DBA Boot Camp
 
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next Boot Camp
 
Oracle 10gR2 (10.2.0.1 - 10.2.0.4)
Oracle provides the database ... you need to provide the technical expertise to install, deploy, manage, and tune it. But how do you do that?

The Oracle database has matured year after year creating an interesting paradox.

Those that "are" Oracle DBAs become less capable if they can not, or do not, keep their skill set current. And those whose background is DB2, Informix, SQL Server, or Sybase become less able to easily take over the management of both their current database and Oracle. And these Boot Camps are a great opportunity to transition developers into being back-up DBAs.

The class, outlined below, will consist of approximately 40% instructor demo and review, 60% hands-on lab exercises.

The following syllabus is for our ten day DBA Boot Camps offered in Seattle Washington and Portland Oregon. The class is taught by two instructors and will be limited to a maximum of 16 students.

If you are interested please contact the PSOUG office at 206-547-1600.
The price per student is only $2495 for the full two week program.
 
Day 1 - Installation
8:30-9:00am Registration Join us for coffee and pastries while you register.
9:00-12:00am Session 1 Oracle Concepts and Architecture
The Oracle database is not just SQL Server or DB2 sold by a different company. The underlying concepts and architecture are substantially different. This session will cover these concepts with live demos of multiversion read consistency, how transactions and locking work including the details of the Undo tablespace and log files, as well as teach basic data dictionary object concepts related to DBA_, ALL_, USER_, and V$ views.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-3:00pm Lab 1 Installation Fest
Students will perform a hands-on installation of Oracle Unbreakable Linux, kernel configuration, and installation of Oracle 10gR2.
2:30-3:00pm Session 2 Metalink
Metalink is where DBAs obtain critical information about managing their Oracle database, download patches, obtain support, report bugs. This instructor led session will take students into metalink and teach them what is there and how to find it.
3:00-3:30pm Session 2 Linux Basics
Hands on navigation of Linux and use of the vi editor
3:30-4:45pm Lab 2 Patching Lab
Students will research required patches for their installed 10.2.0.1 database and then patch them to 10.2.0.3. They will also locate the most current version of Oracle's RDA (Remote Diagnostic Agent) tool, deploy it, create RDAs, and review what they contain.
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 2.
 

Day 2 - Database
9:00-10:30am Session 3 What is a database
A discussion of the components of an Oracle database that are both physical and logical structures including datafiles, tempfiles, tablespaces, tablespace groups, control files, log files, pfiles, and spfiles. The discussion will include storage best practices with the focus on understanding how SAN, NAS, iSCSI, and other storage solutions interact with the Oracle database and how to optimize performance and minimize cost.
10:30-11:30pm Lab 3 Storage
Students, using the data dictionary, will explore the default database files and then create new tablespaces, data files, tempfiles, and learn how to drop and create a new UNDO tablespace.
11:30-12:00pm Session 4 Extent Management
This instructor led discussion, with live demos, will teach students the techniques for determining space usage and predicting space requirements. Also covered will be the UNDO advisor for properly sizing the UNDO tablespace.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:30pm Lab 4 Extents Lab
Students, using the tools discussed in Session 5, will design a schema, use the DBMS_SPACE built-in package to predict space requirements, and design the required infrastructure. They will also, using DBMS_STATS examine space utilization of existing structures.
2:30-3:30pm Session 5 Tables
This instructor led discussion, with live demos, will cover the different types of tables available in Oracle including HEAP, CLUSTERS, COMPRESSED, EXTERNAL, GLOBAL TEMPORARY, INDEX ORGANIZED, PARTITIONED, and XML.
3:30-4:45pm Session 6 Indexes
This instructor led discussion, with live demos, will cover the different types of indexes available in Oracle including B*TREE, BITMAP, BITMAP JOIN,  COMPRESSED, DESCENDING, FUNCTION BASED, INVISIBLE, NO SEGMENT, and REVERSE.
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 3.
 
