The Oracle9i installation
guide included in last month’s Installation Cookbook series established the
concept of applying an installation methodology to Oracle products. This
cookbook article on installing Forms & Reports 6i (on a Solaris system)
illustrates the same methodology.
“But wait, I’m a DBA, not a
software installer,” so you say. True, you may be the DBA, but whom else to
turn to when it comes to anything having to do with Oracle? More often than
not, the DBA owns everything related to Oracle, whether or not the DBA has
anything to do with that “other” Oracle stuff. Additionally, it is not uncommon
to find people working in DBA/developer positions, so shake off the
narrow-minded view about what a DBA does and expand your knowledge of Oracle’s
installation process.
The previous article
included a suggested outline of the installation process. You will find that
when it comes to Oracle products, database or otherwise, the outline works just
the same.
A general outline of installation
steps
The seven steps shown below
are the same steps from the Oracle9i installation cookbook.
1.
Verify that hardware and software
minimums are met or exceeded
2.
Prepare or update the operating
system
3.
Create administrative/owner
accounts and file structures
4.
Reserve, specify, or designate
disk space
5.
Start the Oracle Universal
Installer (OUI) and provide information as necessary
6.
Perform post-installation tasks
7.
Test your installation
The first four steps can be considered
as pre-installation tasks, step five as THE installation task and steps six and
seven as post-installation tasks. Moreover, as I stated in the previous
article, I like to include an introduction along with a list of assumptions or
standards, and a list of references from which the information was drawn.
As an added bonus, you can
include a short troubleshooting section at the end of the installation guide.
Including this section begs the question of, “Why those particular
problems and not others?” Part of that comes from personal experience and
observation. Experience, of course, comes from making mistakes, so that’s part
of the answer, and the observation part may stem from having observed others
(customers) make those mistakes or face similar problems.
The next article in this
series will discuss some additional planning considerations and ways to “dummy
up” the inventory location. This comes in handy when working with different
versions of the Oracle Universal Installer.
Therefore, without further
ado, here is a detailed, step-by-step installation cookbook for installing
Oracle Forms & Reports 6i on a Sun Solaris platform.
