RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
Orr, Steve scribbled on the wall in glitter crayon: I'm not assuming such a tool exists... It indeed does exist because the salesman who happened to be selling it said so and it must be of course it does, and they'll install it for you because they can install and tune it EXACTLY THE SAME WAY for every installation. so see you don't need your DBA any more, just install the whiz-bang tool and follow the bouncing prompt and all you troubles will be far away. until it shows red for some reason and nobody can find out why. -- Bill Shrek Thater ORACLE DBA I'm going to work my ticket if I can... -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] ..one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. - Albert Einstein -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Thater, William INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
Makes me remember the story I was told about damagement running around telling users to log off because the latches are red ;) -- Denny Koovakattu Quoting Thater, William [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Orr, Steve scribbled on the wall in glitter crayon: I'm not assuming such a tool exists... It indeed does exist because the salesman who happened to be selling it said so and it must be of course it does, and they'll install it for you because they can install and tune it EXACTLY THE SAME WAY for every installation. so see you don't need your DBA any more, just install the whiz-bang tool and follow the bouncing prompt and all you troubles will be far away. until it shows red for some reason and nobody can find out why. -- Bill Shrek Thater ORACLE DBA I'm going to work my ticket if I can... -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] ..one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. - Albert Einstein -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Thater, William INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Denny Koovakattu INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
Serves them right for not using mauve database, which, as everybody knows, uses the least RAM. On 12/09/2003 10:24:27 AM, Denny Koovakattu wrote: Makes me remember the story I was told about damagement running around telling users to log off because the latches are red ;) -- Denny Koovakattu Quoting Thater, William [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Orr, Steve scribbled on the wall in glitter crayon: I'm not assuming such a tool exists... It indeed does exist because the salesman who happened to be selling it said so and it must be of course it does, and they'll install it for you because they can install and tune it EXACTLY THE SAME WAY for every installation. so see you don't need your DBA any more, just install the whiz-bang tool and follow the bouncing prompt and all you troubles will be far away. until it shows red for some reason and nobody can find out why. -- Bill Shrek Thater ORACLE DBA I'm going to work my ticket if I can... -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] ..one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. - Albert Einstein -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Thater, William INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Denny Koovakattu INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Note: This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Wang Trading LLC and any of its subsidiaries each reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorized to state them to be the views of any such entity. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Mladen Gogala INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
Mladen Gogala wrote: Serves them right for not using mauve database, which, as everybody knows, uses the least RAM. According to my source(taped up in my cubicle), mauve has the most ram. ;) -Brian -- / * Brian Haas[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Database AdministratorMusician's Friend, Inc.* * Phone:(541)774-5211 http://www.musiciansfriend.com * / -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Brian Haas INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Bellow, Bambi INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Orr, Steve INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system? Escalation matrix in place? Not trying to ruffle any feathers here, and certainly, I appreciate the time requirements in fully answering a question as broad as the one I submitted, but I would like to probe further into various strategies. The whole run scripts to check, install statspack, etc. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA. So what, you've installed statspack? Do you use it regularly? Is this a manual review, or is some system in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA. So what, you've installed statspack? Do you use it regularly? Is this a manual review, or is some system in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Bellow, Bambi INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
sure it runs ok, then shuts itself down. (note to the Oracle-L historians who might be curious, this change in my utilization is largely why my posts from 10 years ago were a lot more DBMS/internals heavy and my posts nowadays are more OS/script heavy.) Regardless, I hope this answers your question and shows some of the complexity of what you're asking for... Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution. Do you have one single machine (or pair of machines) that monitor remote databases? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system? Escalation matrix in place? Not trying to ruffle any feathers here, and certainly, I appreciate the time requirements in fully answering a question as broad as the one I submitted, but I would like to probe further into various strategies. The whole run scripts to check, install statspack, etc. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA. So what, you've installed statspack? Do you use it regularly? Is this a manual review, or is some system in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
