Platform - Oracle 8.1.7 on Win2k server
Disclaimer:  I was called in to pull this db out of the fire.  I have
never seen this db before, and had no hand in its setup or current
condition. The guy that normally covers this db is unavailable.

I am searching for a special security problem and need a tip.
In our application the oracle-user get at runtime a special role assigned
which is password protected. The normal user should not know this role
password.

I wanted to test the standby as a primary so I did the following. This
is a TEST environment so I had to kludge a few things.
1. On the PRIMARY
  alter system set log_archive_dest_state_2='defer';

Platform: Oracle 9.2 on Solaris
Playing around with Tom Kyte's techniques for setting traceing on
sessions.  Everything went as advertised except that I can't find the
trace file.  Yes, I know it should be in the udump directory.  In

I have the following insert staement that is generating a literal
string to long error every time I try to insert this value into a CLOB
field.  I'm trying to insert the data using .net.
Could someone help me convert this one example into something that will

**Alert: Oracle & SQL newbie**
I want to write a report in SQL.  Here's a sample table I want to report on:
server_name severity log_only notification_only
------------  -------- --------  ----------------

I have two doubts regarding the size of control file.
1. I know that the size of control file depends on MAXDATAFILES,
MAXLOGFILES, MAXLOGMEMBERS, MAXLOGHISTORY, and MAXINSTANCES .I also
know that the size of control file will increase automatically by

I'm setting up a RAC using oracle 10g on a two redhat linux 3.0
enterprise boxes and the oracle files are going to be on the SAN (data
files, redo logs, etc...)
1- My SAN is set as RAID 5 and  RAID 10. so linux sees it as /dev/sda

I'm trying to solve a problem with our software. The software is
developed using Visual C++ 6, the Oracle Server is a 8.1.7.0.0 and
we're using the OO4O 8.1.7.3.11. The OS of the server is win2k server
and the workstations are win2k also. The users are connected through

Can you help me with some SQL (probably really simple)?
I want to bet the first deposit date and amount for each user so wrote
this query:
SELECT b.user_id, MIN(date_inserted), b.amount/100 as amount_deposited

Can anyone tell me how the ||'s are interpreted in the DECODE below?
I was thinking string concatenation, but shouldn't there be
commas after 'M' and 'T'?
Many thanks for your help.

I had a problem with a previously problemless 9.2.0.1.0 running on XP
SP2 that after the first connection, the TNS listener would just crash
inexplicably. This could be caused by just pinging the listener twice:
the first tnsping was fine, but the listener had been set into a state

i posted this a few months ago on comp.databases.oracle.misc, but got no
reaction at all. So here is a retry on comp.databases.oracle.server
Below you'l find a self contained script, which, after adding a
ctxsys.CTXXPATH index, produces very strange results.

there is a script that generates triggers.[2]
The problem is the following behavior: both [1] scripts are created by
the same script, same schema, nearly same trigger body, same tables,
but:

I am assigned to a database 9206 on Window server 2003, the database seems
working fine, but have 2000 invalid objects after re-compile.  Registry is
like this
COMP_ID    VERSION              STATUS