mastering oracle 8i

Using Your Sybex Electronic Book To realize the full potential of this Sybex electronic book, you must ha v e Adobe Acrobat Reader with Search installed on your computer. To f ind out if you have the correct version of Acrobat Reader, click on the Edit menu—Search should be an option within this menu f ile. If Search is not an option in the Edit menu, please exit this application and install Adobe Acrobat Reader with Search from this CD (double- click on rp500enu.e xe in the Adobe folder). Navigation To search, click the Search Query b utton on the toolbar or choose Edit >Search > Query to open the Search windo w. In the Adobe Acrobat Search dialog’s text field, type the text you want to find and click Search. Use the Search Next button (Control+U) and Search Pre vious button (Control+Y) to go to other matches in the book. The Search command also has powerful tools for limiting and expanding the def inition of the term you are searching for. Refer to Acrobat's online Help (Help > Plug-In Help > Using Acrobat Search) for more information. www.sybex.com Clic k here to begin using y o u r Syb exElect ronic Book! Search Navigate throught the book by clicking on the headings that appear in the left panel; the corresponding page from the book displays in the right panel. ORACLE8i ™ Robert G. Freeman Mark D. Blomberg San Francisco • London MASTERING ™ C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com Associate Publisher: Richard Mills Acquisitions and Developmental Editor: Christine McGeever Editors: Carol Henry, Marilyn Smith Production Editor: Leslie E. H. 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C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com While this book was being written, the cowardly attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania took place. Thus, this book is dedicated to all those who died there and in other terrorist tragedies throughout the world. This is dedicated to all the children who lost parents, the wives who lost husbands, and the husbands who lost wives. It is dedicated to the grieving families and friends and to the hope of peace, but also to the hope of justice for those who feel that terror and destruction are reasonable alternatives to peace and dialogue. As always, this work is dedicated to my family—my father and my mother, my brother and sisters, and most of all, my wife and children, who sacrifice their time with me in the writing endeavors that I take on. —Robert G. Freeman C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTS T here are numerous individuals who deserve recognition, and if we could put them all on the front cover, we would. Thanks to Richard Basile and Shagun Tyagi, whose names do not appear on the front cover but who contributed to the original content of this book. Thanks to my co-author Mark Blomberg, who really worked hard to make this happen. Thanks, of course, to those who helped make this book what it is. To my friend Jeff Kellum, who put me in contact with everyone else—including Richard Mills, our sup- portive associate publisher. To the wonderful editing staff of this book, Leslie Light, Marilyn Smith, and Carol Henry. Many thanks, as well, to technical editor Ashok Hanumanth. In addition, thanks to Christine McGeever, acquisitions and develop- ment editor, who helped get the book off the ground. The CD team and Dan Mum- mert did a fine job of assembling the CD material. To the production staff, including talented compositor Adrian Woolhouse, thanks for making the book look great. Of course, there are countless people who helped and didn’t even know it. Special thanks to Steve Adams, Tim Stippler, Charles Pack, Mike Ault, Pete Sharman, John B., KG, and numerous other awesome people in the Oracle community! Special thanks to the folks I work with: Nancy Von Dolteren, Yang Jiang, Don Mongeon, Bob Just, Bill Barker, Wendy Hausler, John King, Bill Sullivan, Gunjan Nath, Richard McClain, Nirupam Majumdar, and Maritza Gonzalez. You are all great! Thanks to those who provided moral support (and allowed me to not hold boards for board breaking while I was writing this!): Mrs. Skutnik, Mr. Alfaro, and all those at Master Clark’s Karate America in Jacksonville. Thanks to our many friends, who always support us. Finally, thanks to my wife and my five kids, who came into my work area about once a week just to refresh their memories of what I look like. Robert Freeman C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at Sybex for all their hard work through the long months of this project. The staff at Sybex were helpful, resourceful, and most of all, knowledgeable. I would also like to thank my wife and family for being tolerant of my absence and not making the appropriate time to spend with them. So thank you to my wife Ann, and daughters Rebecca and Dana. Finally, I would like to thank Robert Freeman for bringing me into this venture and giving me the opportunity to realize one of my personal goals. To all involved, a truly grateful THANK YOU. Mark D. Blomberg C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com W e want information… information ” Possibly you recognize these words as the primary interest of a somewhat clandestine group, and as told by a character called Number 2 to Patrick McGoohan’s character Number 6 (in the old TV show The Prisoner). Indeed, in this day, infor- mation is king, and the speedy, accurate, and reliable retrieval of this information is paramount. And if you wish to store and retrieve information quickly, Oracle’s flagship data- base product is the way to go. Oracle