Tag Archives: database

Comedy Errors

Oracle Support Comedy Errors

Don’t get me wrong. Oracle support analysts have a difficult job. Their products are large, complex beasts and you don’t necessarily expect an immediate response. These, however, I did not expect…

  • Having spent over a day with hourly contact with support, they ring back returning a voice-mail message left before managing speaking to a ‘real’ person. Twenty-seven hours apparently wasn’t enough for a correct response, either.
  • Two weeks of problems lead to a call to our sales manager. Obviously concerned, he went away to research the problem. He came back a day or two later. “This problem you’re having with you SCSI CD-ROM…,” he began. Good effort, wrong customer.
  • They asked us to download a patch from their web site, a mere 36Megs. This looked remarkably similar to a patch we’d received the previous week for another problem. Next they insisted that we needed the next version of the SmartClient software. They even sent someone out to install it for us. Naturally, this solution didn’t work. They ummed and arred for a while before declaring it a ‘bug’ and sending it off to the states to be fixed. This is the last I heard of this problem.
Oracle Howto

Installing Oracle 8i R3

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I have recently installed Oracle 8i R3 (8.1.7) on my Celeron 466 machine. I found the installation to be very straight-forward compared with both 8.1.5 and the experiences of many people.

My machine is well below the specification that would be required to do real work on, especially if you have a number of developers. It does work, albeit rather slowly. Creating my initial database, for example, took around eight hours.

It currently runs RedHat 7.2 with a few minor patches (including a more recent kernel). I installed just about everything, including the full development kit and “glibc-compat”.

My secret to success, I believe, were these two commands:

  1. . /usr/i386-glibc21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh
  2. export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5

After this, the installation ran exactly to plan.

Comedy Errors

Oracle Client Software Comedy Errors

Oracle Data Browser

Oracle Data Browser, part of the Discover 2000 suite, is one of the least amusing applications that Oracle supply. Not because it’s bad, but because it almost works…

  • Windows 95 has a ‘full screen drag’ feature (freely download-able from Microsoft‘s web site). If you load Data Browser you don’t. It suddenly stops working.
  • Now this is supposed to be a feature, but I’m not convinced. The word ‘Browser’ seems to indicate that it’s a read-only product. In fact a version comes with it that isn’t.

Oracle Data Query

Until we started really using SmartClient, we thought that Data Query, half of the Discoverer 2000 suite, was the lemon of the Oracle product library. That’s not to say that it’s good, just that after all that’s happened with Applications we’ve more or less forgotten a lot of the really annoying stuff. Lucky Oracle.

  • Data Query makes Windows 2.0 seem stable. Even in it’s 32-bit version.
  • It often magically moves the input focus to somewhere you don’t want.
Comedy Errors

About Oracle Comedy Errors

Credit where it’s due

I am unable to criticise a suite of products the size and complexity of Oracle on my own. There are a number of people that need to me mentioned. Remind me if I missed you out!

People

Thanks to Anna Brabants who nearly created the term ‘Oracle Comedy Errors’ and certainly did an almost continuous stream of abuse (not all of it at Oracle).

And thanks to the rest of the project team, who invariable love Oracle products as much as I do.

Thanks to the people at Oracle support who no doubt have to put up with a lot, and offer much amusement if only after the event.

Sources

I’ve been on a number of projects that use Oracle, however most of the tales have come from the first two. On these I was a DBA and developer and ended up spending much time on the phone to Oracle support.

The first time, we were implementing Oracle Financials and Human Resources using a Sun UltraEnterprise 1 server and Compaq workstations.

The server was running Solaris 2.5, with Oracle Server 7.1.6, Oracle Applications 10.6.1 and an incredibly large number of patches.

The Compaq P166 clients ran Windows 95, with SmartClient Prod 15. Then Prod 15.1. And then with a number of ineffective patches… You get the idea.

The second time, we were implementing a bespoke client-server application. The Sun Ultra 1 (and later Ultra 2) server was running Solaris 2.5.1 (2.6) with Oracle Workgroup Server 7.3.

The Compaq P133 clients ran Windows NT 4 and connected to Oracle using OLE Objects through Microsoft Visual Basic 5.

Since then I’ve worked mainly as a developer (often doing data-loads) on Oracle 8. Any 8i critiques come from developing my 8i on Linux HOWTO.

Oracle Howto

Installing Oracle 8i R2

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Introduction

Everyone will be very pleased to hear that Oracle’s third attempt at producing a usable database product on Linux has largely been successful. The first two usually worked but only after much aggravation. Forget all the extras that 8.1.6 provides, you can get the thing installed with much less grief!

Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was simple and straight-forward all the time. It is Oracle that we’re talking about here.

I’ll start by describing how I got Oracle installed on my box and finish off with some questions and answers, much in the same format as the HOWTO. It’s probably worth having a look at the HOWTO still as many of the problems are similar and the solutions given there may give you some idea of where to start looking.

My machine

First, some news on my ‘server’ configuration: I still have the same Celeron 466 with 128Mb of memory. On the software side I’ve upgraded to Mandrake 7.1 (if I’d been running a production Oracle server I wouldn’t have taken the risk). I didn’t remove my old installation of Oracle before starting on the new one and I didn’t attempt to perform an upgrade.

