Sunday, March 25, 2007

Starting on apps field (my personal theory)

I receive this question (how can I start on apps technical filed? How can I be an apps dba?...etc)
Well I am going to give some hints from my point of view, those hint may not be the ideal therefore any reader of this post can leave any suggestions to make the steps better and easier.

-First of all you need to have instance (vision demo database) so you can test things on it, by this I mean that you should read the installation guide which will guide you on how to build the stage area and what are the pre-requisites (hardware/software) for the installation and the installation process using rapidwiz
The installation will not finish successfully form the first time unless you are so lucky, and from the installation you will get a good experience.
-after the installation you need to understand the applications file system structure.
- also you have to read oracle applications concepts guide.
Then you can start reading about applications administration and maintaining procedures, you need to understand both adpatch and adadmin.
- By now if you manage to install oracle applications and to apply patches on it then you are in the right track.
-then after that you need to read about backup and recovery.
-you need also to monitor oracle forums and oracle blogs.
-keep metalink as your friend.
-when you see an interesting issue in forum or blog try to track it and maybe try to solve it if you can this will give you an add experience.
-try to participate on oracle applications email lists like ittoolbox …etc.
-try to get oracle applications administration books like dba filed guide and others.

finaly keep in mind that (no pain no gain)

Please leave comments on what you think the best way to be an apps dba

Fadi
P.S all the guides mentioned above can be found under (for apps 11i) http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B25516_16/current/html/docset.html

Sunday, March 18, 2007

When seniority is the problem

Day after day and when you get more experience, you start to analyze the problems you faces differently (maybe in a way you are trying to make an easy problems difficult), its kind of weird though, before 2 days I faced an issue with one of our databases the issue was that when you set a dbms job it only run once, but it never rerun the job again, to make long story short I spent around 2 house trying to figure out what the issue was, restarting the database is not an option for me (it is not windows if you get what I mean) anyway finally my colleague restarted the database and voala all the jobs are working normally the problem was that one of oracle's ora_j00 was not running.

Learned lessons
-maybe in some how oracle database is like windows after all ;-)
-the problem might seem difficult but in reality it is easier than you think.
-try to search for the easies way to solve the problem not the difficult one.

Fadi

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Virtual Consulting

It's all about sharing
I received the following email and I thought that it worth sharing
"
ERPstuff Virtual Consulting
All the members of ERPstuff are just like a family and good friends. I was thinking that there should be more challenging tasks in addition to routine tasks of members and those students who are struggling for jobs but due to no experience are getting any chance. So I have developed a business plan in which all the member can work as employee with many benefits like share in the individual project profit on the basis of his/her participation. At any time the member can get an experience letter of projects he/she completed which will help him is finding attractive job.
ERPstuff Virtual Consulting Services
Oracle E-Business Suite
Implementation
- Troubleshooting (Support)
- Training
- Database Administration
- System Administration
- Quality Assurance
- Customization (Forms & Reports)

Development
- Software Development & Customization
- Data Warehousing
- Industrial Automation
- Web Development
- Embedded Device Application
- Microcontroller Programming

Others – In-house Developments
- ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning
- Hotel Management System
- Point-of-Sale
- Embedded Device Applications
- Time Attendance and Management
- Networking Solutions
- Graphic Designing

Please send the following detail at business@erpstuff.com for mentioned positions,No need to send detailed cv right now just send the following detail in the email.
- Name
- Position
- City & Country
- Mailing Address
- Contact Numbers
- Education
- Experience (years if any)

Positions
- Marketing Executives
- Analysts
- Functional Consultants
- Technical Consultants
- Quality Control Consultants
- Software Developers
- Hardware Engineers

Your suggestions will be appreciated.
Thanks
Administrator
"
Nice idea isn’t it?
I sent my details direclty

Fadi

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Testing Restore

I have been busy all the last week with testing our backup/restore software if its really working, we are using hp data protector and it is really a great product for backup and recovery, we were able to restore (applications and Database around 350GB) successfully, we also restored our other 4 production databases (each one around 300 GB) successfully, also our network guys were able to restore our email/file system servers successfully. The only issue we faced was the time, it needs a lot of time to restore for ex. to restore the apps and db (350GB) it took around 6-8 hours, so the management decided that we should have a disaster recovery site (just incase we needed it) and that will be our next project.

Fadi