1. What, When, Why, Where and How SCC maintains your Oracle database
Oracle Database Q&A
What, When, Why, Where and How SCC maintains your Oracle database

2. Paul Roberts; Soft Computer Database Administration
Soft Computer database administrator for 7 years
Full life cycle development experience in Information Technology for over 30 years
Vice President Suncoast Oracle Users Group for 5 years
Father for 31 years, grandfather for 4 ½
Second time SNUG presenter

3. Oracle Database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
This session will discuss SCC Oracle DBA Procedures, including:
Why Oracle?
When can things get done?
Where are the people who work on my database?
How do things interact?
What can I do?
And other topics.

4. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
Why do we use Oracle databases in the first place?
Oracle databases allow state of the art security.
Oracle databases increase the ability to scale the data and applications.
Oracle databases are the gold standard for reliability of data storage platforms.

5. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
When is support available for routine maintenance activities?
Basic maintenance is generally scheduled during normal business hours at the location where the work will be performed.
For most activity, this will be from 3:00AM EST to 5:00PM EST.

6. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
When is support available for emergency maintenance activities?
SCC offers emergency Oracle database support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

7. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
Where is my database supported?
SCC has offices in Florida, Canada, Ukraine and Poland.
Most database support occurs during the normal office hours for the Florida and European locations.
Some support is done by on call personnel during evening hours.

8. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
When can routine maintenance be done without off hours support charge?
Generally between 3:00AM EST and 5:00PM EST.

9. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
What happens to my system if I can't take a patch or an upgrade?
There is a potential for emergency patches or upgrades if the database fails. Most true emergency situations involve a system failure of some kind. In this case, we would patch the database software to get the system to resume proper function.

10. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
How do my operating system, application software and Oracle database depend on each other?
The developers of each of these products create, test and certify their products to work with a range of other products.
In some cases, older products of one brand will not work properly with newer products of another.

11. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
What can I to do to help the database support process?
The biggest thing you can do is to help make sure the backup process is working properly and timely. The most important thing we need to know is that we can recover the data stored in the database in the event of catastrophic failure.
Verify the system after maintenance.

12. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
How do I need to validate my system after database maintenance?
Patches will not require validation other than to see that errors stop occurring.
Upgrades require reviewing functionality to ensure that the application still works as it did before the upgrade.

13. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
How do you decide which Oracle database is right for my needs?
We work to keep the Oracle databases updated to the latest version and patch level.
We will generally offer upgrades when the system is being upgraded for applications, when hardware is upgraded, or when we discover a deficiency that needs to be corrected.

14. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
What does it cost me for all this upgrading?
The Oracle license maintenance contract provides for using any version of Oracle database software. This allows us to upgrade without charge.
The SCC Support and recovery contract provides for the work of applying upgrades.

15. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
What happens if SCC can't figure out what is wrong with my database?
We have partner level support with Oracle corporation, up to and including the ability to ask Oracle corporation to make certain changes to the database code based on errors that occur within the database itself.
We have partner level support with IBM to determine non database root cause issues.

16. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
In summary, the sun never sets on SCC’s Database Administration support.
Routine work happens during regular hours.
SCC DBA works to keep your Oracle database current.
SCC partners with Oracle corporation and IBM to offer the best technical strength available in the industry.

17. Oracle database Q&A Paul Roberts; SCC DBA
Questions?
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