Opening the Door Without the Keys

This week, my DBA team fulfilled a request to restore 1 month old lost data. A review of the RMAN backups showed that ...

Oracle Database Load Testing Tools – Overview

At Pythian's internal forum, someone just asked the following question: "The team here is evaluating DB load testing ...

The Easy Way of Finding Similar SQL Statements

RMAN: Corrupt Block? Let's Re-Read... Nope, It's All Good

Getting a "corrupt block" page 40 minutes before your shift ends is the DBA equivalent of a jump-scare in a horror ...

The Internal Workflow of an E-Business Suite Concurrent Manager Process

Concurrent processing is one of the key elements of any E-Business Suite system. It provides scheduling and queuing ...

Read GoldenGate Discard Files

Do You Know If Your Database Is Slow?

The time to respond There was a question at Pythian a while ago on how to monitor Oracle database instance performance ...

How to Update JDK on Oracle Enterprise Linux from Version 1.6 to 1.7

Intro JDK is the environment to develop Java programs, and updating Java on Linux boxes is a requirement which often ...

Extending OEM 12c with Oracle Application Management Pack

Mother, mother Oracle. I have heard you call… Wanted to sail upon your cloud (control) since 7.3.4… You’ve seen it all, ...

Creating a Physical Standby with RMAN Active Duplicate in 11.2.0.3

Creating a physical standby database is a fundamental skill for any DBA, but tutorials often skip over the "why" or ...

Exadata Join Offloading in Action

One of the biggest selling features of Oracle's flagship engineered system - Exadata - is the storage offloading ...

Build an 11gR2 RAC Cluster in VirtualBox in 1 Hour Using OVM Templates

After reviewing my blog post about running EBS OVM templates in VirtualBox, two of my teammates suggested that I work ...

Hard Drive: Inner or Outer?

To be precise, I wonder if OUTERmost tracks of a spinning HDD are faster than INNERmost tracks. Should we put physical ...

EBS: R12 Default OACORE Memory Settings Are Not Enough

Not many of you know that my day-to-day work focus is Oracle E-Business Suite :). Here goes for an EBS-related blog ...

Duplicate Database from Active Database — Just Works!

My friend Øyvind Isene suggested that I store a DUPLICATE RMAN script that works in a safe place in this tweet. @yvelik ...

Managing Oracle on Windows: Where’s my Oratab?

Introduction If you manage Oracle on Windows, you probably have wondered why it is so difficult to work out which ...

SQL for Pattern Matching in Oracle 12c

Oracle 12c is out! And with it, a myriad of new features that we’ll be learning and playing with in the months and ...

How to Tune Using v$mystat

Situation When reviewing the performance of some queries, it is sometimes useful to review the session statistics for ...

How to Install Oracle 12c RAC: A Step-by-Step Guide

Announcement Okay, back to school folks, back to school :). As with any new product, our long learning journey starts ...

How EBS Concurrent Processing Should Run on Oracle RAC

Suggested audience: Oracle Apps DBAs, Oracle e-Business Suite technical architects, and Oracle ATG team. Introduction ...

How to Troubleshoot OEM 12c Cloud Control Auto-Discovery

I was recently involved in an upgrade project to go from 11.2.0.2 to 11.2.0.3 on an Exadata V2. We hit some snags ...

Revealing the Hints Behind the Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor

Background A client recently supplied a list of 50+ SQL IDs that should receive SQL profiles, and I’ve been working ...

This is How You Disable AUTO_TASKs in 11G

I find myself forgetting how to disable Oracle AUTO_TASKs on a regular basis. Therefore, I have decided to document it ...

Sleuthing for Temporary Space Spendthrifts

I was recently looking at an issue where a large database server was running out of temp space. The issue had occurred ...

Changing SID on a RAC Environment

This post is just a short note documenting a procedure that isn’t done frequently or described anywhere else (to my ...

Select Statement Generating Redo and Other Mysteries of Exadata

Like many good stories, this one also started with an innocent question from a customer: “I often check “SELECT ...

Temporary Tablespaces: to BIGFILE or Not to BIGFILE

I saw a question on the OTN Exadata forum asking whether or not to use BIGFILE temporary tablespaces in an Exadata ...