Danny Gawarecki, Roel Hartman, Niels Hecker, Moritz Klein, Alexander Koblov, Sebastian Kolski, Chad Lee, Bruno Martins, Jens Petersen, Gert Poel, Hudai Polat, Juan Fernando Soruco, Tobias Stark, Viacheslav Stepanov, Miguel Villamil, Stelios Vlasopoulos, Graham Wallace, Scott Wesley, William (Yi) Zhu, gaurav kowale
In addition, we congratulate
Henry Abeska from the Czech Republic for being
the first player to answer over 1,000 quizzes
, in total!
Some players have an enormous impact not by playing
quizzes, but by reviewing them. I encourage you to visit the Reviewers
page to fully appreciate the amount of work these fine volunteers
perform. Without our reviewers, the quizzes would have many more errors
and would be far less informative. Our deepest thanks to all our reviewers,
but I would also like to single out Elic
(a.k.a., Vitaliy Lyanchevskiy) of Belarus (shown below, with his daughter).
Elic has been the most active
reviewer of PL/SQL quizzes throughout 2012, though I must
admit that "review" is an inadequate description of Elic's contribution. He often not only finds and fixes problems with
questions. He also adds interesting choices the author never thought. And he
often completely rewrites the
verification code, making it both more useful, understandable and sophisticated.
Elic said this about the motivation behind his awesome reviews: "I like it when thing are done in the best way possible.
It is not so easy for me to create materials that can teach but I can and like to identify problems in the content created
by others.
And sometimes digging deeper while verifying can help to discover something new. :)"
We don't (yet) have awards for reviewers, but if
we did, Elic would be Reviewer of the Year for 2012!
How the PL/SQL Challenge Changed in 2012
It was a busy year at the PL/SQL Challenge, both for
the development team and for our players. In April, we published version
2.2 of the website, which featured:
Activity Points
Up through 2.1, the only reflection of your activity on
the PL/SQL Challenge was your ranking in the daily PL/SQL quiz, or some other
quiz. Of course, the vast majority of players will never find themselves in the
top rankings for these quizzes, but they nevertheless spend lots of time and
effort at the PL/SQL Challenge improving their skills. In 2.2, we now award
points to players for all of their activities on the site (taking quizzes,
submitting quizzes, reviewing results, engaging in discussions about quizzes,
etc.).
Practice Quizzes
In the olden days of the PL/SQL Challenge, you could take a quiz when it was initially
offered, and then review results and answers through the Library afterwards. You
could not, however, take past quizzes if you'd missed them, nor could you
re-take a quiz. Now, you can set up practices based on past quizzes, specific
features about which you want to learn more, or your favorite authors. You can
also use the unique Autotune feature: the PL/SQL Challenge will automatically
create practices for you, based on pre-defined criteria.
On-Site Quiz Discussions
Rather than discuss interesting aspects of quizzes on
the PLSQL-Challenge.Blogspot.com blog, you can now start or answer a thread
directly on the Quiz Details page. You can also ask for help (it must be related
to the topic of the quiz) or even post an objection to the quiz. In other words,
if you think there is something wrong with the quiz, you can register your
concern on both the post-quiz feedback page or on the Quiz Details page. You can
also easily see if another player has already submitted a request for a
correction.
Quizbook: Quiz as PDF
One of the most long-sought enhancement requests on the
PL/SQL Challenge, the Quizbook feature makes it easy for you to generate a PDF
document of one or more quizzes. These can be formatted as an offline test (no
answer information included), a player scorecard (showcasing your performance)
or a knowledge document, containing all answers and resources. You can save and
reuse your Quizbooks, as well as sharing them with other players.
Three months later, we added a new way for developers to
discuss programming techniques and strategies, with the
Roundtable Discussions
You can now participate in "roundtable" discussions of
big-picture issues or questions that do not necessarily fit within the scope of
a single quiz. We will use this feature to gather use cases for seldom-used
features of PL/SQL, such as invoker rights, and also seek consensus on overall
strategies for optimal PL/SQL development, such as exception handling.
The Roundtable discussion for January 2013 is, appropriately enough, an invitation to
players to offer their single-most important piece of advice for new PL/SQL developers.
