Come see Blue Gecko at the Oracle Technology Solutions Fair! Blue Gecko will have a booth at the 2010 Oracle Technology Solutions Fair at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, 411 University Street, Seattle, WA on March 3, 2010. Come see Jeremiah, Rick, Chuck, Ken, and a bunch of other Oracle Geckos (heck, it's a block away from our Seattle office!) Don't … [Read more...]
New website launch
If you're reading this on RSS, please drop everything (immediately) and check out our updated web site! If you're reading this post on the web site, well, you probably noticed already. :) … [Read more...]
Blue Gecko is an official Drizzle sponsor
We're pleased to announce that Blue Gecko is providing hosting and some technical support for Drizzle! Drizzle is a community-driven project based on the popular MySQL DBMS that is focused on MySQL's original goals of ease-of-use, reliability and performance. For more information go to http://drizzle.org. … [Read more...]
10 Things I Love About RMAN
I was looking at an old backup script the other day. We acquired a new client who was stiil using shell scripts to execute hot tablespace backups and it got me thinking about how much I take RMAN for granted these days. Remember how meticulous we used to be about backup shell scripts? In the "old days" you had to manage everything in the scripts … [Read more...]
Jeremiah Wilton published in the latest Oak Table press book!
"Expert Oracle Practices: Oracle Database Administration from the Oak Table" was just released and it features our own Jeremiah Wilton's thoughts on running Oracle on Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). As an official Amazon Web Services partner, Blue Gecko has adopted EC2 as a primary database hosting platform, and Jeremiah is leading the charge. … [Read more...]
Oracle Correction to Export/Import
If you don't get alerts regularly from Oracle Support you may have missed this notice: If you conducted an import or export of an Oracle10g Release 2 or 11g Release 1 database prior to September 11, 2009, you should follow the instructions in My Oracle Support Knowledge Document 1055539.1 to verify the privileges in your database. This is because a … [Read more...]
Listen and ye shall be heard
Are you the kind of person who takes your car to the shop and tells the mechanic exactly what part needs to be replaced or fixed? Do you go to the doctor’s office and let them know about your condition and probable cures based on what you looked up on WebMD? How about others’ interaction with you? In your professional life, have you been asked to … [Read more...]
s3fox does not create valid export manifest files
S3fox provides a handy utility for creating import manifest and signature files; however, it doesn't seem to properly create export manifests. In fact, it seems like it only creates import manifest files. The version I used was 0.4.8. … [Read more...]
Metalink wget download script
Looking for a simpler way to download from the new Metalink? Oracle has replaced the ftp site with http downloads using wget. If you’re looking for a simple way to use wget without all of that cutting-and-pasting from the web site, you can use a simple script like this: #!/bin/bash # Program: download.sh # Description: Download Oracle … [Read more...]
Blue Gecko named Amazon Web Services partner
Blue Gecko has been officially recognized as an Amazon Web Services partner! Blue Gecko was an early adopter of the AWS platform for databases and database-backed applications. By deploying Oracle, Oracle E-Business Suite and MySQL infrastructures in the cloud, Blue Gecko leverages AWS to substantially improve customer IT flexibility and reduce … [Read more...]
Don’t be that way
Question for all IT support professionals: Ever hear, “The system is down!” when what they mean is, “I got an error,” or “I can’t log in.” How about, “This report doesn’t work!” when what they mean is, “I’m not getting the data I expected.” Working with servers and … [Read more...]
6 things to do after an Oracle Apps R12 install
OK, so there are a ton of things to do right after a fresh R12 install. And before anyone says anything, I know each of my steps has multiple steps; I though 6 things made a simpler blog title, that's all. Nevertheless, below are the major tasks I think every Apps DBA should do right away before letting anyone log in. I call these out for two … [Read more...]
Specificity + Inaccuracy = Yikes!
Every once in a while I run into a customer with a very specific request: Please do “this” down to the very last detail. I might take a look at the request and think, “Hmmm… I don’t know what they’re trying to do, but this doesn’t look like a good idea on the surface. I wonder what’s up.” For … [Read more...]
Use Autoconfig for common system administrator tasks
Use Autoconfig for common system administrator tasks Autoconfig is a wonderful tool that may be extended and customized to meet a variety of needs. One mundane task I don’t deal with anymore is scripting certain basic operating system scripts. For example: Rotating logs Cleaning out old trace files Init scripts … are all examples of cron … [Read more...]
Disable Flash for Oracle Metalink
If you want to improve certain aspects of Oracle's new Flash-based Metalink, you can do so by disabling Flash. In Firefox or IE you can disable Flash discretely; in Safari, you need to disable all plugins. Once Flash is disabled, log out of and back in to your browser and go to http://metalink.oracle.com. On the right, near the bottom, there … [Read more...]