Oracle8i Database Hosting FAQ

Q: What client platforms are supported?

A: We support any platforms that the Oracle Client can be installed on.

Q: What db schema managers do you support?

A: We support Toad, Visio, ER Studio, and Rapid SQL. We are in the process of getting DBA Studio to work as well.

Q: What db schema managers do you not support?

A: We do not support any schema manager that requires DBA access.

Q: Do I get the Oracle Client software when I get an account?

A: The Oracle client software that is available from the Oracle control panel is the same client software that is included with enterprise edition of Oracle. The Oracle8i database, though is Standard edition, so you will not gain the full functionality of enterprise edition. You can use these Oracle client libraries for administration of the schema within your database. For user administration, you must use the Oracle control panel. For information on how to use the Oracle control panel or how to install and configure the Oracle client libraries, please see:

http://<accountname>.myhosteddb.net/help/

Note: Replace <accountname> with your account name.

Q: Is there a connection limit to Oracle?

A: For performance purposes, we have limited the number of concurrent connections; 20, 40, and 80, depending on the plan you have chosen.

Q: Have you limited the idle time that I can be connected for?

A: We are limiting idle time to 10 minutes to prevent too many connections to the servers.

Q: Is there a limit on CPU time?

A: For performance purposes, we have limited the amount of CPU time per session to 10 minutes. This will prevent any run away calls.

Q: How often do you back-up my data?

A: Full Backup to tape of the database are performed once a week. All write transactions (in the form of Archived Redo Logs) are backed up to tape every 15 to 30 minutes.

Q: I just dropped a VERY important table. Can I get it back?

A: Yes, contact Customer Support for help.

Q: How secure is my data? For example, can I confidently store credit card information?

A: Your Oracle8i Database is as secure as Oracle. You can confidently store credit card or customer information without concerns.

Q: I want to resell part of my Oracle tablespace to a customer. How do I add a login and tablespace for the customer?

A: Log in to your Oracle Control Panel at youraccountname.myhosteddb.net, click on the "Add User" button near the bottom of the screen, and fill in the appropriate information about your customer. Click "Submit Changes". If the message on the screen tells you the user was added correctly, the customer will be able to log in to Oracle with the privileges you assigned to that customer.

Q: Can I implement data constraints?

A: Yes. See the constraints section of this Help file.

Q: Why can't I insert any rows into my table?

A: Look for the following problems:

• Ensure that you are supplying data for all the columns marked NOT NULL.
• Make sure your format is correct and that you are using single or double quotation marks where required. For example:
  
  - The correct date format is: "01/04/00"
  - The correct text format is: "31 Archer Street"
  - The correct number format is: 31.9
  
• Refer to a good Oracle SQL guide like Oracle8i: The Complete Reference by Kevin Loney, George Koch. Hardcover (May 23, 2000).

Q: What is the difference between Oracle Enterprise and Oracle Standard?

A: Oracle Standard is designed for single machine databases. Oracle Enterprise is designed for databases that span multiple machines, require off-site replication, or require the 10% performance increase that 64-bit software can provide over the 32-bit Standard Edition.

Q: How is my data protected with my Oracle account?

A: The Oracle8i system runs on Hardware RAID which not only provides fast access to data, but also ensures that hard drive failures do not cause any interuption in service or loss of data for the customer. Assuming either data corruption is caused by the customers application or the statistically impossible chance that both drives in a mirror set fail at the same instant, customers data can be restored from tape. Tape backups of data are comprised of the following two components:

1. Weekly full backup of the database. These full backups are "hot" or "live" backups meaning there is no interuption in database service while performing these backups.
2. Archive logs pulled to tape every 15 minutes. Archive logs (also know as Archived redo logs) are a log of all data modification transactions that hit against the database. These are very similiar to "incremental" file system backups but are more powerful. Given a "Full" backup of a database and "archive logs" from that same database, the database can be restored to literally any point in time covered by the archive logs. For an "as-recent-as-possible" recovery from tape, the database may be recovered to within 15 minutes of the data corruption/catastrophic failure.

Q: If I'm already a VPS Reseller, does Oracle get added to my existing account?

A: Yes. Your Oracle billing will be included with your Hosting billing.

Q: Can I purchase Oracle8i without purchasing Web Hosting?

A: Yes.

Q: How do I control my database service from an account management standpoint?

A: Managing and administering your Oracle database is done through the Oracle Control Panel (OCP).

Q: What does defragment tablespace do? Specifically, does it defragment all tables associated with a user?

A: The "defrag tablespace" function is only available to the Oracle account owner. It removes all empty rows within tables and indexes to free up disk space.

The "defrag tablespace" function defragments space for the entire account. When a row within an Oracle table is deleted, the space is not recovered. That space can be reused by new rows within that table, but cannot be used by other tables. Therefore, the only way to recover space within Oracle is to defrag the entire tablespace. This recovers space from all tables and indexes of all users within that account.

