The book is designed for technology architects and database administrators. Kratochvil plans to write another book which will will focus on developers and storage architects.

First chapter covers key concepts, later chapters cover technical details for database administrators.

Here is the list of the chapters:

1. What is Unstructured Data? First chapter defines unstructured data and explains why you need to store unstructured data in a relational database.
2. Understanding Digital Objects: Second chapter focuses on the definitions and terminologies widely used when working with digital objects.
3. The Multimedia Warehouse: This chapter focuses on data warehouse concepts when storing multimedia. multimedia warehouse structures, metadata standards, data types are explained.
4. Searching the Multimedia Warehouse: This chapter includes the different ways a multimedia database can be searched for multilingual data and how to represent the results.
5. Loading Techniques: This chapter covers loading methods and strategies for attaching metadata to digital objects.
6. Delivery Techniques: This chapter focues on managing digital rights on e-commerce while deliver digital objects (specially images) to customers.
7. Techniques for Creating a Multimedia Database: This chapter covers technical aspects such as multi-tier architecture, database configuration concepts, Oracle securefile, storage system (ASM, Raid, SSD, SANs, and NAS).
8. Tuning: This chapter covers tuning methodologies for an Oracle Database containing unstructured data.
9. Understanding the Limitations of Oracle Products: This chapter covers Oracle Database features, options, and add-ons which can be used to work with unstructured data.
10. Working with the Operating System: When the Oracle Database cannot handle a multimedia object, you need to handle it using external processing. This chapter describes the methods and techniques for working with the Unix and Windows operating systems.

The book contains very detailed information about unstructured data to help Database Administrator to understand fundamental concepts, challenges and methods of building a multimedia datawarehouse. It’s not for people who look for quick and step by step instructions to build a multimedia warehouse. If you want to go deeper on this subject, this is probably the best book in the market.

Overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Administration Cookbook eBook:

• Recipes for installing, configuring, and getting up and running with Oracle Enterprise Manager
• Set up automatic discovery, create and clone databases, and perform provisioning
• Monitor Oracle Fusion Middleware, and remotely use incident and problem management using iPad/iPhone

How to Enter?
Simply post your expectations from this book in comments section. You could be one of the 3 lucky participants to win the e-copy.

DeadLine:
The contest will close on April 12th, 2013. Winners will be contacted by email, so be sure to use your real email address when you comment!

Failed to create the host-only network interface.

VBoxNetAdpCtl: Error while adding new interface: 
failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl: No such file or directory.

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: HostNetworkInterface
Interface: IHostNetworkInterface {87a4153d-6889-4dd6-9654-2e9ff0ae8dec}

I haven’t seen this error before. I have checked if “/dev/vboxnetctl” exists, and unfortunately it doesn’t. It’s obvious that the “vboxnetctl” file should be a part of VirtualBox software but it wasn’t there. One of the good thing of VirtualBox is, you can do everything using command line. So I tried to add host-only network using command line, and this time I see “a warning message” before the error:

gokhan@genesis:~/Desktop$ sudo VBoxManage hostonlyif create

WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
         available for the current kernel (3.5.0-26-generic) or it failed to
         load. Please recompile the kernel module and install it by

           sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

         You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.
0%...
Progress state: NS_ERROR_FAILURE
VBoxManage: error: Failed to create the host-only adapter
VBoxManage: error: VBoxNetAdpCtl: Error while adding new interface: 
failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl: No such file or directory

As you see, vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded because it doesn’t work with the current kernel of my system. So I need to recompile vboxdrv kernel modules. When I run the “/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup”, I get another error because the kernel headers for my current kernel are not installed:

* Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                                    [ OK ] 
 * Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules                       [ OK ] 
 * Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS                  
Error! Your kernel headers for kernel 3.5.0-26-generic cannot be found.
Please install the linux-headers-3.5.0-26-generic package,
or use the --kernelsourcedir option to tell DKMS where it's located

 * Failed, trying without DKMS
 * Recompiling VirtualBox kernel modules                                        
 * Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out what went wrong

So I installed the kernel headers and re-compile VirtualBox kernel modules:

gokhan@genesis:~/Desktop$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.5.0-26-generic
...
gokhan@genesis:~/Desktop$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
 * Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                                    [ OK ] 
 * Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules                       [ OK ] 
 * Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS           [ OK ] 
 * Starting VirtualBox kernel modules                                    [ OK ]

After the kernel modules started, I re-tried to add “Add Host-Only Network” and it worked successfully.

