It can be hard enough just getting the support you need from a vendor. One reader recently found himself needing help from Oracle support to help him deal with Oracle support.
"I have been working on what should be a very simple Oracle 10g problem now for two months," a reader wrote recently. "In the past, Oracle simply allowed you to turn on archiving or keep it off by default. That's still true with 10g, but once you turn it on, watch out. Oracle now includes statistical gathering and includes this data in their archiving. So if you simply install Oracle 10g and turn on archiving and walk away, with no users are using the database, every two or so hours you will generate a ten MB archive log with statistical information. With Oracle's help, I was able to turn off all scheduled jobs off that come as default with 10g. But I still get 10 MB statistical archives being generated, and Oracle has no idea what's going on."
After he was several weeks into trying to solve the problem, he found himself having to use Oracle support tools that were themselves hard to master. "Oracle wanted me to dump out the data from these archive logs, so they had me use their 'Logminer' function to do so," the reader wrote. "After reading up on Logminer, I spent hours trying to get it to work. I failed. So I had to get help from Oracle to show me how to set up the archive dumps. They were kind enough to walk me through the process. So now each time one support rep asks me for an archive log dump, I have another support rep assisting me in developing the scripts to dump the archives out."
The reader's travails weren't made easier by some of the other support tools that were supposed to help him. "Oracle's Metalink has also not been as useful as I would have hoped," he wrote. "When first asked to use Logminer, I was given a 'note number' to read for directions. It was very difficult just to find the note in Metalink, and the instructions were not at all clear. At the same time, I will say that when they were assisting me, I did find their 'Collaborative Support' very helpful."
At last report, the reader said that Oracle was still analyzing the problem. "I have been on this issue to how to turn off statistical gathering in the archives now for over two months, with some short breaks for them and me," the reader wrote. "I find it hard to believe that Oracle would include statistical gathering information in an archive. They should have separated this function into another file/area and keep archiving for backup purposes only."
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