Oracle Internals

If you are a typical Oracle professional, you don't have the luxury of time to keep up with new technology and read all the new manuals to understand each new feature of the latest release from Oracle. You need a comprehensive source of information and in-depth tips and techniques for using the new technology. You need Oracle Internals: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for DBAs.Oracle has evolved from a simple relational database into one of the most complex e-commerce platforms ever devised. It's not enough for you to understand just the Oracle database. You must also understand the components of the Web server technology, XML, Oracle Security, Oracle and Java, and a host of other issues in order to do your job properly. This book is a compendium of the best and most useful articles form Oracle Internals, Auerbach Publications' newsletter for Oracle database administrators and other Oracle professionals. Edited by Oracle guru Don Burleson, it provides the type of in-depth, highly technical information not found in any other book, information only available from peers and consultants. The chapters focus on the truly tough stuff - proven techniques learned in the trenches. You could get this information from other sources, but you'd have to hunt and peck for it. Can you afford that kind of time? Oracle Internals: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for DBAs gives you knowledge and advice directly applicable to your work in one easy-to-use resource.

Contents

Sect. I Oracle Applications Development Techniques 1

• 1 A Practical Example of Data Conversion 3
• 2 Using Wizards in an Oracle Developer 6i Form 13
• 3 Using Oracle's Developer 6i to Create a Record Directory 23
• 4 Using Hierarchical Tree Items in Oracle's Developer 6i 31
• 5 Populating Oracle Form Hierarchies Incrementally at Runtime 41
• 6 Oracle Designer 2.1.2.API: Enforcing Column Naming Standards 51

Sect. II Oracle Web Development 59

• 7 Building a .com from the Ground Up 61
• 8 Rapid Web Deployment with WebDB 73
• 9 Introduction to iAS for the OAS Administrator 89
• 10 Viewing Performance Data with OAS 109
• 11 Top DBA Scripts for Web Developers 117
• 12 Web-Based Testing and Capacity Planning 125
• 13 HTTP Listeners 133
• 14 Introduction to UTL"HTTP 139
• 15 Portal 3.0: Moving Folders Across Content Areas with Its API 149
• 16 Not WebDB 3.0, Not iPortal, But Oracle Portal 159

Sect. III Java and Oracle 177

• 17 The Fast Track to Java with Oracle 179
• 18 Building a Java Applet for Monitoring Oracle 193

Sect. IV Oracle and Unix 213

• 19 UNIX Scripts for Oracle Administration 217
• 20 UNIX Tips and Tricks for the Oracle DBA 233
• 21 File Exchange Solutions: SQL*Loader, PL/SQL, and Pro C* 251
• 22 Gauging How Linux May Change the DBMS Market 269

Sect. V Oracle Backup and Recovery 277

• 23 Strategies for an Archives Management Program 279
• 24 Scripting Oracle Backups with RMAN and EBU 291
• 25 Alert Mechanisms for RMAN Backups 301
• 26 Tips and Scripts for Implementing RMAN 331
• 27 Paging People with Oracle8i Out of the Box 339

Sect. VI Oracle SQL Tuning 347

• 28 Cost-Based Optimization: Whys and Hows 349
• 29 Analytic Functions 353
• 30 Piranhas in the Pool: Investigations into Literal SQL and Oracle Shared Pool Performance 361
• 31 Managing Database Objects in Sets 385
• 32 Oracle's Joins 391
• 33 To"Format 405

Sect. VII Oracle Disk Management 413

• 34 Exploring Disk Size and Oracle Disk I/O Performance 415
• 35 Adaptive Strategies for Disk Performance in Oracle 421
• 36 RAID and Oracle 431
• 37 Visualizing the I/O Signature 445

Sect. VIII Distributed Oracle Systems 463

• 38 Automating Distribution of Oracle Client Software 465
• 39 SQL*Net Diagnostics and Performance Tuning 475

Sect. IX Oracle Buffer and SGA Management 489

• 40 Pinning Packages in the SGA 491
• 41 Investigating the Multiple Buffer Pool Feature of Oracle8 499
• 42 Diving into the Shared Pool 515
• 43 Managing Multiple Buffer Pools in Oracle8 537
• 44 Oracle8i Buffer Cache: New Features 543

Sect. X Oracle Table Management 551

• 45 How I Reorganized a Large Database 553
• 46 Partition and Conquer 575
• 47 Eliminating Space Reorganizations in Oracle8i 591
• 48 Determining the Table Rebuild Ratio for Oracle Tables 605
• 49 Oracle Parallel Query 613
• 50 Managing Oracle Table Freelists 619

Sect. XI Oracle Security 633

• 51 Using Roles in Oracle Security 635
• 52 Managing Row-Level Security in Oracle8i 643
• 53 Auditing Oracle 651

Sect. XII Oracle Data Warehousing 663

• 54 What's Wrong with My Data? 665
• 55 Oracle Express Development in the Enterprise 677
• 56 An Approach to Load Analysis and Stress Testing 685
• 57 Undocumented Express 701
• 58 Enterprise Transformation and Data Management 717

Sect. XIII Oracle Database Internals Management 725

• 59 Getting a Quick Start with Oracle8i 727
• 60 Oracle Sessions Monitoring 741
• 61 The Object/Relational Features of Oracle8 759
• 62 Hardware Considerations 769
• 63 Oralce Extras 781
• 64 Oracle's Triggers 791
• 65 Concurrency 801
• 66 The Supporting GROUPS 809
• 67 Registering a Metadata Schema 817
• 68 ORADEBUG: A Useful (Undocumented?) Utility 825
• 69 Using the DBMS"LOCK Built-In Package 835
• Index