I need to learn some Oracle

Factual Questions
1

I’m pretty fluent in administrating MSSQL and Cache databases, but i now have 2 Oracle systems that have been “bestowed” to me. Both systems run Oracle 9.2 (is that 9i?) with one system being Win2003 and the other Clustered Red Hat Enterprise.

Basically i just want an understanding of Oracle’s physical structure, naming, security, file handling, etc. I don’t need to know how to write queries that do INNER JOINS or OUTERJOINS since there is software that will handle canned reports like that.

What sorts of options do i have for this version of Oracle? I looked at 2 local places in Balitmore and D.C. but they are offering 10 and 11 only.

p.s. - this might be more suited for IMHO, but i figured i’d start here.

2

bump-a-thon

3

Try this book for the basics:

I don’t have it but I paged through the preview they have at the O’Reilly website and it seems like a good introduction. Are you supposed to be the DBA administering those databases or a programmer writing software that access the database? (Or both?)

4

P.S. You can try to e-mail me with questions but I only check this e-mail address once a day.

5

The software has already been graciously (ha!) written by McKesson. I am supposed to be the DBA. We have another McKesson program that uses Oracle and the person in charge of that is an idiot and constantly has to make calls to McK or another consultant. I don’t speak to that person much because of personality issues, but i overhear things like “had to increase table size because it filled up overnight” and “RMAN failed last night for some reason.” I’d rather be able to do these things myself than having to call the monkeys at McK everytime something gets silly.

Plus, i think if i get a better understanding of Oracle i can use Tivoli to backup/restore it better.

Thanks for the link.

6

Good luck. I forgot to answer the question in your OP: 9.2 is 9i.
The recent versions go like this:
9.0 = 9i (i = “internet”)
9.2 = 9iR2 (9i release 2)
10.1 = 10g (g = “grid”)
10.2 = 10gR2
11.1 = 11g

You need to sign up for a technet account. http://otn.oracle.com lets you create a free account. Once you have that account, you can download the latest Oracle software and also post questions at the forums. You can also download the documentation.

What you need to do:

  1. Download the Oracle 9.2 software and burn a CD with that. Keep that handy.
  2. Download the Oracle 9.2 documentation and burn a CD with that. Keep that handy.
  3. Install the documentation on your PC (in HTML form) so that you can easily look up Oracle commands.
  4. Install the Oracle 9.2 enterprise edition database software on your PC (I am assuming that your company is using the enterprise edition) and create a small local database on your personal Windows machine. You will use this to practice commands before doing anything on the production system. If your PC database gets hosed then you just throw it away and start from scratch. Oracle SQL commands will be identical for any Oracle database regardless of the server operating system (you say that you have one Windows database and one Linux database.) Most of the utilities will also work exactly the same on Windows and Redhat except that Windows will have more “GUI” tools.

Does your company pay for Oracle support? I am assuming they do. Find out who is in charge of the support contract and have them get you a Metalink account. Metalink is how you ask questions directly from Oracle support. http://metalink.oracle.com
Metalink is also where you would go to download patches, lookup bug reports, etc.

Your first order of business, now that you are in charge of a database, is practice a recovery. Not a backup - a recovery. e.g. User X had dropped table ORDER_HISTORY in the database. How are you going to get it back? A disk with the datafiles for the SALES_HISTORY tablespace has gone bad. What are you going to do? This is the most necessary skill for a DBA to have.