Re: HELP - Oracle is kicking my ass!!!!!

It's kicked mine a few times also. I'm not familiar with the DEC Alpha, but it's UNIX so should be similar to mine.

> First, I can view table spaces, and datafiles, and such, but I'm never
> prompted to select a database per se. Where is the database? I don't
> even know how many databases we have set up? It's a small lab here, and
> I think there's only one, but none of the tools have a selection called
> "SELECT DATABASE". If I did have two databases, how would they be
> specified?
>

Check the environment variable ORACLE_SID. It is the identifier of the database you are connecting to. How may databases do you have? Check your oratab file. My oratab file is located in /var/opt/oracle. The oratab file should have a line for each database instance running on your system. Each line has three fields. The first field is the SID of the database instance. Set ORACLE_SID to that value to connect to that database instance. The second field is the Oracle home directory for the instance. It may be the same for all instances. The third field determines whether or not the instance should be started at system boot time.

> How does one create a database not-by-hand. Is there some automatic
> method?
>

In your Oracle home directory, there should be a subdirectory named orainst. Within the orainst directory there is a shell script called orainst. Change to the orainst directory and enter the command ./orainst. The installation script has an option to create new databases. You may have to set your TERM environment variable to something like vt100 or ansi before running the script.

-- 
Kevin Cutress -- kcutress_at_bellsouth.net