Check it out - and add your own suggestion!
And if that wasn't
enough to keep you entertained, in September we added....
Favorites
You can now "tag" authors,
players, quizzes, resources, features and more as Favorites. The home page will
then show latest news about your favorites and - if you are receiving emails
with quiz results - you will be notified via a daily email digest of this news
as well. Check out this blog
post for details and instructions, if you haven't yet taken advantage of
this feature.
On the downside, we had to suspend
our weekly APEX quiz, but we still hope to get it back up and running in 2013 - and you can help. Submit a quiz on
APEX to help us fill up the calendar!
So that was 2012...we've got lots of new ideas for 2013, ranging from
offering tests to supporting team play, and more.
The Q4 2012 Championship Playoff
The following players will be invited to participate in the Q4 2012s championship playoff. The number in parentheses after their names are the number of playoffs in which they have already participated. See the FAQ for an explanation of the three ways a player can qualify for the playoff. And congratulations to all listed below on their accomplishment and best of luck in the upcoming competition!
| Name |
Rank |
Qualification |
Country |
| swart260 (2) | 1 | Top 25 | Netherlands |
| Stelios Vlasopoulos (5) | 2 | Top 25 | Belgium |
| mentzel.iudith (8) | 3 | Top 25 | Israel |
| Mike Pargeter (8) | 4 | Top 25 | United Kingdom |
| Frank Schrader (9) | 5 | Top 25 | Germany |
| Stanko Jukic' (0) | 6 | Top 25 | Croatia |
| kowido (7) | 7 | Top 25 | No Country Set |
| Dieter Kowalski (2) | 8 | Top 25 | Germany |
| Viacheslav Stepanov (7) | 9 | Top 25 | Russia |
| Ivan Blanarik (3) | 10 | Top 25 | Slovakia |
| Milibor Jovanovic (0) | 11 | Top 25 | United Kingdom |
| Chris Saxon (4) | 12 | Top 25 | United Kingdom |
| Siim Kask (8) | 13 | Top 25 | Estonia |
| _tiki_4_ (3) | 14 | Top 25 | Germany |
| Frank Schmitt (3) | 15 | Top 25 | Germany |
| Jerry Bull (6) | 16 | Top 25 | United States |
| Jeroen Rutte (2) | 17 | Top 25 | Netherlands |
| Niels Hecker (9) | 18 | Top 25 | Germany |
| Chad Lee (6) | 19 | Top 25 | United States |
| koko (1) | 20 | Top 25 | Ukraine |
| Vincent Malgrat (3) | 21 | Top 25 | French Republic |
| Goran Stefanovic' (3) | 22 | Top 25 | Serbia |
| Michal Cvan (6) | 23 | Top 25 | Slovakia |
| Kevan Gelling (6) | 24 | Top 25 | Isle of Man |
| Justin Cave (7) | 25 | Top 25 | United States |
| Zoltan Fulop (3) | 30 | Correctness | Hungary |
| Krzysztof Helbin (1) | 33 | Correctness | Poland |
| Randy Gettman (8) | 34 | Correctness | United States |
| Dalibor Kovac( (4) | 38 | Correctness | Croatia |
| Karel Prech (1) | 40 | Correctness | Czech Republic |
| Carlos Eduardo Mayorga Rodriguez (1) | 50 | Wildcard | Colombia |
| Rimantas Adomauskas (1) | 62 | Correctness | Lithuania |
| Yuan Tschang (5) | 89 | Correctness | United States |
| Anil Jha (1) | 99 | Correctness | United States |
| mark kavalaris (1) | 154 | Correctness | No Country Set |
| Dan Kiser (2) | 205 | Correctness | United States |
The PL/SQL Daily Quiz in 2012
The daily PL/SQL quiz is the "heart and soul" of the
PL/SQL Challenge. As many of you have no doubt realized, it takes a fair amount
of work to come up with five new PL/SQL quizzes each week (plus the playoff
quizzes and the Oracle Magazine quizzes and the Toad World quizzes and...). I
write the vast majority of these quizzes, and have gotten, I believe, very
efficient about churning out variations of similar themes, week after week. :-)
But several players have also contributed mightily to the PL/SQL quizzes in 2012:
-
Valentin Nikotin volunteered to take a break in 2012 from competing in the daily quiz in order to write quizzes. We have used a total of 30 of his quizzes in2011 and 2012, with more than tweny this year alone. He offered mostly advanced quizzes, with an emphasis on the Function Result Cache. I learned something new in almost every one of his quizzes, and I am very grateful to Nikotin for his contribution.