That isn't a moth! Any improvements to PDBA toolkit are welcome. As Mladen points out, it is somewhat out of date. But then again, it works, and it is fairly simple. If you buy one on Mladens recommendation, I'll send him a check for 10% of what I make on it. Mladen, I'll round it up to $0.10 for you. Re the question asked about choice of monitoring platforms, mine is Linux, though most of my databases run on Windoze. It's much easier to manage from Linux. The alert log monitoring scripts work from the database server, so most are running on Windoze. Should I get ambitious enough, I will rewrite it so that the Windoze portion is merely a server ( all X11 architecture ) and the client will be on Linux, and centralize the reporting portion ( emailing and paging ). Automating everything you can so that emails merely have to be perused will simplify your life immensely. Here's what I currently have automated. Statspack report graphs via YAPPPACK. Important production databases have statspack running. Response times are daily graphed in 15 minute increments via YAPPACK, Statspack, DBI::Chart, and cron. Objects that may run out of space are reported daily. These emails typically have a size of ~1920 bytes, so I don't actually read these unless the size of the email is larger than usual. DBA_JOBS are monitored every 2 hours. I just scan down the email looking for a 'Y' in the 'Broken' column. Alert log errors are emailed via a Perl script. This is found in the PDBA toolkit. A script running on a Win2k server monitor important Oracle services on other Win2K/NT servers, and attempts to restart them if down. An email is sent when one is found to be down, and indicates the failure/success of the restart attempt. All databases are checked every 5 minutes by logging into to them. Failures are recorded and sent the the DBA on call. (me). This script is configurable as to how many failures will be tolerated on a per database level before paging the dba, based on the critical times of day specified. Also in the PDBA toolkit. A password server is used to supply passwords to all of the Linux based scripts, and some of the Win32 scripts. These are sent across the network encrypted in RC4. I considered using LDAP for this, but it was at the time too difficult to get OpenLDAP to work reliably. Also in the PDBA toolkit. There might be more, I can't recall at the moment. One word of advice regarding automation: Document the things you automate, even if it's only a checklist. It's surprising how easy it is not to notice that you are no longer receiving an email from an automated process because it's broken. Scan the list occasionally to make sure everything is working. In at least one case, I have a monitor that monitors another monitor. :) Jared On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 13:14, Mladen Gogala wrote: Ryan, have you tried PDBA toolkit? The address is: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oracleperl/pdbatoolkit/ This toolkit has a plethora of very useful scripts. I seem to recollect an ugly looking O'Reilly book with moth on an orange overtone cover, which does a very good job on documenting it. The book is called Perl for Oracle DBA. The PDBA toolkit is slightly out of date but still very useful, but the book is invaluable because it documents a whole lot of other tools like Oracle::OCI (a perversion) Apache::OWA, Apache::DBI and Mason, which are hard to come by and even harder to find examples that make sense. The author is Mr. Jared Still, otherwise known as the owner of this list. Please let me know if you purchase the book, because I'll have to charge Jared for commission. On 12/05/2003 03:44:32 PM, Ryan wrote: one more point. Sorry for all the emails. I found that when writing scripts for monitoring you really should follow an abstraction philosohpy similiar to what you see in Object Oriented programming. Write utility scripts, use data files, then have utility scripts that 'echo' out data from them like a function. maintenance is much easier. - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:49 PM Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
Well said, Ryan! I have about the same number of instances, all on Sun. Development responsibilities also. One DBA. Time off is difficult. Excellent advice on emailing results. I have found the tools cause you about as much maintenance as they might save, so I favor simple scripts with emailed results. If you have time to visit each instance each day, you have way too much time on your hands. But I can recall those days when I only had 2 instances too. Fondly recall. For user/developer requests, the magic phrase I've found is can I do that for you tomorrow morning? Before leaving for the day I prepare a list of tasks for the next morning, and when I arrive I defer anything that I can to concentrate on my list and ticking off tasks on that list. Try to get meetings moved to the afternoon. Just basic time management, and everyone is different. For mature applications, I've found autoextend on datafiles to be a big time-saver. I've used that for many years now and only been bitten by that a couple of times. Much simpler to watch one number (available disk space) than dozens of numbers. For deployment, we are working toward ITIL procedures. We have test, staging, production instances for most databases, so I and developers can deploy against a staging instance before inflicting a deployment on production. Staging is a fresh clone of production. Naming standards are good, but I have found that some sites get so wrapped up in them that they cause more work than they prevent. Often packaged applications are mainly tested against their default configuration so if you insist on changing everything to meet your standards, you end up finding bugs nobody else found. One technique I have had good results with is to prepare an audit sheet and when time is available, pick an instance and audit it for security, performance, recoverability, etc. During the audit, make up a list of tasks to perform on that instance, and as time permits, execute those tasks. