A repository has been setup at Bitbucket: jQuery Day Calendar

Specs:
- Drag and drop events (which contains various resources).
- Slot-based event containers of variable length (variable event length).
- Both calendar and event components are jQuery UI Widget based.
- Supports the jQuery Theme Roller.
- Support all major browsers.
- Very reusable, should not be a one-trick-pony.
- Using multiple day-calendars would create something similar to the jQuery-Week-Calendar (maybe make another composite UI widget for it even).

DEMO

jQuery Plugins Day Calendar

Warning: strtotime() [function.strtotime]: It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier.

; Copy this line into the php.ini
; http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
date.timezone = “Europe/Amsterdam”

Instead of using the SQL UPPER and LOWER functions to perform case-insensitive queries, an alternative approach is to utilize the linguistic sort GENERIC_BASELETTER. GENERIC_BASELETTER groups all characters together based on their base letter values, this is achieved by ignoring their case and the diacritic differences.
Here is an example of a GENERIC_BASELETTER query.

ALTER SESSION SET NLS_COMP=ANSI;
ALTER SESSION SET NLS_SORT=GENERIC_BASELETTER;

SELECT * FROM PRODUCT
WHERE PRODUCT_NAME = database;

All other operators, such as LIKE, perform comparisons in binary mode only. i.e. they do not honor the NLS_SORT value. This has now been be enhanced in 10gR2.

See also:
Diacritics in like clause, Globalization support
http://dbaforums.org/oracle/index.php?showtopic=915

Diacritics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic

Oracle® Database Globalization Support Guide
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/server.101/b10749/ch5lingsort.htm#i1006463

Oracle NLS_LOWER
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/functions098.htm#i78373

Oracle Replace
http://www.psoug.org/reference/translate_replace.html

SELECT translate('árvíztűrőtükörfúrógép','áéíóöőúüű','aeiooouuu') without FROM dual

Arguments for the use of GUIDs

- Makes distribution and replication a lot easier.
- ID’s can be created in the application, thus no ID would need to fetched from a DB insert.
- Creating ID’s on the “client” side enables working “offline”.
- Enabled (dirty?) cross-table references, e.g. a table which contains website url’s could contain a generic “ID” column which contains id’s from the “books” table or “articles” table. This also applies for class models ofcourse.
- Security (by obscurity) in urls.
- don’t have to create those (annoying) sequences with triggers in Oracle :)

Arguments against the use of GUIDs

- Performance (will depend on which database, e.g. Oracle also has sequential GUIDs and MS-Sql has a native guid type).
- Universally small chance that it’s not unique.
- Looks ugly (heard that a LOT)
- It has a Microsoft feel to it :)

Well, Google also supplies some nice information about the performance, reasons to use (or not) and options:

[1] How should I store a Guid in Oracle
[2] Unique IDs for multi-master replication – Sequence or SYS_GUID?
[3] Watch out for sequential Oracle GUIDs!
[4] UUIDs as primary keys

- Probable performance loss of 40% when using a CHAR / RAW(16) instead of an integer. [1] (Searching is faster in CHAR as all the strings are stored at a specified position from the each other, the system doesnot have to search for the end of string, thus CHAR instead of VARCHAR2, plus the length of a GUID is fixed anyway)
Whereas in VARCHAR the system has to first find the end of string and then go for searching.
- SYS_GUID is sequential because random GUIDs play hell with indexes. SQL Server has a sequential GUID generator as well for the same reason.
- On SQL Server, the base datatype of a Guid is actually a binary(16) (equivalent to Raw(16) on Oracle). But when the Guid value is marshalled into the binary, the bytes are re-ordered!
- You can uses sys_guid() as a default column so that it is automatically populated. CREATE TABLE guid_table (pky RAW(16) default sys_guid() PRIMARY KEY, NAME VARCHAR2(100));
- Using UUIDs in URLs is more secure. [4]
- A nice function to format the SYS_GUID() [3] :

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION GET_FORMATTED_GUID RETURN VARCHAR2 IS guid VARCHAR2(38) ;
BEGIN
SELECT SYS_GUID() INTO guid FROM DUAL ;

guid :=
'{' || SUBSTR(guid,  1, 8) ||
'-' || SUBSTR(guid,  9, 4) ||
'-' || SUBSTR(guid, 13, 4) ||
'-' || SUBSTR(guid, 17, 4) ||
'-' || SUBSTR(guid, 21) || '}' ;

RETURN guid ;
END GET_FORMATTED_GUID ;
/

/*
CREATE TABLE "TEST_GUID_FORMATTED"
(  "GUID_FORMATTED" CHAR(36),
"NAME" NVARCHAR2(50),
CONSTRAINT "PK_GUID_FORMATTED" PRIMARY KEY ("GUID_FORMATTED"
)</code>

truncate table test_guid_formatted;
commit;
*/

declare
stopwatch date;
begin
stopwatch := sysdate;
for counter in 1..1000000 loop
insert into test_guid_formatted (guid_formatted, name)
values (get_formatted_guid, 'test: ' || to_char(counter));
end loop;
dbms_output.put_line(to_char(sysdate - stopwatch));
commit;
end;

See also:

Oracle NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/olap.111/b28126/dml_options072.htm

Scenarios:
- You want to group by but treat a specific value to overrule no matter what else is specified it would look like:

select id, strpref(string_prefered_pars_type(status, status, ‘active’)) from tablename group by id;
(prefer the ‘active’ value above all else)

- The value has a dependency on another column which looks like:

select id, strpref(string_prefered_pars_type(return_column, pref_dependency_column, ‘active’)) from tablename group by id;
(prefer the value from a record which has its pref_dependency_column set to ‘active’)

Naturally with some code changes it enables all kind of fun aggregation features!

