plumber

Using External Table on Windows RAC ACFS

One of my customer is using Oracle RAC (11.2.0.3) on Windows 2012. This is might not be the most ideal setup I’ve ever seen, but it works and we’ll leave it by that.

One of the side effects of using Oracle RAC on Windows is that some of the basic things I am used to do when using RAC on Linux (for example) is behaving differently when it comes to windows. Here is a quick example for that.

I was asked by the customer to create an external table using a fixed-record file. This should be easy enough, right? Well, yeah – but we need to consider that we might connect to the database from either node so we need to put the file on a shared storage.

The customer is using ASM for his RAC so what better solution we have than using ACFS configured on top of the ASM?

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elephant don't forget

Oracle 12c Caching and In Memory Databases

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A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a private session about In-Memory database vs. traditional persistent databases. I created an hour-long session explaining the basics of database systems, how in-memory systems work, and when to use each of the systems.

One of the questions I got (and answered) was about persistent (regular) database cache mechanism – and I felt this is a good opportunity to write about Oracle 12c new feature – the Force FULL database cache.

In my session, I gave a long explanation about several hybrid solutions (such as the MySQL memory storage engine, and Oracle 12c database In-Memory option) but this post will focus on the Force Full database cache, which will be explained in the second part of the post.

Enjoy!

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SQL Riddle: Find the Sum of ASCII Codes of Employee Names (solution)

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Zahar Hilkevich (from the blog – https://sqlpatterns.wordpress.com – cool blog, you should check it out) posted a riddle on Facebook.
The question was:

“For every employee find the sum of ASCII codes of all the characters in their names. Write a single SELECT statement only.”

EMPNO ENAME       SUM_ASCII
----- ---------- ----------
 7788 SCOTT             397
 7876 ADAMS             358
 7566 JONES             383
 7499 ALLEN             364
 7521 WARD              302
 7934 MILLER            453
 7902 FORD              299
 7369 SMITH             389
 7844 TURNER            480
 7698 BLAKE             351
 7782 CLARK             365
 7654 MARTIN            459
 7839 KING              297
 7900 JAMES             368

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RMAN no files found to be unknown to the database error

Here’s a weird error message for my collection…

I’ve been working with a customer to setup a RMAN backup on his standby database (backup is going to SBT). After a while, we decided that we couldn’t avoid using the RMAN catalog so we created one.
Now, when using the catalog, we can backup the database from either the primary or standby instances and that will register to a shared catalog so we could restore from either database.

RMAN> LIST DB_UNIQUE_NAME OF DATABASE;


List of Databases
DB Key  DB Name  DB ID            Database Role    Db_unique_name
------- ------- ----------------- ---------------  ------------------
1       ORCL     1415951511       PRIMARY          ORCL
1       ORCL     1415951511       STANDBY          ORCLDG

The thing is, that if we change the DB_UNIQUE_NAME of the backup pieces (using RMAN’s CHANGE command), they will now be “owned” by the wrong database server and the files will not be available when running CROSSCHECK command.

RMAN> CHANGE BACKUP FOR DB_UNIQUE_NAME orcldg RESET DB_UNIQUE_NAME TO orcl;

change backup piece db_unique_name
backup piece handle=/data/fast_recovery_area/ORCLDG/backupset/2016_05_01/o1_mf_nnndf_TAG20160501T174121_cld5dkrj_.bkp RECID=15 STAMP=910719681
change backup piece db_unique_name
backup piece handle=/data/fast_recovery_area/ORCLDG/autobackup/2016_05_01/o1_mf_s_910715737_cld5dm03_.bkp RECID=16 STAMP=910719682
Changed 2 objects db_unique_name

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Automatic DB Startup: The Linux Part (OEL 6 and 7)

This is part 2 of the automatic startup article. In the previous part, we talked about the basic building blocks for the automatic Oracle database and listener startup. We talked about the orastart and orashut scripts and the /etc/oratab that control which instances are automatically started.

In this part, we will put everything together and see how to configure Linux to use the scripts for automatic start. I will demonstrate two version of Linux here. I used Oracle Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 – which are similar to RedHat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 (but free). These startup procedures are similar to most of the other distributions including CentOS and Ubuntu.
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Hacking Oracle Data Redaction

Last month Oracle ACE Director Oded Raz published an article about Data Redaction. This month, Oded will explain some of the vulnerabilities of data redaction and how to “hack it”. I would like to thank Oded for his contribution and invite him to publish more things in the future.
Zohar

On my last article, I have introduced you the new oracle security feature – Data Redaction, selective, on-the-fly redaction of sensitive data in SQL query results prior to display by applications so that unauthorized users cannot view the sensitive data. Although I welcome this feature and think it’s a much-needed addition to Oracle database security features it has some limitations that you need to be aware of before using it to protect sensitive data.

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