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:09 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution. Do you have one single machine (or pair of machines) that monitor remote databases? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system? Escalation matrix in place? Not trying to ruffle any feathers here, and certainly, I appreciate the time requirements in fully answering a question as broad as the one I submitted, but I would like to probe further into various strategies. The whole run scripts to check, install statspack, etc. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA. So what, you've installed statspack? Do you use it regularly? Is this a manual review, or is some system in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
When I had only one instance to baby sit doing the script thing was OK, but it also missed things like the listener not being up and lost of other problems. Besides it was a pain to add it to each new server as they came along. Therefore I re-wrote those scripts into one C language program with integrated SMTP capabilities, a couple of extprocedures as well as a built in that understands when a DB is suppose to be down for backup or in hot backup mode. I then added common fix it stuff that I've always had to do manually hung it off the side on an NT server we had. It's been here for the past 10 years and even understands Oracle 9i. Sends a message to the pager/cell phone when needed otherwise just sends the old e-mail. Dick Goulet Senior Oracle DBA Oracle Certified 8i DBA -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:50 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Goulet, Dick INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
Adam -- I've done this more times than I can count. The answer is it depends on your environment, your desired results, and, more often than not, your corporate structure. Here's some examples: 1) Monitoring script pages DBA group if X happens, Unix group if Y happens, Network group if Z happens. Simultaneously, XTerm windows are popped up in both Operations and HelpDesk with the name and pager number of the person paged (via uucp) 2) Monitoring script sends messages to centralized Error Management System. Error Management System handles it 3) Monitoring script finds problem and corrects problem. If problem continues, email is generated 4) Error Management System has external handles (not APIs) which can be used to call Monitoring Scripts, which need to be modified to ustilize System's internal structures (sometimes written in French -- *that* was fun!) 5) Monitoring script simply sends emails 6) Monitoring script keeps track of the errors in log files which are compared to log files from X time ago and only the differences are reported 7) Monitoring script has redundancy built in such that the first X times a particular problem is encountered, the Monitoring System ignores it, then generates a page 8) Monitoring script has redundnacy built in such that after the first time the problem is encountered, a page is sent, and if there is still a problem 15 minutes later, someone else is paged and so on up the company ladder It goes on and on. This is largely what I've been doing for the past 8 years. Note that the words Monitoring script as used above is generally an inherently complicated conglomeration of several different scripts, generally with a governor and/or one or more driver(s), infrequently on different operating systems, sometimes in multiple languages and/or utilizing, or integrating with, or extending the capabilities of, one or more COTS products, which use different mechanisms to trigger and synchronize them. Generally, there is some kind of IGNORE functionality which allows for specified downtime for maintenance, or ALTERNATE functionality for unusual yet definable situations, and hierarchy of tests (if the database is down, that implies that a subsequent error that a user cannot connect to it has already been dealt with) and, occasionally has sniffers on other boxes to determine whether remote scripts need to be run either dependent upon remote conditions or independent of them. Sometimes, there is a process which kicks off other jobs and manages the security. I particularly enjoy those where there is fault tolerance built in such that if Monitoring script X on Machine Y craps out, Machine Z takes over and runs the scripts until Y is back, then copies the logs back, kicks off Y, make sure it runs ok, then shuts itself down. (note to the Oracle-L historians who might be curious, this change in my utilization is largely why my posts from 10 years ago were a lot more DBMS/internals heavy and my posts nowadays are more OS/script heavy.) Regardless, I hope this answers your question and shows some of the complexity of what you're asking for... Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution. Do you have one single machine (or pair of machines) that monitor remote databases? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system? Escalation matrix in place? Not trying to ruffle any feathers here, and certainly, I appreciate the time requirements in fully answering a question as broad as the one I submitted, but I would like to probe further into various strategies. The whole run scripts to check, install statspack, etc. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA. So what, you've installed statspack? Do you use it regularly? Is this a manual review, or is some system in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
- Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 2:44 PM So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution. Do you have one single machine (or pair of machines) that monitor remote databases? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system? Escalation matrix in place? 7-8 servers and growing. we use data files that the scripts read. We use an NAS, so we share common directories across servers making it easier to manage. so each server will be server_name.host each instance instance.target We use scripts to access these data files so we can change them. For example, I have one script that tests all alert logs. It does ps -ef| grep pmon. Then logs in to each instance and gets all the alert log paths and polls them for new ORA messages. I have another one to test whether the instances are up. This one takes the host variable and hits the appropriate *.host file. This file will have a list of all instances on that server. Then tries to log into each server. We dont have adequate code for checking the listener? Any suggestions. Easier to do with CRON on a platform like this than DBMS_JOB, plus I dont have to worry about the quotes. Our threat matrix is Success, failure, warning. People carry beepers that have emails and if a failure flag comes up, they get beeped. We use warnings for this such as ORA messages in alert log, Increase in size of data file, things that arent 100% the way we want on ETL loads, etc... Not trying to ruffle any feathers here, and certainly, I appreciate the time requirements in fully answering a question as broad as the one I submitted, but I would like to probe further into various strategies. The whole run scripts to check, install statspack, etc. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA. So what, you've installed statspack? Do you use it regularly? Is this a manual review, or is some system in place to monitor changes? How easy is it to deploy this framework? Scripts are very scalable. You just dont go nailing the v$views 1000 times. We do our polling stuff every 5 minutes. You cant monitor statspack all the time. We monitor it when we have a problem. That is what design is for. As I said, I also write code every day. (Does anyone here use Oracle's SNMP agents for monitoring? I've leveraged these -- along with a home-grown SNMP NMS (in Perl) -- to some degree at a multiple database site to good effect.) not in the budget. Are there any 'design patterns for databases' around? Should we come up with some? David Wendelken from casetech has some articles on his company's website. More lower level patterns. Such as different types of relations. He basically takes relational theory and makes it readable. They are quite good. Overall all high level pattersn for one size fits all doesnt work. But lower level 'relational' patterns for specific tables is a viable strategy. Perl and C might be good. Dont know perl and Im weak in C. (I'll post my own notes on the topic of management in a future post -- still compiling.) Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 11:09 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: Database management techniques and frameworks We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
one more point. Sorry for all the emails. I found that when writing scripts for monitoring you really should follow an abstraction philosohpy similiar to what you see in Object Oriented programming. Write utility scripts, use data files, then have utility scripts that 'echo' out data from them like a function. maintenance is much easier. - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:49 PM Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Ryan INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
i think instead of doing lists myself, I say Can I teach this guy how to do it and is he willing to learn. If he is willing to learn its great, if not, its a pain. Learning DBA skills is very advantage to any developers career, so if their smart they will want to learn. The key is to not give them the deer in the head lights look. Little bit at a time. - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 2:39 PM Well said, Ryan! I have about the same number of instances, all on Sun. Development responsibilities also. One DBA. Time off is difficult. Excellent advice on emailing results. I have found the tools cause you about as much maintenance as they might save, so I favor simple scripts with emailed results. If you have time to visit each instance each day, you have way too much time on your hands. But I can recall those days when I only had 2 instances too. Fondly recall. For user/developer requests, the magic phrase I've found is can I do that for you tomorrow morning? Before leaving for the day I prepare a list of tasks for the next morning, and when I arrive I defer anything that I can to concentrate on my list and ticking off tasks on that list. Try to get meetings moved to the afternoon. Just basic time management, and everyone is different. For mature applications, I've found autoextend on datafiles to be a big time-saver. I've used that for many years now and only been bitten by that a couple of times. Much simpler to watch one number (available disk space) than dozens of numbers. For deployment, we are working toward ITIL procedures. We have test, staging, production instances for most databases, so I and developers can deploy against a staging instance before inflicting a deployment on production. Staging is a fresh clone of production. Naming standards are good, but I have found that some sites get so wrapped up in them that they cause more work than they prevent. Often packaged applications are mainly tested against their default configuration so if you insist on changing everything to meet your standards, you end up finding bugs nobody else found. One technique I have had good results with is to prepare an audit sheet and when time is available, pick an instance and audit it for security, performance, recoverability, etc. During the audit, make up a list of tasks to perform on that instance, and as time permits, execute those tasks. