Strategies for Centralizing Data Backup

Organizations are facing a massive challenge in protecting their data in a cost effective and timely manner. But with a growing number of branch offices, an increasing number of servers, and a high priority on reducing cost, backup is becoming increasingly difficult. In this paper, learn Riverbed's proven strategy for combining WAN-based backup with wide-area data services (WDS) solutions. Backup windows can be cut significantly and bandwidth use can be reduced by 60% to 95% at the same time. Riverbed will seamlessly integrate with your existing backup software and current storage infrastructure.
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Storage Choices For Virtual Server Environments

Server virtualization is the most substantial shift in IT so far this decade. Adoption is high, and firms are virtualizing mission-critical and business-critical applications. But while server virtualization has become mainstream, firms still struggle with storage availability and performance. Storage configuration options abound, and successful deployment can be tricky.

In an attempt to add clarity to this tricky decision process, Forrester surveyed 124 of its global clients on the topic of storage for virtual server environments. Overall, Forrester found a high number of virtual server deployments in production, mainly using preexisting Fibre Channel storage area networks. For IT professionals who will either upgrade or deploy a new storage environment to support server virtualization, this report gives an overview of what firms have done in the past, as well as key Forrester recommendations.

more about Storage choices for virtual server environments at http://whitepapers.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=949313&promo=099&tag=nl.e099.em040209&tag=nl.e099

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Postgres Plus® Advanced Server

Postgres Plus claimedto be able to replace oracle database functionality, 100% compatible oracle database. We've tried it with out oracle database, and every triggers are working fine, all the same with procedure, view. The platform supported included windows, linux 32/64 bit MAC OS X... below are some of it's feature and download link.
some feature I took it from the official site: http://www.enterprisedb.com

Packed with Performance: discover DynaTune® , Bulk Collect and Bind, Query Optimization Hints, Distributed Memory Caching, Federated Queries and much more.

Productive Tools: check out Postgres Studio with advanced programming capabilities, Oracle® Replication Console, GridSQL® Monitoring Console, DBA Management Server and Migration Studio.

Tops in Compatibility: see why Advanced Server is the only open source database that runs applications that were written for Oracle without requiring changes for a fraction of their licensed cost! You can also migrate MySQL® and other commercial databases too.

Download

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Database Tour Pro 5.1.0.715. Manage your database with variety of functions!

For a software developer, a «Swiss knife»-style tool can be incredibly useful, but only when that?s the «right» tool. The problem is, nobody can tell you exactly, how to determine whether a tool is «right». A right tool must be full-featured, but it must not be overloaded with features; a right tool must have laconic and functional interface, but it must be easy to learn and understand; it must support all possible platforms, but must also be not bloated. In the database area, Database Tour Pro is the right Swiss-knife tool.

As for the platform aspect, Database Tour Pro supports virtually all databases, which can be accessed through BDE or ADO database abstraction layers. That includes a wide range, from the simple CSV files through the enterprise-level Oracle databases.

As for the features aspect, Database Tour Pro allows all of the standard database management tasks (creating tables, viewing, editing and printing data) alongside with the more advanced ones (import and export, copy to clipboard, syntax-highlighting SQL editor and builder.) It also provides complex features for data analysis, sorting, filtering and reporting. The software also works in command-line mode, which makes it a good tool for DB scripting.

As for the interface side, Database Tour Pro has colorful, informative and quite slick interface; it provides outstanding BLOB viewing capabilities (for images, RTF’s and so on).


Cross-database tool with report builder. Tested on Paradox, dBase, FoxPro, ASCII, Lotus, HTML, InterBase, Oracle, SQL Server, MS Access, MS Excel, PostgreSQL, MySQL.

Main features are:

-Viewing, editing, and printing data.

-Automatically created reports and convenient report builder (with templates, expressions, preview, etc.).

-Building queries with tools for convenient writing the SQL statesments.

