Re: data extraction from dead database

When I attended the last Internals class taught by the legendary Andre Bakker back in the mid-90's, it was probably the last internals class taught by a VP in Oracle. Andre had to stop teaching because he had been named head of Support in EMEA. A fantastic move, which was reversed a year or two later, when he had really taught us all a lot of good principles. Here's one thing I always quote Andre for:

• Layers in an organisation create queues.
• Queues means that nobody takes responsibility.

This principle, therefore, he did away with: In many countries we simply had a phone number that customers could use to reach, say, RDBMS Support. So if you called +45 44 808 430 you would be answered by one of my guys in RDBMS Support. Simple. In fact, customers still remember it, and they still think it worked.

Oh yes.

During the last break of that last internals class by Andre, I told him about a problem we had in Denmark, where the drawings for a new high-speed train had been lost because the DBA hadn't taken a backup of the system tablespace for 18 months.

He then told me of one of his guys from the Dutch Oracle Support office, Bernard, who had written something called Direct UnLoader (DUL). So I think we (RDBMS Support Denmark) either were the first or the second (there was a case in South Korea at that time, too) to use DUL, and we worked for several days and nights in a row, with Bernard fixing bugs in DUL as we went along.

We saved all the technical drawings for the trains. We were proud. At a status meeting with the customer a week later, they were furious with us, and told us that Oracle was dirt and that Support sucked: Why hadn't ANYBODY told them that they should backup the system tablespace?

I still think DUL is the best data unloader on the market, but unfortunately Oracle has become greedy and nose-uppy about it, so they will take advantage of the fact that a customer has his back against the wall and demand outrageous prices (examples can be given if anybody doubt me), plus all the usual crap about only Oracle consultants must use DUL, etc. etc. Bernard has nothing to do with this development - he's just a very good and very honest techie, who continues to maintain and expand DUL - now for the 10th year or so. Respect for that.

Because of Oracle's arrogance and greed in this area, a number of other people have written tools to do the same thing (or to do most of what DUL can do).

One of them is DUDE, written by Kurt, which Miracle supports (Kurt REALLY knows his stuff). There are other (and free) tools out there that can probably help save many databases. Competition is good.

Here's to Bernard for the original idea and work.

Here's to the other guys writing tools after doing lots of research into block structures in Oracle.

Mogens

Fedock, John (KAM.RHQ) wrote:

> Thanks to all who have replied.
>
> What I have found so far is that Oracle consulting will do it for a 2
> day minimum charge and I have also been in touch with the guys at
> http://www.ora600.nl/ as well. I will let you know the resolution.
>
> John
>

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