Oracle stored procedures and ColdFusion

I’ve heard for years that using Oracle’s stored procedures is both more efficient and more secure than writing queries against the database. It turns out, not everyone agrees with that and there is quite a bit of room for debate (most of the articles focus on MS-SQL Server and T-SQL, not Oracle and PL/SQL, although some general principles still apply):

I was still interested in how to use Oracle stored procedures with ColdFusion, though.
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JAWS Screen Reader Reads Hidden Span in Internet Explorer

5 years ago, Juicy Studio posted in the article Screen Readers and display: none that the JAWS Screen Reader reads the content of hidden span elements on a page when used with Internet Explorer.

Although a subsequent article (JAWS, Window-Eyes and display:none: Return to 2007) suggests that this issue has been resolved in JAWS version 12 when used with Internet Explorer 9.

I have not yet tested this in Internet Explorer 9, but I noted that there is still at least one issue when using JAWS 12 with Internet Explorer 8: the title attribute of a hidden span element is read aloud. For example, take the following HTML:

<p>Paragraph element. You should hear this text.</p>
<p>Paragraph element. You should hear this text. <span style=”display:none”>Hidden span element. You should not hear this text.</span></p>
<p>Paragraph element. You should hear this text. <span title=”Title attribute of hidden span element. You should not hear this text.” style=”display:none”></span></p>

I expected to hear exactly what is displayed on-screen:

  • Paragraph element. You should hear this text.
  • Paragraph element. You should hear this text.
  • Paragraph element. You should hear this text.

Instead, I hear:

  • Paragraph element. You should hear this text.
  • Paragraph element. You should hear this text.
  • Paragraph element. You should hear this text. Title attribute of hidden span element. You should not hear this text.

I don’t know for certain that this is unexpected behavior, although I know that I personally expected different behavior.

How Many People Does It Take To Silence an Alarm System?

This is my fourth logbook entry for my Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) course.

A few weeks ago on a Sunday morning, a piercing, ear-splitting din pervaded my apartment: the fire alarm. This is not anything like your typical household smoke detector: smoke detectors are merely loud. This sound causes pain. We managed to scoop up the cat and shove her into her carrier and head outside. Fortunately, it was a false alarm: workers in the restaurant on the ground floor of my building accidentally triggered the alarm system.

The fire department arrived and confirmed that, indeed, there was no fire. However, they did not have the code to turn off the alarm. Neither did the employees at the restaurant. I called the maintenance number for our building who relayed the top-secret code that would reset the alarm: 1-2-3-4.
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