DBA's rely on Oracle's data dictionary views and dynamic performance views in order to support and better manage their databases. Although these views provide a simple and easy mechanism to query critical information regarding the database, it helps to have a collection of accurate and readily available SQL scripts to query these views.

Over the years, I have published a vast array of Oracle DBA scripts that can be used to manage many aspects of the database including space management, performance, backups, security, and session management. Once the scripts have been put in place, they can be easily run from within SQL*Plus while logged in as a DBA user.

The following article provides a new approach to SQL scripting that allows the Oracle DBA to collect a wide array of metrics and statistics using a single script. This "Snapshot Database" script will contain a collection of useful queries that run as a whole and produce an eye-catching HTML report. The report will contain critical database information including installed options, storage, performance data, and security.

The featured "Snapshot Database" article is available at:

http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Oracle/DBA_tips/Database_Administration/DBA_50.shtml

Currently, I have three separate Snapshot Database scripts available for each major Oracle release (8i, 9i, and 10g). The release for Oracle Database 11g will be released soon.

Although not as exciting as building an Oracle RAC or adding a new node and instance to a clustered database; removing a node from a clustered environment is just as important to understand for a DBA managing Oracle RAC 10g. While it is true that most of the attention in a clustered database environment is focused on extending the database tier to support increased demand, the exact opposite is just as likely to be encountered where the DBA needs to remove a node from an existing RAC environment. It may be that a server is being underutilized in the database cluster and could be better served in another business unit. Another scenario is a node failure. In this case, a node can be removed from the cluster while the remaining nodes continue to service ongoing requests.

I recently published an extension to two of my articles:

"Building an Inexpensive Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 on Linux - (CentOS 4.5 / iSCSI)"

and

"Adding a Node to an Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 Cluster on Linux - (CentOS 4.5 / iSCSI)".

Contained in this new article are the steps required to remove a single node from an already running and configured three-node Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 environment on the CentOS 32-bit (x86) platform. The node being removed is the third node I added in the second article. Although this article was written and tested on CentOS 4.5 Linux, it should work unchanged with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 5.

As your organization grows so too does your need for more application and database resources to support the company's IT systems. Oracle RAC 10g provides a scalable framework which allows DBA's to effortlessly extend the database tier to support this increased demand. As the number of users and transactions increase, additional Oracle instances can be added to the Oracle database cluster to distribute the extra load.

I recently published an extension to my article "Building an Inexpensive Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 on Linux - (CentOS 4.5 / iSCSI)". Contained in this new article are the steps required to add a single node to an already running and configured two-node Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 environment on the CentOS 32-bit (x86) platform. Although this article was written and tested on CentOS 4.5 Linux, it should work unchanged with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 5.

By default, the Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) does not configure the TNS listener to accept client requests to an ASM instance running from a different node. Access will be denied for clients like SQL*Plus, Perl DBI:DBD, and JDBC when attempting to connect to an ASM instance from a node other than the node running the ASM instance. When the service is created for an ASM instance, its status is BLOCKED:

[oracle@linux1 ~]$ lsnrctl status LISTENER_LINUX1 | grep ASM
Service "+ASM" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "+ASM1", status BLOCKED, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
Service "+ASM_XPT" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "+ASM1", status BLOCKED, has 1 handler(s) for this service...

This limitation puts restrictions on scripts and other client tools that want to monitor and manage an ASM instance from a different node. Getting around this restriction, however, is an easy task that involves manually creating a service name for the ASM instance.

This article presents the steps required to access an ASM instance through the TNS listener from a client desktop. The database used in this article is a two-node Oracle RAC 10g clustered database where in fact there will two ASM instances (one ASM instance for each Oracle instance in the cluster). The database version is Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.3.0) running on CentOS 4.5 (or RHEL 4.5).

Comprehensive article on installing Oracle Database 11g Release 1 on Linux - (CentOS 5.1). This article should also work unchanged with the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1.

Included in the article are detailed instructions for installing and configuring the Linux operating system to host the Oracle Database 11g Release 1 software and database. I also incorporated many tips that go beyond just simply installing the software to help newcomers to Oracle Database 11g better manage their database environment.

Comprehensive article on installing Oracle Database 10g Release 2 on Linux - (CentOS 5.1). This article should also work unchanged with the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1.

Included in the article are detailed instructions for installing and configuring the Linux operating system to host the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 software and database. I also incorporated many tips that go beyond just simply installing the software to help newcomers to Oracle Database 10g better manage their database environment.

Learn how to configure an inexpensive Oracle RAC 11g environment on Linux using iSCSI technologies from Openfiler.

(For educational purposes only!)

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Learn how to configure an inexpensive Oracle10g RAC environment using VMware Workstation 5.5.3 and Red Hat 4 Update 4.

(For educational purposes only!)

Written by Dominic Giles, Swingbench is a free load generator (and benchmarks) designed to stress test an Oracle database (9i or 10g)

SwingBench consists of a load generator, a coordinator and a cluster \ overview. The software enables a load to be generated and the transactions/response times to be charted.

The essential step-by-step Oracle10g new features course for experienced Developers and Database Administrators.

This course book presents - in a succinct and practical fashion - an introduction to more than 120 new features introduced with Oracle Database 10g.

Release 1 and Release 2 features are covered.

Learn how to configure an inexpensive Oracle RAC 10g environment on Linux using iSCSI technologies from Openfiler.

(For educational purposes only!)

Learn how to configure an inexpensive Oracle10g RAC environment using FireWire 800 for shared storage.

(For educational purposes only!)