I did remove JRE (Blackdown 1.1.6v5) and my installation of JDK (1.2.2) from my path. Oracle now comes with its own JRE, so even having the risk of it using the wrong one made me paranoid.

The last thing to note is that this time I downloaded my copy rather than using a CD. This seems to be what most other people do, so my tale here should be closer to ‘real life.’

My successful install

The process was as follows:

  1. Download Oracle 8i R2
  2. Extract the archive
  3. Create the required users and groups
  4. Make sure X is set up correctly
  5. Start the installer
  6. Quick tests

Firstly, the download. It’s big, nearly 300Mb. Don’t attempt it without something like Gozilla or wget even if you’re on a fast corporate connection.

Secondly the extraction. You’ll find that it comes in a standard tar archive compressed with GNU Zip. This command should get all the files out: 

tar zxvf oracle8161.tar.gz

When you extract it, remember that the files coming out are slightly bigger (301807K on my machine). So you need over 500Mb of disk space before you even start the installation!

Before you actually start the installation, you’ll need to switch to “root” for a couple of commands. Start by creating a group called “dba” and a user “oracle”. Your new user should be in the new group. Log in as your new “oracle” user and make sure your X Windows system is working properly. (If you can fire up a new ‘xterm’ you’re fine.) The Oracle installer, as before, works only in a graphical environment.

Go to where you extracted the software archive. You’ll find a directory has been created (“Oracle8iR2”). Move into it and you’re ready to start the installation!

(A quick note: in the same directory there’s “index.htm” which is the root page for all the Oracle installation document. This seems to be improved over earlier releases and is worth a read.)

Type: 

./runInstaller

A splash screen should appear, followed by a Windows-style Wizard/Installer. I find the default options for almost everything to be fine. Broadly speaking, and assuming some common-sense is used, just clicking “Next” continually should result in a working installation. In slightly more detail…

(Note that there are a few points where the installer asks you to log in as “root” to run some shell scripts. To simplify the text below, I’ve missed these steps out. Simply do as it says and click “Retry” once it’s done.)

  1. Welcome screen. Click “Next.”
  2. File Locations screen. The top box should be correct; it displays the location of the archive containing all the software about to be installed. The second box is the “base” of you Oracle installation. I chose “/home/ora816” but this is not recommended. Have a read of the OFA (Oracle Flexible Architecture) documentation.
  3. Available Products screen. If you’re installing a server, select “Oracle 8i Enterprise Edition 8.1.6.1.0”; otherwise select “Oracle 8i Client 8.1.6.1.0”. I’m assuming that you’re building a server and click the first option.
  4. Installation Types screen. Do you want a “Typical”, “Minimal” or “Custom” installation. Unless you really know what you’re doing, pick “Typical”.
  5. Upgrading or Migrating an Existing Database screen. If you have a previous installation, Oracle will ask whether you want to upgrade your database to the new 8.1.6 format. I didn’t. I’d recommend doing this yourself once the installation process is complete even if you do.
  6. Database Identification screen. Here Oracle asks you for a Global Database Name and a SID. As before, this is something your DBA probably has an opinion on. If you’re the DBA and you don’t know what it’s asking for, enter “dev1” for both.
  7. Database File Location screen. Now Oracle knows what you want to call your database, it asks you where you want to put all the files that make up the database. Think back to your reading of the OFA documentation for this.
  8. Summary screen. Oracle now tells you what it’s planning on installing. Click “Install” if you’re sure, or go to the “Previous” screen an juggle the options around.
  9. Configuration Tools. First Oracle runs the Net8 Configuration Assistant and then runs the Database Configuration Assistant. Basically, it sets up your networking and creates the database you asked for. No user intervention is required. (Note: the SYS account password is “change_on_install” and the SYSTEM password is “manager”. You should change both using the SQL*Plus “password” command as soon as possible.)
  10. End of Installation. That’s it, you have a complete installation!

If you want to install Oracle Programmer (Pro*C, etc), you need to follow the same process as before: go back through the installation process, but this time following the “Oracle Client” route. The rest of the process is similar to the above and very straight-forward. The new installer even asks you if you want to start again once your database has been created.

And if you want to set up a network connection to another machine, the process is exactly the same as for Oracle 8i (and is covered in the main HOWTO).

Questions and answers

Java problems?

As before, many of the problems come from your choice of Java Virtual Machine. R2 actually comes with a runtime environment this time (JRE 1.1.8), which does make things easier. However I have heard reports that older versions sometimes work better. The older version is normally Blackdown’s 1.1.6v5 release, the same Oracle used to recommend with their 8.1.5 release.

Memory requirements

One thing that is exactly the same is the amount of memory required. I don’t remember seeing a figure in their old documentation, but they say you need 400Mb this time, either real or virtual, for 8.1.6. I have 384Mb in total on my machine and it was fine. The default database configuration seems to use more memory but, as always, you can change that.

Running Redhat 7 or another glibc 2.2 based distribution

Short answer: add “export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5” to your profile and then type “. /usr/i386-glib21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh”.

Long answer: look at my page on the subject.