Re: My woes continue

Joost Ouwerkerk wrote:
>
> To all DBA's:
> My DBA is making my job rather difficult, but I'm having trouble
> exposing some of his incompetencies to my superiors... Should any of
> the following statements be true for a well-tuned Oracle 7.3.2
> database server running on an IBM AIX and serving an organization of
> 50 users, about 15 of whom are data entry staff, and about 10 of whom
> run regular queries and reports:
>
> 1) A complex query can 'crash' the database and cause corruption of
> data.
>
> 2) Running Personal Oracle on a client (user) machine can 'crash' the
> database and cause corruption of data
>
> 3) Running Developer/2000 on a client machine can 'crash' the database
> and cause corruption of data.
>
> My suspicion is that if any of these are true, there is a server
> tuning problem. My DBA is suggesting no queries be run while data
> entry is occuring (during business hours) and is threatening to remove
> Personal Oracle and Dev/2000 from my computer because of the damage
> I'm supposedly causing. Am I going crazy?
>
> Joost Ouwerkerk
> Toronto, Canada
> (PS Thanks to all who responded to my previous appeal; I'm in the
> middle of a bloody battle and need all the amunition I can get)

I'll bet your DBA is going crazy though. This sounds like a stress related memory leak problem to me. (been there, seen that)

I'd double the amount of RAM on the server, bump up the shared memory parameters, and bump up the SGA via init.ora parameters. The problem will probably 'disappear'. It won't really, but you probably will be able to run longer before problems occur.

I'd also schedule to periodically bounce the database (bring down, up) to free up the memory that should have been earlier. (I'd guess the DBA is already doing this now).

If this is a memory leak problem, then these 'fixes' are not really fixing the bug, but at least it can prove or disprove where the problem really lies. (I doubt the client side has anything to do with the problem other than adding more load/stress on the server).

If this proves to be the case, I'd give your DBA a raise!

Good luck!
Steve

P.S. are you Year-2000 compliant yet?

-- 
"It's just like having your screen lock up on you
 when you're using Microsoft Word or something.
 You've got to hit the reset button."
 - rover coordinator Matt Wallace after communications
 were restored to the Mars rover Sojourner after more
 than 12 hours of no communication.

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