Corporation currently “owns” the major share of the large database market, which is one sign of the superiority of Oracle’s product. The Oracle product is robust in features and very fast—but it can also be complicated and expensive to run. As much as Oracle wishes to market its database product as being easy to manage and install, the truth is that an experienced DBA is generally needed for anything other than the most elemental installation and operation. We hear often from aspiring or beginning DBAs wondering how they can join the ranks of Oracle DBAs. Experience is undeniably one of the primary requirements for DBA excellence. Yet, the need to acquire that experience also stands in the way of the junior DBA’s advancement. This experience requirement has made senior DBAs some- what scarce, and it’s also a principal reason for the good salaries offered to truly good DBAs. In other words, you can’t just pick up a book, go through the motions, and become a great DBA. The bottom line for employers is that it’s best to start out with the best and brightest. (“You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”) If you’re investing millions in equip- ment and software, then you want to invest in talent, as well, at the beginning. Once you have a stable, well-designed system up and running, then you can bring on the juniors to maintain it. Getting one’s foot in the DBA door is difficult. What you can do, however, is learn from each book you study. Realize that just knowing the commands and how the processes work is not enough to become a good DBA. In addition, you need to know about backup and recovery. You need to know about tuning the database and tuning the SQL running in the database. You need to know how to ferret statistics out of the database and how to interpret them. That’s what mastering Oracle database administration, and this book, are about. INTRODUCTION “ C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com INTRODUCTION xxviii This text goes beyond basic administration tasks, though it covers those as well. Within these pages you will find nuggets of our experience that might help you. We hope that you will also take away from this book the fact that administration of an Oracle database is a multifaceted job. Finally, remember that the best approach to management of Oracle is a proactive one. Don’t sit and wait for problems to occur. Is This Book for You? We assume that the reader has fundamental knowledge of an Oracle database. If you are a beginning DBA with little or no understanding of Oracle, you should carefully read Chapter 1 before going further. In addition, we strongly suggest that you read a selec- tion of the following books; these are in order from basic to advanced skills coverage: • Oracle DBA 101 by Marlene L. Theriault, et al • The Sybex Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) series of certification study guides, including • OCP: Oracle8i DBA SQL and PL/SQL Study Guide, 0-7821-2682-0 (Sybex, 2000) • OCP: Oracle8i DBA Architecture & Administration and Backup & Recovery Study Guide, 0-7821-2683-9 (Sybex, 2001) • OCP: Oracle8i DBA Performance Tuning and Network Administration Study Guide, 0-7821-2684-7 (Sybex, 2000) Though this set of books is designed primarily for those working toward the Oracle OCP exams, the study guides really are a good introduction to the Oracle product. • Oracle8i Networking 101 by Marlene L. Theriault • Oracle8i Administration and Management by Michael R. Ault If you are a beginning DBA and do not have direct access to the Oracle product, you can download a copy of Oracle from Technet (www.technet.com), the Oracle web- site that contains demonstration copies of Oracle software. Technet also contains code samples and Oracle documentation. Following are some other beneficial websites that you might use in your quest to master the Oracle database product: www.revealnet.com This website provides information on the product offerings of RevealNet Labs (Quest Software), which develops state-of-the-art tech- nical knowledge bases and development/administration tools for Oracle, DB2, C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com xxix and SQL Server. The site also includes the Oracle DBA Pipelines, a forum for Oracle database administrators to meet and share ideas and ask for help. The syn- tax diagrams throughout this book and in Appendix E (on the CD) were produced using the RevealNet Knowledge Base for Oracle Administration. www.oracle.com This is the main page of Oracle Corporation’s website. Here you can find information on Oracle and download certain products. education.oracle.com This is Oracle Corporation’s education site, which offers information on Oracle training courses and becoming an Oracle Certified Professional. metalink.oracle.com Metalink is the online website for Oracle users. If you are an Oracle support customer, you will have access to this site. Use it to search out help with existing Oracle bugs, to find Oracle documents, and to access Oracle forums on various subjects. www.ixora.com.au The Ixora site provides a great wealth of Unix-related Oracle internal knowledge, as well as scripts that you can use to monitor the health of your database. What You Need to Know As you pick up this book, understand that we have not devoted a great number of its pages to examining every fundamental detail of the Oracle database environment. You should already be comfortable with putting together SQL statements, and you should know what SQL*Plus is. Although the book as a whole is not designed for beginners, beginning DBAs will find Chapter 1 to be a quick primer that may well be enough to help them on the way to mastering Oracle8i database administration. If you are a junior DBA, this book is right up your alley. You’ll be comfortable already with what’s involved in starting and stopping the database and working with simple queries. You’ll have some understanding of what the data dictionary is, and perhaps even be familiar with parts of it. It’s our hope that you’ll eat this book up and that it will give you the knowledge you need to become a truly great DBA. If you’re already a master DBA, we hope this text will be a trusted reference, and perhaps provide insight into some aspects of database administration that you want to improve. INTRODUCTION C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com [...]