The authors of the book (Dhananjay Papde, Tushar Nath and Vipul Patel) are experienced on Oracle Fusion Middleware, so you’ll also be able to find the integration of Oracle Fusion Middleware products such as Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher and Oracle WebLogic. The book also covers recipes on Incident and Problem Management using iPhone or iPad, and there are recipes for creating and cloning databases and creating templates.

List of the chapters:

1. Prerequisites of OEM 12c Installation: This chapter covers hardware and OS requirements (user and groups, packages, kernel parameters), installing the Oracle 11gR2 RDBMS software and creating OEM repository database.
2. Installation of OEM 12c: You will see how to install Enterprise Manager System with Simple and Advanced configuration options. This chapter also covers various Agent deployment methods.
3. Upgrade to OEM 12c: If you want to upgrade your OEM 10g/11g to OEM 12c, this chapter shows how to upgrade using the 1-system and the 2-system upgrade approach.
4. Configuring OEM 12c: Automatic discovery, promoting discovered targets, adding host (and non-hosts) targets manually, configuring a software Library are shown in this chapter.
5. Managing Oracle Database Using OEM 12c: This chapter explains how to configure a database target, create database templates and creating Oracle Database clones and provisioning Oracle Database software.
6. Managing Database Performance Using OEM 12c: This chapter shows how to use Active Session History Analytics, the Real-Time ADDM and compare period reports.
7. Middleware Management Using OEM 12c: You can find the required information to manage Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle GoldenGate and Weblogic Server targets using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.
8. Incident and Problem Management Using an iDevice: This chapter explains how to set up OEM12c and use incident management on an iDevice (iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad).

In ebook PDF version, the screen images are blur. I think Packt can fix this if you contact them. I prefer to read the books on ipad, and the screen images are readable in epub (ipad) version. On the other hand, all steps are detailed so it’s easy to follow the instructions and complete the tasks.

I recommend all Enterprise Manager users to buy “Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Administration Cookbook“.

Here’s the SQL script (rmanfind.sql) to query RMAN backups. Our customer takes archive log backups during the day, so I needed to state full backup jobs while querying.

SET HEA OFF
SET FEED OFF
SET LINES 500
SET PAGES 500
SET TRIM ON

SELECT handle
from V$BACKUP_PIECE
where rman_Status_stamp IN (
select  stamp from V$RMAN_STATUS where parent_stamp =
 (SELECT session_stamp
from V$RMAN_BACKUP_JOB_DETAILS
where start_time =
(select max(start_time) from 
V$RMAN_BACKUP_JOB_DETAILS where input_type = 'DB FULL')));

The bash script (rmanftp.sh) can divided to 3 parts. In first part, the required credentials and environment variables are defined. On second part, rmanfind.sql is called. On last part, the resultset is processed and files are uploaded via FTP:

#!/bin/bash

#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# rmanftp (C) 2013 Gokhan Atil http://www.gokhanatil.com
#---------------------------------------------------------------------

# Required Info to Connect Oracle
. oraenv <<EOF
ORCL
EOF
ORACLE_CREDENTIALS=gokhan/atil

# Required Info to Connect FTP Server
TARGETSERVER=192.168.0.10
FTPUSER=oracle
FTPPASS=oracle
TARGETDIR=DAILY_BACKUP

# Query Latest Backup
SENDFILES=(`$ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus -s $ORACLE_CREDENTIALS @rmanfind.sql`)

COUNT=${#SENDFILES[*]}
IDX=0
SENDTHEMALL=''

while (( $IDX < $COUNT ))
do
LOCALPATH=`echo ${SENDFILES[$IDX]} | sed 's|\(.*\)/.*|\1|'`
FILENAME=`echo ${SENDFILES[$IDX]} | sed 's|.*/\(.*\)|\1|'`
SENDTHEMALL="${SENDTHEMALL}lcd $LOCALPATH\n"
SENDTHEMALL="${SENDTHEMALL}put $FILENAME\n"
IDX=$(($IDX+1))
done

