Learning is not a spectator sport

Complete listing of posts

  • Avoid orphaned Lockdown Profiles

    Avoid orphaned Lockdown Profiles

    Most administrators are now aware of the lockdown profile facility in the Oracle database (available since 12c). They allow a more granular level of privilege control of components and functionality within the database. I’m not going to spend more time than that on what they do – this post is just to highlight a small Read more

  • Getting the most out of in-memory – part 2

    Getting the most out of in-memory – part 2

    In the previous post, I described the importance of checking V$IM_SEGMENTS to ensure that the in-memory store is populated to have confidence that you are indeed getting the benefit of the feature. But even if the store has been populated, when it comes to virtual columns, additional care is needed to make sure you can Read more

  • Getting the most out of in-memory

    Getting the most out of in-memory

    First of all … Happy New Year! This is my first post for 2020. Last year, I fell just short of 100 blog posts for the year – so this year, I’m starting early and hopefully I can crack the 100 mark! Anyway..onto the post. The in-memory option in the Oracle database can yield some Read more

  • Why all pluggable database names should be unique

    Why all pluggable database names should be unique

    A quick tip just in time for Christmas I logged on to my database this morning, and things just didn’t look right. In fact, they looked down right alarming. All my objects were gone, my user account had the wrong password..It was almost as if I was connecting to a totally different database! That’s because Read more

  • Listener log data mining with SQL

    Listener log data mining with SQL

    If you take a look at the log files created by the listener, there is obviously a nice wealth of information in there. We get service updates, connections etc, all of which might be useful particularly in terms of auditing security However, it also is in a fairly loose text format, which means ideally I’d Read more

  • dbca silent mode – Windows

    dbca silent mode – Windows

    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. Read more

  • 2019-what grabbed your attention

    2019-what grabbed your attention

    Here are the blog posts that you hit on most this year, with the most viewed entry on top. Unsurprisingly is it related to my bugbear with the OpenWorld catalog. I mean, every conference organizer must know that the one thing the attendees will always want is to get access to all of the content. Read more

  • Larger number of Exadata storage indexes

    Larger number of Exadata storage indexes

    We had a question on AskTOM inquiring about how to handle the issue of only 8 storage indexes being possible on an Exadata engineered system. If you are unfamiliar with what a storage index is, they are part of the suite of features often referred to as the “secret sauce” that can improve query performance Read more

  • Do you work in I.T?

    Do you work in I.T?

    If you do, then you know that only 20% of your I.T work is spent at the office. And no, I’m not talking about telecommuting or working remotely here. I’m talking about the 80% of our time we spend handling all those I.T calls from friends and family So I was motivated to put together Read more

  • Cloning a schema with a one line command

    Cloning a schema with a one line command

    Aug 2024 Update: I updated this routine to be a little more robust for those wanting to use this in a more “production-esque” way, ie, have a dedicated user account, plus handle the nuances of cloud versus on-prem etc. If that is what you need, then please use “clone_schema_v2.sql” in my git repo, not the original Read more

  • DML error logging – customising the error log table

    DML error logging – customising the error log table

    I posted a nice little feature of DML error logging recently, and a comment came in mentioned that caution is needed with DML error logging because the errors are logged persistently. Hence if you ran a load multiple times, or multiple sessions were utilizing the facility, then the error logging table can quickly become a Read more

  • The holistic SQL tuning series

    The holistic SQL tuning series

    I did a set of articles for Oracle Magazine on a more holistic view of SQL tuning. What do I mean by “holistic”? It was a reflection of a common problem that I see when questions come into AskTOM, or when people in the community approach me at conferences, namely, there is an inclination to Read more