Forbidden file and folder names on Windows

Here’s an interesting experiment. On a Windows desktop, right-click on the desktop, and create a new Folder. Then, try renaming it ‘aux’. Can’t do it, right? There are certain restricted words that cannot be used to name folders or files, even though they use regular characters. You can’t even name it, say, ‘aux.test’.

Create Duplicate DB with RMAN - Single Instance

You can use the RMAN DUPLICATE command to create a duplicate database from target database backups while still retaining the original target database. The duplicate database can be either identical to the original database or contain only a subset of the original tablespaces.

Using SPFile

SQL> create spfile from pfile='E:\oracle\product\10.2.0\admin\DUPDB\initDUPDB.ora';

File created.

SQL> shutdown immediate;
ORA-01507: database not mounted

One Concurrent User Per Schema

1- Set in init.ora or spfile.ora the parameter
SQL@ homedev> alter system set resource_limit=true;
System altered.

Windows Sysinternals

The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools. This file contains the individual troubleshooting tools and help files. It does not contain non-troubleshooting tools like the BSOD Screen Saver or NotMyFault.

How to Find Out Which Windows Process is Using a File

Ever come across the following messages and wondered how to find out what is using the file?

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied

User Level Security - Disable SQL*Plus and DDL Commands

Sqlplus_product_profile

A table that resides in the SYSTEM account. It provides product level security that supplements the user level security provided by SQL commands GRANT and REVOKE, and can be used with one's own applications as well as with other ORACLE products.

Using External Table

1- Create the CSV File on some location using excel
1,ABC,100
2,DEF,200
3,IJK,300

Applying 10.2.0.4 Patch 42 (January 2011)

Release 10.2.0.4 for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit)
You should administer one Oracle product, one Oracle home at a time, for its particular Bundle Patch Update. Each Oracle home will have its own requirements. We are updating Oracle Database as below.

Upgrading from 10.2.0.1 to 10.2.0.4 (Win)

Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.4) Patch Set 3 for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit) 

Identify the Oracle Database Installation
This is not a complete software distribution. You must install it in an existing Oracle Database 10g Oracle home. To identify Oracle home directories, view the/etc/oratab file.

Alt+Ctrl+Del on Remote Desktop

In order to send Ctrl-Alt-Del keystrokes to remote computer connected via Remote Desktop client, just press the following workaround
Ctrl+Alt+End

Using and Disabling the Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR) with Oracle Net for 11g

Trace Files Viewing Method 
C:\Users\inam>adrci
ADRCI: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Tue Jan 25 13:56:20 2011
Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
No ADR base is set

Alter system kill session and ORA-00031: session marked for kill

Today we face a problem on our development database.
problem is :- One of user's sesssion is killed by "alter system kill session" but that session was being a huge DML operation with the wait "HS Message sent to agent".

Export did not include some table in dump file

Today a .NET developer took a dump for a schema and noticed that a table was not included in the exported file. I observed that table was newly created and was not used at all before exporting. So I just inserted a row in the table save it and then delete and save. After this this table was exported as others.

WUT-121 upon downloading file from AS

Today one of the developer complained that he is getting WUT-121 as below while trying to download a file from the Application Server.

PING with Timestamp

We were getting ORA-3113 errors for some web clients and after investigations, I found that this is due the many network dropouts on all Oracle related servers. I just ran the simple pingtest as below

Setting the Default Connect String

If you want to avoid putting the connect string every time on your local client you can do the following
-- in unix
export TWO_TASK=HOMEDEV
-- in windows: set LOCAL key to mydb value in the registry or:
SET LOCAL=HOMEDEV  -- your db connect string

SQLNet Logging/Tracing

Net Logging and Trace
Oracle Net logging and trace are configured in the sqlnet.ora typically found at ORACLE_HOME\network\admin

Deny Access to DB for Specific IPs

We can configure the sqlnet.ora file to allow and deny access to the database via the validnode checking parmeters.

Password protected listener

Listener Intro:

The Oracle Database Listener is the database server software component that manages the network traffic between the Oracle Database and the client. The Oracle Database Listener listens on a specific network port (default 1521) and forwards network connections to the Database.