- Iudith Mentzel has also written many high quality, well documented quizzes. You would be seeing many more of her quizzes, but Iudith is a fierce competitor in the daily quiz, and this means that we can only use two of her quizzes per quarter. Those quizzes are not, however, her only contribution. Iudith also is a very active contributor in discussions about quizzes, often offering rigorously-constructed scripts to validate her arguments and teach us more about the Oracle technology stack. Oh, and Iudith took first ranking overall in the Weekly SQL quiz for 2012. Congratuations and thanks, Iudith!
Some of you might wonder how I manage to keep coming up
with new daily quizzes. Sometimes I wonder that myself. But there is no shortage
of "material" to work with and, let's face it, most of the code we write follows
certain patterns. And those patterns are reflected in the quizzes. The
"repetition" that comes from patterns is, I believe, one of the most important
ways that playing these quizzes can improve your skills and productivity. The
more you play, the more the patterns are embedded in and quickly extracted from your brain, as needed to write the next program.
But I must confess: I originally planned to offer a
truly daily quiz: seven days a week. Fortunately, however, my founding
partner, Finn Ellebaek Nielsen, convinced me that five days a week was more than
enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Finn, for that enormously wise
advice (and for your help in launching the PL/SQL Challenge). If, by the way,
you ever need consulting on applying Agile principles to Oracle-based projects,
especially around testing, I strongly recommend Ellebaek Consulting ApS .
Here are some stats on the Daily PL/SQL Quizes for 2012:
| Total number of players: | 2,993 |
| Total answers submitted: | 123,920 |
| Time playing quizzes : | 393 days 10 hrs 57 mins |
| Total countries playing: | 78 |
Top Ranked in Past Year Among All Players
| Rank | Name | Country | Total Time | #Answers | Total Score |
|---|
| 1 | Stelios Vlasopoulos | Belgium | 12 hrs 00 mins | 255 | 104,600 |
| 2 | mentzel.iudith | Israel | 11 hrs 43 mins | 255 | 102,341 |
| 3 | Frank Schrader | Germany | 12 hrs 38 mins | 246 | 101,832 |
| 4 | Viacheslav Stepanov | Russia | 14 hrs 20 mins | 255 | 99,908 |
| 5 | Jerry Bull | United States | 14 hrs 53 mins | 253 | 99,791 |
| 6 | kowido | Not Provided | 14 hrs 04 mins | 234 | 98,462 |
| 7 | Siim Kask | Estonia | 13 hrs 58 mins | 252 | 97,387 |
| 8 | Chad Lee | United States | 17 hrs 37 mins | 255 | 96,805 |
| 9 | Zoltan Fulop | Hungary | 13 hrs 52 mins | 255 | 95,589 |
| 10 | Justin Cave | United States | 12 hrs 23 mins | 245 | 95,588 |
Top Ranked in Past Year Among Advanced Players
| Rank | Name | Country | Total Time | #Answers | Total Score |
|---|
| 1 | Stelios Vlasopoulos | Belgium | 12 hrs 00 mins | 255 | 104,600 |
| 2 | mentzel.iudith | Israel | 11 hrs 43 mins | 255 | 102,341 |
| 3 | Frank Schrader | Germany | 12 hrs 38 mins | 246 | 101,832 |
| 4 | Viacheslav Stepanov | Russia | 14 hrs 20 mins | 255 | 99,908 |
| 5 | Jerry Bull | United States | 14 hrs 53 mins | 253 | 99,791 |
| 9 | Zoltan Fulop | Hungary | 13 hrs 52 mins | 255 | 95,589 |
| 10 | Justin Cave | United States | 12 hrs 23 mins | 245 | 95,588 |
| 11 | Niels Hecker | Germany | 09 hrs 10 mins | 253 | 95,028 |
