A System for Oracle Users and Privileges with Automatic Expiry Dates

Tired of tracking down all the users in the database to deactivate them when they cease to exist, or change roles, or fulfill their temporary need to the database? Or, tracking down privileges you granted to existing users at the end of their requested period? The solution is to think out of the box - developing a system that allows you to create a database user account with an expiration date. This fire-and-forget method allows you to create users with the assurance that they will be expired (locked or dropped) at the expiration date automatically, without your intervention. Interested? Read on how I developed such a system--along with source code for you to try.

My #OOW13 Session: Are Indexes Unnecessary in Exadata

Thanks to all those who came to my session "Are Indexes Unnecessary in Exadata" at Oracle Open World 2013. Considering it was late afternoon of the last day of the conference, especially after the appreciation concert, it was a pleasure to see a packed room. Judging by the interaction I had with the attendees afterwards, it was clear that the crowd was pretty serious about this topic. Thanks you very much. There is nothing more a speaker can ask for, at #oow13 or anywhere.

Here is the presentation material, if you want, in PDF format. Please feel to download and as always, your comments will be highly valuable. I will make it a blog post later.

Last Successful Login Time in SQL*Plus in Oracle 12c

If you have been working with Oracle 12c, you may have missed a little something that appeared without mush fanfare but has some powerful implications. Let's see it with a small example--connecting with SQL*Plus.

C:\> sqlplus arup/arup

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.1.0 Production on Mon Aug 19 14:17:45 2013

Copyright (c) 1982, 2013, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Last Successful login time: Mon Aug 19 2013 14:13:33 -04:00

Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

Did you note the line in red above?

Last Successful login time: Mon Aug 19 2013 14:13:33 -04:00

That line shows you when you last logged in successfully. The purpose of that little output is to alert you about the last time you (the user ARUP) logged in, very similar to the message you get after logging in to a unix session. If you didn't login earlier, this message will alert you for possible compromise of your account.

Suppression

What if you don't want to show this timestamp?

C:\> sqlplus -nologintime arup/arup

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.1.0 Production on Mon Aug 19 14:23:25 2013

Copyright (c) 1982, 2013, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:

Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.1.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

The login time has been suppressed, going back to the old behavior.

Scanned Copy of Oracle Magazine Article on Oracle 12c Multitenant

My article on Oracle Database 12c Multitenant feature (aka Pluggable Database) has been finally published, after being in the cold storage for about 6 months. You can read it on Oracle Magazine online, which is optimized for a web-presentation.

Here is a scanned copy of the article from the actual magazine. It may be easier to read. Hope you like it.

New York Oracle User Group Fall Conference Materials

Thank you all who attended my sessions at NYOUG Fall Conference this morning. I appreciate spending you most precious commodity - your time - with me. I sincerely hope you found both the presentations enlightening as well as entertaining.

Please see the details of the sessions below along with the download links.

Keynote: Oracle 12c Gee Whiz Features

Yet another Oracle version is out and so are about 1500 new features in a variety of areas. Some are well marketed (e.g. pluggable database or the multitenant option) and some shine by their sheer usefulness. And there are some that do not get a whole lot of coverage but are are hidden gems. In this session you learned 12 broad areas of Oracle Database 12c I feel are worth learning about to make your job as a DBA or developer better, easier, smoother and, in some cases, even make it possible what was hitherto impossible or impractical.

Download slides here and scripts here.

Big Data for Oracle DBAs

Have you ever considered the impact of Big Data on your career as database professionals? Or do you feel frustrated by the lack of a coherent set of explanations of various concepts like Hadoop, Hive, HDFS and Pig Latin - the essential vocabulary of  Big Data? If you did, then session was for you. In this, I explained the various concepts of Big Data - Hadoop, Hive, HDFS, etc. and explained how they relate to and contrast with modern relational database concepts.

Download the slides here.