Re: ** HELP! a couple of "expert" questions **

In article <bpuett-2203962126460001_at_greenvillesc-221.interpath.net>, Brad Puett (bpuett_at_interpath.com) says...
!>
!>Everone has been so helpful to my questions, so I thought I'd
!>take a chance and post these questions which are critical to my
!>job ... I've been hired as a consultant, mostly to load data from
!>old tables to a new Oracle Database ... But some questions have
!>arisen that require DBA skills, and I don't seem to "totally"
!>understand how to solve them ... To wit:
!>
!>1) I KNOW that if you have the ORACLE_SID and ORACLE_HOME
!> environment variables set correctly, you can log in and
!> do things with SQL*Plus ... I ALSO KNOW that if you have
!> the ORACLE_SID, you can find the corresponding ORACLE_HOME
!> by looking in the /etc/oratab file ...
!>
!> What I don't understand is once you have both variables, HOW does
!> Oracle determine where your data files are? I mean physically,
!> not logically ... What I'm trying to do is prove that I'm working
!> with the correct tables in SQL*Plus, but I only know ORACLE_HOME
!> and ORACLE_SID ... I need to know which tables are "attached" to
!> these 2 variables ... SOMEONE ELSE set up the tables (who is no
!> longer with the company) and no one else there knows much about
!> Oracle (they've only had it for 6 weeks!)
!>
Not that I would want you to loose your job, but I'll only try to answer your first question.
In fact, I have no experience with cumulative backups on Oracle.

Oracle will find its datafiles via the control-files, and the control-files via the initXXXX.ora which is normally in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs. I know you can start a database with a pfile (initXXXX.ora) somewhere else, but then you should consult the clever guy who started it.

Once connected, you may consult v$datafile, I believe, or something alike. I hope you have some books (Oracle7 Server Administrator's Guide is quite interesting in this field) and are capable of reading, since you seem to have acquired the noble art of typing (or did someone else ...?);

!>Thanks for any info you can give me!!!
!>
!>--
!>Brad Puett
!>bpuett_at_interpath.com

-- 
Kind reGards
     \ /   |
      X    |
     / \   s
     Gerard