| 12 | Sebastian Kolski | Poland | 13 hrs 20 mins | 255 | 94,149 |
| 14 | Ivan Blanarik | Slovakia | 12 hrs 13 mins | 255 | 94,079 |
Top Ranked in Past Year Among Intermediate Players
| Rank | Name | Country | Total Time | #Answers | Total Score |
|---|
| 6 | kowido | Not Provided | 14 hrs 04 mins | 234 | 98,462 |
| 7 | Siim Kask | Estonia | 13 hrs 58 mins | 252 | 97,387 |
| 8 | Chad Lee | United States | 17 hrs 37 mins | 255 | 96,805 |
| 13 | Sean Stuber | United States | 12 hrs 30 mins | 240 | 94,138 |
| 15 | _tiki_4_ | Germany | 14 hrs 39 mins | 255 | 93,993 |
| 16 | Randy Gettman | United States | 17 hrs 04 mins | 241 | 93,073 |
| 18 | Krzysztof Helbin | Poland | 15 hrs 16 mins | 253 | 92,667 |
| 19 | Mike Pargeter | United Kingdom | 10 hrs 03 mins | 242 | 92,322 |
| 20 | Dieter Kowalski | Germany | 12 hrs 30 mins | 250 | 91,586 |
| 23 | Marco Siefert | Germany | 09 hrs 31 mins | 241 | 90,227 |
Top Ranked in Past Year Among Beginner Players
| Rank | Name | Country | Total Time | #Answers | Total Score |
|---|
| 70 | haennesche | Germany | 07 hrs 57 mins | 224 | 79,812 |
| 106 | micklesh | Moldova | 08 hrs 42 mins | 252 | 74,803 |
| 108 | Khijun | NOT SET | 09 hrs 08 mins | 249 | 74,544 |
| 110 | Sachi | NOT SET | 10 hrs 26 mins | 247 | 74,327 |
| 112 | gobruins | NOT SET | 08 hrs 58 mins | 230 | 73,713 |
| 122 | attagianno | NOT SET | 10 hrs 14 mins | 235 | 72,727 |
| 162 | Mark_123458366528865965
Jones_98576238967255482736 | Australia | 11 hrs 46 mins | 246 | 65,988 |
| 170 | Dmitry Funt | NOT SET | 13 hrs 47 mins | 247 | 64,796 |
| 171 | mark kavalaris | NOT SET | 1 day 20 hrs 49 mins | 255 | 64,770 |
| 176 | Cor van Berkel | Netherlands | 14 hrs 41 mins | 249 | 64,187 |
Rankings by Country
| Rank | Country | Total Score | Top Rank | #Players | #Answers |
|---|
| 1 | Not Provided | 6217618 | 6 | 1493 | 24682 |
| 2 | United States | 4539373 | 5 | 246 | 15808 |
| 3 | Germany | 3704022 | 3 | 116 | 11811 |
| 4 | India | 2733003 | 93 | 255 | 10384 |
| 5 | Netherlands | 2382848 | 26 | 105 | 8172 |
| 6 | United Kingdom | 1771946 | 19 | 95 | 6074 |
| 7 | Russia | 1497786 | 4 | 54 | 4820 |
| 8 | Czech Republic | 1032842 | 44 | 27 | 3390 |
| 9 | Australia | 866983 | 22 | 35 | 2793 |
| 10 | Ukraine | 710133 | 29 | 25 | 2287 |
Rankings by Organization
| Rank | Organization | Total Score | Top Rank | #Players | #Answers |
|---|
| 1 | OTN - Oracle Technology Network | 3779559 | 1 | 130 | 12000 |
| 2 | DOAG - Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe | 1664336 | 3 | 47 | 5247 |
| 3 | ODTUG - Oracle Developer Tools User Group | 1167204 | 13 | 40 | 3806 |
| 4 | Oracle Gebruikersclub Holland - OGh | 924530 | 30 | 28 | 3122 |
| 5 | IOUG - International Oracle User Group | 671944 | 13 | 19 | 2158 |
| 6 | UKOUG - United Kingdom Oracle Users Group | 483761 | 10 | 12 | 1461 |
| 7 | All India Oracle User Group (AIOUG) | 472651 | 93 | 25 | 1767 |
| 8 | ACE Program - Oracle ACE or Oracle ACE Director | 387249 | 10 | 8 | 1180 |
| 9 | Australian Oracle User Group | 365979 | 22 | 11 | 1111 |
| 10 | Oracle Benelux User Group | 315998 | 30 | 11 | 1039 |
Playoff Winners in 2012
It takes a lot of work to write daily PL/SQL quizzes - but it also takes
substantial professional dedication to take those quizzes each day. And
to rank high enough to participate in a quarterly playoff requires an additional
commitment and deep experience with the PL/SQL language.
