Just incase the question is not clear, just assume that a client asked you to design a database for his company,now after designing it how do u give it to the client,in the case my school is my client and i have designed the database with a user interface using oracle express edition, how do i give it to them?

Azum please help.

@savenaija

savenaija:

Azum please help.

Actually your best bet is to ask the school to give you a server/pc and you do a reinstall of your application and your database. That way the school can have a copy for future reference and for the use of other students as a case study. To do this, you will simply need to do an export of your database from your pc/server and import to the server/pc provided by the school.

@Azum , thanks for the reply. As for the school u know how naija lecturers treat students, they will never allow me.

@Savenaija,

then your best bet will be to get the machine u installed your application on to the school and demo it. Simple.

Thanks Azum, but i still want it on a cd as exe file. let me restructure the question.
i have completed my application, and would like to copy it onto a cd,
first of all i need to know how go about creating .exe file that contains, application express program, my export of tables .exp, and my application thats a .sql
And created paremeters that the user needs to input, eg. LOV, etc,
The cd needs to be a auto run,

savenaija:

Thanks Azum, but i still want it on a cd as exe file. let me restructure the question.
i have completed my application, and would like to copy it onto a cd,
first of all i need to know how go about creating .exe file that contains, application express program, my export of tables .exp, and my application thats a .sql
And created paremeters that the user needs to input, eg. LOV, etc,
The cd needs to be a auto run,

Not possible.

Thanks Azum for your time but i need to create a cd, that when the user inserts in into their computer, it needs to automatically install the system i created. Do i need to use something like install sheild or do i use the batch process .bat?
And how do i go about doing this??
The tables and the application export needs to be installed, etc,

@Azum
Na wah oh Bros you just overlooked ma post

A-40:

@Azum
Na wah oh Bros you just overlooked ma post

@A-40,

Sorry abeg. must have somehow overlooked your last post.
On SAP, i administer the oracle database hosting the application. Do know my way around the application though. I am however not a SAP functional person. I do have some materials on SAP though but from an Oracle DBA point of view. Let me know what type of materials you really need and i will see if i have it.
To be an Oracle DBA, a lot of personal development is required. Working on windows may not be enough on the long run though a very good point to start. You will need to have hands on practice on the other operating systems such as unix and linux. And with the advent of VMware, you can easily install these to seat on your laptop for practice purposes. And i do hope you belong to Oracle Technology network. But believe me, being an Oracle DBA is very exciting, its more than a meal ticket.
Knowing PLSQL and SQL is very good, but the emphasis on it here is misplaced. Look being an Oracle DBA is far more than knowing PLSQL or SQL. As a DBA, except you're a Development DBA, you hardly get to put to use whatever knowledge you have of this. Its over 7 years know that i wrote a PLSQL procedure or what have you. At a stage as a DBA it becomes very irrelevant to you. You get involved in sepcialities such as DG, RAC, ASM, OEM GC, Streams, Replication, RMAN, DR etc that hardly require little or no PLSQL or SQL.
On RAC, if you do have any questions or issues, dont hesitate to ask and i will definitely share whatever knowledge i have with you or anyone.
Once again i apologies for not replying early.

savenaija:

Thanks Azum for your time but i need to create a cd, that when the user inserts in into their computer, it needs to automatically install the system i created. Do i need to use something like install sheild or do i use the batch process .bat?
And how do i go about doing this??
The tables and the application export needs to be installed, etc,

Unfortunately what you want to achieve can be partly achieved but will require a lot of work and testing to achieve. But definitely you can not run an Oracle Instance from a CD.

@azum, the Lord bless you, a few months ago i installed Solaris 10 on a virtual machine and prepared it for oracle 11g install.i ran into two problems
1. after creating the oracle user 'oracle', i could not log in, the log on process would hang and then start again so i had to login as root
2.the oracle installation completed prematurely after giving me some memory error, and i had 1024MB of physical memory as required by oracle for solaris 10.
the database was not created and when i tried to run DBCA it ran and gave some error which i cant remember now
anyway, i have installed Solaris 10 via a virtual image from Oracle/Sun and want to try it again
Do you think the problem is from the Solaris patch?when i try to install the required O/S patch as required by oracle it does not go cos i have to have a service plan number, we dont user Solaris O/S @ work, our 10g DB runs on Windows server but i really want to get my hands on oracle running on solaris

@Azum
Its no biggie man no need to apologize i just wanted to draw your attention. So basically you work mainly with the Database server part but can navigate the front end.
Do you have stuff on the HR,Material Management or Production Planning modules? Just anything besides the FICO module.

