Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration From Novice to Professional

INTRODUCTION
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quietly, but I never questioned why he advertised his presence so loudly. Armed only with
a walking stick, he would have to rely on strong lungs to wake up the neighborhood if he
saw any burglars, so perhaps it was best to advertise his presence and hope that burglars
would flee when they heard him coming. Nevertheless, the sound of his stick was comforting—it
was good to know that someone trustworthy was watching the neighborhood
while we slept.
The database administrator is responsible for watching the database. If something
goes wrong with the database that could have been prevented, there is nobody else to
blame. As you’ll learn in this chapter, database availability, changes, security, growth, backups,
workload, performance, and capacity are some of the areas that should be monitored.
Chapter 11: Fixing Problems
In this chapter, you will watch a real-life problem as it progresses from detection to
resolution. You will learn a five-step systematic approach to problem-fixing and the difference
between incident management and problem management. I will cover the variety
of Internet resources that are available to you, introduce an Oracle knowledge base called
MetaLink, and explain how to get technical support from Oracle Corporation. Finally, I
will discuss some common database problems.
Chapter 12: Backups
American national hero Benjamin Franklin often wrote anonymous letters to the Pennsylvania
Gazette, a prominent newspaper that he himself owned and edited. In one such
letter he coined the famous phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
and, in addition to making several suggestions for the prevention of fires, he suggested
that Philadelphia imitate his native Boston in establishing fire stations and employing
firefighters; not only should all efforts be made to prevent fires but the city should be
adequately prepared to handle the next inevitable fire.
Backups are to a database what fire stations and fire fighters are to a city; we may
protect the database against damage the best we can, but we must be prepared if the
database ever gets damaged, through user or operator error or hardware failure, and
needs to be repaired. In this chapter you’ll learn about the different kinds of backups
and the tools used to create them.
Chapter 13: Recovery
In the previous chapter, you learned how to make backup copies of the database; you will
now turn your attention to repairing the database if it gets damaged.