23. May 2008 by Bennett.

You can use the PL-SQL to_char function to format the output of SYSDATE like this:

select to_char(sysdate,’DD/MM/YYYY HH24:MI:SS’) from dual;

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7. May 2008 by Bennett.

I used several books to study for the ICCP DBA exam including:

• Modern Database Management, 8th Edition by Hoffer, Prescott and McFadden
• Database Systems: Design, Implementation & Management 6th Edition by Rob and Coronel
• Database Administration: The complete Guide to Practices and Procedures by Craig S. Mullins
• An Introduction to Database Systems 5th Editon by C.J. Date

Of these, Modern Database Management was my favorite. Chapter 6 of this book covers physical database design and performance. There is a section in this book that has guideline for improving query performance. Here are a few of the  recommendations:

• Use compatible data types, i.e., avoid type conversions
• Write simple queries
• Break complex queries into multiple, simple parts
• Don’t nest one query inside another (just because you can use a subquery doesn’t always mean that you should)
• Don’t combine a table with itself, i.e. avoid self-joins.
• Create temporary tables for groups of queries.

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4. May 2008 by Bennett.

Today while applying patches to a couple of mission-critical servers, I was reminded of something:  reboots issued through the terminal services client are not always successful.  The server can get stuck in an odd state where it is running but terminal services is not working.  For me the workaround has been to issue a remote reboot command using the shutdown utility:

shutdown /r  /m \\server_name_to_reboot /t 0  /f

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