Oracle

If you’re going to be working with Oracle, you need to be able to get a better handle on what’s going on with the Oracle database. Just like other database platforms, Oracle provides a data dictionary to help users interrogate the database system. Looking at System Objects Database administrators can view all of the objects…

It’s Hard to Configure Historically speaking, Oracle was a bit painful to configure. A DBA needed to be able to size internal components like the rollback segment, buffer cache, large object cache, sort area, and a number of other memory structures. This gave Oracle a reputation for being difficult to configure. Rightfully so – compared…

Let’s assume you want to get started with Oracle. Maybe your employer is switching to Oracle, maybe you just want a career change. Where do you go to get started? There’s no need to feel lost. Getting the Database You can get a hold of the Oracle database in two main ways – a VM…

To get ready for Tuesday’s webcast, here’s what you have to do: Watch the video below, but watch it today (or over the long weekend). There will be no live presentation this week and we won’t be rehashing all of the material in the video. Write down your questions or comments. (You don’t have to do…

At some point, you’re going to need to know what’s wrong with your Oracle instance. While there are a lot of monitoring tools around, there’s always some reason why third party monitoring tools can’t be installed. Oracle has shipped with something called Statspack that provides DBAs with some ability to monitor their Oracle instance. Statspack:…

Oracle 12.1.0.2 was recently released with some fanfare. One of the most talked about features is Oracle Database In-Memory, but there’s more to this release than just columnar storage. Big Investment in Data Warehousing Almost all of the new features reflect an increased focus on data warehousing. This is similar to recent SQL Server releases and, indeed, most…

Execution plans are fantastic – they make it easier to visualize how a query is running and find tuning opportunities. SQL Server DBAs starting with Oracle may be a bit frustrated by the lack of a clear way to get to execution plans. This covers three ways to get to execution plans in Oracle –…

One of a DBA’s most important tasks is taking backups of databases. As SQL Server DBAs, we’re used to using the same tools to backup the database that we use for the rest of our job. With Oracle, there are two main ways to back up a database: user managed backups and Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN).…

When you’ve got database questions, you can get fast, free, friendly help.  Here’s how to do it: Join Twitter. It’s completely free, and you don’t have to post boring stuff.  Just use it for questions. Post your question in a tweet with the word #SQLHelp or #OracleHelp.  People in the community have searches set up…

Oracle is buying Sun, the owner of Java, MySQL and Solaris. Oracle is now the enterprise equivalent of Apple: a single vendor with a start-to-finish closed loop from the hardware to the OS to the applications. Another way to look at it: they now own a top-to-bottom development stack like Microsoft’s: OS (Solaris, and no,…

I don’t have much insight to add here, but it’s something my readers are probably into: Oracle now supports running on Amazon EC2.  They’ve got prebuilt EC2 instances that you can just turn on, a cloud management portal, and licensing options. This is such a cool time to be a database administrator.  I can’t wait…