And all that just gets you into the playoff. Then you've got to compete with between 30 and 45 other
top-notch Oracle technologists. So I am very pleased, indeed, to present to
you the winners of the first three 2012 championship playoffs:
Winners of Q3 2012 Playoff
1st Place: Stelios
Vlasopoulos of Belgium
2nd Place: Frank
Schrader of Germany
3rd Place: Niels
Hecker of Germany
Winners of Q2 2012 Playoff
1st Place: kowido
2nd Place: Justin
Cave of United States
3rd Place: Frank
Schrader of Germany
Winners of Q1 2012 Playoff
1st Place: Chad Lee of United States
2nd Place: Niels Hecker of Germany
3rd Place: Ivan Blanarik of Slovakia
The Weekly SQL Quiz in 2012
Three words come to mind immediately when I think about
the weekly SQL quiz in 2012: Kim
Berg Hansen (a.k.a., the SQL Evangelist).
Kim is a Senior System Developer for
T. Hansen Gruppen A/S and has been using SQL since 2000. He started playing
quizzes at the PL/SQL Challenge on 14 April 2010, just six days after it
started. Kim has written a total of 38 quizzes and reviewed 48 others. His
quizzes have covered lots of territory, but many of them have helped educate
thousands of us about the power of analytic functions. We asked Kim why he
spends so much of his time on the PL/SQL Challenge and he told us
"I see many developers shying away from learning advanced SQL, as it is easier
to understand procedural languages in your head. If I can teach SQL through
the quizzes, I help myself getting more like-minded people out there to share the fun
of squeezing as much power out of Oracle as possibles."
Thanks, Kim: we couldn't have done it without you!
Here are some stats on the Weekly SQL Quiz for 2012:
| Total number of players: | 2,003 |
| Total answers submitted: | 18,177 |
| Time playing quizzes : | 324 days 08 hrs 31 mins |
| Total countries playing: | 74 |
Top Ranked in Past Year Among All Players
| Rank | Name | Country | Total Time | #Answers | Total Score |
|---|
| 1 | mentzel.iudith | Israel | 02 hrs 39 mins | 51 | 22,768 |
| 2 | Stelios Vlasopoulos | Belgium | 02 hrs 52 mins | 51 | 21,788 |
| 3 | Syed Ariful Bari | Bangladesh | 01 hrs 11 mins | 48 | 20,898 |
| 4 | Frank Schrader | Germany | 02 hrs 49 mins | 47 | 20,834 |
| 5 | james su | Canada | 2 days 20 hrs 03 mins | 51 | 19,911 |
| 6 | Sean Stuber | United States | 02 hrs 39 mins | 49 | 19,868 |
| 7 | Krzysztof Helbin | Poland | 03 hrs 45 mins | 51 | 19,639 |
| 8 | Giedrius Deveikis | Lithuania | 04 hrs 05 mins | 51 | 19,381 |
| 9 | Chris Saxon | United Kingdom | 02 hrs 09 mins | 50 | 18,979 |
| 10 | Justin Cave | United States | 02 hrs 27 mins | 49 | 18,859 |
Rankings by Country
| Rank | Country | Total Score | Top Rank | #Players | #Answers |
|---|
| 1 | Not Provided | 1059688 | 11 | 979 | 4699 |
| 2 | United States | 519798 | 6 | 157 | 1921 |
| 3 | India | 485684 | 15 | 181 | 1943 |
| 4 | Germany | 425368 | 4 | 80 | 1449 |
| 5 | Russia | 221267 | 22 | 44 | 759 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 196075 | 26 | 65 | 729 |
| 7 | United Kingdom | 181677 | 9 | 64 | 659 |
| 8 | Czech Republic | 118174 | 45 | 15 | 416 |
| 9 | Australia | 112545 | 23 | 27 | 371 |
| 10 | Ukraine | 107611 | 28 | 19 | 344 |
Rankings by Organization
