This article shows how materialized views can be analyzed and optimized to ensure they can be FAST REFRESHed. As tools, the DBMS_MVIEW.explain_mview procedure and the MV_CAPABILITIES_TABLE are used. In this particular case, refresh time was reduced from more than 14 hours to less than 2!

If there is a task in Oracle for which the wheel has been reinvented many times, it is that of generating database object DDL. There are numerous scripts floating in different forums doing the same thing. Some of them work great, while others work only until a specific version. Sometimes the DBAs prefer to create the scripts themselves. Apart from the testing overhead, these scripts require substantial insight into the data dictionary. As new versions of the database are released, the scripts need to be modified to fit the new requirements.

Starting from Oracle 9i Release 1, the DBMS_METADATA package has put an official end to all such scripting effort. This article provides a tour of the reverse engineering features of the above package, with a focus on generating the creation DDL of existing database objects. The article also has a section covering the issue of finding object dependencies.

Just about every DBA has had to deal with ora-1000 errors, "Maximum open cursors exceeded." This article will discuss initialization parameters that affect open cursors, the difference between open and cached cursors, closing cursors, and monitoring open and cached cursors.

Last month we talked about basic Oracle security, and set out principles for a top notch secure system. These included passwords, the principle of least privilege, and roles.

This month we journey into the fascinating world of Oracle Network Security. The topics covered will not involve the Oracle Advanced Security option: it's too big to cover here, and it is an added expense that many companies do not want. Instead, we will go over basic network security that can be implemented by anyone who uses Oracle. It is built in and so is already part of your system.

This article introduces Oracle XML DB features to the DBAs and Developers who are not actively working with XML. It offers a quick start to those who finds quite a lot of Oracle XML literature around, and who is not sure where to begin.

In the rapidly shifting world of database technology, one fact has always been, and will always remain, true: a great database is no good if it can easily be broken into. A faulty security plan is not just vulnerable to hackers; it opens your company to data theft, corruption, or even legal action.

On our quest to learn about Oracle's Data Pump utility it has often been compared to the old export and import (exp & imp) utilities that we have all grown to love (or hate). This article is where where Data Pump takes a detour from these old utilities and begins to shine. This article will explore some of the export modes available and give examples on how to export selected object types and dependencies those objects

Oracle recommends that RAC databases be managed with srvctl, an Oracle-supplied tool that was first introduced with 9i RAC. The 10g version of srvctl is slightly different from the 9i implementation. In this article, we will look at how -- and why -- to manage your 10g databases with srvctl.

Since we are all familiar with Oracle’s original export (exp) utility, and in my opinion Data Pump will be replacing exp soon, I thought it would be good to start off getting familiar with this utility by some relatively simple Data Pump exports (expdp) that are similar to the way we have used exp in the past. In particular the FULL export.

DBAs wanting to create a 10g Real Applications Cluster face many configuration decisions. One of the more potentially confusing decisions involves the choice of filesystems. Gone are the days when DBAs simply had to choose between "raw" and "cooked". DBAs setting up a 10g RAC can still choose raw devices, but they also have several filesystem options, and these options vary considerably from platform to platform. Further, some storage options cannot be used for all the files in the RAC setup. This article gives an overview of the RAC storage options available.