I have used Oracle on Linux but just on a minor scale. I joined OTN when i got my OCA back in 08 and i do know being an Oracle DBA is more than a meal ticket but it just had to take the backseat while i was battling with school i'm just pulling all the stops to serve in Lagos so that my Oracle doesn't suffer

As for the PL/SQL you have a strong point but you do realize that aside RMAN with its proprietary language a lot of the other specialities are kinda run by PL/SQL and its also useful when you want to check your DDV,DPV tables. Obviously you are the more experienced one between us but with the little i know i do understand that they could be very useful for a DBA

I am moving right along on the RAC thing and i'll alert you if or more likely when i get stuck

@Jimblaze
What's good boss? How work?

@Jimblaze,
First let me start by saying i never ever installed Oracle on Solaris running on virtual machine. All my work on Oracle with Solaris has always being on Sun Solaris servers and not virtual machines. That said i will attempt to apply my knowledge here to your questions.

1. the only reason i can think of in this case could be that you did not create the oracle user properly. You must have missed an error that occur while you were creating it. Or could it be that the user you tried to create exist?

2. When Oracle states that it requires 1024MB of physical memory, it means that this is what is required as minimum for Oracle ALONE after the OS memory use has been taken care of. In this case remember out of the 1024MB of physical memory, your virtual software is allocated some and so also the Sun Solaris you installed. In effect what remains of the 1024MB physical memory you have will be about half of that which does not even meet the basic minimum requirement. As such dont expect Oracle to run on such. Even at 1024MB, you will be hard pressed to have Oracle being able to run on Solaris.

3. To be able to run Oracle on Solaris, all the required patches must be installed. Which in effect means you must have a service plan number. I really dont know how you can go around this. Hopefully somehow you will be able to get around this and start it al over again. Also, after applying all the require Solaris patches, make sure you cross check the Memory Kernel parameters in Solaris that is required to be modified so that Oracle can run. This have to be configured otherwise your oracle instance wont start up. When you do start to do your install again, post what whatever errors you have so we can all find a solution to them.

thanks alot azum, the problem is getting a service plan number which would enable me to install all the patches,that being said the kernel para's are configured correctly and YES i do need more memory and about the oracle user, he was created correctly even when i issue an SU command he comes up and i can even ID him and see his primary group and also see his default project

Hi all, i'm quite new to oracle and i have to say, its been a biter sweet experience so far but one thing's for sure, i'm loving the challenges. i hope to get my OCA and OCP by next month
fantastic thread you guys have here, i' definitely subscribing.

@Dominique
You are more than welcome. What do you mean by bittersweet by the way? Care to share

@Azum
Patiently waiting for your reply

A-40:

@Dominique
You are more than welcome. What do you mean by bittersweet by the way? Care to share

@Azum
Patiently waiting for your reply

@A-40. I already replied.

@Azum
I don't think you have oh! I'm talking about the post on the SAP modules i asked u for and the ones you said you might have. Please check again

GO CHECK OUT DIZ ONE. Is OWNED BY A LADY AND HOSTED BY CENTRAL http://ladieshood.waphall.com go check it OUT.

A-40:

@Dominique
You are more than welcome. What do you mean by bittersweet by the way? Care to share

thanks for the warm welcome.
i didn't find easy when i started the course (since i don't have much of an IT background). fouund it very challenging especially the SQL part. but so far i'm enjoying the challenge. i can now start up an instance (duh!!!), configure a listener, create a database using the DBCA. i can pretty much do anything on the enterprise manager but i'm still trying to figure out the back up and recovery procedures.
i'm so happy i found this thread (cos i hardly come here), you guys are doing a fantastic job.

azum:

@A-40. I already replied.

My bad. I saw that my previous post got swallowed by the useless spambot on this site

azum:

@A-40,

Sorry abeg. must have somehow overlooked your last post.
On SAP, i administer the oracle database hosting the application. Do know my way around the application though. I am however not a SAP functional person. I do have some materials on SAP though but from an Oracle DBA point of view. Let me know what type of materials you really need and i will see if i have it.
To be an Oracle DBA, a lot of personal development is required. Working on windows may not be enough on the long run though a very good point to start. You will need to have hands on practice on the other operating systems such as unix and linux. And with the advent of VMware, you can easily install these to seat on your laptop for practice purposes. And i do hope you belong to Oracle Technology network. But believe me, being an Oracle DBA is very exciting, its more than a meal ticket.
Knowing PLSQL and SQL is very good, but the emphasis on it here is misplaced. Look being an Oracle DBA is far more than knowing PLSQL or SQL. As a DBA, except you're a Development DBA, you hardly get to put to use whatever knowledge you have of this. Its over 7 years know that i wrote a PLSQL procedure or what have you. At a stage as a DBA it becomes very irrelevant to you. You get involved in sepcialities such as DG, RAC, ASM, OEM GC, Streams, Replication, RMAN, DR etc that hardly require little or no PLSQL or SQL.
On RAC, if you do have any questions or issues, dont hesitate to ask and i will definitely share whatever knowledge i have with you or anyone.
Once again i apologies for not replying early.

