Database Administration Resources

Some of the relational database practicals will use Oracle. Some of the documentation will only be available from within the campus network.


For those of you who have little or no experience with SQL the Oracle8 SQL Reference manual could prove very useful.
(Look at Chapter 4 for a list of possible commands you might find useful.)
You could also have a look at the documentation pages—in particular the "Administrator's Guide" and "Concepts" manuals—to get an idea of how to proceed with your work for the assignment, and to get an idea of what you as a client should be requiring your DBA to do for you.
There is a whole guide to Tuning for Oracle 8 (as there is for Backup and Recovery) in the Administration section of the guides. See here

Note :

There are references to (what might be considered useful) sections under the heading "Documentation references" at the bottom of both the dbtute3 and the dbtute4 pages, and there are also some references on the dbtute2 page in the section on creating rollback segments

When trouble-shooting a problem, google can be your friend, but may also lead you astray.
These 4 sites are ones I have found to be generally knowledgeable, and useful :-

Unix Shell resources

Students will need to be familiar with the Unix Shell by the time of the first database practical session (week three). As discussed in lectures and over email, please ensure that you are comfortable with use of the Unix Shell on lab computers within the Owheo Building.

The two resources that you should work through are:

Resources from COSC344

Those of you who did not do our COSC344 course, or who did it but would benefit from refreshing your knowledge, might like to read through the online lecture notes (the later ones—e.g. from Lecture 16 on—in particular). The list is available here
Also, there are a couple of example databases containing data which you could use to populate the database in your instance, for use by your clients (e.g. for Parts 1 to 4), available from the COSC344 resources page (see links at bottom of page).

Other resources

Oracle DBMS architecture—A quick overview.

Extracts from Oracle DBA 101 book (pdf, also available only from departmental computers)

Tutorial pages for DBA work
(Please note - these are available only from departmental computers) :-

The pages of tutorials for you to work through will be made available as we progress through the course.
You could get a head-start on the lab session we will have on 9th March by reading the following 2 documents, plus the document showing output from a session creating an Oracle instance (see link below) :-
Tutorial notes 1
Tutorial notes 2
Tutorial notes 3
Tutorial notes 4
If you have trouble understanding any of the notes, please do ask for clarification - by email, or you can come talk to me in my office - and I can come to the lab to help with the practical work at most times (if you give me some notice .....).
I may also compose notes on processes / methods / problem solving activities if I think it might be helpful / of general interest and I will add links to the notes here. - e.g. the links below to some notes I made re the scripts to install the test instance.

Resources for March 9th Lab session

If you would like to get a head-start on the lab session for Monday 9th March, read the document I created - Output from a session creating an Oracle instance and try replicating it yourself on your own server.
(You will receive an email advising you of the name of your server.)

Notes re files used for setting up the Oracle (test) instance for labs as .pdf or as .rtf