-Enhanced db grids, which allow to view and manipulate the data in the most convenient way.

-Creating, deleting, modifying BDE aliases.

-Command line support for most important operations like exporting, query executing etc. Log of performed operations.

-Searching and replacing text.

-Importing data to table from another table or a query.

-Exporting data from any open table or query to another database or file (with format conversion).

-Copying data to clipboard.

-Calculating numeric fields (sum, avg, min, max, count).

-Editing BLOB fields (MEMO, graphic).

-Tools for editing string fields (trimming, changing case of symbols).

-Sorting (logical and physical) data.

-Filtering data.

-Viewing structure with ability to print it.

-Limited table restructure.

-Reindexing tables.

-Customized data view (color, font style, temporarily hiding any column).

-Transaction control.



More about Database Tour Pro 5.1.0.715

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Oracle Maestro 8.12

Oracle Maestro is a powerful solution for the Oracle server administration and development. Key features include:

- support for all Oracle server versions on the market;

- easy database object management ;

- database designer;

- PL/SQL debugger;

- data management: viewing, editing, grouping, sorting and filtering abilities;

- handy SQL editor with code folding, syntax highlighting, SQL formatter and multi-threading;

- visual query builder;

- data export/import to/from the most popular formats;

- powerful BLOB Viewer/Editor.

The application also provides you with a powerful set of tools to edit and execute SQL scripts, build visual diagrams for numeric data, compose OLAP cubes, and much more.


Download

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Public Synonym

If you are the owner of a table or view and you create a public synonym for the table
or view, when you grant select on the synonym mane you are in effect granting select
on the table or view. The synonym eliminates the need to clarify the table or view
with the schema.table name.

And here is how yo create public synonym

CREATE public SYNONYM [table/view name] FOR [owner].[table/view name];

and then you can grant select/insert/update/delete on this object to the role which will apply to any user who was assigned that role. Without the role assigned to that specific user he/she would still not be able to access that object event it was create as public synonym

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Oracle 11g Data Compression Tips for the DBA

One of the exciting new features of Oracle 11g is their inline data compression utility. While it is true that data storage prices have fallen dramatically over the last decade, and continue to fall rapidly, Oracle data compression has far more appealing benefits than simply saving on disk storage cost. Because indexes and the data itself can be highly compressed, information can be fetched off of the disk devices with less physical IO, which radically improves query performance under certain conditions.

Let's take a closer look at how one would implement Oracle 11g Data Compression in order to achieve the optimal results.

Understanding data compression

Data compression techniques, such as the Huffman algorithm, have been around for nearly a century, but only today are being put to use within main stream information systems processing. Using these techniques, a decompression utility is called immediately upon the data block fetch. Within the Oracle data buffers, the fully uncompressed version of the data remains in the data buffers, even though the information remains compressed on the data blocks themselves. This leads to an anomaly between the size of information on the data blocks and the size of the information within the data buffers. Upon applying Oracle data compression, people will find that far more rows will fit on a data block of a given size, but there is still no impact on the data base management system from the point of view of the SGA (system global area). Because the decompression routine is called upon block fetch, the Oracle data buffers remain largely unchanged while the data blocks themselves tend
to have a lot more data on them.


Tests show that 11g compression results in slower transaction throughput but creates less writes because of higher row density on the data block. Overall, the benchmark slows that I/O writes being reduced while CPU increases, resulting in slowing SQL throughput:

* Slower transaction throughput – As we expect, Oracle transactions run faster without the encryption/decryption processing overhead. This encryption benchmark shows significantly slower throughput when deploying TDE, almost 20% (81 transactions/second with TDE, 121 transactions/second with TDE).

* Less Disk Writes – Since transparent data encryption compresses the data, the benchmark with TDE required less disk writes.

* More CPU required - As we would expert, TDE required CPU cycles for the encrypt/decrypt operations, and in this benchmark test we see User CPU rise from 46 to 80 when using TDE data encryption.