Do you have the modules on Materials Management, HR, Production Planning and anything on ABAP or Netweaver?? If you got any material on that stuff i would appreciate it. I guess the nature of your job gets you working mostly on the database server

To be honest i have only ever worked on Linux and don't know too much about working with other OS. As for the OTN i joined after i got my OCA in 08 but it was always tough combining school with Oracle since what i studied was slightly different. I know Oracle is a definite meal ticket which is why i am going full-throttle with it now since there is no more school work to worry about


As for the PL/SQL debate you do know that a lot of Oracle utilities (DG,OEM,Schedulers e.t.c) are run on PL/SQL and SQL and if you are not on an EM environment you might need to make use of some of it a lot more often. While you don't necessarily need to be a guru at it i dont advice one should suck at it either. Its a very useful tool in my opinion especially when you want to make use of DD views and DP views. But hey you are the expert here i am just giving my two cents on the matter

I would definitely get back to you if and when i get stuck on the RAC topic

dominique:

thanks for the warm welcome.
i didn't find easy when i started the course (since i don't have much of an IT background). fouund it very challenging especially the SQL part. but so far i'm enjoying the challenge. i can now start up an instance (duh!!!), configure a listener, create a database using the DBCA. i can pretty much do anything on the enterprise manager but i'm still trying to figure out the back up and recovery procedures.
i'm so happy i found this thread (cos i hardly come here), you guys are doing a fantastic job.

Its nothing Ma'am. Tell me about it very few people found it easy i did find SQL easy sha. Hehehe my niece that just turned 1 yesterday can startup an instance
As a starter i think you should leave Enterprise Manager for a bit and work more with SQL Plus. Enterprise Manager could make you a very lazy DBA so try and spend more time on SQL Plus. As for backups and recovery leave that for your OCP just try and grasp the basics first and don't run before you walk

A-40:


Its nothing Ma'am. Tell me about it very few people found it easy i did find SQL easy sha.

i like SQL but its just very frustrating when every slight mistake returns an error or the wrong output.

Hehehe my niece that just turned 1 yesterday can startup an instance 

lol. . . i bet she can't

As a starter i think you should leave Enterprise Manager for a bit and work more with SQL Plus. Enterprise Manager could make you a very lazy DBA so try and spend more time on SQL Plus.

you're absolutely right and my tutor advised the same. i'm trying to enjoy it sha.

As for backups and recovery leave that for your OCP just try and grasp the basics first and don't run before you walk

thanks, but i really want to know how and when to perform level 0 and level 1 incremental and cumulative backups.

@A-40,

Unfortunately i dont have the materials you asked for. For one i am not a SAP Functional expert. Only those can have the materials you're asking for. The materials i have on SAP has to do with managing the Oracle DB hosting the SAP application: stuff like that.

On PLSQL, i guess you got me wrong. It is very good to know it. Trust me. But then, there is more to being an Oracle DBA than knowing just PLSQL. My point is the time aspiring DBAs on this thread spend learning PLSQL can be used to learn stuff like networking, operating system and so on. A complete DBA is one that knows a little bit of everything including those that seems unrelated to the DBA work.

@Dominique
On OEM: i dont agree that learning OEM makes you a lazy DBA. Infact OEM GC 10.2.0.5 is more complicated than anything before it. It requires a lot of learning and mastering to be an expert. I see a situation in not distant a future where being an OEM GC expert becomes a specialist subject just like RAC, DG , RMAN etc. That said, it is also important to know the basics fundamentals behind how OEM works. As such A-40 and your tutor are right that you should not devote too much time on it. At this stage it is advisable to learn and have a good grasp of the basics of Oracle DBA tasks first.

On Backups:
Level 0 is a full database backups. This is basically a complete backup of your database. This is the ideal backups that should be done. However so many constraints make it impossible to do this regularly. For example the size of your database makes it impossible to do a full backup level 0 backup every time. For example, it is not advisable to do a full backup of a 3 Terabyte that takes like 24 hours to complete every time. It is in this scenerio that level 1 backups come into play.

