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

I'm no expert, but I do know a little about the data files . Oracle associates data files with a particular tablespace name. You add a data file to a tablespace with the command "alter tablespace xxx add datafile ...." .

You can find out where your data files are by using one of the sys/dba tables. I think the name of it is sys.dba_data_files or something like that. Look in the dba guide or in the server manager's guide. This table holds the full path name of all the data files. With regard to which SID is using which files exactly, I guess you will have to find the default tablespace for the user who created the tables and look for those data files.

Hope this helps.

bpuett_at_interpath.com (Brad Puett) wrote:

>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!)
 

>2) What do most people use to back up their data base files? Tar or export?
> I KNOW that you can use TAR to backup everything for the purposes
> of restoring all the data and structures ... suppose you just
>want a cum-
> lative backup, what do you use? Suppose you want to ensure that, once
> you've made changes to the structure of the database (i.e. you have to
> increase the storage size, change some keys in tables, etc.), you can
> restore the data back to the way it was (Note: I don't mean make any
> changes that would preclude putting the data back correctly [adding new
> fields, etc.])
 

>3) If you happen to be an "expert" in the software package "Pointman", I have
> some other questions (mostly in how it interacts with the
>database, etc. --
> nothing too technical!)
 

>Thanks for any info you can give me!!!
 

>--
>Brad Puett
>bpuett_at_interpath.com
Received on Tue Sep 03 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST