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Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.
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Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Dec 22, 2015

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Page 1: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Oracle DBA Best Practices

Dennis Williams

Senior Database Administrator

Lifetouch, Inc.

Page 2: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

About Me TCOUG member since 1990 8 years only DBA at Lifetouch, Inc. Lawson Software Database

Research Engineer Consultant - Fingerhut Control Data Contact me at

[email protected]

Page 3: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Audience Those considering DBA career DBAs who want to improve Those forced to tolerate DBAs

Page 4: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

There’s no asset more important than a company’s data. You can’t give that responsibility to someone who doesn’t know how to handle it.

Malcom Fields, CIOHon Industries

Page 5: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Agenda

Time - Until lunch is ready Left-brain portion - tech. Issues Right-brain portion - softer issues Database audit form

Page 6: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

75,610 DBAs U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in

2003 began tracking the IT workforce.

6.46% unemployed There are 797,445 Software

Engineers (5.3% unemployed) DBA supports about 10

developers. 66% DBA growth by 2010

Page 7: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Where do DBAs come from? Schools don’t offer a degree. Developer DB developer System Administrator

Page 8: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

DBA is a role Like a policeman or teacher Unstated responsibilities,

expectations Most people don’t know what a

DBA does.

Page 9: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

DBA time breakdown 22% Fire Fighting 33% Monitoring 12% Perf. Tuning / Change Mgt. 33% Development Support 0% Planning for growth 0% Backup & Recovery Planning 0% Learning

Koopman

Page 10: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Assignment Keep a personal time log - 1 week Learn your time distribution Target improvements Study time management

Page 11: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Levels of Oracle DBARookie Veteran Expert

TCOUG No time Member,attends reg.

On theboard

Studies Admin.Commands

Concepts Architecture

Manuals No time Readsmanuals

Veryfamiliar

Learning Takesclasses

OCP, books OCM,author,conferences

Onlineforums

No time Lurks, asks Answersquestions

New Oraclefeatures

Uses anyfeature

Wary ofnew feature

Createstests to findproblems

Page 12: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

OCP

Misconception: you are an expert Multiple choice, so simple

questions Broad, not deep Career benefit - can’t hurt Can help you go deeper in Oracle

Page 13: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Types of DBAs:Development DBA

May carry developer title Develop code ( PL/SQL ) “Hunter” personality (find/fix/forget) Best practices: Code Complete by

McConnell

Page 14: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Production Support DBA

Keep it running “shepherd / farmer” personality Where best practices really make a

difference The hero isn’t the DBA that battles

problems through the weekend, but the one that avoided the problem

Page 15: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Application DBA

Supports a business critical app. like Oracle Financials, SAP, Peoplesoft, Lawson

Production support, some dev. Key skill: understands how the

app. Interacts with Oracle Can’t self-study Caution: Vendor doesn’t operate

databases in production

Page 16: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Consultant DBA

Fastest way to get expertise Varied work opportunities Understand economic cycles

Page 17: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Backup is Job #1 Ensuring data is never lost Don’t trust an untested backup

configuration Be ready to perform any type of

recovery at any time Communicate vulnerabilities, recovery

times to management Archivelog mode by default Cold or Hot backups, which best fits

your environment

Page 18: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Export: the DBAs friend

Enhance recoverability Easy to recover a single table,

avoid full recovery Checks block corruption Teach your developers to request

special exports Validate, no errors, Unix strings

command, last line should be EXIT

Page 19: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Security is Job #2

DBA is responsible for making data available to authorized users

Keeping data inaccessible to unauthorized

Role: policy, implementation Know security options, implications Know how application affects

security, data sensitivity

Page 20: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Making it workDev to Prod

ITIL 3 environments - test/stage/prod Clone DB from backup Developers provide scripts to change

production Simple application login test Always have a backout plan Is this change worth the possible

consequences?

Page 21: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Oracle Performance Tuning - Types SQL Statements - explain plan,

tkprof, 10053 events Application disasters - 10046 trace,

Cary Millsap (TCOUG Hotsos seminar)

Proactive tuning and hanging - STATSPACK, utlestat/utlbstat

Page 22: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Server statistics

If you have a performance problem, either your database is working too hard, or it’s not being allowed to work. - Jonathan Lewis

You must know what your server is doing.

