How to find out version and install security patches?

Hello fellow Oracle users,

I have unfortunately no Oracle experience, but will have to maintain a server at my new job
(this will be 1 of my 50 other tasks).

After lots of searching I've managed to install version 9i.2 at a CentOS 5 Linux machine.
(And I really don't understand, why would
Oracle use a Java installer and also compile lots of stuff during the "Linking" phase instead of providing a well-tested binary rpm-package).

A consultant has installed their program then.

Now I'd like to install security patches. I have a Metalink account and have read their wordy FAQ but still don't have an idea,
where to download their patches and how
to install them (is there another GUI for that?)

Also I don't know which version do I actually have, is it 9.2.0.4? Where could I check?

Can anyone please advise me?

Can I do anything else to improve the security?
(Change some default passwords etc.)

Also is there maybe an easy way for me to create daily snapshots of the program database?

For PostgreSQL I have a cronjob
pg_dump phpbb > /mnt/backups/pg-`date +\%F`.sql and know that I can at least roll back to it if I do something stupid as a would-be-admin.

Is there something as simple for Oracle?

Thank you very much
Alex Received on Sat May 31 2008 - 17:54:07 CDT