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  • Using dbca to create a physical standby database

    While investigating new options I discovered with dbca for the previous article I noticed that it’s now possible to use Oracle’s Database Creation Assistant (dbca) to create a physical standby database using the -createDuplicateDB flag. I wanted to know how easily this can be done on my Oracle 18.5.0 system. I have 2 VMs, server3…

  • dbca now makes it easy to configure OMF on file systems

    Up until – and including – Oracle 12.1 I always found it not-quite-so-straight-forward to create a new database using Database Creation Assistant (dbca) and configure it with Oracle Managed Files (OMF) on a file system in silent mode. I really like to use OMF in my lab databases as it saves me a lot of typing. I…

  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: understanding your Ansible configuration

    When writing automation scripts I tend to use a local Ansible configuration file. This has certain advantages for me, such as including it in a version control system (VCS). It also is a valid option for developers without access to the global configuration file installed by the package manager. And more convenient to use than…

  • Oracle Linux 7 and a new YUM configuration since January 2019

    For quite some time I used to have a configuration file /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol7.repo managing my package sources in lab VMs. Today I noticed that this configuration file is deprecated, and has been replaced by a new model. This is explained in the Oracle Linux 7 administrator guide and a few other sources I totally missed. I…

  • Building your own local Oracle Linux 7 Vagrant base box

    I have been talking about Vagrant for a long time and use it extensively on my Ubuntu-powered laptop. I am using Oracle Linux 7.6 for most of my lab builds, and I like to have specific tools such as collectl, perf, and many others available when the VM boots. I als like to stay in…

  • Making some more sense of direct path reads during primary key lookups

    After having published my first article of 2019 I have received feedback I felt like including. With a nod to @fritshoogland, @ChrisAntognini and @FranckPachot. In the previous post I showed you output of Tanel Poder’s ashtop.sql as proof that direct path reads can occur even if all you do is look up data by primary…

  • Making sense of direct path reads during primary key lookups

    I recently made an interesting observation while monitoring database performance on an Oracle Enterprise Edition system. While looking at some ASH data (for which you must be licensed appropriately!) I came across direct path reads attributed to a select statement performing a primary key lookup. At first, this didn’t make much sense to me, but…

  • Little things worth knowing: the latest public-yum-ol7.repo configuration file enables an upgrade to UEK R5

    For a little while now I have been using Ansible for all installation/configuration tasks I do in the lab. I can’t really be bothered to do these things by typing commands anymore: once you get the hang of Ansible, you can develop an urge to automate everything. As part of my playbook installing the Oracle database…

  • Little things worth knowing: parallel Data Pump export in table mode

    I haven’t used Data Pump in a little while but recently needed to do a bit of work involving this very useful utility to export a single table. I know that it is possible to export data in parallel using expdp, but I can’t recall the syntax for doing so off the top of my…

  • Installing Ansible on Oracle Linux 7 for test and development use

    There are a few alternative ways of installing Ansible on Linux, and the install guide for Ansible does a great job in explaining them all in detail.  There is a potentially easier way to get to a current Ansible version if you are using Oracle Linux 7, but it comes with a very important limitation.…