2 Day DBA Again

Before turning off the computer and going to sleep last night, i stopped all Oracle-related services and set them to Manual. Now that i rebooted, there seem to be no Oracle-related processes in the Task Manager.

After some searching in the docs i decided that OracleCSService is for clusters only and the ones i really need to start are OracleServiceORCLSTRT which is the more or less the database itself, OracleOraDb10g_home1TNSListener which is the venerable listener and OracleDBConsoleOrclStrt, which is the EM. The latter is the most problematic: it takes about 90 seconds to start and starts up several java and perl processes. I don't know what are they and it is an annoyance, but at least it makes me content that my dearly beloved Perl is an integral part of Oracle.

Now i'm playing with the EM. I created myself a user, using the GUI, but i should learn how to do it in SQL. The problem is that i don't even know how to connect to the famous EMPLOYEES table using that user. My schema is wrong or something. Now the real learning begins: I'm going back to "2 Day DBA" and SQL books.

Reinstall Notes part 2

I found where those names and numbers are taken from. There's an "inventory" located in ... C:\Program Files\Oracle\! I was sure there's only c:\oracle. So i renamed that folder to Oracle_, but when i ran OUI again, it still offered me creating the new home in Db_3. So i deleted all oracle directories on all drives. On one hand it feels literally creepy that Oracle creeps in all corners of my computer -- file system, registry, environment variables, and God knows where else, but on the other hand it is well documented, if you know how to use the docs, of course.

Eventually i installed it using the basic method and called the starter database "OrclStrt".

The installation process, including database creation took about half an hour.

The output at the end:

The following J2EE Applications have been deployed and are accessible
at the URLs listed below.

Your database configuration files have been installed in
C:\oracle\product\10.1.0 while other components selected for
installation have been installed in C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\Db_1.
Be cautious not to accidentally delete these configuration files.

Ultra Search URL:
http://sugarcube:5620/ultrasearch

Ultra Search Administration Tool URL:
http://sugarcube:5620/ultrasearch/admin

iSQL*Plus URL:
http://sugarcube:5560/isqlplus

Enteprise Manager 10g Database Control URL:
http://sugarcube:5500/em

It's really important to know how to access the Enteprise (sic) Manager. Pressing the "Exit" button pops a "Do you really want to exit?" dialog. Funny -- there's not much else to do at this point.

After exiting the web-based Enterprise Manager (EM from now on) appears asking for username and password, then there's an obscure license, to which i, of course, agree, and finally the OrclStrt database summary with all the options -- Maintenance, Performance, Management etc. I wonder why didn't it work smoothly the first time around. Oh, and for some reason there's an untitled Java window saying: "VTA-1000: The browser could not be launched with the file of URL: http://sugarcube:5500/em". But it was launched. Whatever.

Before i reboot, these are the Windows services created:

1. OracleCSService
2. OracleDBConsoleOrclStrt
3. OracleJobSchedulerORCLSTRT (Disabled)
4. OracleOraDb10g_home1iSQL*Plus
5. OracleOraDb10g_home1SNMPPeerEncapsulator (Manual)
6. OracleOraDb10g_home1SNMPPeerMasterAgent (Manual)
7. OracleOraDb10g_home1TNSListener
8. OracleServiceORCLSTRT

All of them are set to Automatic and started, unless otherwise noticed. I hope that after the reboot there won't be anything weird, like the first time ... i admit that maybe it's because i screwed around back then.

In the Home screen of the EM i already see two alerts: the CPU is at 100%, because of Folding@Home and there is only 10.64% available space on filesystem E:\. I wonder if these are configurable somehow, because both are fine with me. I don't even understand why does the EM care about filesystem E:\ at all -- the datafiles are on C:\.

Anyway, i'm going to shut the computer down now and go to sleep. It looks good and i don't want to ruin anything. Tomorrow i'll start fresh and face the terrible truth ... or something.

Reinstall Notes part 1: Installation Begins Again ... Or Not

Starting at 20:00. It took 15 seconds for the welcome screen to appear. When i saw the description of Advanced Installation -- "Allows ... different passwords for, database character set etc.", i understood that it probably means that the DBCA will be run and opted for the default "Basic Installation".

I named the starter database "orcl10g-starter" so i won't be confused the next time i see "orcl". However, after 15 seconds the installer said that the database name can contain only alphanumeric characters and the underscore and went back to the welcome screen, where i renamed it "orcl_starter". Then after 10 more seconds the installer told that the SID can be no more than 8 chars long, which was an even more annoying turn. It also warned me about an already existing directory -- but it created the directory itself! Now talk about transactions.

Let's start again, it's 20:15 now. And just for the kicks i opted for Advanced installation. Now the installer wants to name my Oracle home db_3, because it detects that i am running it for the third time on my computer. The question is -- how? Will the registry tell? After ten minutes of searching the registry i gave up -- there are way too much Oracle-related keys and i don't want to touch it. So i started reading the "Universal Installer Concepts Guide". Apparently there's even a Deinstalling section there -- i should have thought about that, when i thought about uninstalling -- but it doesn't tell anything interesting about a complete cleanup. There is, however, a chapter about Oracle Homes, which i should better read, because this concept seems to be quite important. So i'll leave the installation for now, and study well about these concepts to become a better DBA someday.

Uninstall Notes part 2

I didn't find an uninstallation guide in the Oracle documentation. Perhaps Oracle think that no-one would ever want to uninstall their venerable product for whatever reason. I followed the instructions from this site:

• Uninstall all Oracle components using the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI).
• Run regedit.exe and delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/ORACLE key. This contains registry entries for all Oracle products.
• Delete any references to Oracle services left behind in the following part of the registry: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Ora*". It should be pretty obvious which ones relate to Oracle.
• Reboot your machine.
• Delete the C:\Oracle directory, or whatever directory is your ORACLE_BASE.
• Delete the C:\Program Files\Oracle directory.
• Empty the contents of your c:\temp directory.
• Empty your recycle bin.

It seems quite reasonable and i would do it myself if i wouldn't find anything on the web.

Uninstall Notes part 1

Uninstallation was easy and took less then 10 minutes. It was, however, an illusion: Oracle program group in the start menu is gone, but in my C:\oracle directory there is still over 1GB of data left and there's still one service left, OracleOraDb10g_home1TNSListener. Maybe i should just find an uninstallation guide and do something right for a change?

The Journey Begins - Take Two

I sent some suggestions to Oracle's Documentation team and pointed them to this blog for more info about me. It worked: A few days later i received an email from an Oracle employee who is involved with search, indexing and user experience issues. He said that they rarely come upon scenarios such as the one i describe here and they are interested to know more about it. Our correspondence might be posted here later for reference.

In the few days that passed since i last wrote here, i delved deeper into Oracle's documentation and understood that it is much better than i thought initially, one just needs to learn how to use it. It is not very good, but it's behind me now and i hope that documenting it here will help Oracle to improve it.

Anyway, i decided to uninstall Oracle completely, rid my computer of that performance hog and give up. No, just kidding -- i'm gonna reinstall it now utilizing all the knowledge i gained.

This is still only the beginning.

Work

Definition of "service" from the "Net Services Administrator's Guide": "Work done for others".