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TNS Configuration files – Search order
Oracle clients (and programs that use Oracle clients/drivers) will search for TNS configuration files such as sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora in the following order. Note that the first file to be found...
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Unusual ORA-01031: insufficient privileges error
Whilst investigating a user issue today, I came across an unusual occurrence of the “ORA-01031: insufficient privileges” error which was not caused to the usual suspects of missing grants and/or...
View ArticleJDBC Connection strings for Oracle (thin driver)
This is a subject that I am often asked about by developers and support teams changing application configuration details: What is the correct format of JDBC connection strings for the thin driver?...
View ArticleIntermittent ORA-12514 error connecting to SCAN listeners
Users were complaining of ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptor errors whilst connecting to a database on a RAC cluster. Testing manually: The TNS...
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Logging PuTTY sessions
As a DBA, it is generally a good idea to log all your activity when working on Unix/Linux servers. Logging provides an audit of changes that you have made to a system as well as being a valuable...
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RMAN: Displaying current backup progress
When performing a backup of a large database using RMAN, you often get asked “how is the backup progressing?” and “when it will complete?”. Although the log produced by RMAN is detailed in almost every...
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Oracle Data Access Components (ODAC)
ODAC insn’t a product as such – it is actually a collection of drivers that provide connectivity to Oracle (listed below). If you are asked to install a particular Oracle driver, such as ODBC, OLE DB...
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ORA-1089 reported by a database link
Recently, we encountered a strange problem whereby trying to issue a select over a database link caused an ORA-1089 “immediate shutdown in progress – no operations are permitted” error even though the...
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ORA-01017 during RMAN Duplicate from Active Database
While refreshing a standby Database (11gR2) using “duplicate target database for standby” I recently encountered an error which one would normally associate with password files and/or the fact that the...
View ArticleContinue SCP’ing file(s) after log out
The unix command scp is very useful for transferring files between two hosts over a secure connection, but sometimes you need to kick off an scp command that will take several hours to complete and you...
View ArticleTNS Configuration files – Search order
Oracle clients (and programs that use Oracle clients/drivers) will search for TNS configuration files such as sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora in the following order. Note that the first file to be found...
View ArticleUnusual ORA-01031: insufficient privileges error
Whilst investigating a user issue today, I came across an unusual occurrence of the “ORA-01031: insufficient privileges” error which was not caused to the usual suspects of missing grants and/or...
View ArticleScripting: Is the DB DataGuarded?
Whilst developing some administrative functions within PL/SQL I needed to know whether the database that the code was being run in was part of an Oracle DataGuard setup, which you would think would be...
View ArticleWrapping PL/SQL code from within the database
If you have ever wanted to wrap PL/SQL code that already exists within the database, then you can do so using the simple procedure below which uses a combination of DBMS_METADATA and DBMS_DDL. Our...
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Finding the origin of failed login attempts
This guide is intended to aid in establishing the origin of failed database login attempts. Most of the time these failed attempts are due to typos or outdated application configurations and are...
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CRS: pullup() dependency test
Introduction We were recently creating some custom CRS resources that we need to automatically startup and shutdown to follow the Primary database in a DataGuard configuration. To achieve this, we were...
View ArticleHow to determine flashback database progress
After you have issued the FLASHBACK DATABASE command how can you monitor the progress of the command, and more importantly, how can you predict when it will complete? With Oracle 11g this information...
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Obtaining Database PSU history from SQL
It is possible to determine all Patch Set Updates that has been applied to a database using a simple SQL statement - but note that this will only retrieve the details of patchsets that contained a...
View ArticleOracle October 2015 Critical Patch Update issues
After applying the October 2015 Critical Patchset Update to our databases (12.1.0.2 on IBM AIX) , we discovered a number of invalid objects within the XDB and GSMADMIN_INTERNAL schemas: select owner,...
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