Steve Callan

A fairly common event in a database’s lifecycle is that of the migration from version "older" to version "newer." Migrating from one version to another may be as simple as exporting the old and importing into the new, but chances are there is a lot more involved than first meets the eye. It is not […]

It may be possible that raptors once feasted on toads, and if that were the case, it would be safe to assume that Oracle hopes its new Raptor product will do the same to the Toads of today. The features and functions – all for free – that ship with Raptor will likely give Quest […]

Between Oracle’s critical patch updates and security alerts, perhaps a better phrasing of "Unbreakable" would be "Unbreakable (when patched)." Other articles exist which qualify and clarify what "unbreakable" actually means, and defining "unbreakable" is not the point of this particular article. What is of interest here is the latest critical patch update (released 17 Jan […]

How does extensible markup language relate to the J2EE standalone version of Application Server? If "extensible markup language" sounds unfamiliar to you, perhaps you know it better by its acronym of XML. XML matters not to just to the J2EE version of Application Server, but to all versions. The manner in which XML matters is […]

At the end of Part 3, a patch for an Oracle 10.2.0.1 database was obtained from MetaLink and cached in a cache repository. During the installation, the patch was not applied (although it could have been at that time). In this part of the series, Oracle’s OPatch utility will be used to actually apply the […]

Part 3 of this series examines some new functionality found in Oracle10g’s Enterprise Manager Console. In prior releases of Oracle (as shown in the first two parts of this series), patching and patch administration were manually performed by the DBA. In 10g, some of that workload has transferred to the software. As an analogy, it […]

Part 2 of this series covers the mechanics of installing a patch. Overall, installing a patch is quite easy, but depending upon the platform and version, the number of steps may be different. The base version used as the example is Oracle 9.2.0.1 (for Windows NT/2000/XP) – exactly what you get on the download from […]

For some products, keeping up with patches is almost a full time job in and of itself. Microsoft has certainly garnered a lot of attention when it comes to patches and security updates. Chances are that the computer you are using to read this article has an automatic update service running. The description of the […]

Sometimes it is worthwhile to go back and review some fundamentals, and this article does just that using views. Views are extremely useful for DBAs, developers, and users alike, but are you getting all you can out of what views have to offer? Why are some views updateable and others aren’t? For example, if you […]

As mentioned in Parts 1 and 2, there are several relatively easy steps you can take to improve performance. One of those steps involves using an automated tool to “guide” you in writing SQL statements. There are several vendors who manufacture analysis or performance tuning tools, and in the next two articles, we will look […]

As mentioned in Part 1, there are several relatively easy steps you can take to improve performance. From the user’s perspective, one of the most frequently used interfaces with a database involves SQL statements, so getting a handle on them is a good place to start in terms of being able to see an immediate […]

Performance tuning is a broad and somewhat complex topic area when it comes to Oracle databases. Two of the biggest questions faced by your average DBA concern where to start and what to do. All you may know is that someone (a user) reports a problem about a slow or poor performing application or query. […]