| Rank | Organization | Total Score | Top Rank | #Players | #Answers |
|---|
| 1 | OTN - Oracle Technology Network | 471234 | 1 | 88 | 1590 |
| 2 | DOAG - Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe | 237459 | 4 | 34 | 776 |
| 3 | ODTUG - Oracle Developer Tools User Group | 125325 | 6 | 27 | 457 |
| 4 | All India Oracle User Group (AIOUG) | 80604 | 94 | 19 | 318 |
| 5 | IOUG - International Oracle User Group | 73239 | 6 | 11 | 230 |
| 6 | Australian Oracle User Group | 53006 | 23 | 8 | 167 |
| 7 | Oracle Gebruikersclub Holland - OGh | 49266 | 63 | 17 | 189 |
| 8 | ACE Program s | 44898 | 10 | 6 | 154 |
| 9 | Russian Oracle User Group | 44049 | 92 | 11 | 170 |
| 10 | Toad for Oracle Discussion List | 39101 | 6 | 8 | 113 |
The Weekly Logic Puzzle in 2012
We launched the Weekly Logic Puzzle back in July 2011,
and ever since then, every week, rain or shine, a Mastermind-like puzzle has
been available for Oracle technologists, to help them strengthen their deductive
logic skills. More people play the weekly SQL quiz than the logic puzzle - and
that has always surprised me a bit. As Luis
Esteban Fajardo Bravo wrote in the January 2012
Roundtable:
I found very useful to study "Deductive Logic" even before
learning a programming language. I think that every programming language is the
same, the applied logic is what counts.
You can't write code, debug code, understand code
without a very deep level of comfort with deductive logic. And I would have had
a hard time, indeed, offering these weekly puzzlers without the assistance of
Eli, my son and main APEX developer for the PL/SQL Challenge. I've always loved
to play games and so Eli grew up keeping me entertained, playing all sorts of
card games, board games, logic games with me. Well, that investment in time and
fun has now paid off!
It's great to be able to turn to Eli and ask him to put
together another weekly puzzler. He has produced some really tough ones. And he
creates these puzzles in a much more difficult way than I. When I write a logic
puzzler, I play part of a game of Mastermind and then use that as my template
for the quiz. Eli, conversely, works it all out on paper, in his head, without the benefit of game software.
Here are some stats on the Weekly Logic Puzzle for 2012:
| Total number of players: | 1,121 |
| Total answers submitted: | 11,394 |
| Time playing quizzes : | 85 days 23 hrs 40 mins |
| Total countries playing: | 68 |
Top Ranked in Past Year Among All Players
| Rank | Name | Country | Total Time | #Answers | Total Score |
|---|
| 1 | Sebastian Kolski | Poland | 01 hrs 12 mins | 51 | 22,950 |
| 2 | Chad Lee | United States | 01 hrs 09 mins | 51 | 22,669 |
| 3 | Ingimundur Gudmundsson | Norway | 01 hrs 41 mins | 51 | 21,970 |
| 4 | mentzel.iudith | Israel | 01 hrs 46 mins | 51 | 21,948 |
| 5 | Naresh Kumar | India | 01 hrs 01 mins | 51 | 21,840 |
| 6 | Brigt Olav Vik | Norway | 01 hrs 40 mins | 51 | 20,968 |
| 7 | Sean Stuber | United States | 02 hrs 08 mins | 51 | 20,909 |
| 8 | Dan Jankowski | United States | 01 hrs 20 mins | 50 | 20,900 |
| 9 | Chris Saxon | United Kingdom | 01 hrs 38 mins | 50 | 20,043 |
| 10 | macabre | Russia | 02 hrs 34 mins | 49 | 19,841 |
|