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Oracle Critical Patch Update January 2009

The Critical Patch Update for January 2009 was released on January 13, 2009. Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes the list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities for each product suite, and links to other important documents. Supported products that are not listed in the "Supported Products and Components Affected" section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available at any of the following locations:

Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards products: https://metalink3.oracle.com/od/faces/secure/km/BrowseResults.jspx?fid=15948.1

Oracle BEA products: https://support.bea.com/application_content/product_portlets/securityadvisories/index.html

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

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New Release of MySQL 6.0.9 (Alpha)

New Release of MySQL 6.0.9 (Alpha)

MySQL 6.0.9-alpha, a new version of the MySQL database system has been released. A new algorithm that uses both index access to the joined table and a join buffer has been implemented. It's called Batched Key Access (BKA) Join algorithm. The algorithm supports inner join, outer join and semi-join operations, including nested outer joins and nested semi-joins.

View the complete list of changes

Download MySQL 6.0.9 (Alpha) »

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Oracle RAC Installation & Configuration Resources

• Real Application Clusters Installation Guide

http://www.filibeto.org/sun/lib/nonsun/oracle/11.1.0.6.0/B28359_01/install.111/b28264/racinstl.htm


• Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide

http://www.filibeto.org/sun/lib/nonsun/oracle/11.1.0.6.0/B28359_01/rac.111/b28254/toc.htm


• Oracle Real Application Clusters GFS

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/Oracle_GFS-en-US/index.html


• Great guide to install Oracle RAC at home

http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_news/2005_2_4_great_guide_install_RAC_home.htm


• How to install Oracle RAC on Sun Cluster?

http://www.iselfschooling.com/mc4articles/RACinstallation.htm


• Build Your Own Oracle RAC Cluster on Oracle Enterprise Linux and iSCSI (deploy Openfiler)

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hunter_rac10gr2_iscsi.html


• Build Your Own Oracle Extended RAC Cluster on Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Linux

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/wartak-rac-vm.html


• Installing Oracle Database 10g Release 1 and 2 (32-bit/64-bit) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4, 3, 2.1, Fedora Core 4, 3, 1, RH 9 on x86 and x86_64 Architecture

http://www.puschitz.com/InstallingOracle10g.shtml


• Installing Oracle Database 10g on Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES-9) and on SUSE Linux Professional 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3

http://www.puschitz.com/InstallingOracle10gOnSUSE.shtml



• Step by Step build RAC : Part 1 : Install VMWare and Linux

http://onlineappsdba.com/index.php/2007/07/09/step-by-step-build-rac-part-1-install-vmware-and-linux/



• Adding New Nodes to Your Oracle RAC 10g Cluster on Linux

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/vallath-nodes.html



• Oracle RAC: How shared storage works on VMware Part 1

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.php/3686461


• Oracle RAC: How shared storage works on VMware Part 2

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.php/3690806


• Oracle RAC: How shared storage works on VMware Part 3

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.php/3691806


• Oracle 10gR2 RAC : Solaris 10 U1 on ESX 3.0

http://oracleperf.blogspot.com/2006/07/oracle-10gr2-rac-solaris-10-u1-on-esx.html


• Oracle 10g RAC On Linux Using VMware Server

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/OracleDB10gR2RACInstallationOnCentos4UsingVMware.php


• Oracle 10gR2 RAC Installation On Windows2003 Using VMware

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/OracleDB10gR2RACInstallationOnWindows2003UsingVMware.php


• Installing Oracle 10gR2 RAC on Windows2003

http://oraclepitstop.wordpress.com/about/installing-oracle-10g-r2-rac-on-windows-2003-with-domain-controller/

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Oracle Import Utility

Import extracts data from an export file and puts it back into an Oracle database. Import is command line not SQL command.

