I'm using Oracle 8i and am trying to keep a backup database current
with our Production database. We do a daily full EXP of Production and
then weekly IMP the latest dumpfile into the backup database. Normally
this has only taken an hour to complete but lately it appears to be

Is it possible to have the following design for my Oracle Installation

Using only one set of binary
Multiple Instances.

I am trying to find an efficient way to trace a session in a database
in which all connections coming into the database are through a
middle-tier (web server, etc), and thus all logins to the database are
the same as well as the OSUSER. An example of this is Siebel, in which

Question about this case statement below - is it actually evaluating
the 3=3 or does it short ciruit? I'm trying to judge decode versus case
in terms of potential performance differences.
case when 1=2 and 3=3 then 0 else 1 end

<Oracle 9.2i>
I got 2 questions:
Is there a package (or something else) where I can get a GUID from the
oracle system? (something like SELECT DBMS_GUID.GenerateGUID FROM DUAL)

I have created a procedure called decrypt_inmemory with following
parameters:
key IN varchar2, data IN varchar2, cleardata OUT varchar2
I was wondering how I can test execute this procedure from within

I have one procedure to encrypt:
CREATE or REPLACE PROCEDURE encrypt_password (key_string IN varchar2,
uname IN varchar2, password IN varchar2) IS
input_string    VARCHAR2(16) := to_char(password);

If there are no system statistics generated for a 9i database, does the CBO
use some sort of default values to calculate cost of queries?
Thankyou.

What is the maximum allowed size for the Tablespace in Oracle? If it
varies depending on the system configuration, please let me about how I
can find this, for my Solaris system where Oracle is running on?

I'm coding a function a document to a server using POST method.
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: hex to raw conversion error
Can someone help me? I'm not a PL/SQL programmer.
Thanks a lot!

we have a strange behaviour here in a combination of a VIEW, INSTAED OF
TRIGGER and DATABASE LINK. While the INSERT works, any UPDATE or DELETE
statement will fail with
ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel

1.
Is one Table records spanning across multiple Tablespaces is possible?
2.
We have a case where it is required to move data from one tablespace to

Hi NewsGroup,
<Oracle 9.2i>
for debugging we wrote down a logging that stores some information to
file and to database.

How i can know the column name index from a table?
This information is not in USER_INDEXES.
Anybody Knows other table where this information is available ?
I need copy an index automatically.

I was assigned to a new Client site.
The SA there told me he is not sure whether the sever is configured to use
Raid 5 or Raid 1+0, how could I find out?
It is Linux AS 3.0, he is  a disk Array (300G) and a 10 local disks, 146G