Day 3 - Instance & SQL*Net
9:00-10:30am Session 7 What is an Instance
A discussion of the components of an Oracle instance that are both physical and logical structures including processes (PMON, SMON), memory structures (SGA, Shared Pool), and background processes such as those collecting statistics, ASH, and AWR.
10:30-11:30am Lab 7A SPFILE Lab
Students will use this lab to learn how to create and manage parameter files and spfiles.
11:30-12:30pm Lunch
12:30-2:00pm Lab 7B Instance Management Lab
This lab will provide students with hands-on experience in instance management.
2:00-3:30pm Session 8 Network Connectivity
This instructor led session will focus on SQL*Net and connectivity issues. Students will learn basic information on the structure and purpose of listener.ora, sqlnet.ora, and tnsnames.ora files.
3:30-4:45pm Lab 8 Network Connectivity Lab
In this lab students will drop and create their own listeners and gain hands-on experience tracing SQL*Net connections
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 4.
 
Day 4 - Disaster Avoidance
9:00-10:00am Session 9 Things that can go terribly wrong
You can not be expected to create and manage an enterprise architecture if you don't know what to watch out for. This session will focus on all aspects of the database technology stack: servers, networks, storage, operating systems, database, and application software.
10:00-11:00am Lab 9A Flashback
Flashback technology is a great way to avoid most situations where less experienced DBAs run for their backup tapes. This session will review the six types of Flashback available in Oracle 10g as well as expose students to the Flashback Archive new in 11g.
11:00-12:00pm Lab 9B Flashback Lab
This hands-on lab will provide students with an opportunity to work with two or three of the Flashback technologies and provide them with the background required to learn others.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:00pm Session 10 RMAN
 RMAN is the tool of choice for backing up, restoring, and recovering in an Oracle database environment. This session will acquaint students with the concepts, architecture, and basic steps in implementing RMAN.
2:00-4:45pm Lab 10A RMAN Lab
 This hands-on lab will give students the opportunity to create an RMAN catalog, register a database, perform backup operations, triage, and recover from the loss of a control file, log file, and corrupt data file.
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for the midterm project.
 
Day 5 - Midterm
9:00-9:30am Session 11 Midterm Assignment
The instructor will take students through the systematic destruction of their entire Oracle installation and provide a one-day lab assignment that will allow them to practice, in a real-world environment, the skills learned during the previous four days.
9:30-12:00pm Lab 11 Midterm Lab
The instructor will be available to answer questions and coach students while they rebuild the architecture constructed during labs over the previous four days. The assignment will be developed during the class based upon the instructor's experience working with the students and will target those areas that will be most directly applicable to their work assignments.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-4:00pm Lab 11
continued		 Midterm Lab
 Refreshed after a walk outside and lunch students will complete their midterm project assignments.
4:00-5:00pm Review Midterm Review
The instructor will review midterm projects and help students focus on areas most critical for them to be successful with Oracle.
 
Day 6 - Users
9:00-9:45am Lab 10B Control File Loss
Identify and recover from the loss of one, or multiple, control files.
9:45-11:00am Session 12 User Management
An essential part of managing any Oracle database installation is creating users, managing their privileges, and providing an infrastructure that meets requirements for governance and compliance.

This instructor led session will teach students both the issues and the solutions.
11:00-11:30am Lab 12A Users Lab
This lab is hands-on and provides students an opportunity to learn how to create and manage users and schemas. Students will create and drop user, lock and unlock accounts, and manage passwords.
11:30-12:00am Lab 12B System & Object Privileges
In this lab students will gain hands on experience in how to identify, grant, and revoke system and object privileges.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-1:30pm Session 13 Roles
System and object privileges are best managed by creating a hierarchy of job function/responsibility related roles. This discussion will focus on how to design, create, and maintain roles.
1:30-2:15pm Lab 13 Roles Lab
Students will use this hands-on lab to gain familiarity with designing a role hierarchy, and building custom roles based on system and object privileges.
2:15-2:45pm Session 14 Profiles
Profiles are used in the Oracle database to manage security via password expiration, reuse, complexity, and lock-out functionality. They can also be used to control connect time, idle time, and resource allocation. This instructor led session will cover the syntax and capabilities of Profiles.
2:45-3:30pm Lab 14 Profiles Lab
Students will use this hands-on lab to design, create, alter, and drop profiles and to alter the default password verify complexity function.
3:30-4:00pm Session 15 Deadlocks
This instructor led demo and lecture will focus on identification and resolution of enqueue related issues, deadlocks, and endless loops. The instructor will explain the issues, demonstrate how to identify them, and multiple methods of killing blocking and misbehaving sessions.
4:00-4:45pm Lab 15 Deadlocks Lab
Students will use this lab session to generate a deadlock situation and use the data dictionary to identify the deadlocking session. They will also use an endless-loop scenario to identify the session and kill it both at the operating system and database level
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 7.
 
