James Koopmann

Using e-mail from within Oracle can be a great advantage. Many methods of sending e-mail extract the information and then package it up outside of Oracle. However, Oracle has supplied us with all that we need to do everything from within Oracle. This can be quite handy when we as DBAs need to check statuses, […]

As a DBA, you are always faced with the critical question of whether the undo that you have created is in fact sufficient for the transaction mix on your database system. Oracle has now given us an Undo Advisor in Oracle 10g to help simplify the answer. Undo within an Oracle database is used to […]

If you aren’t moving you will never go anywhere. It is time to dust off your DBA shoes, and start thinking about your future. I am often questioned about how I became a DBA and the road I traveled. This can be a very valid question because there are many DBA-want-to-bees that just do not […]

How much memory does each of the individual components of the SGA need? Oracle now has methods to determine most of the major parameters all on its own. What is the SGA Simply stated, the system global area (SGA) is just shared memory structures that are created at instance startup, hold information about the instance […]

Improperly sized redo logs can impede the performance of your database and hamper recovery time in the event of a database crash. Oracle has given us yet another advisory that helps us to properly size redo logs, taking yet another tedious task from us. Sizing Redo Logs in the Past In the past, it was […]

If you have ever had a difficult time tuning applications because you can never find the SQL or code behind these applications, Oracle 10g’s new SQLAccess Advisor, a new tool from Oracle, is a must. Have you have ever had a 3rd party application or internal application that you just never could get your hands […]

Catching a session waiting on a resource used to be hit or miss. Let’s take a look at how Oracle has helped give us a better mousetrap for seeing the waits experienced by sessions. It used to be that a DBA would sit in front of the terminal screen and continually hit the ENTER key […]

Come along and see how Oracle has helped us in alleviating the pain associated with tuning SQL. Gone are the days of staring at countless structures and statistics just attempting to tune a SQL statement. Oracle has once again given us a great tool that will assist us with manual tuning of SQL statements. This […]

Do you have SQL running within your database? Of course you do. This article is the second in a series to introduce you to how you can extract more information about the SQL executing in your databases. In the first of this series we looked at how to determine if sessions were running SQL from […]

Do you have SQL running within your database? Of course you do. This article is the first in a series to introduce you to a method of finding information about the SQL your users are executing in your databases. Your ability as a DBA to detect who is accessing the database and the SQL they […]

Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to install the full Oracle client software just to get connectivity to an Oracle instance? Well, it is now reality with Oracle’s new Instant Client software offering. Oracle Instant Client If we wanted to go the java route and name the typical Oracle Client installation as a […]

Finally, Oracle 10g has given us the ability to execute external programs from within Oracle. Let’s take a look at what we need to do to expose this new feature. DBMS_JOB It must first be stated, or you might get confused as I did, that the DBMS_JOB package that was widely used in earlier versions […]