Oracle DB Admin

[Segnosaur]

Hi there.

The database administrator in the company I work for has recently left the company, so now I'm responsible doing his job. Sadly, I've only taken the basic admin course (and that was about a decade ago), and when he was here he wasn't too cooperative in passing off knowledge to others in the company. Now, one of our customers (running Oracle 10G on a Windows Server box) wants to change the IP address and domain name of their oracle server, and they want me to handle the Oracle side.

Does anyone have any tips on things to watch out for, or who can point out potential problems? I've already started going through the database administrator's guide, and have started googling for sites that might help, but I'm not sure if the information provided will be complete or not. (I assume I will have to change the listener.ora file.)

[Gaspode]

Only just saw this - hope I'm not too late.

I'm assuming it's just a single instance database i.e. not RAC otherwise it can get very complicated!

Any IP addresses in listener.ora should be changed and the listener restarted (lsnrctl start/stop or restart in Services). Also, I'm guessing you're using Local naming in which case each client connecting to the database will have a tnsnames.ora file. Check in each one for the database server IP address and change accordingly.

On the database itself there are a number of parameters that may need to be changed. Logon to the database (as SYS) and check the following parameters:

local_listener
remote_listener
dispatchers

Again if these reference the server IP address then change them using ALTER SYSTEM (if using an SPFILE) or update the init.ora file.

Does your company have an Oracle support contract? If so you should have access to Oracle Metalink (https://metalink.oracle.com/) in which case check out Note:363609.1

In case you don't have these already, here are links to the 10g documentation - versions 10.1 (http://www.oracle.com/pls/db10g/portal.portal_demo3?selected=1) and 10.2 (http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/homepage) and the Oracle forum (http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=61).

I'm not sure what your level of knowledge is so let me know if you need any clarification.

[Segnosaur]

Only just saw this - hope I'm not too late.

No, not too late at all.

I'm not sure what your level of knowledge is so let me know if you need any clarification.

Pretty basic at this point... Like I said, I took the basic DBA class, but that was over a decade ago (on Oracle 7) and didn't really cover installation or listeners (mostly creating databases and table spaces, etc.)

Well, you've given me a few things to look into... I've also asked the same question on the oracle forum, but most people there said you just need to change the tnsnames.ora and listeners.ora files.

[Gaspode]

Well, you've given me a few things to look into... I've also asked the same question on the oracle forum, but most people there said you just need to change the tnsnames.ora and listeners.ora files.


Changing listener.ora and tnsnames.ora is probably the only thing that needs to be done, especially if it's just a basic installation with the defaults left as is. So definitely start with those.

The parameters I mentioned may not be setup and if they are they tend to only reference localhost.

[Segnosaur]

Changing listener.ora and tnsnames.ora is probably the only thing that needs to be done, especially if it's just a basic installation with the defaults left as is. So definitely start with those.


The problem is, the guy who actually set up the database has left the company, so I have no idea what parameters he left as defaults and which he changed.

[Gaspode]

The database parameters I mentioned are easy enough to check. For each one do show parameter e.g.

SQL> show parameter local_listener
VALUE
-----------------------------------------------------
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=localhost)(PORT=1521))
SQL>

The above is the default for local_listener and is fairly typical.

If any of them reference the server name that is to be changed, then these parameters can be updated accordingly. But it's very likely that they won't need to be changed.