# Convert Newlines to Enters?
FTPCMD=`echo -e $SENDTHEMALL`

# Upload Files
ftp -d -n $TARGETSERVER <<EOF
user $FTPUSER $FTPPASS
cd $TARGETDIR
bin
$FTPCMD
bye
EOF

Here are the important parts of the script:

Line 20: The resultset returned from SQL Plus is put into an array variable. Be careful about the brackets.
Line 22: How many rows we have?
Line 26: A while loop starts here to processes all rows in the result set.
Line 30-31: I extract the path and file name because ftp client does not support full path names. So I create “cd” and “put” commands for each backup piece.
Line 36: SENDTHEMALL variable has newline (\n) characters but when I put it directly to EOF block, these newline characters are not honored, so I call “echo -e” and assign the result to FTPCMD variable.
Line 43: FTPCMD contains ftp commands such as “lcd XXXXX put YYYYY”.

Anyway, in this blog post, I’ll describe how to manually remove Enterprise Manager Grid/Cloud Control Agent and then enable Enterprise Manager Database Control on the target system. First we need to stop the agent:

$AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl stop agent

If your Cloud Control is up, we need to remove agent. Login as oracle user and run the following commands:

emcli login -username=SYSMAN
emcli sync
emcli delete_target -name="targetsystem.testdomain.com:1836" \
-type="oracle_emd" -delete_monitored_targets

If you have Grid Control 10g/11g, then login to the repository database as SYSMAN and execute the following:

exec mgmt_admin.cleanup_agent('targetsystem.testdomain.com:3872');

Now we’re ready to uninstall the agent software. Run the installer:

export ORACLE_HOME=export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/agent/core/12.1.0.2.0
$ORACLE_HOME/oui/bin/runInstaller -deinstall -removeallfiles

Click “deinstall products..” button to see Inventory (installed Oracle products on the server). For Grid Control Agents, all you need is to select agent home and click “Remove”. For Cloud Control Agents, you need to first select and remove plug-in homes (OraHome1..5), then select and remove sbin12cX home, and lastly select and remove agent home.

After we uninstall the agent, we’re ready to reconfigure Enterprise Manager Database Control. All you need is to run the following command. It will ask us to enter some information such as the Database SID, listener port number, passwords of SYS, DBSNMP and SYSMAN users:

emca -config dbcontrol db -repos recreate

After a few minutes, you’ll see that Database Control is up.

Let’s say we’ll create a group named “oinstall” and a user named “oracle” belongs to this group, and install the agent software to “/u01/agent”. Login as root user and issue the following commands:

[root@targetsystem ~]# groupadd oinstall
[root@targetsystem ~]# useradd -g oinstall oracle
[root@targetsystem ~]# passwd oracle
[root@targetsystem ~]# mkdir -p /u01/agent
[root@targetsystem ~]# chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01/agent

Of course, I assume that you don’t have oracle user and oinstall group, and there’s no directory named “/u01/agent”. Instead of creating new user, group and directory, you can use an existing user, group and directory (if the directory is empty). Do not forget to check if OMS and target system can resolve each other’s host name!

Login to the OMS host as oracle user (again I assume you used oracle to install OMS), and log in to OEM using emcli:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli login -username=sysman

Oracle documents sugget us to synchronize EMCLI:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli sync

List the platforms for which the Management Agent software is available on the OMS host:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli get_supported_platforms
Getting list of platforms ...
Check the logs at /u01/app/Middleware/gc_inst/em/EMGC_OMS1/.../.emcli/agent.log
About to access self-update code path to retrieve the platforms list..
Getting Platforms list  ...
-----------------------------------------------
Version = 12.1.0.2.0
Platform = Linux x86-64
-----------------------------------------------
Platforms list displayed successfully.