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:09 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L We have about 20-25 instances here. Nearly all on SUN. I dont touch the ones on windows. I also have development responsibilities, so I dont have time for a checklist. you need to automate tasks. You cant spend your time reading the alert log. you should poll it and get an email when something pops up. Same with chained rows, tablespace sizes, etc... Write scripts for this and send your self emails. Have statspack snapshots run daily. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/12/05 Fri PM 01:49:30 EST To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Database management techniques and frameworks Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
Re: Database management techniques and frameworks
Ryan, have you tried PDBA toolkit? The address is: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oracleperl/pdbatoolkit/ This toolkit has a plethora of very useful scripts. I seem to recollect an ugly looking O'Reilly book with moth on an orange overtone cover, which does a very good job on documenting it. The book is called Perl for Oracle DBA. The PDBA toolkit is slightly out of date but still very useful, but the book is invaluable because it documents a whole lot of other tools like Oracle::OCI (a perversion) Apache::OWA, Apache::DBI and Mason, which are hard to come by and even harder to find examples that make sense. The author is Mr. Jared Still, otherwise known as the owner of this list. Please let me know if you purchase the book, because I'll have to charge Jared for commission. On 12/05/2003 03:44:32 PM, Ryan wrote: one more point. Sorry for all the emails. I found that when writing scripts for monitoring you really should follow an abstraction philosohpy similiar to what you see in Object Oriented programming. Write utility scripts, use data files, then have utility scripts that 'echo' out data from them like a function. maintenance is much easier. - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:49 PM Folks, I thought it'd be interesting to take a survey on what techniques and frameworks DBA's on this list use to manage their Oracle databases. I imagine that some of us manage only a single database and instance, but in those configurations where there are many instances, multiple databases, different platforms/versions, etc., what are some of the strategies for management in place? What daily tasks do you perform, and how do you organize them? How do you manage user requests (individually or as part of a larger environment)? How do you handle jobs? Organization techniques? Naming standards? User/application deployment framework, etc., etc.? (Obviously we could write a book about this -- there's an idea! -- but summaries and pointers would be interesting. Perhaps we can come up with a best practices document and associated framework for Oracle database management.) Thanks, Adam -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Ryan INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Note: This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Wang Trading LLC and any of its subsidiaries each reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorized to state them to be the views of any such entity. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Mladen Gogala INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services - To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
I guess the impetus here is my Occamian approach to technology problems. I abstract to the point of maximum flexibility with minimal complexity, which often also requires maximum time and effort. Reality of course dictates that a solution that ends up in common ground. So it's not that I'm asking for 'answers' so much as I'm attempting to identify patterns that have worked. From your post, it's clear your method isn't X -- it's X, Y, or Z depending on the situation. Perhaps we can extrapolate from these variables a more generic way ... a common thread throughout, that is understandable, deterministic, and implementable. It's Friday, ignore my ramblings. Adam Bellow, Bambi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 12:34 PM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject RE: Database management techniques and frameworks Adam -- I've done this more times than I can count. The answer is it depends on your environment, your desired results, and, more often than not, your corporate structure. Here's some examples: 1) Monitoring script pages DBA group if X happens, Unix group if Y happens, Network group if Z happens. Simultaneously, XTerm windows are popped up in both Operations and HelpDesk with the name and pager number of the person paged (via uucp) 2) Monitoring script sends messages to centralized Error Management System. Error Management System handles it 3) Monitoring script finds problem and corrects problem. If problem continues, email is generated 4) Error Management System has external handles (not APIs) which can be used to call Monitoring Scripts, which need to be modified to ustilize System's internal structures (sometimes written in French -- *that* was fun!) 5) Monitoring script simply sends emails 6) Monitoring script keeps track of the errors in log files which are compared to log files from X time ago and only the differences are reported 7) Monitoring script has redundancy built in such that the first X times a particular problem is encountered, the Monitoring System ignores it, then generates a page 8) Monitoring script has redundnacy built in such that after the first time the problem is encountered, a page is sent, and if there is still a problem 