TWO More Certifications  to the existing long list.

        "Oracle Certified Master, Database Cloud Administrator"

       Oracle Certified Expert, Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administrator"

          

Cleared the following  exam  yesterday.

"Oracle Certified Expert, Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administrator"

By this  completed  all the required Exams for the following  certification.(This certification  is just launched by Oracle University)

"Oracle Certified Master, Database Cloud Administrator"

Given  below  are the list of  required exams (I completed) for this this credential.

1.Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Master.(Existing)

2. 1Z0-058 Oracle Certified Expert, Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administrator

3. 1Z0-028 Oracle Database Cloud Administration

 1Z0-058 Oracle Certified Expert, Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administrator   was found to be a bit tough  exam  and it seems this exam expect that matches  answers  as per the suggested exam prep class, not exactly as per how the stuff work !!!

Yet Another Exam 1Z0-028 Oracle Database Cloud Administration

1Z0-028 Oracle Database Cloud Administration , cleared this one.. Towards Oracle Certified Master, Database Cloud Administrator

One more Certification..1Z0-536 exadata

Cleared 1Z0-536 Exadata Essentials  to gain  the  credential Oracle Exadata 11g Certified Implementation Specialist.

It is not one among the  tough exams Oracle Certification program has.

My friend Porus Havewala’s first book on Oracle Enterprise Manager has been published:

http://www.rampant-books.com/book_1001_advanced_techniques_oem_grid_control.htm

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Advanced Techniques for the Real World

Finished OCM 11g

Got the result of OCM 11g exam (OCM 11g upgrade exam) after few weeks waiting. By clearing this one more OCM is added to my list of OCMs OCM(9i,10g and 11g) :)
It was pretty similar to 10g OCM exam in terms of effort and preparation required, only difference it is just one day as it is an upgrade exam for 10g OCMs.
Was great to know that was the first run of this exam, which is not available in production.
Topics for OCM 11g upgrade exam is already available in Oracle website. As per website,Exam also expected to available soon for public.

Data Dictionary corruption on noarchive log mode database - Is restore the only solution?

For any corruption case the first solution given( by even support) is to do a restore and recover or do an Rman Block media recovery(BMR). BMR is a feature I like very much !. In fact I have co-authored a note on metalink (Note 342972.1How to Do block media recovery when backups are not taken by rman) It was an out come of my experiments with RMAN and Backup and recovery in initial days in Oracle support- Co-authored with Ramkumar).

Ok all these things are good, if we are lucky to have backup and archive logs. What if we hit a data dictionary corruption when we are not that lucky to have them? Is it end of world? Definitely not. Here is a case I encountered last day.
Got a call from a friend and their 400GB database (noarchive log mode) got a block corruption. Issue was clarified as below after few iterations.
1) A query on one table fails with ORA-01578. The block which is being reports as corrupted is part of dependency$.
2) The ORA-1578 happens only when they use a synonym to access table.
3)Directly querying the table works well.
4)Attempt to drop the synonym also fails.
Ok so that make it clear that the corrupted block of dependency$ holds information for the synonym. Application is a packaged one and it is not possible to change the synonym it uses. (Otherwise simply we could have created another synonym and used that).

So what is the next solution? They are OK for any workaround. The DB will be refreshed from a production copy weeks later. So as long as the current issue is solved any further risk is acceptable. Good, then we can take any risk :)
Where is the name of synonym stored? Can we change it just there so that we would be able to create a new synonym with same original name?
Yes , possible. This is what we did finally..
Updated table obj$ to change name of synonym to originalname_old.
(Its a data dictionary update, which need to be followed by a commit and shutdown Abort)
That did the trick. They were able to create synonym with original name and application started functioning smoothly!!.

DBA Round Table ppt is uploaded to oracle site.

http://www.oracle.com/dm/09h2apac/how_one_record_cause_db_hang_pradeep_george.pdf