Granting sysdba to a user

I want to 'grant sysdba to a user' for an application. (At least that is what I believe so far after having had this problem dumped on me 2 days ago.) The support we get from the application vendor is lame, to say the least. Our application users dont know anything.

1. The Oracle 9i server is installed on a Sun Solaris system.
2. I work with Sybase and hence don't know any Oracle.
3. I can start sqlplus but dont know where to go after that.
4. Nobody knows the 'sa' password. (If sa is indeed the proper Oracle term.)
5. Nobody here can tell me if the Oracle server is running or not.

Am I SOL or is there someone who can tell me:

1. How to check if the server is running and if not how to start it?
2. How to grant sysdba to the user? (I at least hope this user already exists on the server, but in case not I should also like to know how to add this user to the system.)

The answers to the above 2 questions should get me started, although I dont see at this point how I do anything without the 'sa' password. Thanks. Received on Fri Jan 02 2004 - 20:11:44 CET