How do I deploy an Oracle database?

Question

I have an ASP .NET application that connects to an Oracle or a SQL Server database. An installer has been developed to install a fresh database to an existing SQL Server using sql commands such as "restore database..." which simply restores a ".bak" file which we keep under source control.

I'm very new to Oracle and our application has only recently been ported to be compatible with 10g.

We are currently using the "exp.exe" tool to generate a ".dmp" file and then using the "imp.exe" to import it into a developers box.

How would you go about creating an "Oracle Database Installer"?

Would you create the database using script files and then populate the database with required default data?

Would you run the "imp.exe" tool behind the scenes?

Do we need to provide a clean interface for system administrators so that they can just select the destination server and have done, or should we just provide them with the ".dmp" file? What are the best practices?

Thanks.

Liber

Answer 1

The question is -- what do your customers know about Oracle?

• Nothing? You should probably rethink this position. Oracle is very large and complex. If you assume your customers know nothing, you'll then start providing tutorials and help that's inappropriate.

• Minimally Competent? If they're competent, they know enough to run imp by themselves. Also, they know enough to run a script that executes SQL.

• Actual DBA's? Most organizations that can afford Oracle can afford real DBA's. Real DBA's can cope with a lot of things -- they do not need much hand-holding. Some of them like to assign storage parameters according to their shop standards.

You should provide a script with reasonable defaults. You should define your script in a way that someone can easily find all of your storage parameters and tweak them if necessary.

Your initial data can be via export/import or via a script. I prefer a script.

Inquiring

"Actual DBA's". I want to make this look as professional as possible. It seems to me you are suggesting that Oracle DBA's wouldn't expect much more than a bunch of script files or a ".dmp" file. – Liber

@Carl: Real DBA's can cope with almost anything you throw at them. It's not what they would or wouldn't expect. You don't have to do as much in advance. Giving them a script is recommended. – Inquiring

Answer 2

I have done this repeatedly from both sides (consumer and provider) as a DBA, developer, and architect.

As a provider, one of my grand accomplishments (in 1996) was the creation of an installation CD for a commercial insurance claims management software product targeted to the largest insurance carriers (a multi-million dollar item). That installation CD installed the Oracle 7.2 RDBMS engine, the FileNet optical storage system (scans paper documents and creates cataloged binary versions), and our custom claim-processing application (built in VB 4.0), all integrated and ready to run. As part of the installation process, the user could skip the Oracle software installation or customize it, and the user could customize/override the database configuration in all of its major details (database, schemas, tablespaces, sizes, disks, etc.).

I also provided the field service for this product, which included traveling to the client site as necessary. I tested the installation CD literally hundreds of times under every imaginable scenario that I could replicate, and we NEVER had a field failure that required even a phone call, let alone a trip (I did travel on four occasions, but for pre-sales stuff instead).

More recently (2007), I scripted the creation of an Oracle 10g database for an internal system at a megacorp. In production, the database was sized at 8 TB, mostly for a single transaction table with high data volume. In test, the database was sized around 1 TB for a modest server. In development, the database was sized around 100 MB to run on my laptop. The EXACT SAME SCRIPTS created all three environments, and I could extend them to handle a new environment/machine in about five minutes. This database involved extreme performance tuning, so customization of all pertinent characteristics was absolutely crucial.

Back to the insurance claims processing product--let me please add that I was originally hired to lead its conversion from a SQL Server database to an Oracle database. That conversion was identified as a business necessity because most potential clients did not view a SQL-Server-based product as a professional, serious solution. That is not quite as common today, but it still applies in general: a software product has a better chance of market penetration if it can accommodate multiple database options as preferred by the target customers (especially enterprise-class customers).

Likewise, the installation CD was also viewed as an essential element. However, that situation and many more have revealed to me that most "real" DBAs will not accept an import-based database installation. As a DBA and architect, I know that I definitely will not for the same reasons.

Simply put, an import-based database installation gives the customer almost no control over the resulting database. It is opaque to the customer, leaving them questioning what it did. It forces the customer to expend massive efforts to attempt to exercise what little control they can. It is notoriously fragile and error-prone (Oracle imports are well known for ownership and permission problems, constraint problems, etc.). Weighing all those impacts, an import-based database installation is unprofessional--it does not put the customers' needs first.

Scripting the database installation provides the right kind of transparency, configurability, selective repeatability, and overall customer control that professionalism demands. It also encourages you to properly understand the impacts of your database design decisions in a way that an import does not.

Best wishes.

Gonick

Answer 3

Personally I favour SQL scripts to database creation and data loads where possible. I tend to use PL/SQL Developer. It has some good options to generate scripts from an existing database. Once you have these you can run the scripts using sqlplus or any application code that can execute arbitrary SQL (eg JDBC with Java). Toad is the more common (and more expensive) tool for Oracle development.

The only limitation of a SQL export is it can't export CLOB/BLOB fields. If you have those, you either need to do them separately (as a PL/SQL export) or do the whole thing as a PL/SQL export. Theres no dramas with this except the file is effectively a binary export (extension .pde) and is more limited in how you can execute it.

The other big advantage of SQL source files is they can be version controlled easily. It's really handy to be able to create a database environment by running one or two scripts.

The import and export tools for Oracle I think are more applicable for backup and restore operations.

Now, as for delivering that to a customer, from your comments it seems that you'll be giving this to DBAs. Pretty much any Oracle installation will have DBAs involved. They will be fine with SQL scripts to create the schema and do the data load. They will be doing a lot of site-specific configuration (eg tuning the SGA, temp tablespaces, # of concurrent connections, etc based on expected load).

You, as the vendor, can give guidance on any relevant configuration and you may get involved in support and possibly installation but ultimately it's up to them to figure out what works for them. Oracle runs on a large number of operating systems and hardware variants with infinite variations in network topology and firewall configuraiton. You can't factor in all of these to an installer or even a set of instructions (other than the guidelines mentioned previously).

Tice

+1 for PL/SQL Developer, looks good and is new to me. You don't really answer my question though. What would DBA's expect to receive for installing my database. An installer? Some SQL scripts? A .dmp file? – Liber

Thanks again cletus. I'm getting the impression that the Oracle database world is managed by experienced DBA's so scripts and ".dmp" files would be acceptable. – Liber

Answer 4

The last time I was involved in the creation of a (oracle) db (for a reasonably large company with in-house DBAs) the DBAs wanted to know things like:

• what we wanted to call the db,
• what tablespaces we would need, and an estimate of how much data would be in each one
• how many users would be connecting.

(From memory) they set up the db and tablespaces, then we provided a combination of simple scripts that they could run (or clear instructions if a task wasn't easy to automate)
As I say this was for an in-house app, so your mileage may vary, but in my case they wanted all instructions clearly spelt out so that (a) there was no possibily of a misunderstanding leading to the wrong thing being done, and (b) no culpability on their part if something didn't work ("we were just following the instructions")

Nitz