Oracle Rant

In Oracle 10g, there are several different ways of loading and unloading data. Prior to Oracle 10g the two methods outside of running queries were RMAN and import and export. In 10g RMAN still exists and is exanded upon. It is also the backup tool of choice for many DBAs as it actually simplifies things and gives you other benefits such a block corruption checking. Import and export are still there as well. Import will always be there but export will be going away. Why would they keep the import utility? Because you can export an Oracle 8i or 9i database and import it into Oracle 10g or the new 11g that will be coming out. Datapump is the new utility that replaces import and export.

So what has changed?

First of all, the command is different. To invoke export or import you would just use exp or imp. With datapump it is similar but follows with ‘dp’ for data pump: expdp and impdp. Also, if you are using new features such as Transparent Data Encryption, the old exp utility will not export encrypted columns. Your only choice is to use datapump in place of it. Datapump is also much faster than export and import as well as more flexible. You can run multiple jobs as well as run single jobs in parallel. You can also attach from jobs and detach from jobs.  You cannot use datapump to import an export from the traditional utilities. You can still use imp in Oracle 10g.

What does the datapump architecture look like?
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It looks like Oracle 11g is coming out on July 11th. I don’t even know everything about 10g! I guess this means I need to hurry up on my OCP stuff so that I can start blogging about some of the new features and enhacements in 11g. I also need to finish a few posts that I have promised. Those are 2 things I plan to work on this weekend.

Last week I was at Microsoft Tech Ed and got to see some of the new things coming out in SQL Server. Can you say Copy Cat? Nontheless, I guess it is good to see them continue to evolve. Competition is good for the industry. Innovation is good. I also managed to snag about 50 shirts last week as well as 200 pens. I wonder what I will do with all that junk.

So I am back in the office and trying to get the ground back under me. I am behind on my OCP 10g commitments as well as lots of other blog posts. I have several I am working on. The neat thing about WordPress (The software I use) is that I can work and save drafts. It also gives you a nice WYSIWYG editor. I can click a tab for how it looks and one for the code. That way, I can get detailed and make it do exactly what I want.

Here are the posts I need to do:

• OCP 10g Upgrade Posts
• Renaming Database Post
• Installing RAC on Linux post
• Installing RAC on Solaris post
• In General RAC postings
• ASM postings
• RMAN postings
• Partitioning postings

I am also presenting a security presentation to the Suncoast Oracle Users Group here in Tampa. This is the same presentation I did for the Central Florida Oracle Users Group back in January. They had about 45 people at that one. I wonder if we can do that many or more : ). I will also post about many of those topics including the use of Transparent Data Encryption, Auditing, DBMS_Crypto and just good best practices overall. I am also working on writing a white paper on PCI compliance at the database level. What technologies to use and how to apply them to meet your goals. It might turn into a pretty nifty presentation I can do as well.

I’m glad I started this blog because it now allows me to share much of what I do every day with all of you : ) I hope you enjoy it.

Time to get back to work…

It was absolutely packed. Over 40,000 people at the Orlando Convention Center. The keynote was Bob Muglia who is Sr VP at Microsoft in the Server and Tools division. They did a back to the future theme with Christopher Lloyd. It was pretty funny but I left early. I walked around to all the booths and got over 30+ TShirts. Yes, tons of swag. The Novell booth had the most gorgeous girl by far : ). Doubt she will read this hehe.

Oracle was there and Christian Shay did an Oracle ODP Tools for .NET presentation. I also got a chance to see a SQL Server clustering presentation. In 2005 they have some options that make it seem like Oracle. The VIP’s, private interconnects, shared storage etc that is similar to RAC. The presenter even said active / active. I thought, wow, they copied Oracle again. Well Active / Active has each node active but they run separate databases. It can just failover to the other node so it is not true RAC in the Oracle sense. Speaking of RAC, the product manager for RAC, Barb Lundhild, was out there. She will be there all week. What an awesome lady : ). I sat there and talked RAC with her for close to 45 minutes. I probably put her to sleep with all the RAC speak. Nontheless, I told her some things I would like to see changed. Afterall, who else to tell than the product manager. Is there anything you would like to see changed? If so, let me know and I’ll pass them on…

Well I need to get some sleep. I have many blog posts in the pipeline that I hope to get to shortly : ).

Memorial Day slowed me down and right now I am so busy at work that I haven’t had time to study. I do have a post half way complete on data pump but I can finish that this weekend. So what can I blog about in the meantime?

Well today I have to install an Oracle RAC environment on AIX. Next month I have a Solaris environment to setup that is RAC. I did 3 Linux ones last month (All Red Hat). What I will do is post through the install and what hiccups I ran into as well as what the gotcha were with each system.

So here we are 9:00pm at night and I will be trying to get this done throughout the night. I am actually working on 3 posts in parallel. This, partitioning of some tables for another database (a partitioning post YEAH!), and then a post on some more Veritas Backup jobs that I will be writing using the Veritas NetBackup Agent. All good stuff. When I finish that I will try and get some more OCP 10g DBA posts up.

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Sorry I have not kept on pace as I would have liked with the OCP 10g. I have a couple of posts in the works but not published as they aren’t finished. The next section will be on loading and unloading of data. Work has been extremely busy. I am actually installing Oracle 10gR2 RAC on AIX with CRS and ASM. I have been taking notes on my setup including the gotchas. This is my groups first install of RAC on AIX. We have done 4 RAC installations on Red Hat Linux which I will also blog about later. I have also implemented partitioning and I have a post in the works on that. I also setup a wallet for transparent data encryption as well as TDE. Ahhhh another blog post I am working on : ). I am also finally building the actual RMAN scripts with Veritas and will talk about my script, why I set it up the way I did and how it works. It will be with the Flash Recovery Area on a different diskgroup on ASM. A level 0 initially and then the level 1 with block changing file and the merging of the level 1 with the existing level 0 to make a whole new level 0. Then when that is done, you ship it off to tape. I am really working with it and might actually have to have a slick unix script run it or just have separate scripts in cron. One for 6 days of the week and one for the one day I want to issue the backup validate database command to check for the block corruption that a full backup gives you. So many benefits to this and it’s really slick.

I also will be renaming a database so I will walk through the process of doing that : ).

Also, this week I will be in Orlando attending Microsoft’s Tech-Ed conference. Yes, I am an Oracle DBA but I am also a SQL Server one as well : )… Oracle is what I am passionate about though. So much great stuff, so powerful — they really let you get under the hood and tweak so many things. Nontheless, I plan on attending many good sessions and I will blog about any cool Oracle / Microsoft things that I see there : ).

I’m working on my AIX install tonight so hopefully I will get that blog post finished and posted!

Tom