Learning is not a spectator sport

Just a quick tip that often catches me out. If you are like me, you have long since tired of clicking Next, Next, Next, … through the GUI when you want to quickly create a database. Many people work around this by storing a set of database creation scripts. However, you can do even better. The Database Creation Assistant (dbca) can also be used at the command line and in silent mode.

On Windows, this is the error I commonly get when using dbca at the command line

C:\oracle\product\19\bin>dbca -silent -createDatabase  -templateName General_Purpose.dbc  -gdbname db19x ...
[FATAL] [DBT-50000] Unable to check for available memory.

There is nothing wrong with the tool, and nothing wrong with Windows . In this case, it is a PEBKAC moment – all you need to do is ensure (as per the docs!) that you always create your databases with a command prompt that has been opened with “Run as Administrator”. Once you’ve done that, all should be fine.

C:\oracle\product\19\bin>dbca -silent -createDatabase  -templateName General_Purpose.dbc  -gdbname db19x ...
Prepare for db operation
8% complete
31% complete
Creating and starting Oracle instance
...

If you haven’t used dbca at the command line, you should check it out. Databases are now trivial to create with a one line command.