Testing a Connection from Client to SQL Server

A connection from client to SQL Server can easily be checked with the help of a .udl file. This is also helpful for building a connection string.
Step 1 - Create a .udl file
Create a text file and name it for example test.udl
Double click on test.udl to open the connection dialog.
Step 2 - Choose the type [...]

"Failure would be heaped upon failure, disaster upon disaster"

Over on Dizwell Informatics you’ll read a great post about a real life restore/recovery experience and lessons learned.
“I’ve gone on at some length on this matter partly because if you had told me that failure would be heaped upon failure, disaster upon disaster, rendering all recovery plans null and void, I would never have believed [...]

11g Mentioned in Oracle Apex Documentation

Oracle Database 11g is already mentioned on many pages of the Oracle Application Express (Apex) 3.0 Documentation which was released on March 16, 2007. This is because Oracle Database 11g seems to have HTTP server and PL/SQL gateway built into the DBMS itself.
Oracle Application Express (Apex) Documentation Library

Oracle PL/SQL Developer Certified Associate

Yesterday I passed the last exam for my “Oracle PL/SQL Developer Certified Associate” certificate. There are two exams:

1Z0-007 Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL
1Z0-147 Program with PL/SQL

Introduction to SQL can be taken online. I found the examination surprisingly difficult. There were a few rather strange questions - and lots uf stuff I didn’t prepare because [...]

Hardening Oracle Servers

On Tonguç Yilmaz Oracle Blog I clicked on a link to “Project Lockdown - A phased approach to securing your database infrastructure” recently. This is an exceptional article about hardening Oracle servers, written by Arup Nanda and published on OTN.

Off Topic - Monty Python on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkj4Wm6INFYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7whttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H6DSoqZz_s
:-))

Killing Oracle Sessions of a User

We are hosting around a hundred websites for the public administration on a web content management system which is built on top of an Oracle database. There is a stage and a live environment with snapshot replication. Sometimes websites on the live environment have to be dropped and recreated. One website is represented by one [...]

Creating an ERD of an Existing Oracle Database With DB Designer 4

Today I was asked to prepare an ERD of an existing Oracle Database for a meeting. Forces DB Designer 4 was the tool of my choice. Although it’s written for MySQL (and there weren’t any bugfixes or releases since long time), some features work fine with Oracle too.
To get an ERD do the following.
“Reverse Engineering”
Open [...]

Oracle Magazine March/April Issue

The march/april issue of Oracle Magazine is here. The online edition can be found here. Free subscriptions to the print edition can be done here.