Oracle for Sysadmins

Set the 'EDITOR' variable for the user 'oracle'. Doing so will allow you to edit your sqlplus commands using a reasonable editor. After executing a piece of SQL in sqlplus, just type 'edit' or 'ed' and you'll be transported to your editor. In vi just type :q to get back to the sqlplus prompt.


Create an oracle environment file in your home directory and have Oracle execute it every time you start sqlplus. Oracle will execute a command file called login.sql if it finds one in the path defined by $SQLPATH. For DBA activity you can format commonly used columns to display in a more user friendly way e.g.

set linesize 200
col file_name for a40
col tablespace_name for a20

I store this file in $HOME/env/oracle and put this directory in $SQLPATH

Other things in the login.sql

• set timing on Automatically print the duration of a sqlplus command.
  

You can store your DBA scripts in the $SQLPATH too.

Supplementry packages

You'll want to add in these packages to allow you to monitor the database

• statspack - sample counters in the database then report on them. Very useful for performance analysis
  
• dbms_space
  

Statspack

Install the statspack tools

SQL>  @?/rdbms/admin/spcreate

Ensure timed statistics is set to true

SQL> show parameter timed_statistics

SQL> exec statspack.snap

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:09.57
SQL> exec statspack.snap

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Elapsed: 00:00:01.20
SQL> @$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/spreport

If you ever need to get rid of statspack (sometimes useful if the instll crashed part way through) just run the script

SQL>  @?/rdbms/admin/spdrop

UNC vs Duke

Poker

Our neighbor has invited me to his monthly poker evening. The only problem is that I don't know how to play. I have month to learn enough to not look an idiot.

Photos

This should be a photo slideshow linked to picassa.

Tag cloud

I got fed up with not beign able to find things I'd noted down here, so I added the ubiquitous tag cloud, using these instructions.

American TV

So it turns out that the best thing about American TV is that there are so many adverts (which are a special type of annoying) that you *really* have to want to watch something in order to put up with it. Even BBC America . On a lot of the minor channels where we sometimes watch college sport, the advertisers obviously don't have a large marketing budget. So they JUST SHOUT and hope you'll buy the product. I guess it must work. We don't watch a lot of TV.

I heard from a bloke in the pub that a lot of people download their TV from usenet. I'm not surprised.

One blog per week

According to my favourite blog, Coding Horror the path to blog greatness is to set a schedule and stick to it. It has to be said that I am not the worlds best at sticking to things. Our bookshelf as at least three books that I started and never finished. Since nobody outside my family and friends really cares what I do on a day-to-day basis - unless I happen to win the lottery in the next year I don'thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif expect the readership to exceed... more than a handfull. However, I think it's worth keeping a journal even if it's only for myself. Lots of folks are currently using facebook - and once the novelty of the apps has worn off, the real interest in facebook - for me at least is to see what people are up to (Status updates) and seeing their photo's. I don't see why blogs and things like 'twitter' couldn't do the same thing but using a more open platform. It will be interesting to see what happens with facebook during the coming year - it's currently very hot.