Oracle Database 12.2 became available for download last week. This weekend I’ve been playing with Docker and created a container with it. The whole process is so easy, thanks to the work by Gerald Venzl at Oracle. You’ll find all the information you need in his blog post. Though the post is for version 12.1.0.2, the dockerfiles have already been updated for 12.2.0.1, and you can download it from Github using the link he provides in the post.

If you need to delete all rows in a table that has parent keys for other tables' foreign keys, and the foreign keys constraints have not been defined with “on delete cascade”, you can do a recursive delete with the following simple procedure.

I have been using SQL Developer since it required some goodwill to work. Some of the motivation came from an annoyance with Toad sessions in the database. Iremember that I back then googled “how to block Toad users from the database”.  

At UKOUG Tech conference in Liverpool last year I had an interesting talk with a DBA that had two years of experience. Being 23 years the DBA naturally stood out from the crowd. I talked about my thoughts on what is important for a DBA, and since I spend way too much on user group activities and conferences I argued that going to such events are useful for a DBA, and continued with other ramblings about what I think is important for a DBA to do. I hope I stopped soon enough, but stop talking and…

This is a common error message after upgrade of the database:

The garbage in this case is the recycle bin in the database. Just as in any tidy house you should not wait too long before you empty the garbage bin. I’ve come across two reasons to empty it.

If your database is using anything else than UTF8 as database character set you may consider to migrate from it. Oracle states in the Globalization Guide (10gR2):

I’ll probably need this in the not-so-distant future. Here is the link to Noon’s write-up when I need it. His blog is recommended, by the way.

Any database that has gone into production is a legacy database according to Tom Kyte. I agree, but to me some databases give me associations to legacy more often than others. In a post at the OraStory blog Dom complains about companies that hire contractors for a maximum of one year, and due to the fact that it takes half a year to understand the business and the data, you hardly get to show what you can deliver.