SQL Server: More light shed on "non-yielding scheduler" and Indexes stats

SQL server folks may find the "non-yielding scheduler" warning familiar and it is usually (if not always) associated ...

Moving Oracle Datafiles to a ZFS Filesystem with the Correct Recordsize

Oracle's OPT_ESTIMATE hint: Usage Guide

It's one of those hints that you've heard about many times, but all the information is scattered, and finding what you ...

Exadata's Best Kept Secret: Storage Indexes

While features like Smart Scan often steal the spotlight in Exadata discussions, Storage Indexes are a silent ...

AQ Notifications in Oracle 11gR1

Introduction The AQ notification process has changed from release 10gR2 to 11gR1. The most notable change is the switch ...

Exadata TPC Benchmarks

Notice One of the questions in my webinar this week related to TPC benchmark results for Exadata. Kevin Closson blogged ...

Cloning Oracle Home from RAC to Stand-Alone

This should have been the easiest task on my todo list: Install Oracle 10.2.0.3 EE standalone on a new Linux RHEL 5 ...

DBD::Oracle and Windows 64bit

I have successfully compiled and installed DBD::Oracle on Windows 2008 Server 64bit operating system today. I used the ...

Emergency Recovery or RMAN DUPLICATE Rerun Just Works!

Working as a DBA often means facing high-pressure situations, especially during an on-call weekend. Recently, I was ...

Running querys against multiple SQL Server AND Oracle instances

Background It is not unusual that a DBA needs to run the same query across multiple instances. The query can be ...

HOWTO: Oracle Cross-Platform Migration with Minimal Downtime

Strategy for a Minimal Downtime Migration I recently performed a migration from Oracle 10gR2 on Solaris to the same ...

Oracle GoldenGate Installation, Part 1

I want to introduce several post about Oracle GoldenGate (GG), a relatively new replication software from Oracle. We ...

Patching an 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure Home

Introduction The process for applying a patch on top of the CRS, or now called, the Grid Infrastructure, has changed ...

Setting up Network ACLs in Oracle 11g… For Dummies

Having recently performed a test upgrade for a client from Oracle RDBMS 10g to 11g, I can tell you that one of the big ...

Check URL status from SQL server

One of our clients has a public web page and they needed to ensure that it is always up and accessible. Pythian already ...

AWR Extract and Load

Introduction In preparing my presentation for the Michigan Oak Table Symposium, I came across AWR extract and load. ...

Using the Sphinx Search Engine with MySQL

MySQL Full Text Search Limitations Suppose you have a MyISAM table containing a column with a full text index. This ...

Notes on Learning MySQL (as an Oracle DBA)

I spent some time last month getting up to speed on MySQL. One of the nice perks of working at Pythian is the ability ...

Questions you always wanted to ask about Flashback Database…

Last Friday in the Sydney Oracle Meetup I talked about Oracle Flashback technology and how it helps to reduce downtime. ...

MySQL on Debian and Ubuntu

Introduction Debian Linux (the underlying foundation of Ubuntu) manages the startup/shutdown of MySQL quite differently ...

Beware the /var/tmp/.oracle Hidden Directory!

Background A few months ago, we had a test instance complaining that it couldn’t write to ASM. This was an 11.1.0.7 ...

Installing Oracle 11gR2 Enterprise Edition on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

I recently reformatted my laptop with the latest Ubuntu LTS release, 10.04, aka Lucid Lynx. Since I like to have a ...

Designing for Exadata: Maximizing Storage Indexes Use

Oracle Exadata V2 is a very well balanced database machine combined with smart and innovative software. One of these ...

Oracle GoldenGate Extract Internals, Part III

This is the third post in the Oracle GoldenGate Extract Internals series (links to part I and part II). In this post, ...

Oracle GoldenGate Extract Internals, Part I

Since GoldenGate has been declared as a strategic direction for replication technology by Oracle, it sounds like it’s ...

Oracle: What is an Unrecoverable Data File?

A data file is considered unrecoverable if an unrecoverable operation has been performed on an object residing in the ...

ORA-01555: snapshot too old, When Running Flashback Query

Argh! Of all the frustrating, partially-completed features Oracle has released, this is the most frustrating. Did I ...

A grand tour of Oracle Exadata, Part 2

After covering hardware components of Sun Oracle Database Machine in part 1, our grand tour continues with a look at ...