Iggy Fernandez

Click here for Part I of this article. Searching for information online is an essential DBA skill. The Internet is a treasure trove of information that can help you in solving a problem. For example, user groups such as the Northern California Oracle Users Group (NoCOUG) have made vast collections of electronic presentations and white papers available [...]

I have attended many interviews for Oracle DBA positions in my career and, with rare exceptions, always found that the interviewers set great store on knowledge of Oracle syntax. A big problem is that the typical interviewer usually only asks questions about those Oracle features that he or she uses on the job and is [...]

Got some pennies, brother? For just 33 cents—plus a little more for shipping and handling—you can have a used copy of the best book on Oracle internals that has ever been written: Oracle8i Internal Services for Waits, Latches, Locks, and Memory by Steve Adams. Yes it doesn’t have the word RAC in it, but what [...]

I found this message on the Classic MetaLink/My Oracle Support website when I went to create a service request this weekend. I tried calling the 800 number but only got a recorded message. I left a message but was not called back. Luckily, we were able to solve our problem ourselves. A READ-ONLY version of Classic MetaLink [...]

This story begins with a puzzling question asked in one of the OTN forums: “I need some help to know what’s the auxiliary constructs, and examples in the auxiliary constructs.” Eventually the question was traced to the following SQL problem posted on the University of Freiburg’s website: “Exchange the members of NATO and EU without introducing [...]

I recently did a podcast for Oracle and mentioned the term Manageability By Design (MBD) which I had co-invented with my friend Ravi Kulkarni from IBM. Here is our definition: An IT System is Manageable By Design (MBD) if it uses Standards, Instrumentation, Interfaces, Automation, Autonomics, and Documentation to facilitate the activities and purposes of IT Operations, IT [...]

Interview conducted by Iggy Fernandez for the August 2006 issue of the NoCOUG Journal. (Steven Feuerstein provided updates for this version; click here for the PDF of the original version from the NoCOUG Journal.) “He couldn’t move a mountain—nor pull down a big oak tree But my daddy became a mighty big man with a simple philosophy. Do what you [...]

I was asked to tune the following SQL query; it usually retrieved less than a hundred rows but took several minutes of execution time. Table names and column names have been changed in the interests of confidentiality. SELECT DISTINCT o.order_id, o.order_date FROM orders o, order_items ol WHERE LOWER(o.order_state) = : order_state AND [...]

In general, there are lots of ways of expressing a particular query requirement in SQL with implications for query performance. For example, which departments have employees with salaries greater than a certain cutoff? Here are two ways to express this query requirement in SQL. The first uses a conventional correlated subquery while the second uses [...]

Cary Millsap is the co-creator of Method R, an antidote for Compulsive Tuning Disorder—the disease that afflicts so many of us. His motto is “Nullius in verba” which means “On the words of no one.” In other words, check the facts for yourself. What’s Method R and how does it cure Compulsive Tuning Disorder? Method R is a commonsense approach [...]

Dear Iggy, I’m M. S. [name withheld], 25 years old, Egyptian, graduated from the faculty of Computer Science & Information Systems in 2006, working in KSA. First I want to thank you very much for your book; it’s really very helpful. I’m OCP DBA 9i from 2006 but I never implemented Oracle. I know SQL, PL/SQL, Forms 9i [...]

If you want to learn how to systematically and effectively troubleshoot Oracle problems, join the Northern California Oracle Users Group (NoCOUG) for a two-day advanced Oracle troubleshooting seminar by Tanel Poder on November 11 and 12 at the Carr America Conference Center in Pleasanton, California. Register before September 25 and pay only the low, low early-bird price. More about [...]

Our summer conference was a great success with nearly two hundred attendees. A productive time was had by all. There were learning and networking opportunities galore and huge raffle prizes—including a full pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2009, the hottest ticket in town. Here’s a picture of the lucky raffle winners. The next lucky winner could be [...]

Bert Scalzo has worked with Oracle databases for well over two decades, starting with version 4. He has an extensive academic background, including a PhD in computer science. He has written or co-authored six books on Oracle: Oracle DBA Guide to Data Warehousing and Star Schemas, TOAD Handbook, TOAD Pocket Reference, Database Benchmarking: Practical Methods [...]

For over 20 years, Karen Morton has worked in information technology, starting out as a mainframe programmer and then growing and changing with the times to do development, DBA, and data architect work. She has been using Oracle since the early 1990s and began teaching others how to use Oracle over a decade ago. She has [...]

As editor of the NoCOUG Journal, I have interviewed some of the best Oracle minds over the years. One of my recurring themes is the flight of database administration jobs to overseas locations. The consensus appears to be that “offshoring may push some of the less-qualified positions out of the country, but that plenty of [...]

I got the idea for the First International NoCOUG SQL Challenge from a trick question that I was asked at a job interview several years ago: “How would you calculate the probabilities of obtaining various sums in two throws of a [six-sided fair] die?” No, this was not at Google—I’ve never got past the front [...]

Tanel Poder is an experienced consultant with deep expertise in Oracle database internals, advanced performance tuning, and end-to-end troubleshooting. He specializes in solving complex problems spanning multiple infrastructure layers such as Unix, Oracle, application servers, and storage. He hosts an Oracle performance tuning blog at blog.tanelpoder.com and has published useful Oracle troubleshooting tools like PerfSheet, [...]