Q: Will I be notified of events affecting my billing or system limits?

A: Yes. When problems occur or account limits are reached, an e-mail is automatically sent to the account owner with instructions on how to resolve the problem.

Q: What is the Cancellation Policy on this service?

A: Oracle8i Hosting is a month-to-month service offering. You may cancel any time, but you will be billed for the remainder of the month.

Q: What kind of Support is offered?

A: Support will only support Oracle's functionality; this includes making sure the database is up and running, the listener is listening, and all servers are functional.

Q: Can I purchase my own Oracle license in the future and run it from my own machine?

A: Yes, you can export your data and transfer it to your new Oracle server.

Q: What version of Oracle are you using?

A: We are using Oracle 8i 8.1.6 Standard Edition.

Q: Do I have access to my database with SQL Plus?

A: Yes.

Q: How do you import and export from a database on a client's main system? Do you have the ability to run PL/SQL scripts and do ftp's to the Server maintaining the Oracle Database?

A: You can do imports and exports using the Oracle Client software, which we distribute to users; however, you do not have ftp access to the servers that an account is on. You can also do a db link from your existing account to your new account.

Q: What is the configuration of the servers upon which the databases are running? Primarily, is their sufficient horsepower to run multiple Oracle Databases on a single computer, and does that server have a RAID based Disk Capacity.

A: The Managed Oracle Servers are running on Sun UltraSparc systems with the Solaris Operating system. All disks are RAID and we have a custom and comprehensive monitoring system in place that constantly monitors all critical factors of the box from Raid integrity to system responsiveness.

Q: What are the recovery options that are available? Why would they incur an additional charge if there is a problem with your server and the database crashes?

A: A server crash that was somehow destructive to data (multiple disk failures at one) that could not be compensated for by RAID would affect all customers on a box. We would probably detect the problem long before the customer does and will work as fast as we can to restore service to the box. We have scripts and procedures in place to rebuild a whole system as quickly as possible. The customer is not charged for this type of problem.

Q: What are the additional charges for in situations where the customer messes something up?

A: The additional charges are strictly for situations where the customer or the customers application destroys or corrupts data in the customers account and the customer desires to have a "Point in Time Recovery" of his/her data. This is where his/her data is rolled back to a specified point in time presumably before the data was destroyed/corrupted.

Q: Does the 200/500MB of Disk Capacity that is indicated on the Web site for the Professional/Corporate Plans include all of the tablespaces associated with an Oracle Database (System, User, Temporary, Rollback, Index, etc.) or just the User tablespace?

A: Just your user tablespace where all objects you, main and sub users, create will be stored. System, Temporary, Rollbacks are huge and shared between everybody. System and temporary tablespaces as well as Rollback segements are shared between all customers on the system.

Q:How difficult is it to change from the Professional to Corporate options?

A: Upgrading is quite easy and has no downtime. Down grading may need to shrink data files. This can be complicated and require downtime.

Q: Is there any issue with using ODBC to access the data in the Oracle Database on a Shared Oracle Server?

A: Your application server will need to have the Oracle ODBC driver installed. The ODBC driver is linked against the Oracle client library. The driver changes the ODBC calls to oracle OCI calls and connects to the database as any other Oracle connection. The database does not need know anything about OBDC. You web/application server usually needs to have the Oracle client libraries installed. The libraries are not available for FreeBSD. The libraries are available on Solaris VPS or you can run you application under Linux compatibility mode on FreeBSD.

Q: Where would all of our code reside, on the server hosting the main Web page or on the server with the Oracle database?

A: If you wanted to you could use PL/SQL to generate all of your html and just have the web server send sql to the database to request the appropriate page. You could also code your pages in Perl, PHP, or Cold Fusion that is interpreted by Apache and just store catalog in Oracle. We recommend the later choices, as it pulls load off of the database servers.

Q: When defining a number datatype, what is the default value?

A: The default value for the number datatype is 22.

Q: How do we connect to an Oracle8i account from an exterior server?

A: There are several ways to connect to your Oracle account, including using ODBC, JDBC, and DBI Proxy.

Q: How can we access the Oracle database remotely?

A: There are currently several ways to access the Oracle database remotely. You can use SQL Plus or any other third party database administrative tool that does not require DBA access.

Q: How do we load existing data into our Oracle database?

A: You can import any existing data from an existing Oracle database into your account by performing an export from your current database, and an import into your new Oracle database. If you are using non Oracle databases you will need to format the data in an Oracle database format in order to import the data into Oracle.

Q: What type of hardware is my Oracle database being hosted on.

A: Your Oracle database is being hosted on Solaris operating system, Sun Sparc processors, Disk arrays with Hardware raid.