Steve Callan

This article and ones to follow are written from the perspective of someone fairly new to Oracle’s E-Business Suite, described in another article as EBS, Oracle Applications and Oracle Apps. You may be an Oracle DBA charged with setting up a test or evaluation environment, or you may already be working with EBS, but inherited […]

Reporting in and from Oracle, or any database for that matter, has always been somewhat difficult. It seems that the more complex a report, the less flexible it is when something changes. Changes can originate from within the tool or from a change in the requirements. It’s also not uncommon that once a report has […]

How often are you, as a DBA, asked to provide a report on an operation, load, process, application, or whatever – where “whatever” can include a sundry list of files and logs? The first several items just listed probably already have some structure surrounding them, that is, reporting on these events fits into some well-defined […]

We know that in Oracle, certain things are and can be done at certain times. One of those operations pertains to adding or creating datafiles. One operation where adding datafiles to a database is common is within or during the CREATE DATABASE-related statements. Even if using Oracle managed files and accepting defaults, datafiles will be […]

Quest Software has hit the ball out of the park with its Toad Data Modeler 3 (TDM) application. Ease of use, a huge amount of functionality, and an outstanding support base all combine to make TDM a superb product. Every once in a while you get lucky enough to run across a product that makes […]

Virtually everything produced by Oracle Corporation is documented. Adding a qualifier to that statement, one could say that most everything is well documented and documented well. We’ve seen the explosion of books regarding database administration, utilities and supporting products – almost all of which have to do with supporting or using the database management system. […]

In a prior article about E-Business Suite, I provided an overview of the cloning process, which is essentially three steps: gather, copy and implement. Virtually all of the documentation regarding cloning assumes you already have replicants in place. Replicants you ask? Like the ones in Blade Runner? The ones who are “visually indistinguishable from [the […]

One of Oracle’s most powerful but somewhat under the radar tool is Warehouse Builder. Like several of Oracle’s non-RDBMS products, it didn’t get off to exactly the best start possible with respect to being user friendly, bug free, easy to use/install, documented, and well, you get the idea. However, in later versions, Warehouse Builder has […]

Transitioning from being a “normal” Oracle DBA into becoming an Oracle Applications DBA has two components. The first concerns the job or position itself, that is, how do you get a job as an Oracle Apps DBA? The second component has to do with the technology aspect of the job. In other words, what is […]

In a prior article about backup and recovery exercises, one of the scenarios dealt with recovering from the loss of a control file. In that scenario, the database was running with more than one control file, so recovering from the (self-induced, but for instructional purposes) media failure was pretty simple. When installing Oracle and creating […]

Frustration. Anger. Despair. Depression. A sense of futility. Words and feelings to describe what it’s like to unravel performance tuning and the conflicting information among MetaLink, documentation, and renowned experts? Well, yes, they can be, but in this case, these words and feelings are what you can expect when dealing with Oracle licensing. A recent […]

Games in Oracle? No, the games reference here is like the “games” in Olympic Games. The athletes competing in games at that level are serious about what they do, and you can pretty much bet the farm they are passionate about their sport or event as well. As an Oracle DBA, how serious – and […]