You must know the O.S. Unix Admin. - your best friend

Page 23: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Bind variables

Ensure developers use bind variables

Audit v$sql in test to verify In Java, PreparedStatement In .net, CommandText,

CreateParameter, Append Connection pooling

Page 24: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Not your Dad’s Oracle tuning Rules of thumb, ratios to

mathematical foundations Counts to measured times in

microseconds Aggregate by instance to process

details V$ tables are either too

summarized or point-in-time

Page 25: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Goal of tuning

What matters to the business user Good chance to sell value End-to-end analysis DBA must prove innocence

Page 26: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Monitoring

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which shouldn’t be done at all - Peter F. Drucker

Use LMT, uniform extents, vs. rebuild

Use autoextend vs. monitoring Email exceptional conditions

Page 27: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Oracle Versions Be not the first by whom the new

are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside - Alexander Pope

Good choice saves downtime Support by appl, O.S. Rule of 4’s - 7.3.4, 8.1.7.4, 9.2.0.4 Timing - can I skip versions? Appl. quality requirements What are others saying? Metalink Only change one major component

Page 28: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Oracle Patches

Two philosophies: Only when bug arises Immediately (security)

Vendor testing hierarchy: Version Patch set Individual patch

Page 29: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Oracle Licensing

Install defaults to all - know what costs extra

Consider Standard Version Understand the organization

budget mechanisms Knowledgeable if not authorized

Page 30: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Troubleshooting

Never worked? Check installation Worked earlier, doesn’t work now?

What changed? Intermittent? (worst kind) How

does it vary? With time, system load, hardware?

From Oracle Networking 101 by Marlene Theriault

Page 31: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Documentation

Key: What is essential? Don’t document what can easily be

figured out Keeping up-to-date is the crucial

aspect. Obsolete documentation is

treacherous Self-documenting where possible

Page 32: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Data Modeling

O-O Developer: Database is just a means to persist classes

DBA: Good data modeling can ensure the data is usable across the enterprise

Data architect is a DBA career path Participate in initial design where

your leverage is large Learn data modeling software

Page 33: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Tech. Learning List

Application interface methods - Microsoft, Java, OCBC

Server tuning Storage methods and options,

strengths and weaknesses

Effective communication proceeds from shared knowledge

Page 34: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Self-Study When you can’t get experience Be aware of the limits Well-defined area? (books?) Can earn credentials? Area where you can gain significant

knowledge with a reasonable effort? Average experience of competitors is

short Enjoy after doing 10 years?

Page 35: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Know your learning style

Left-brain vs. right-brain Four primary learning styles:

Visual (diagrams) Auditory (reading) Tactile (hands-on) Kinesthetic (body)

Your manager’s learning style

Page 36: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

People Skills

Few people besides a DBA understand what a DBA does

This makes it hard to communicate your value to the organization

People don’t mind paying for what they value, but resist paying for what they don’t consider valuable

If your manager is a DBA, less people skills are required, but this is career-limiting

Page 37: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Respect

Do you respect someone who doesn’t respect you?

The root of much conflict is a mutual lack of respect

Smartness paradox We are the hero of our own movie, we

justify ourselves, never the bad guy Really care about the people you

work with

Page 38: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

How to avoid problems Many bad reactions stem from a

lack of warning Emotions play a large role in

decision-making Work hard to warn people ahead of

time of what will be coming Don’t know why? Assume stupidity A DBA appreciates a heads-up,

why shouldn’t others?

Page 39: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

When you’re wrong, admit it, quickly Any man worth his salt will

stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error - Andrew Jackson

Page 40: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Stress Feeling no control Constant interruptions DBA syndrome - responsible for

everything, control nothing, nobody understands

You hear yourself saying “nobody appreciates me”

Antidote: study stress control, exercise

visit clients, future changes

Page 41: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

That Problem Person Sandwich / Oreo approach by Rachel

Carmichael 1-on-1 outside the office Begin with a complement Make statements addressing the

problem, starting with “I” - “I feel”, “I think”, “what I see is”. Listen

Wrap with team-building “we can work together on this”, “I need your help”

End with a nice complement

Page 42: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Simple Explanations

The most valuable people are those who can understand complex issues and explain them simply to others

Makes other feel good about themselves

Albert Einstein, Steve Hawking, Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman

Page 43: Oracle DBA Best Practices Dennis Williams Senior Database Administrator Lifetouch, Inc.

Database Audit Form

Periodically audit each database Checklist for problems Form is terse, so I included a sheet

describing the purpose of each check