Oracle Pro Tips, Trends & Technology eXTRA Pinnacle Publishing http://www.pinnaclepublishing.com Issue 3.19 November 21, 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1) Pop Quiz (answer at the end) 2) IT News 3) Oracle OpenWorld 2003 4) UTL_LOB -- Supplementary Note 5) Answer to the Pop Quiz -------------------------------------------------------- 1) POP QUIZ (answer at the end) --------------------------------------------------------- How do you protect your archived redo log files against potential corruption? --------------------------------------------------------- 2) IT NEWS --------------------------------------------------------- Given the uncertainty in the economy and the gloomy news we hear these days, it's refreshing to find an article that talks about the turnaround in the IT job market. This article examines the types of IT jobs that are in demand and where these jobs might be. Find out more at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,687141,00.asp --------------------------------------------------------- 3) ORACLE OPENWORLD 2003 --------------------------------------------------------- Oracle OpenWorld 2003 was recently held in San Francisco. There are a number of links on Oracle's Web site that provide useful archives of the conference. The URL for the main page is: http://www.oracle.com/oracleworld/online/sanfrancisco/ On this page, you can find the links to the keynote speeches, and the Guru Chats link, which provides insight on product strategy from the industry experts. For those who are technically inclined, you may find the Technical Sessions link useful, as it contains extensive documentation and reference material on various Oracle products. At the keynote address, Larry Ellison highlighted the main information processing issues: data fragmentation, complex software integration, and incomplete automation. You can read about this at: http://www.oracle.com/features/ow02/index.html?1114_ow_lje.html Further, he also said: "If You Want Good Information, You Have to Be Willing to Spend Less." Whether this catchphrase is as appealing as the other slogans such as "Oracle, Unbreakable" is debatable; there were also some rumblings among some conference attendees that Ellison didn't deliver his speech in person. Nevertheless, a number of product announcements were made, including Oracle9i database availability, Oracle on Linux, Oracle9iAS, and Oracle Collaboration Suite. You can find out more at: http://www.oracle.com/features/ow02/index.html?content.html Even if you're not interested in the marketing aspect of the conference, you should take a look at the technical sessions, as listed here: http://www.oracle.com/oracleworld/online/sanfrancisco/index.html?tech_sessions.html Here are some of the downloads available from the technical sessions page: * Business Intelligence Products * Oracle Application Development Tools Overview and Strategy * Fundamentals of J2EE and Web Services * Developing Java Client and JSP Applications * Oracle's Roadmap for Linux * Top Ten Reasons To Migrate to Oracle9i * Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Directions --------------------------------------------------------- 4) UTL_LOB -- Supplementary Note --------------------------------------------------------- In the last issue I discussed the use of UTL_FILE to write out CLOBs. My colleague Andrew Okimi (mailto:aokimi@procaseconsulting.com) pointed out that you may not be able to write out CLOBs using UTL_FILE in all cases. For instance, if the CLOB contains a long sentence/paragraph without any carriage returns in it, you cannot output the exact same content as the CLOB into the file. Please email me at mailto:GChan@ProcaseConsulting.com if you know of other restrictions and if you have additional information you'd like to share with your fellow subscribers. --------------------------------------------------------- 5) ANSWER TO THE POP QUIZ --------------------------------------------------------- A simple way of protecting your archived redo log files is to multiplex them. By multiplexing I mean making duplicate copies of the archived redo log files. You can configure Oracle to accomplish this. In the init.ora parameter file, you can set up to 10 log destination directories, based on the following format: LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_ = 'LOCATION=' For instance, to create two copies of the archived redo logs, you can: LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 = 'LOCATION=/backup1/dbarchive' LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_2 = 'LOCATION=/backup2/dbarchive' Of course, if you make this change in the initialization file you'll need to restart the database for these settings to take effect. Alternatively, you can issue the ALTER SYSTEM command to set up the destinations for the currently running instance: ALTER SYSTEM SET LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 = 'LOCATION=/backup1/dbarchive'; ALTER SYSTEM SET LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_2 = 'LOCATION=/backup2/dbarchive'; Other initialization parameters are available to manage the archived log files. Let's take a look at some of them. The LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_STATE_ allows to you manage the availability of a destination. For each destination you have the option of setting its state, rendering it unavailable for archiving activities, as shown here: LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_STATE_2 = DEFER Or LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_STATE_1 = ENABLE By default, the destination is available for archiving. You can query the destination state using the v$archive_dest view. As you may recall, you can specify the filename format for archived log files: LOG_ARCHIVE_FORMAT = LOG%S.%T Note that %S refers to the generated file sequence for an archived log file, and %T refers to the thread number. The generated archived log files will be named LOG123.1, LOG123.2, etc. Of course, no matter what you do remember to enable the ARCHIVELOG mode in the database as well as automatic archiving. You can verify the ARCHIVELOG mode using v$database, and in order to enable automatic archiving, you need the following: LOG_ARCHIVE_START = TRUE Or ALTER SYSTEM ARCHIVE LOG START; --------------------------------------------------------- Well, that's it for this issue. I welcome your feedback, input, tips, suggestions, Web sites, and other Oracle- related news. If you send me something, please let me know whether I can use your name with your comments. I apologize in advance if I don't respond personally to each of your questions or suggestions, but I'll get to as many as I can in the eNewsletter if not personally. Garry Chan, Editor Database Architect mailto:GChan@ProcaseConsulting.com This eNewsletter is brought to you compliments of Pinnacle Publishing, Inc. Copyright(c) 2002 http://www.pinnaclepublishing.com All rights reserved.