James Koopmann

Interviewing for a PL/SQL developer position may turn into a quiz, specifically about writing SQL and extracting information from a set of tables. The following questions are actual questions the author has been asked when interviewing for both a DBA position and a PL/SQL developer position. Interviewing for a PL/SQL developer position may turn into […]

Interviewing for a PL/SQL developer position ultimately will turn towards talking about database structures and objects. This article goes beyond the basic table and index questions that you might expect and offers a tip or two designed to impress the interviewer. Interviewing for a PL/SQL developer position ultimately will turn towards talking about database structures […]

James Koopman discusses how to give/take/study for an Oracle Database PL/SQL developer position, with a look at the top five questions he would ask potential Oracle Database PL/SQL Developers to help assess his/her basic knowledge. Interviewing for any technical position can be quite a stressful experience. Ever since I initially wrote “Oracle Technical Interview Questions […]

Constantly watching CPU utilization is critical to a database administrator’s understanding of their database system. The sar utility, while seemingly small and insignificant can and should be used to help initially determine if any high-level CPU resource usage is out of balance, potentially signaling a database performance tuning problem. Being an effective database administrator means […]

Oracle Database change control is always difficult even under the best scenarios. Using Oracle’s DBMS_METADATA_DIFF becomes a great weapon for a database administrator to regain control. Sometimes, ok many times, one of the most difficult jobs as a database administrator is having to sync database objects between databases, schemas, production, development, QA, etc. etc. etc. […]

Everyone wants to go virtual, but getting started with Oracle’s VM VirtualBox can be tricky. James Koopmann takes a quick look at installing Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2.4, covering some of the features you as a database administrator or database developer might run across while trying to install an operating system or Oracle database. Introduction There […]

Oracle Database’s Oracle Error messaging system is often forgotten but can become a staple for many Database Administrators. One need only look at the Oracle documentation to realize that the extent and number of errors that could be generated are enormous within the oracle product set. Most DBAs and database developers will tend to thumb […]

Oracle’s ADRCI extended commands provide valuable scripting and file viewing options, with about two dozen commands that you can use to look at and manage diagnostic information.. ADR is the future of Oracle diagnostics and it’s essential that database administrators understand it. If you read Oracle database documentation for the ADRCI utility, and looked at […]

Oracle’s ADR seems to be great for the new XML logs but let’s not forget about the old style logs as ADRCI can do a few things with them as well. In the last few articles that I’ve been writing about ADR, I’ve stuck with viewing and rotating the new XML style alert log from […]

Oracle Database’s ADR purge command is superior for purging alert log entries. Just be forewarned on how to actually use it since the desired or perceived outcome is not always apparent. Alert Log Scraping with Oracle’s ADRCI Utility looks at extracting Oracle alert errors from the alert log and Rotating Oracle’s Alert Log with ADRCI […]

Many Oracle database administrators would not only like to report on (ORA-) errors but also manage the alert log itself–saving and/or trimming the alert log, aka alert log rotation. Oracle’s new ADR with command interface can easily be used to help rotate Oracle’s alert log. In Alert Log Scraping with Oracle’s ADRCI Utility, I looked […]

Oracle’s new ADR with command interface shows promise for database administrators who like to script their own solution for quickly scraping the alert log and automatically looking for errors. Oracle’s alert log is a chronological log of important messages and errors that are generated using an Oracle database. Often times it is the first place […]