It served the purpose..

Couple of months back, I was asked to run a script on UAT as part of a change deployment.  When I looked into it, I got shocked.  You can see yourself why..

REM   
REM    NAME
REM    abc.sql - Delete Contact
REM
REM       ********************************************************
PROMPT    *** abc.sql ...                                      ***
set define off
set serveroutput on
delete from XXXXXXXX where EMAIL='abc.xys@oracle.com';
dbms_output.put_line('*** Script Confirmation : Property Deleted from XXXXXXXX ***');
commit;
exception
  when others then
    dbms_output.put_line('*** Error: sqlcode: ' || sqlcode || '; sqlerrm: ' || substr(sqlerrm, 1, 100) || ' ***');
PROMPT    *** abc.sql ... completed                            ***
REM       ********************************************************
EXIT

If you notice, there is no DECLARE block, no BEGIN block, only exception block!!!!
I asked the developer how it didn’t give errors on development environment? He told “yes, but the record got deleted and commit was done.  That’s all I want.  It served the purpose.”
He was one among those who attended training on PL/SQL earlier that month.  Needless to say, he has learnt the “Error handling” very well, at least.

OEL on VMWare

Finally sometime back, I have completed installing Oracle Enterprise Linux on VMWare server.  The installation is quite simple and straight forward.  I just followed the steps given by Frederik (Frikkie) Visser in http://startoracle.com/2007/09/30/so-you-want-to-play-with-oracle-11gs-rac-heres-how/ .  It is an excellent article that tells you step by step not only how to install linux on VMWare but also configuring RAC.  A must read for a DBA. Thanks Frikkie.

My first reaction to OEL is, it is bulky and a bit slow.  But I have allocated only 800 MB or memory to it.  May be I should throw more memory to it and see how it behaves.

My next step would be to download Oracle 11g for Linux ans start installing it.