Re: Please help: stuck with ORA-12514

"Anonymous Coder" <no_at_email.com> wrote in message news:40d1434a.428515_at_news.individual.de...
> "Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote:

> Now, everything works as it should - thanks a lot!

Good.

> >These
> >are init.ora parameters, which are probably for you actually spfile
> >parameters. The init.ora is a text file which tells the instance how to
> >behave. It's stored in ORACLE_HOME\database and is called init<SID>.ora.
In
> >9i and above, there may be a binary version of it (instead of, or as well
> >as, the init.ora) which is stored in the same place but called
> >spfile<SID>.ora. Hence the binary version is known as the spfile.
> >
> >Run SQL Plus from the command line, and you can check the values of
> >parameters like so
> >C:\>sqlplus "/ as sysdba"
>
> Ah, interesting... I thought I couldn't use sqlplus *at all* before I
> sorted that ORA-12514 out.

No. You only get 12514 errors when you are connecting via the listener (which is what all normal users will do when they connect to a server over a network, and which you can do even on the server itself by using a tnsnames alias). A connection request that is performed locally on the server, and which does not mention a tnsnames alias, uses IPC to establish a connection direct to the instance. It bypasses the listener altogether.

>
> Added to my "to read" stack :)
>
> >>I don't see it in my task
> >> list, but I guess it SHOULD be running...?
> >
> >Er, I have no idea what task list you are looking at. This is all done
with
> >a text editor and a command line.
>
> The Win2000 task manager... as you said "process" I thought it was an
> actual, separate program which I didn't find to be running. Now I see
> that's not the case.

You have to be a bit more precise than that. I didn't say it was a process. I said it was a "background process". I even put that phrase in quotation marks for you, and told you it was part of an instance. Which means it's an Oracle phrase, not an operating system phrase, and thus an operating system tool is not the appropriate way to track it down. (V$PROCESS, the view within Oracle itself, is a better source of information).

Which doesn't mean I'm having a go at you... as Frank pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it is perfectly possible to confuse a newbie with such phrases. But as I in essence replied to him, this is where you need to become just a little familiar with the Oracle architecture, and then such confusion wouldn't arise.

Because of fundamental architectural differences between Unix and Windows, an Oracle instance only manifests itself on a Windows machine as a single process, called oracle.exe. It has threads within it which are your server processes, the background processes and so on. Technically, they are threads on Windows (and hence invisible in something like task manager), not processes as they would be in Unix and Linux. But they're still called 'server processes' or 'background processes' regardless of platform. By most people, most of the time, anyway.

If you have any other questions, just ask.

Regards
HJR Received on Thu Jun 17 2004 - 03:15:49 CDT