15 minutes later, someone else is paged and so on up the company ladder It goes on and on. This is largely what I've been doing for the past 8 years. Note that the words Monitoring script as used above is generally an inherently complicated conglomeration of several different scripts, generally with a governor and/or one or more driver(s), infrequently on different operating systems, sometimes in multiple languages and/or utilizing, or integrating with, or extending the capabilities of, one or more COTS products, which use different mechanisms to trigger and synchronize them. Generally, there is some kind of IGNORE functionality which allows for specified downtime for maintenance, or ALTERNATE functionality for unusual yet definable situations, and hierarchy of tests (if the database is down, that implies that a subsequent error that a user cannot connect to it has already been dealt with) and, occasionally has sniffers on other boxes to determine whether remote scripts need to be run either dependent upon remote conditions or independent of them. Sometimes, there is a process which kicks off other jobs and manages the security. I particularly enjoy those where there is fault tolerance built in such that if Monitoring script X on Machine Y craps out, Machine Z takes over and runs the scripts until Y is back, then copies the logs back, kicks off Y, make sure it runs ok, then shuts itself down. (note to the Oracle-L historians who might be curious, this change in my utilization is largely why my posts from 10 years ago were a lot more DBMS/internals heavy and my posts nowadays are more OS/script heavy.) Regardless, I hope this answers your question and shows some of the complexity of what you're asking for... Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution. Do you have one single machine (or pair of machines) that monitor remote databases? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system? Escalation matrix in place? Not trying to ruffle any feathers here, and certainly, I appreciate the time requirements in fully answering a question as broad as the one I submitted, but I would like to probe further into various strategies. The whole run scripts to check, install statspack, etc. approach seems both highly unscalable and leaves much to the whim of the individual DBA
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
Adam -- Generally, my approach is X *and* Y *and* Z, and I have found that maximum flexibility with a decent level of functionality will be of at least moderate complexity. And I have never seen Occam's name turned into an adjective like that. Is that standard? Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 3:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I guess the impetus here is my Occamian approach to technology problems. I abstract to the point of maximum flexibility with minimal complexity, which often also requires maximum time and effort. Reality of course dictates that a solution that ends up in common ground. So it's not that I'm asking for 'answers' so much as I'm attempting to identify patterns that have worked. From your post, it's clear your method isn't X -- it's X, Y, or Z depending on the situation. Perhaps we can extrapolate from these variables a more generic way ... a common thread throughout, that is understandable, deterministic, and implementable. It's Friday, ignore my ramblings. Adam Bellow, Bambi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 12:34 PM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject RE: Database management techniques and frameworks Adam -- I've done this more times than I can count. The answer is it depends on your environment, your desired results, and, more often than not, your corporate structure. Here's some examples: 1) Monitoring script pages DBA group if X happens, Unix group if Y happens, Network group if Z happens. Simultaneously, XTerm windows are popped up in both Operations and HelpDesk with the name and pager number of the person paged (via uucp) 2) Monitoring script sends messages to centralized Error Management System. Error Management System handles it 3) Monitoring script finds problem and corrects problem. If problem continues, email is generated 4) Error Management System has external handles (not APIs) which can be used to call Monitoring Scripts, which need to be modified to ustilize System's internal structures (sometimes written in French -- *that* was fun!) 5) Monitoring script simply sends emails 6) Monitoring script keeps track of the errors in log files which are compared to log files from X time ago and only the differences are reported 7) Monitoring script has redundancy built in such that the first X times a particular problem is encountered, the Monitoring System ignores it, then generates a page 8) Monitoring script has redundnacy built in such that after the first time the problem is encountered, a page is sent, and if there is still a problem 15 minutes later, someone else is paged and so on up the company ladder It goes on and on. This is largely what I've been doing for the past 8 years. Note that the words Monitoring script as used above is generally an inherently complicated conglomeration of several different scripts, generally with a governor and/or one or more driver(s), infrequently on different operating systems, sometimes in multiple languages and/or utilizing, or integrating with, or extending the capabilities of, one or more COTS products, which use different mechanisms to trigger and synchronize them. Generally, there is some kind of IGNORE functionality which allows for specified downtime for maintenance, or ALTERNATE functionality for unusual yet definable situations, and hierarchy of tests (if the database is down, that implies that a subsequent error that a user cannot connect to it has already been dealt with) and, occasionally has sniffers on other boxes to determine whether remote scripts need to be run either dependent upon remote conditions or independent of them. Sometimes, there is a process which kicks off other jobs and manages the security. I particularly enjoy those where there is fault tolerance built in such that if Monitoring script X on Machine Y craps out, Machine Z takes over and runs the scripts until Y is back, then copies the logs back, kicks off Y, make sure it runs ok, then shuts itself down. (note to the Oracle-L historians who might be curious, this change in my utilization is largely why my posts from 10 years ago were a lot more DBMS/internals heavy and my posts nowadays are more OS/script heavy.) Regardless, I hope this answers your question and shows some of the complexity of what you're asking for... Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution. Do you have one single machine (or pair of machines) that monitor remote databases? Or do you install these scripts on each database server? Do you leverage dbms_jobs? And relying on email seems kind of iffy -- what happens if you're not around to check your email? Page system
RE: Database management techniques and frameworks
Perhaps it should have said Occam's razorian ;) Bellow, Bambi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 01:59 PM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject RE: Database management techniques and frameworks Adam -- Generally, my approach is X *and* Y *and* Z, and I have found that maximum flexibility with a decent level of functionality will be of at least moderate complexity. And I have never seen Occam's name turned into an adjective like that. Is that standard? Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 3:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I guess the impetus here is my Occamian approach to technology problems. I abstract to the point of maximum flexibility with minimal complexity, which often also requires maximum time and effort. Reality of course dictates that a solution that ends up in common ground. So it's not that I'm asking for 'answers' so much as I'm attempting to identify patterns that have worked. From your post, it's clear your method isn't X -- it's X, Y, or Z depending on the situation. Perhaps we can extrapolate from these variables a more generic way ... a common thread throughout, that is understandable, deterministic, and implementable. It's Friday, ignore my ramblings. Adam Bellow, Bambi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2003 12:34 PM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject RE: Database management techniques and frameworks Adam -- I've done this more times than I can count. The answer is it depends on your environment, your desired results, and, more often than not, your corporate structure. Here's some examples: 1) Monitoring script pages DBA group if X happens, Unix group if Y happens, Network group if Z happens. Simultaneously, XTerm windows are popped up in both Operations and HelpDesk with the name and pager number of the person paged (via uucp) 2) Monitoring script sends messages to centralized Error Management System. Error Management System handles it 3) Monitoring script finds problem and corrects problem. If problem continues, email is generated 4) Error Management System has external handles (not APIs) which can be used to call Monitoring Scripts, which need to be modified to ustilize System's internal structures (sometimes written in French -- *that* was fun!) 5) Monitoring script simply sends emails 6) Monitoring script keeps track of the errors in log files which are compared to log files from X time ago and only the differences are reported 7) Monitoring script has redundancy built in such that the first X times a particular problem is encountered, the Monitoring System ignores it, then generates a page 8) Monitoring script has redundnacy built in such that after the first time the problem is encountered, a page is sent, and if there is still a problem 15 minutes later, someone else is paged and so on up the company ladder It goes on and on. This is largely what I've been doing for the past 8 years. Note that the words Monitoring script as used above is generally an inherently complicated conglomeration of several different scripts, generally with a governor and/or one or more driver(s), infrequently on different operating systems, sometimes in multiple languages and/or utilizing, or integrating with, or extending the capabilities of, one or more COTS products, which use different mechanisms to trigger and synchronize them. Generally, there is some kind of IGNORE functionality which allows for specified downtime for maintenance, or ALTERNATE functionality for unusual yet definable situations, and hierarchy of tests (if the database is down, that implies that a subsequent error that a user cannot connect to it has already been dealt with) and, occasionally has sniffers on other boxes to determine whether remote scripts need to be run either dependent upon remote conditions or independent of them. Sometimes, there is a process which kicks off other jobs and manages the security. I particularly enjoy those where there is fault tolerance built in such that if Monitoring script X on Machine Y craps out, Machine Z takes over and runs the scripts until Y is back, then copies the logs back, kicks off Y, make sure it runs ok, then shuts itself down. (note to the Oracle-L historians who might be curious, this change in my utilization is largely why my posts from 10 years ago were a lot more DBMS/internals heavy and my posts nowadays are more OS/script heavy.) Regardless, I hope this answers your question and shows some of the complexity of what you're asking for... Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:44 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L So your approach is to write a series of custom scripts, add them to (I assume) oracle's crontab for periodic execution
