How to troubleshoot an ORA-28030 error

ORA-28030: Server encountered problems accessing LDAP directory service. Cause: Unable to access LDAP directory ...

ASM nternals: tracking down failed ASM reads

Creating a test lab using VirtualBox / NAT networking

My job is almost completely reliant upon my ability to perform work in lab of virtual machines. Almost every action ...

ORA-10173: Dynamic sampling time-out error

Part 1: Oracle cloud database backup service

Oracle Cloud Database Backup Service (ODBS) This is part 1 of 3 in a series on "Getting Started with Oracle Cloud ...

Oracle EBS R12.2: Restarting online patching enablement patch

If you are in process of upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.4, you would have went though this critical phase in ...

Oracle ASM rebalance - Turn it up. To 11?

If you've ever seen or heard of the movie This is Spinal Tap, then you have likely heard the phrase "Turn it up to 11." ...

Oracle E-Business Suite: Virtual host names

The ability to use virtual host names with Oracle E-Business Suite is one of the features that I have been waiting for ...

Online resizing of ASM disks

The SAN administrator recently informed us that several disks were extended from 300GB to 600GB. These multipath disks ...

Oracle E-business suite: Virtual host names solution

This blog post is a continuation to an earlier post about my musings on Oracle EBS support for virtual host names. ...

Part 2: Oracle Cloud Backups to AWS S3

Getting Started with Oracle Cloud Backups - Amazon Web Services (AWS) This is part 2 of a 3 part series on "Getting ...

Using Docker to visualize MySQL performance schema

Context Last week, I was pleased to present at Percona Live Amsterdam 2015 regarding the importance of Performance ...

RMAN full backup vs. level 0 incremental

Full backup vs. level 0 incremental: a physical comparison Perhaps you've wondered about this. What is the difference ...

How to decipher oracle Internal datatype storage

What started out as an investigation into how the optimizer deals with predicates that are outside the known range of ...

Oracle 12c - adaptive query optimization

Scenario: A user complains that a batch job that is critical for the month end business processing is taking more time ...

Patching fun: GI and database patches

Intro So, it has been some time since I have patched a database. Patching seemed necessary in a 12c database used for ...

Import/export multiple SSIS packages

While I was working on a migration project recently, I had the task of importing and then exporting multiple packages - ...

Locks, blocks and deadlocks - what's the difference?

Explanation We are often being paged by development teams talking about locks, blocks or deadlocks and some people make ...

Benchmarking Google Cloud SQL instances

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed database service that makes it easy to set-up, maintain, manage, and administer ...

Issues with Plan Cache Reuse & Row Goal Optimization

I am presenting here on behalf of my colleague Fabiano Amorim (he is busy resolving other exciting performance ...

High "cursor: pin S wait on X" waits?

If your system meets any of the following criteria:

Oracle upgrade failures due to METHOD_OPT and XDBCONFIG

Background I recently experienced a problem when upgrading an old Oracle 10.2.0.4 database to 11.2.0.4 that had no ...

Autoconfig in Oracle EBS R12.2

The evolution of autoconfig in oracle e-business suite All seasoned Oracle Apps DBAs know that Autoconfig is the master ...

Implementing fuzzy search in SQL server - part 2: Levenshtein distance

Introduction The Levenshtein Distance, as discussed in my last post, is a way to measure how far two strings are ...

Windows containers: installing SQL server

This blog post is a quick introduction to Containers in the Windows world, and a walk-through on installing SQL Server ...

Magic of "\d" in Vertica

A quick neat way to list down important and oft-needed information like names of databases, schemas, users, tables, ...

Why locking Oracle accounts is a bad idea

Time and time again I run into database accounts which are marked "LOCKED" or "EXPIRED & LOCKED". The main problem ...

Advanced compression option caveat in Oracle 12c

Oracle 12c introduced a new capability to move a partition online, without any interruptions to DML happening at the ...