Tag Archives: Oracle

Wayback Machine: snapshots still valid technique

Posted on May 10, 2010 by kgorman

I came across this old article I wrote for the NOCOUG newsletter in 2002 about using OS snapshots for backups. This technique is still very much a valid and widely used technique to perform backups. The idea is simple: – … Continue reading →

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The death of a Sun

Posted on April 1, 2010 by kgorman

As I was shutting down my last Sun server in my colo, I was thinking back about how things have changed. It’s sad to see such a great company fall. But it seems there is little reason to keep using … Continue reading →

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Dropping ACID

Posted on March 15, 2010 by kgorman

The de-facto durability story in MongoDB is essentially… there is none. Or at least single server durability. OMFG! No ACID WTF! &^%#^#?! For the next generation of internet scale, downtime intolerant systems, ACID may not be a desirable property. Traditional … Continue reading →

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Open source databases; scaling the application stack.

Posted on July 30, 2008 by kgorman

After reading Allan Packers excellent blog entry; Are Proprietary Databases Doomed?, a couple of additional thoughts came to mind. He mentions that open source databases (OSDB’s) are becoming ‘good enough’, and explains about how most users don’t need or use … Continue reading →

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Incremental Commits in PostgreSQL

Posted on April 30, 2008 by kgorman

On large and/or busy databases it’s often not feasible to update an entire table at one time. For instance, if one has to perform some background DML task to change all credit card limits on a 300gb table that sees … Continue reading →

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Python/cx_Oracle utility functions

Posted on March 31, 2008 by kgorman

I recently created some utility functions to startup, mount and stop Oracle via cx_Oracle and thought I would share them. You will want to make sure you have password files setup correctly in order for this stuff to work. # … Continue reading →

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Python and cx_oracle

Posted on March 9, 2008 by kgorman

I decided to start futzing with Python and Oracle. I generally use perl for most everything, and sometimes php for web based things, but I wanted to try Python at the urging of colleagues. I downloaded the source from here, and added … Continue reading →

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Backing up Oracle optimizer statistics

Posted on March 9, 2008 by kgorman

Oracle 10g has some neat features for keeping track of old statistics. Pre-10g It used to be important to backup your statistics before you analyzed a table just in case your plans went crazy. Now Oracle does this for you … Continue reading →

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Using Statspack Effectively

Posted on May 9, 2006 by kgorman

Statspack has been around since Oracle 8.1.5 and many DBAs regularly use it to diagnose and troubleshoot problems. Most of the time the stock report ($ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/spreport.sql) is what is used. While good, this report only shows a snapshot of the … Continue reading →

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