Andreas' Adventures

Sometimes I wish that there was just one language and therefore just one keyboard. I'm working in Belgium right now and at this customer there is no possibility to use my laptop on the network. Instead they have a thin client concept based on Citrix. That is ok but working with a Belgian keyboard just makes my hands hurt. I have switched the locale to English. But now I have to convince my eyes that there are different keys. Also after locking the PC I mistyped my password too often (the Citrix environment was still on FR) so the helpdesk had to unlock my account. I have not yet done Oracle related work on this machine but I cannot imagine what will happen when doing some interessting stuff with the DB or the Application Server and entering $#@%^& instead of some numbers or terminating each command with an m (that's where they've put the semicolon).

In my previous post http://achatzia.blogspot.com/2007/09/stand-alone-oracle-http-server-vs-as.html I said that there are two separate code trees for the OHS. Now I found at least one difference. If you have a look at the mod_oc4j.conf file you will see that the standalone version includes LoadModule oc4j_module modules/mod_oc4j.so while the AS version does include LoadModule oc4j_module modules/ApacheModuleOc4j.dll This of course is the Windows version. If somebody wants to check if such a difference exists with a Unix version I would like to hear that as well.

I just learned the following, which I wanted to share with you. One reason for using the 10.1.3.3 HTTP Server rather than the companion cd - Apache 2.0 - version is that no generic patchsets are ever issued for the Apache 2.0 version. It means that the MOD_OC4J component which comes with the 2.0 version always stays the same and neve r receives any bug fixes. You can also more easily configure the base 10.1.3 HTTP Server as part of an OracleAS 10.1.3 cluster topology. I had the idea that a stand alone OHS in the web tier (e.g. in the DMZ) would be a better setup as there are less points to attack, especially as there is a direct exposion to the Internet. I'll try to switch to the AS 10.1.3.x version instead of the stand alone OHS to see if this solves my problem. However I do not understand why Oracle keep different patch regimes with their software when they should share the same code base?

I thought that using the Oracle Enterprise Linux for the 11g would be a pretty cool idea. Actually the installation experience is not different from a normal RH ES version. I would have thought that a couple of necessary packages were already included (unixODBC, libaio, etc) but I guess that this is the age-old problem of having the OS out there for some time when the software (DB) is still in development. It would be awesome if Oracle would come up with a intermediate release of the OEL when they bring out a new version of the DB or the AS (yes I like to daydream :-) When installing the software no issues were detected. However when I build the Database (dbca) it seemed to hang at 45%. I retried three times (sample schemas on/off). Then I left it running while I was having lunch. And guess what: it just takes a little bit longer. So when installing 11g just bring a little bit of patience with you.

Ok, I promise I will take more time to read things like manuals and other documents when it comes to new features in the database. Take the Flashback Recovery Area (FRA). Oracle does store archive logs in there, which is cool as it speeds up the recovery. The bad thing is that the Oracle Database behaves like a small child. When you do not look it will do strange things. So I was busy setting up the online backup of an infrastructure database. This one is still in 10.1.x while all the others in this environment are on 10.2.x . For the RMAN I have a catalog (also 10.2.x) so I had some problems with the versions as the 10.1.x database refused to get into the 10.2.x RMAN catalog. I thought that I have plenty of space for the archivelogs in the ASM (everything was RAC of course). I turned my attention to some other issues (aka not watching your kid for a moment). Then during an important demo for the client a developer told me that he cannot use the OID. Of course I checked, but the OID wa...