Everything below the line is Oracle PL/SQL example code which demonstrates how a custom aggregate function can be created which accepts multiple parameters by encapsulating the parameters in a custom type.

/*
quote:
There is no support for writing custom aggregate functions that accept multiple parameters.

source:
Build Custom Aggregate Functions
By Jonathan Gennick

http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-jul/o46sql.html

This example uses a custom type to use a custom aggregate function that accepts multiple parameters through parameter encapsulation!

more references:

Oracle® Database Data Cartridge Developer's Guide, 10g Release 2 (10.2)
11 User-Defined Aggregate Functions

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96595/dci11agg.htm

*/

create or replace type STRING_PREFERED_PARS_TYPE as object
(
-- Author  : O. Lissenberg
-- Created : 4-11-2009
-- Purpose : Passes parameters to the STRING_PREFERED_TYPE's ODCIAggregateIterate function

-- Attributes
strvalue varchar2(100),
pref varchar2(10),
prefvalue varchar2(10)

-- Member functions and procedures
-- N.a.
)
/
create or replace type string_prefered_type as object
(
retvalue varchar2(4000),

static function ODCIAggregateInitialize(sctx IN OUT string_prefered_type) return number,
member function ODCIAggregateIterate(self IN OUT string_prefered_type, value IN STRING_PREFERED_PARS_TYPE) return number,
member function ODCIAggregateTerminate(self IN string_prefered_type, returnValue OUT varchar2, flags IN number) return number,
member function ODCIAggregateMerge(self IN OUT string_prefered_type, ctx2 IN string_prefered_type) return number
);
/
create or replace type body string_prefered_type is
static function ODCIAggregateInitialize(sctx IN OUT string_prefered_type)
return number is
begin
sctx := string_prefered_type(null);
return ODCIConst.Success;
end;

member function ODCIAggregateIterate(self IN OUT string_prefered_type, value IN STRING_PREFERED_PARS_TYPE)
return number is
begin

IF self.retvalue is null THEN
self.retvalue := value.strvalue;
ELSIF value.pref is not null AND lower(value.pref) = lower(value.prefvalue) THEN
-- only change the return value if the prefered value is found
-- hence otherwise the behavior is "the first non null value is accepted and does not change", which
-- might be nice to change into a max() or min() feature.
self.retvalue := value.strvalue;
END IF;

return ODCIConst.Success;
end;

member function ODCIAggregateTerminate(self IN string_prefered_type, returnValue OUT varchar2, flags IN number)
return number is
begin
-- just return the set value.
returnValue := self.retvalue;
return ODCIConst.Success;
end;

member function ODCIAggregateMerge(self IN OUT string_prefered_type, ctx2 IN string_prefered_type)
return number is
begin
-- this might prove to be difficult, it's easier to disable PARALLEL execution
-- to enable though, a state needs to be added to enable the merge, the state
-- would flag if the current or other context value was set with a "prefered" value.

return ODCIConst.Success;
end;
end;
/
CREATE or replace
FUNCTION strpref(input STRING_PREFERED_PARS_TYPE)
RETURN varchar2
AGGREGATE USING string_prefered_type;
-- PARALLEL_ENABLE (to enable: implement the merge function)
/
select t.id ,strpref(STRING_PREFERED_PARS_TYPE(t.name, t.pref, 'pickme'))
from testgroupby t group by t.id;

/*
CREATE TABLE "TESTGROUPBY"
(  "ID" NUMBER,
"NAME" NVARCHAR2(10),
"PREF" NVARCHAR2(10) );

insert into TESTGROUPBY (id,name,pref) values (1,'test1','ignoreme');
insert into TESTGROUPBY (id,name,pref) values (1,'test2','pickme');
insert into TESTGROUPBY (id,name,pref) values (1,'test3','ignoreme');
insert into TESTGROUPBY (id,name,pref) values (2,'test4','pickme');
insert into TESTGROUPBY (id,name,pref) values (2,'test5','pickme');
insert into TESTGROUPBY (id,name,pref) values (2,'test6','ignoreme');

select t.id ,strpref(STRING_PREFERED_PARS_TYPE(t.name, t.pref, 'pickme'))
from testgroupby t group by t.id;

drop table TESTGROUPBY;
*/

Code examples will follow shortly ;-D

SELECT * FROM NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS;

To replace the light with the full client in Zend Server, put the “oraociei11.dll” (full) into the __ZendServerInstallPath__\ZendServer\bin directory and remove or rename the “oraociicus11.dll” (light). These libraries can be found in oracle client installation.

Thanks for the html conversion of this code:
http://www.phpdebutant.com

Regex Tutorial/Reference:
http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Introduction-to-PHP-Regex.html

http://ingol.nl/code/FaviconProxy.htm

http://code.google.com/appengine/

http://seleniumhq.org/projects/ide/

http://www.programmableweb.com/