Oracle and more - Amardeep Sidhu

Import and default values for columns

Sidhu — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:17:59 +0000

I had got an export of a database and had to import it to a new database. The only difference was that in new database few of the large tables were partitioned. So instead of partitioning it after the import, i thought about pre-creating the tables (with partitioning) and then run import with ignore=Y . Everything went fine. But later on the front end application gave some error and we came to know that default values for columns in some tables were not set.

I did some googling and didn’t find much. Then i posted the same to OTN forums and came to know that if the table pre-exists, import doesn’t take care of default values of columns. Metalink note 224727.1 discusses this. So if you are pre-creating the tables and there are some default values for any columns, set it manually, don’t rely on import for this. Same is true for impdp as well.

Maintenance…is everywhere ;)

Sidhu — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:04:41 +0000

I just opened the Oracle Community page and :

Have you searched “%” in metalink ?

Sidhu — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:13:33 +0000

Today I was searching for an error message in metalink and it was giving strange messages. Then i came to know that the error message contained “%” character and metalink was not really happy searching for it. Rather it showed a confusing message:

Pretty strange…

Unxutils for Windows

Sidhu — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:27:25 +0000

If you are used to work in Unix enviroment and then sometime, in between have to sit on Windows and tail -f alert_DB.log, its a real pain. There is a small bundle of utilities, called Unxutils which can make you feel at home in Windows too. These are the exe’s of all major commands in Unix like more, less, ls, grep etc…

To use it just download the zip file from the link above, extract it to some folder and add the path of exe’s to your Windows PATH. Restart your machine and you are done.

Happy more’ing…less’ing…

Automating Wordpress 2.5 upgrade

Sidhu — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:29:44 +0000

I recently upgraded my blog to Wordpress 2.5. The manual process is real cumbersome. Today I came across few plugins which help in almost automating the upgrade stuff.

Wordpress Automatic upgrade: As per description this plugin first takes backup and then upgrades. I didn’t try this one, though.

Instant Upgrade: I upgraded one of my blog using this. It doesn’t take care of backup but otherwise the upgrade was super smooth. Just few clicks and you are done.

Happy upgrading !

Gtalk with Winamp 5.531

Sidhu — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:16:27 +0000

If you use Gtalk and Winamp simultaneously and tried to set the currently playing track as your status, you might have been faced by Gtalk hanging. I also struggled with this for 2 weeks until I did a bit of googling and got a link which gives a trick to get rid of the problem.

The trick is to create an empty winamp.m3u file in \Program Files\Winamp folder and you are done.

OTN forums etiquettes

Sidhu — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:39:52 +0000

Finally finally finally a small sticky has been posted on OTN Database forums homepage. But its there only on Database forums page not on PL/SQL. It reads like:

Posters, please mind these common-sense rules when participating here:

- When asking a question, provide all the details that someone would need to answer it. Consulting documentation first is highly recommended. (See http://blogs.oracle.com/shay/2007/03/02 for more hints.)
- When answering a question, please be courteous; there are different levels of experience represented here. A poorly worded question is better ignored than flamed - or better yet, help the poster ask a better question.

Thanks for doing your part to make this community as valuable as possible for everyone!

- OTN

That means Database forum enjoys most number of flames

DBAzine.com is back :)

Sidhu — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:24:31 +0000

Few days ago i posted about DBAzine being down. I was just checking to see if its back.

Its rocking now.

Welcome back DBAzine.com

Upgrading to Wordpress 2.5

Sidhu — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:16:14 +0000

Just finished upgrading to Wordpress 2.5. Everything seems to be working fine.

Another issue I just came to know that wherever i am using syntaxhighlighter to format the code, it doesn’t display properly in Internet Explorer. May be something to do with the plugin. Will try to fix it. It works fine in Mozilla.

Upgrade 10gR1 to 10gR2 - DBUA error

Sidhu — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:23:01 +0000

Today I was upgrading 10gR1 to 10gR2 (10.2.0.1) on Linux x86. The upgrade went almost fine (except that I had to install one package and change few kernel parameters) but while running DBUA to upgrade databases, it gave an error:

Could not get database version from the Oracle Server component. The CEP file rdbmsup.sql does not provide the version directive

and

Start of root element expected. Upgrade Configuration file
'C:\Oracle10g2\cfgtoollogs\dbua\test\upgrade5\upgrade.xml' is not a valid XML file.

I searched in the metalink and found that this all happens due to customized glogin.sql file which was there in my case also. And removing that customization made DBUA rock

You might want to check here, here and here.