Day 7 - Governance and Compliance
9:00-9:45am Lab 10C Log File Loss
Identifying and recovering from the loss of inactive, current, and active log files
9:45-10:30am Session 16 Best Practices
Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, PCI, FACTA, Oregon State Senate Bill 583: The regulatory requirements, and internal governance requirements affect how we manage and secure our databases and their data. This instructor led session will focus on auditing and encryption
10:30-11:15am Lab 16A Database Auditing
This instructor led lab will introduce students to how to implement auditing.
11:15-12:00pm Lab 16B Fine Grained Auditing
 This instructor led lab will introduce students to how to implement Fine Grained Auditing to audit INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and SELECT: SELECT being required for HIPAA compliance.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:30pm Lab 16C Audit Vault
This lab is instructor led and students will work with the instructor to install the Audit Vault agent on their Oracle servers and learn how Audit Vault works to meet governance and compliance requirements.
2:30-3:30pm Lab 16D Transparent Data Encryption
During this lab students will gain hands-on experience creating a wallet and implementing transparent encryption.
3:30-4:45pm Lab 16E SecureFiles
 Oracle 11g has added a new capability that transparently encrypts large objects which might include emails, documents, even medical image files. Using the wallet created in Lab 14D students will create a table using a  SecureFile LOB and load several file types.
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 8.
 
Day 8 - Transactions & Tuning
9:00-9:45am Lab 10D Datafile File Loss
Identifying and recovering from the loss of data files
9:45-10:30am Session 17 Transactions and the Optimizer
Tuning a database to improve performance and scalability is an essential task for DBAs. This session will acquaint students with ASH, AWR, StatsPack, and how the optimizer works.
10:30-11:00am Lab 17A Statistics Collection
This instructor led lab will teach students how to use DBMS_STATS to collect system, dictionary, schema, and object statistics.
11:00-11:30pm Lab 17B Clustering Factor and Plan Stability
This lab is designed to teach students the importance of paying attention to details. Students will learn to use DBMS_STATS to collect table and index statistics and let them see, first hand, clustering factor affects performance.
11:30-12:00pm Lab 17C SQL Tuning
The tool most often used by DBAs for tuning SQL statements is Explain Plan. Unfortunately most Oracle developers and DBAs still use it improperly. This lab will provide students with hands-on experience running Explain Plan and working with the DBMS_XPLAN built-in package.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:00pm Lab 17D PL/SQL Tuning
Tuning of functions, packages, and stored procedures is performed with the DBMS_PROFILER built-in package. This instructor led lab will give students the knowledge they will need to profile PL/SQL code.
2:00-3:00pm Lab 17E Tracing and TKPROF
When the tuning gets tough DBAs perform tracing often analyzing trace files with TKPROF. This lab will provide students experience creating both a 10046 and 10053 trace: The two most comply used.
3:00-4:45pm Lab 17F StatsPack, AWR, and ASH
StatsPack is a set of performance monitoring and reporting utilities provided by Oracle. This instructor led lab will familiarize students with running a StatsPack.
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 9.
 
Day 9 - Grid Control
9:00-9:45am Lab 10E Tablespace Loss
Identifying and recovering from the loss of data files
9:00-11:00am Session 18 Grid Architecture and Concepts
The OEM Grid Control is the state-of-the-art way to manage your Oracle based infrastructure. This session will cover the Grid's concepts and architecture.
11:00-12:00pm Lab 18A Installation and Deployment
During this instructor led lab students will use the installed Grid Control to deploy agents to their database servers and then use the Oracle Management Server (OMS) to explore their database implementation.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-1:45pm Lab 18B System Management
This instructor led lab will give students the opportunity to review the system management capabilities of the OEM Grid. 
1:45-2:45pm Lab 18C Comparisons
This instructor led lab will give students the opportunity to use the Grid Control to compare their system with those of other students.
2:45-3:45pm Lab 18D Diagnostics
This instructor led lab will give students the opportunity to use the Grid to diagnose issues with their system.
3:45-4:45pm Lab 18E Tuning
This instructor led lab will give students the opportunity to use the Grid to tune a poorly performing SQL statement on their system.
4:45-5:00pm Review Review
The day's work will be reviewed and students will receive a homework assignment to prepare them for Day 10.
 
