Oracle Database is the skill with the biggest demand

Since the last few days i am only hearing discouraging news about the US economic slowdown and a possible recession in the coming days , but there is one news item that will bring a smile to all the Oracle DBAs !

According to The Dice Report, the latest snapshot on the technology job market published by dice.com for the month of March 2008, Oracle Database is the skill thats the most in demand. This is certainly heartening especially for the Oracle DBA community.

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Oracle Business Intelligence (Discoverer 10g) Linux Migration

Introduction

As part of the ongoing Linux Migration project, we successfully migrated the Oracle Business Intelligence (Discoverer 10g) from HPUX to Linux last weekend. The Discoverer migration is straightforward for the most part and many steps can be done well in advance to avoid increased system downtime during the cutover. Most of the procedure involves a new linux installation and configuration and only a part of the procedure involves “actual migration” of files from the existing source HPUX platform to the target linux platform. Below are the high level steps that we followed.

Advance Steps

1. Our existing version on HPUX is 10.1.2.0.2. We downloaded the same Linux x86 version from the OTN site. Oracle Discoverer 10g is also called Oracle Business Intelligence SE (Standard Edition).
2. Install the Linux 10.1.2.0.2 software on the target linux host.
3. Create $ORACLE_HOME/discoverer/secure directory
4. To provide transparency and a much more friendly user URL to end users, we got a DNS alias for the linux host. After the installation, $ORACLE_HOME/chgip/scripts/chgiphost.sh -mid is run to update the discoverer installation's configuration files with the DNS alias (Compare it with adautocfg.sh in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.

Cutover Steps (Downtime)

1. Shutdown the discoverer processes on the existing HPUX platform.
2. Migrate the discoverer preferences from the source HPUX to the target Linux platform. Discoverer preferences are settings that define the Discoverer environment and control the behavior of Discoverer Plus and Discoverer Viewer. Whenever an individual user changes preferences in discoverer, thet are stored in a hidden file $ORACLE_HOME/discoverer/.reg_key.dc. This file contains values in a platform specific format and therefore needs to be converted to the target platform format.

• Backup the target linux platform’s $ORACLE_HOME/discoverer/.reg_key.dc
• Copy the $ORACLE_HOME/discoverer/.reg_key.dc from source platform to Linux as hpux_reg_key.dc
• On Linux , cd $ORACLE_HOME/discoverer/util and run the below conversion script
• perl convertreg.pl hpux_reg_key.dc $ORACLE_HOME/discoverer/.reg_key.dc

3. Apply any one-off patches on Linux that have been applied in source platform

4. Migrate tnsnames.ora and dbc files from source to Linux.

5. Start the linux discoverer processes (opmnctl startall and emctl start iasconsole)

6. Oracle Discoverer is now LIVE on Linux !