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.
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 technical 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 interruption 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 interruption 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 similar 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: Can
I purchase Oracle8i without purchasing Web Hosting?
A: Yes.
Q: If I want
to down grade my account, how do I do this?
A: To down grade your account you will need to order the lesser
account. You will need to export your information from your original
account, then import that information in to your new account. Only
after you have imported your information in to the new account should
you cancel your first account. To cancel your first account you
will need to contact technical support.
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: What if I
want to change my payment method?
A: Call Customer Service at (859) 219-0389.
Q: What if I
want to change my billing address?
A: Call Customer Service at (859) 219-0389.
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: 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. Will be 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 you mess 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 segments 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.
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