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  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: configuring the dynamic inventory plugin for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

    As yet another preparation for a talk I’m about to give later this year I ran into a documentation bug concerning the use of the Ansible Dynamic Inventory plugin for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It has since been fixed, but it prompted me to write the entire procedure down anyway as I couldn’t really make sense…

  • Handling kernel upgrades with Ansible prior to an Oracle installation

    As part of the process of setting up VMs in the cloud for use with the Oracle database it is frequently necessary to update the systems to the latest and greatest, and hopefully more secure packages before the Oracle installation can begin. In a similar way I regularly upgrade the (cloud-vendor provided) base image when…

  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: using Network Security Groups and the caveat with the subnet’s default security list

    This is going to be one of these posts I’m mainly writing to myself, in the hope that a) I don’t forget about that topic too soon and b) someone might have the same question and doesn’t want to spin up an environment to find out. Broadly speaking Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (and some other cloud…

  • Upgrading oraclelinux-release-el7 might trigger an upgrade to UEK Release 6

    While building a demo environment for an upcoming presentation I noticed an upgrade from UEK 5 to UEK 6 on my Oracle Linux 7 VM. As it turned out, the kernel change has been triggered by an upgrade of oraclelinux-release-el7 RPM. I am a great fan of Oracle’s UEK and the team behind it, so…

  • Enforcing a re-parse of a cursor in Autonomous Database. Using a hammer

    UPDATE 251208: The original post is now retired, the workaround previously described is no longer necessary. Oracle Autonomous Database 19c and 26ai both expose dbms_shared_pool to the ADMIN user, therefore the selective purging of cursors from the cursor cache described Selectively purging the shared pool in is possible. Please head over and use the script…

  • Introducing Packer: building immutable infrastructure in the cloud

    After having spent a bit of time with Packer to create Vagrant base boxes it was time to focus on the cloud. I have referenced Packer multiple times in my cloud talks as a popular way to create immutable infrastructure and/or custom images, and I wanted to share how you could potentially make use of…

  • Introducing Packer: building Vagrant base boxes hands-free

    I have referred to Packer in some of my cloud-related presentations as an example of a tool for creating immutable infrastructure. In addition to the cloud, Packer supports a great many other build targets as well. Since I work with VirtualBox and Vagrant a lot, Packer’s ability to create Vagrant base boxes is super awesome.…

  • JDBC & the Oracle Database: if you want Transparent Application Failover you need the OCI driver

    This is the second article in the series of JDBC articles I’m about to publish. It covers an old technology that’s surprisingly often found in use: Transparent Application Failover (TAF). It’s a client side feature for clustered Oracle databases allowing sessions (and to some extent, select statements) to fail over to a healthy node from…

  • JDBC & the Oracle Database: using Maven Central

    Over the years I have written a few blog posts about Java and the Oracle database. Most of these posts contained code in some form or another. And I have to admit that I haven’t been following my own advice … I have run into all sorts of issues with the code simply as a…

  • Using wallets with dbca in Oracle 19c

    One of the features I haven’t seen blogged about is the option to provide SYS and SYSTEM passwords (among other parameters) to dbca via a wallet. This is documented in chapter 2 of the Database Administration Guide 19c. [oracle@server1 ~]$ dbca -silent -createDatabase -help … [-useWalletForDBCredentials Specify true to load database credentials from wallet] -dbCredentialsWalletLocation…