... www.sybex.com CHAPTER 1 Elements of Oracle Database Management F E AT U R I N G : What is a DBA? 4 Introducing Oracle8 i 5 Oracle internals 13 The physilogical Oracle 17 Fundamental Oracle principles 19 Environment settings 21 The Oracle SQL interface tools 22 Using Oracle SQL 29 Oracle PL/SQL 39 Copyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com W elcome to Mastering Oracle8 i We hope you find this book... time of this writing, release 8.1.7 of Oracle8 i was the latest and greatest version of the Oracle database Also, the beta for Oracle9 i (release 9.0) has been announced With Oracle8 i, Oracle has introduced significant features that indicate a long, bright future for this product Overall performance has been Copyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com ORACLE INTERNALS enhanced, and there have... fully object oriented, Oracle8 i is a step in the right direction As the company continues to improve the nature of object features in Oracle, more—and more truly object-oriented—features will be available Chapter 6 explores the objectoriented architecture of Oracle8 i Oracle Internals This section covers the basics of Oracle internals: instances and how to create them, the SGA, Oracle processes, the... USED BY ORACLE (CONTINUED) Parameter Description ORACLE_ BASE The base installation location When installing the Oracle database software, ORACLE_ BASE defines the place to begin creating the OFA-compliant directory structures See Chapter 3 ORACLE_ HOME Base location of all the Oracle database software ORACLE_ SID The name of the local database to which you are connecting PATH Should include the $ORACLE_ HOME/bin... Brief History of Oracle Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison in 1977 as Relational Software Inc (RSI) The first version of RSI’s database product was called Oracle Oracle version 2 was introduced in 1979 It has quickly become the relational database of choice in most Fortune 500 businesses and a great number of Internet businesses In late 1999, Oracle released its newest version, Oracle8 i At the time... and what you didn’t We have set up a website, www.masteringoracle.com, where you’ll find a link to e-mail Robert There are also some links to the book’s errata and other nifty things! Copyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com PA R T I Oracle Essentials LEARN TO: • Install Oracle • Migrate to Oracle • Create an Oracle database • Use the Oracle data dictionary Copyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc.,... data if disaster occurs Oracle allows you to define foreign keys and enforce those relationships, yet Oracle offers you the flexibility to break those rules (or bend them a bit) when necessary Oracle as an Object-Oriented Database Oracle8 introduced object-oriented functionality, which continues to evolve in Oracle8 i You can create user-defined datatypes that can be used in Oracle object tables, nested... the working Oracle DBA We assume most of you already know Oracle well and want to explore Oracle8 i in particular And if you’re new to Oracle, start right here The pace might seem fast and furious, but you’ll manage quite well Here in Chapter 1, we offer a broad view of Oracle and SQL fundamentals We’ll begin with a refresher on the DBA’s role Then we’ll review some database theory and Oracle history... examination of Oracle physical and logical elements continues in subsequent chapters, and you’ll find a discussion of Oracle architecture in general in Chapter 5 Copyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com Oracle Essentials log_archive_dest_1 = “location=D: \Oracle\ oradata\ora816\archive” 18 CHAPTER 1 • ELEMENTS OF ORACLE DATABASE MANAGEMENT Physical Oracle At the physical level, Oracle exists... soon find out Of course, if you end up getting fired, I didn’t say this and I’m not here Introducing Oracle8 i In this section we will briefly discuss some relational database theory and some Oracle history We will take an overview of Oracle8 i, the latest and greatest version of Oracle, and see how the Oracle database is both relational and object oriented TI P Already an expert on relational theory? . corresponding page from the book displays in the right panel. ORACLE8i ™ Robert G. Freeman Mark D. Blomberg San Francisco • London MASTERING ™ C opyright ©2002 SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, CA www.sybex.com C opyright. (OCP) series of certification study guides, including • OCP: Oracle8i DBA SQL and PL/SQL Study Guide, 0-7821-2682-0 (Sybex, 2000) • OCP: Oracle8i DBA Architecture & Administration and Backup. the study guides really are a good introduction to the Oracle product. • Oracle8i Networking 101 by Marlene L. Theriault • Oracle8i Administration and Management by Michael R. Ault If you are a