Unix for Oracle DBAs Pocket Reference
Reviewed
by Michael Dinh
From the San Diego Oracle Users group -
www.sdoug.org
Buy this Oracle book
here
The Oracle Database product operates on a variety of operating
systems, including Unix, Windows, and Linux. The Oracle database
administrators (DBAs) need to be familiar with the database platform
-- the operating system. For Oracle DBAs working in a Unix
environment, O'Reilly & Associates has a publication,
Unix for
Oracle DBAs Pocket Reference. The author, Donald K. Burleson,
does a thorough job explaining Unix commands, e.g., sed, nohup,
umask. The author also mentions that the intended purpose of this
book is to provide a quick reference describing the Unix commands
most often used by Oracle database administrators. The book is not a
tutorial on the use of Unix.
The introduction contains a brief description of what is covered
in major topic areas. The emphasis is on Unix commands common to all
dialects. The author also attempt to cover different Unix platforms:
HP-UX, IBM AIX, and Sun Solaris are the majority with a
little reference to DEC UNIX and IRIX. Several topics, Server
Values and System Log Messages only covered HP-UX
and AIX, are very brief.
Understanding Unix topic provides the reader with some
history of Unix. Also, there is an introduction to the case
sensitivity, safety, linkability, and shell in Unix. All Unix
commands and command options are case sensitive; ls -c
and ls -C will have different results. There is no
recycle bin; therefore, be careful of the rm command,
especially rm -rf. Last of all, shell scripts written
in this book are for the Korn shell.
Building Unix Commands primarily emphasizes the command:
ps -ef|grep "ora_"|grep -v grep|awk '{ print $2}'|xarg
kill -9
The section shows the reader how to decompose a Unix command and
how to build a complex Unix command from scratch using the example
above. Using the same principle, the author composes a script to
find all files containing a specific string.
The book also provides references to Unix Server Environment,
Process Management, Server Values, Memory and CPU Management,
Semaphore Management, System Log Messages, Server Monitoring, File
Management, Disk Management, and Miscellaneous Shell Scripts. In
the Server Monitoring section, the author demonstrates
command usage at the command line and in a shell script. The shell
script is utilized to automate the collection of system statistics,
to store the data in the database, and to report the results using
SQL*Plus.
The book does have one annoyance. One shell script shows the DBAs
how to make a tape backup, using the tar utility. The
script has a good explanation for the commands and the command
parameters. However, script lacks code to shutdown the database.
There must be the assumption; all DBAs know that the database must
be shutdown prior to performing a cold backup, copying the data file
to tape, in order to have a good backup.
In summary, Unix for Oracle DBAs Pocket Reference is a
good book to have, at an inexpensive price. Be sure to check out the
O'Reilly website for this book at
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/unixoracledbapr to download the
examples in the book and to view the author's tip, Five
Timesaving Unix Commands for Oracle DBAs.
Copyright © 2002 Michael Dinh. All rights reserved. |
