Knowledge increases exponentially. Today, you probably own more books than great universities of times past—Cambridge University owned less than two hundred books in the fifteenth century. First came the invention of writing, then alphabets, then paper, then the printing press, then mechanization. Each step caused an exponential increase in the collective human knowledge. In our generation, Al Gore invented the internet and the last barriers to the spread of knowledge have been broken. Today, everybody has the ability to contribute, communicate, and collaborate. We are all caught up in a tsunami, an avalanche, a conflagration, a veritable explosion of knowledge for the betterment of humankind. This is the blog of the good folks at Database Specialists, a brave band of Oracle database administrators from the great state of California. We bid you greeting, traveler. We hope you find something of value on these pages and we wish you good fortune in your journey.

How To Install and Configure Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c

step by step guide to installing and configuring Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c

Grid Control or Database Control - which one is right for your enterprise?

comparison of Grid Control and Database Control

crsstat in Oracle 11g doesn’t show the instances

If you are familiar with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) on 10g, you have likely seen output from crsstat that looks something like this.  This is from a 10.2.0.4 two node RAC cluster.  Notice that each instance is listed (RACDB1 and RACDB3) as well as the database itself (RACDB).
 
[oracle@node15 ~]$ crsstat
HA Resource                                   Target     State
———–                                   ——     [...]

Using v$rman_output to review your backups

In my work as a Remote DBA when I implement RMAN backups for customers, I always have the output written to a logfile.  This provides a way to review the results and keep a long-term record of your backups.  But there is also a way to get this information straight out of the database by [...]

Installing 11g Grid Control on Linux

I recently installed Oracle Grid Control 11g on my linux workstation. Below are the steps that I went through to get it working.  Prior to installing Control, I had already installed Grid Infrastructure 11.2.0.2 and Oracle Database 11.2.0.2 and created a database to be used as the Grid Control repository.
Step 1) Download the Grid Control software:
- [...]

Tracing PL/SQL executions

The problem

Here’s a hypothetical problem: you are developing a PL/SQL application, that is in production. Unfortunately, in production the code is failing somehow, and you can’t figure out where or why. You’re unable to reproduce the problem in your development environment. The production server is behind lots of VPNs and firewalls, so you can’t easily [...]

Automatic Shared Memory Management (ASMM) - even when not configured

Oracle 10g introduced a new feature known as ‘Automatic Shared Memory Management (ASMM)’. As its name suggests this feature allows an Oracle instance to automatically adjust some of its internal memory sizes:
shared pool
large pool
java pool
buffer cache
streams pool
pga_aggregate_target <- 11g only if using memory_target
The setting of sga_target (10g or 11g) or memory_target (11g) to a non-zero [...]

Where’s My AWR in 11g?

Happy Valentines Day!
Many DBAs are aware that the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) including Active Session History (ASH) is only available to users licensed for Enterprise Edition with the Diagnostic Pack.  This is invaluable data for conducting performance tuning based on recent historical data but off limits unless you are properly licensed.  Those 10g users who [...]

Simplifying storage management; using fewer tablespaces

Sooner or later, every DBA will need to address how to manage storage capacity in their databases. Nearly every database needs more storage as time goes on, and without attention, the database will fill up, and new data/inserts can’t happen. It’s been my experience that bad space mangement is the root cause of a high [...]

DatabaseRX - Initial Impressions Part 2

As an implementer of commercial and open source database monitoring tools I find DatabaseRX has capabilities that clearly differentiate it from the rest of the market:

Scalability - hundreds of databases and instances can be added with trivial monitoring overhead, due in part to a highly normalized data model, message based architecture and modular design (loader,analyzer,notifier).
Security [...]