Level 1: A level 1 backup is simply a backup of the data that has changed in the database since the last level 0 backup. For example let's say you take a level 0 backup on Sunday. This level 0 backups then becomes your base level backup. If you then take a level 1 backup on Monday, what happens is that the backup taking on monday will only include data that has changed since your level 0 backup on Sunday. If you now take another level 1 backup on Tuesday what you have is the backup of data that has changed since your last backup on Sunday. And so on. In this case if say on Friday at 4.00pm your database crashes and you want to recover, you first have to restore your level 0 backup taken on Sunday and then progressively apply all the level 1 backups taken from Monday to Thursday. This will bring your database up to Thursday. To bring your database up till the crash time on Friday you then apply archived log files in a process called roll forward. As you notice here, this a tedious process which involves not only restoring the base level 0 backup of Sunday but also applying all the different daily level 1 backups of Monday to Thursday.
This is where Cummulative level 1 backups come into play. What happens here is that a cummulative level 1 backup of all the changes that happen since the last level 0 backup is taken. For example your level 0 backup is done on Tuesday. On wednesday a cumulative backup of all the changes that happens since the last level 0 backup on Tuesday is done. If also on Saturday you do a cumulative backup this backups up all the changes that has happened since the last level 0 backup is taken. This makes database recovery simple since all you need to restore is a level 0 backup and 1 single cumulative level 1.

I hope this explains the situation. To read more go to www.otn.oracle.com

@Dominique
If you think SQL is frustrating then i pray you never come across Java

No try the girl oh she can even check the archivelog status of a DB

To take baseline backups is pretty simple

RMAN> backup Incremental level 0
as compressed backupset database;

RMAN> backup Incremental level 1
as compressed backupset database;

I think Azum has pretty much explained when to use those backup strategies
By the way how far have u gone with RMAN? Can you point to your target DB or create a recovery catalog? I hope you are not skipping steps oh

@dominique the Lord bless you and you are highly welcome to the DBA corner
@azum hey i finally solved the issue of not being able to login to Solaris 10 as the oracle user
whenever i created the user with /usr/sbin/useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle , the home directory was not being created even after i specified it after running the command passwd -h oracle.
Solution: i had to manually create a directory in /export/home/oracle and after that i could login and now i have fininshed installing oracle 10gR2 on Solaris 10 which runs in a virtual machine ( sun virtual box) ontop of windows vista.I am really keen to work with oracle on solaris as our company only runs it on windows server, anyway i have some issues on the solaris machine which i will solve if not i can always post it here i think most of the issues arise from not having a service plan number and thereby not able to install the required O/S patches
@dominique-i would advise you to leave enterprise manager for now and concetrate on sqlplus, so as you dont have any issues when enterprise manager fails, as it has failed on me a couple of times and that was when my sqlplus/command line skills bailed me out

@Azum
Its no biggie you can give me what you got and incase you do come across the functional material holla at ur boi

Hehehe secondly i think there is a mutual misunderstanding cos i never said PL/SQL is the be all and end all of a DBA and to be honest PL/SQL is not being given as much attention as you are suggesting i am definitely sure networking has a lot more attention especially in Naij

@jimblaze
thanks and God bless you too
i also try to use sql commands as often as possible but the em makes everything much easier. what i do now is i perforn the activuty on em, them click on "show sql" and i copy out the sql commands that it brings

@A-40
is java programming really that bad? my sister that majored in computer also wants nothing to do with it.
with time, i bet they'll bring out a software (like em) that will make programing easier.

@Azum and A-40, u guys r rily gr8t,v bn follyng dis ORACLE DBA corner months ago nw and am rily intrestd in Oracle bt wl b finishng my B.tech in August by specia grace of God and afterwards,wl like to enrol for dis Oracle, pls guys i rily nid your help on dis. Wht steps du u guys tnk shud take? Whch of dis centres is d best 4me(Aptech,niit or new horizon)? Wl rily apreciate it if u guys cud help out on dis. Thnks.

Pallytu:

@Azum and A-40, u guys r rily gr8t,v bn follyng dis ORACLE DBA corner months ago nw and am rily intrestd in Oracle bt wl b finishng my B.tech in August by specia grace of God and afterwards,wl like to enrol for dis Oracle, pls guys i rily nid your help on dis. Wht steps du u guys tnk shud take? Whch of dis centres is d best 4me(Aptech,niit or new horizon)? Wl rily apreciate it if u guys cud help out on dis. Thnks.

Unfortunately i am not based in Nigeria and cant help. But there are many resources online to help u get started. A good place to start is:http://www.oracle.com/technology/index.html.

Good luck.

@Dominique
Its not that bad but it could really be a pain in the butt when you type 500 lines of code and you get 501 errors. There are actually drag and drop and java code generating softwares like JBuilder, Netbeans e.t.c but even to use these softwares properly you have to be up to scratch with Java in the first place

Where you able to backup the DB? Can you backup or multiplex your control files? Happy Easter in arrears

@Pallytu
Well its no biggie! Do you want to be a Database Admin or a Developer? If you are code savvy and good at programming then the latter is for you otherwise stick with the former

As for where to go Nu Horizons or First Logic are your best bets! Stay away from Aptech and NIIT if u know whats good for you and your money! Just make sure you are really into this cos it won't be all sweet sailin

@Azum
I am still waiting for what u got? Hope you had fun this Easter