Create the installation package for the Management Agent software in a directory on the OMS host:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli get_agentimage \
-destination=/home/oracle -platform="Linux x86-64" -version=12.1.0.2.0

You’ll have a new file in the destination directory. Its name will be something like 12.1.0.2.0_AgentCore_XXX.zip. Transfer this file to the target system. You may use ftp, scp or put that file to a shared directory and copy to target system. Then extract the zip file (on target system):

[oracle@targetsystem ~]$ unzip 12.1.0.2.0_AgentCore_226.zip -d agentsetup
Archive:  12.1.0.2.0_AgentCore_226.zip
  inflating: agentsetup/unzip
  inflating: agentsetup/agentDeploy.sh
  inflating: agentsetup/agentimage.properties
  inflating: agentsetup/agent.rsp
 extracting: agentsetup/agentcoreimage.zip
 extracting: agentsetup/12.1.0.2.0_PluginsOneoffs_226.zip

Enter the agentsetup directory and edit the agent response file:

[oracle@targetsystem ~]$ cd agentsetup
[oracle@targetsystem agentsetup]$ vi agent.rsp

Modify the response file according to your OMS configuration:

OMS_HOST=cloudcontrol12.gokhanatil.com
EM_UPLOAD_PORT=4900
AGENT_REGISTRATION_PASSWORD=<registration_password>
AGENT_INSTANCE_HOME=/u01/agent
AGENT_PORT=3872
b_startAgent=true
ORACLE_HOSTNAME=targetsystem.gokhanatil.com
s_agentHomeName="agent12gR2"

Run the agentDeploy.sh script to deploy the agent:

./agentDeploy.sh RESPONSE_FILE=/home/oracle/agentsetup/agent.rsp \
AGENT_BASE_DIR=/u01/agent

After the script is completed successfully, open a new terminal window, login as “root” and run the configuration script (the location of the script is written in the output of agentDeploy.sh):

[root@targetsystem ~]#  /u01/agent/core/12.1.0.2.0/root.sh
Finished product-specific root actions.

You can check the agent’s status:

[oracle@targetsystem agentsetup]$ /u01/agent/core/12.1.0.2.0/bin/emctl status agent
Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2
Copyright (c) 1996, 2012 Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Agent Version     : 12.1.0.2.0
OMS Version       : 12.1.0.2.0
Protocol Version  : 12.1.0.1.0
Agent Home        : /u01/agent
Agent Binaries    : /u01/agent/core/12.1.0.2.0
Agent Process ID  : 14620
Parent Process ID : 14578
Agent URL         : https://targetsystem.gokhanatil.com:3872/emd/main/
Repository URL    : https://cloudcontrol12.gokhanatil.com:4900/empbs/upload
Started at        : 2012-10-12 06:10:12
Started by user   : oracle
Last Reload       : (none)
Last successful upload                       : 2012-10-12 06:12:57
Last attempted upload                        : 2012-10-12 06:12:57
Total Megabytes of XML files uploaded so far : 0.01
Number of XML files pending upload           : 0
Size of XML files pending upload(MB)         : 0
Available disk space on upload filesystem    : 89.15%
Collection Status                            : Collections enabled
Heartbeat Status                             : Ok
Last attempted heartbeat to OMS              : 2012-10-12 06:13:26
Last successful heartbeat to OMS             : 2012-10-12 06:13:26
Next scheduled heartbeat to OMS              : 2012-10-12 06:14:26

---------------------------------------------------------------
Agent is Running and Ready

First, you need to create “/usr/lib/oracle” on OMS server (if there is no such a directory). Login as root user and run the following commands:

[root@cloudcontrol12 ~]# mkdir /usr/lib/oracle
[root@cloudcontrol12 ~]# chmod 777 /usr/lib/oracle

Install the rpm-build package on the OMS host:

[root@cloudcontrol12 ~]# yum install rpm-build

Switch to oracle user, and login to OEM using emcli as SYSMAN user:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli login -username=sysman

List the platforms for which the Management Agent software is available on the OMS host:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli get_supported_platforms
Getting list of platforms ...
Check the logs at /u01/app/Middleware/gc_inst/em/EMGC_OMS1/sysman/.../agent.log
About to access self-update code path to retrieve the platforms list..
Getting Platforms list  ...
-----------------------------------------------
Version = 12.1.0.2.0
Platform = Linux x86-64
-----------------------------------------------
Platforms list displayed successfully.