Table objects are imported from the export file in the following order:

1. Table definitions
2. Table data
3. Table indexes
4. Integrity constraints and triggers

Here are the list of import process order
1. New tables are created
2. Data is imported.
3. Indexes are built.
4. Triggers are imported,
5. Integrity constraints are enabled.

Note: Tablespace need to be create from the first place(if not exist), otherwise the object on the specific tablespace would not be able to be created.

To list exp parameter enter "exp HELP=y" .

More Information on Oracle Export at
- http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Import
- http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Import_Export_FAQ

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Unable to mount ASMlib driver filesystem

While doing # /etc/init.d/oracleasm configure
and you have the following error message

Mounting ASMlib driver filesystem: mount: block device oracleasmfs is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: cannot mount block device oracleasmfs read-only
Unable to mount ASMlib driver filesystem

you may not have disabled SELinux

to disablet SELinux at /etc/selinux/config set

SELINUX=disabled

More Information on how to disable SELinux have a look at http://www.crypt.gen.nz/selinux/disable_selinux.html

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Recompile oracle invalid object from script

Login to oracle using sqlplus command line

prompt>sqlplus login@ora_service

enter password then copy the following text after the ---------- line to sqlplus prompt

---------script start ------------------------
set heading off;
set feedback off;
set echo off;
Set lines 999;

Spool compile_ora_invalid_obj.sql

select 'ALTER ' || OBJECT_TYPE || ' ' || OWNER || '.' || OBJECT_NAME || ' COMPILE;'
from dba_objects
where status = 'INVALID' and
object_type in ('PACKAGE','FUNCTION','PROCEDURE', 'TRIGGER', 'VIEW');

spool off;

set heading on;
set feedback on;
set echo on;

@compile_ora_invalid_obj.sql
--- script end-------

Note: You may need to run @compile_ora_invalid_obj.sql at sqlplus prompt again in case of some of oracle invalid objects caused by the other.

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Mount CD Rom/DVD Rom for installing Oracle Database

Most of the linux distros these days automount their CDs with the noexec switch set. In other word no-one apart from root is allowed to execute programs from the mounted media.

To work around this login as root and unmount cdrom using this command

umount /dev/cdrom

then remount it with this command

mount -o loop /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

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PL/SQL features by release

A Mini-History of Oracle and PL/SQL

This chapter answers two questions: where did PL/SQL come from and why is it the best database development language ever developed?

In the late 70s, around the time Ingres was getting started at UC Berkeley, three guys working on a contract for the CIA got together and started a company called Relational Software, Inc.

Their first product was a relational database called Oracle. The founders decided to use the C language for development. This would later become important when they decided to start porting to different platforms.

They also decided to support SQL as the internal data access language. This would also become a very important factor to its success. In 1979, Relational Software was the only company making an SQL compliant database. If anyone ever asks you who wrote the first SQL database, you now know the answer: Oracle.

To access the database, to write an application for example, you had to use an external language and compiler. In the early days of Oracle, that was C but, in time, several other languages were added: COBOL, ADA, Fortran, PL/1, and others.

In the early 1980s, the company was renamed Oracle Corporation. That would just be the beginning of Oracle’s desire to rename its products. In my time using the Oracle database, I think every tool I have used has been renamed at least once. In the case of CDE/Developer 2000/Developer Suite, it has been renamed enough to be confusing.

Oracle did not have an embedded language for many years. Having come from a government background, when they chose a language for the database, they modeled it on ADA.

I programmed in ADA for a few years in the 1980s while I was working as a consultant for the US Department of Defense. It is a very powerful, but very wordy, object oriented language. ADA, and by extension PL/SQL, are descendants of Pascal.

Oracle named this new language PL/SQL; the Procedural Language extension to SQL. I pronounce it pee ell sequel but many others pronounce it pee ell ess que ell. Feel free to pronounce it however you like though.

>> More Information <<

Source: oracle_tips@topica.email-publisher.com

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