Day 10 - Conclusion
9:00-9:15am Session 19 Class Final Assignment
Students receive their final assignment.
9:15-12:00pm Lab 19 Final Project
Students collaborate on their final project.
12:00-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:00pm Session 20 Maximum Availability Architecture
An instructor led session discussing Oracle high availability technologies including RAC, ASM, Online Redefinition, and Resumable Transactions.
2:00-3:00pm Session 21 Event Triggers
An instructor led session discussing and demonstrating the use of System and DDL event triggers and the use of System Event environment variables.
3:00-4:00pm Session 22 Replication
An instructor led session discussing Oracle replication technologies including Data Guard and Streams.
4:00-5:00pm Review Closing Remarks
A final Q&A session for students with the instructor
 
Instructors
Dan Morgan is an Oracle Ace Director, a 10g and 11g Beta tester for Oracle, and the author and primary instructor of the Oracle program at the University of Washington since its inception in 1999. Morgan began his IT career in 1969 with an IBM 370/145, punch cards, and Fortran IV, and though he will vigorously deny it, wrote COBOL for a decade before moving into Oracle when version 6 came to market.

In addition to Dan's work at the university he is the Education Chair of the Puget Sound Oracle Users Group, a member of UKOUG, and a member of the British-American Chamber of Commerce in Seattle. He is also a frequent lecturer at training events and at conferences and has presented at Oracle OpenWorld on RAC (2005), at Seattle OracleDay (2004-2007), at numerous government and corporate training events including Apple Computer, Argonne National Laboratory, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Dow Jones & Company, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA, T-Mobile, US Navy at Pearl Harbor, and Weyerhaeuser to name but a few and presented on Streams and Change Data Capture at UKOUG in 2006.

Dan Morgan is the Morgan behind the "Morgan's Library" website that contains the many demos he has  created for his University of Washington classes as well as for his frequent lectures. He is the former publisher of MacTech Journal, has presented Oracle technical lectures in the US, Canada, Great Britain, and Japan. Morgan is also the author of this course.
Victoria Whitlock has more than 23 years experience in the Information Technology industry. She specializes in Database Architecture, Administration, Data Warehousing, Training, and Mentoring. Formerly one of Oracle Corporation's top Education trainers, Victoria excels in teaching and working with diverse groups to master complex procedure-based processes by applying leading edge technologies. Victoria managed a variety of successful international data warehousing projects and speaks regularly at industry forums such as Oracle Open World. She is currently at Boeing working on projects related to mainframes, Oracle, and "best practice" implementation.

Victoria has built a strong sub-specialty in the world of government mandated compliance. Her  understanding of the technical systems which must ultimately be crafted, either by design or modification, to deliver compliant performance and her understanding of automated business processes grant her a very rare perspective.
 
Victoria is a frequent contributor to both PCAOB and SEC data calls. Her work is posted on their websites and is recognized for its thoughtful, thorough, and unbiased point of view.
 
Victoria also is currently serving on the AEA National Governance committee.
Caleb Small is the primary instructor for the Oracle Workforce Development program at Camosun College in Victoria BC, and a private consultant with years of experience implementing and teaching Oracle throughout North America. He has over 30 years experience in the IT industry in numerous business areas including both public and private sectors.

Caleb is also active as a director of the Victoria and Puget Sound Oracle User Groups, and has delivered numerous lectures, presentations, live demos and articles to other groups.  He has authored and led many of the PSOUG workshops including RAC, ASM, RMAN and Data Guard.

Caleb was one of the first people to build an 11g RAC cluster and has been a primary consultant on RAC to publicly held corporations including Areva T&D and Montana Dakota Utilities (MDU).
 
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