As you see, there’s only Linux x86-64 agent available. Let’s create and download the RPM file for it:

[oracle@cloudcontrol12 ~]$ /u01/app/Middleware/oms/bin/emcli get_agentimage_rpm \
-destination=/home/oracle -platform="Linux x86-64" -version=12.1.0.2.0
…
Agent Image copied successfully...
Creation of RPM started...
RPM creation successful.
Agent image to rpm conversion completed successfully

Now we can copy the RPM to the target system to deploy the agent. I assume that you have already created a user for agent.

$ scp oracle-agt-12.1.0.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm oracle@targetsystem:.
oracle@targetsystem's password:
oracle-agt-12.1.0.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm           55%  124MB  14.2MB/s   00:08 ETA

Login as root to the target system and install the RPM:

[root@targetsystem ~]# cd /home/oracle
[root@targetsystem ~]# rpm –i oracle-agt-12.1.0.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm

When it’s done, you need to edit /usr/lib/oracle/agent/agent.properties file, enter the required values:

OMS_HOST=cloudcontrol12.gokhanatil.com
OMS_PORT=7799
AGENT_REGISTRATION_PASSWORD=<registration_password>
AGENT_USERNAME=<user_created_for_agent>
AGENT_GROUP=<group_created_for_agent>
AGENT_PORT=3872
ORACLE_HOSTNAME=targetsystem.gokhanatil.com

Save the file and run /etc/init.d/oracle-agt:

# /etc/init.d/oracle-agt RESPONSE_FILE=/usr/lib/oracle/agent/agent.properties

That’s all, now you can check if agent is running:

$ /usr/lib/oracle/agent/core/12.1.0.2.0/bin/emctl status agent
Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2
Copyright (c) 1996, 2012 Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Agent Version     : 12.1.0.2.0
OMS Version       : 12.1.0.2.0
Protocol Version  : 12.1.0.1.0
Agent Home        : /usr/lib/oracle/agent/agent_inst
Agent Binaries    : /usr/lib/oracle/agent/core/12.1.0.2.0
Agent Process ID  : 5323
Parent Process ID : 5283

Oracle recommends to use Java 1.6 for SQL Developer so instead of trying Java 1.7, I tried to find the latest compatible version of jTDS and luckily I found it on my first try. So to fix the problem, all you need is to download and use 1.2.7 version of jTDS: jtds-1.2.7-dist.zip

Then you’ll be able to connect to Ms SQL Server or Sybase with your Oracle SQL Developer. For more information about using SQL Developer with Ms SQL Server and MySQL, please read my related blog post.

First we need to stop OMS:

/oracle/Middleware/oms11g/bin/emctl stop oms -all

Then modify the port information in repository:

/oracle/Middleware/oms11g/bin/emctl set property -name \
oracle.sysman.emSDK.svlt.ConsoleServerHTTPSPort -value 2000
/oracle/Middleware/oms11g/bin/emctl set property -name \
oracle.sysman.emSDK.svlt.EMConsoleServerHTTPSPort -value 8000

Modify the ports in the configuration files (/oracle/gc_inst/em/EMGC_OMS1/emgc.properties):

Change values of EM_CONSOLE_HTTPS_PORT (Oracle Enterprise Manager web console port) and EM_UPLOAD_HTTPS_PORT (upload port used by agents)

EM_CONSOLE_HTTPS_PORT=8000
EM_UPLOAD_HTTPS_PORT=2000

Edit SSL configuration of Apache (/oracle/gc_inst/WebTierIH1/config/OHS/ohs1/ssl.conf ) and find “Listen 7799″ and “VirtualHost *:7799″ and enter new port numbers:

# OHS Listen Port
Listen 8000

<VirtualHost *:8000>

Edit SSL configuration of EM Upload service (/oracle/gc_inst/WebTierIH1/config/OHS/ohs1/httpd_em.conf), find the following lines:

<IfDefine SSL>
    Listen 1159
    <VirtualHost *:1159>

and enter new port numbers:

<IfDefine SSL>
    Listen 2000
    <VirtualHost *:2000>

Now you can start OMS. Of course you also need to modify agent configuration if you change upload ports. The agent configuration file can be found at $AGENT_INSTANCE_HOME/sysman/config/emd.properties. Open it and search for REPOSITORY_URL.

Modify its value according to your new OMS upload port:

REPOSITORY_URL=https://gridcontrol11.gokhanatil.com:2000/em/upload