Today DBAs are expected to deploy and manage large databases with quality service and little to no downtime. The DBA's main focus is on increasing productivity and eliminating idle redundancy throughout the enterprise. However, there is no magic set of best practices or hard and fast rules that DBAs need to follow, and this can make life difficult. But if DBAs follow some basic approaches and best practices, tasks can be performed more efficiently and effectively.

This survival guide offers previously unwritten underground advice for DBAs. The author provides extensive information to illuminate where you fit in, and runs through many of the tasks that you need to be watchful of, extensively covering solutions to the most common problems encountered by newcomers to the world of Oracle databases.

The book will quickly introduce you to your job responsibilities, as well as the skills, and abilities needed to be successful as a DBA. It will show you how to overcome common problems and proactively prevent disasters by implementing distributed grid computing-scalable and robust-with the ability to redeploy or rearchitect when business needs change. Reduce downtime across your enterprise by standardizing hardware, software, tools, utilities, commands, and architectural components.

This book will also help you in situations where you need to install Oracle Database 11g or migrate to new hardware making it compliant with a Maximum Availability Architecture. By the end of this book you will have learned a lot and gained confidence in your abilities. You will be armed with knowledge as to which tools are best used to accomplish tasks while proactively moving towards an automated environment.

An example-oriented guide to optimize a DBA's performance on 11g databases

What you will learn from this book

• The mechanics and essentials of the database at the block level and tracking the System Change Number
• Reducing or eliminating downtime for the primary database using DATA GUARD and FLASHBACK in tandem
• Enterprise implementations of RMAN with DATA GUARD, Transportable Tablespaces, and the new Data Recovery Advisor
• Using both GUI tools and command-line utilities
• Migrating to the latest release of 11g using the Step-Ordered Approach
• A solid foundation designed to reduce future maintenance
• Implementing Maximum Availability Architecture with commodity hardware
• Many of the common mistakes and failures of common implementations
• Solving forecasting, performance, and tuning issues with the low cost tools available

Approach

This book is designed to cover the problems that novice DBAs particularly struggle with. This handbook covers a minimal amount of theoretical information before showing you how to overcome common problems through the use of real-life examples. It covers both Oracle 11g R1 and 11g R2 in examples, with material applicable to all versions of Oracle.

Who this book is written for

This book is for you if you find yourself in charge of an Oracle database. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Whether you are a single employee or the DBA manager of several employees, whether you are taking over an existing position or taking up a newly created one -this book is designed to be a sanity check. If you need guidance for migrating to 11g or implementing Oracle's Maximum Availability Architecture, you will find this book very helpful.