4 Installing Oracle Database

4.1.1 Installation Consideration on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Later

On Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and later versions command prompts should be opened with Administrator privileges.

4.1.2 Performing Multiple Oracle Database Installations

If you must perform multiple installations of Oracle Database, then you may want to use either of the following methods to install Oracle Database:

• Response files: At each node, you run Oracle Universal Installer from the command line using silent or response file mode and you supply a response file to provide information Oracle Universal Installer needs. The response file is a text file containing the settings you normally enter in the Oracle Universal Installer GUI dialog boxes.

  See Also:

  Appendix C, "Installing and Configuring Oracle Database Using Response Files"

• Cloning the Oracle home of an existing Oracle Database installation: With this method, you install one instance of Oracle Database, and then clone its Oracle home for each additional installation.

  See Also:

  "Cloning an Oracle Home"

4.1.3 Installing on Systems That Already Have Oracle Components

Follow these steps when other components exist on your computer:

1. Log on as a member of the Administrators group for the computer on which you want to install Oracle components.

   If you are installing on a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or a Backup Domain Controller (BDC), log on as a member of the Domain Administrators group.

2. Delete the ORACLE_HOME environment variable if it exists. See the Microsoft online help for more information about deleting environment variables.

   Note:

   The ORACLE_HOME environment variable is automatically set in the registry. Manually setting this variable prevents installation.

3. Back up any databases you must upgrade. Review "Upgrade Considerations" for more information.

4.1.4 Installing with Minimum Memory Requirements

Installations of Oracle Database on computers with RAM and virtual memory lesser than the minimum required have the following limitations:

• Computers cannot run Oracle Database Upgrade Assistant, Oracle Database Configuration Assistant, or Oracle Net Services Configuration Assistant during an Oracle Universal Installer installation session.

• Depending on how many applications run on the computer, you must further increase the paging file size or reduce the size of the System Global Area (SGA) if you run out of virtual memory. If temporary files and the paging file are both stored on the same physical drive, the space requirements for one may limit the size of another. If your system has limited free space, first install the Oracle Database software. After the installation is finished, create a database with Oracle Database Configuration Assistant.

You can install only the database software by selecting the Install Database Software only option provided on the Select Installation Option screen.

After installation, run the appropriate configuration assistant for your needs:

• To create a new database, run Oracle Database Configuration Assistant. From the Start menu, select All Programs, then Oracle - HOME_NAME, then Configuration and Migration Tools, then Database Configuration Assistant.

• To upgrade an existing database, run Oracle Database Upgrade Assistant. From the Start menu, select All Programs, then Oracle - HOME_NAME, then Configuration and Migration Tools, then Database Upgrade Assistant.

4.2.1 Selecting the Database Character Set

Oracle Database uses the database character set for:

• Data stored in SQL character datatypes (CHAR, VARCHAR2, CLOB, and LONG).

• Identifiers such as table names, column names, and PL/SQL variables.

• Stored SQL and PL/SQL source code, including text literals embedded in this code.

Once a database is created, changing its character set is usually very expensive in terms of time and resources. Such operation may require converting all character data by exporting the whole database and importing it back. Therefore, it is important that you carefully select the database character set at installation time.

Oracle recommends Unicode AL32UTF8 as the database character set. Unicode is the universal character set that supports most of the currently spoken languages of the world. It also supports many historical scripts (alphabets). Unicode is the native encoding of many technologies, including Java, XML, XHTML, ECMAScript, LDAP. Unicode is ideally suited for databases supporting the Internet and the global economy.

As AL32UTF8 is a multibyte character set, database operations on character data may be slightly slower when compared to single-byte database character sets, such as WE8MSWIN1252. Storage space requirements for text in most languages that use characters outside of the ASCII repertoire are higher in AL32UTF8 compared to legacy character sets supporting the language. The increase in storage space concerns only character data and only data that is not in English. The universality and flexibility of Unicode usually outweighs these additional costs.

Legacy character sets should be considered when compatibility, storage requirements, or performance of text processing is critical and the database supports only a single group of languages. The database character set to be selected in such case is the character set of most clients connecting to this database.

The default character set suggested or used by Oracle Universal Installer and Database Configuration Assistant in this release is based on the language configuration of the operating system.

For most languages, the default character set is one of the Microsoft Windows character sets, for example WE8MSWIN1252. It is noteworthy that the same default is used by the database installation process on UNIX-based platforms. This results from the assumption that most clients connecting to the database run under the Microsoft Windows operating system. As the database should be able to store all characters coming from the clients and Microsoft Windows character sets have richer character repertoire than the corresponding ISO 8859 character sets, the Microsoft Windows character sets are usually the better choice. For example, the EE8MSWIN1250 character set supports the Euro currency symbol and various smart quote characters, while the corresponding EE8ISO8859P2 character set does not support them. In any case, Oracle converts the data between the database character set and the client character sets, which are declared by the NLS_LANG settings.

The list of database character sets that is presented to you for selection by Oracle Universal Installer contains only the recommended character sets. Even though Oracle Database supports many more character sets, they are either deprecated or they are binary subsets of another recommended character set. For example, WE8DEC is a deprecated character set and US7ASCII and WE8ISO8859P1 are both binary subsets of WE8MSWIN1252.

If, for compatibility reasons, you must create a database in one of the non-recommended character sets, choose the Advanced database configuration option. Database Configuration Assistant in the interactive mode gives you the opportunity to select any of the database character sets supported on Windows.

4.2.2 Using an Oracle Automatic Storage Management Disk Group

This section is optional and describes how to identify disk groups and determine the free disk space that they contain. You can store either database or recovery files in an existing Oracle Automatic Storage Management disk group that you created during the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

To determine whether an existing Oracle Automatic Storage Management disk group exists, or to determine whether there is sufficient disk space in a disk group, use the following procedure:

1. In the Services Control Panel, ensure that the OracleASMService+ASM service has started.

2. Open command prompt and temporarily set the ORACLE_SID environment variable to specify the appropriate value for the Oracle Automatic Storage Management instance.

   For example, if the Oracle Automatic Storage Management SID, which is named +ASM, is located in the asm directory, you would enter the following setting:

   DRIVE_LETTER:\>set ORACLE_SID=+ASM
   

3. Connect to the Oracle Automatic Storage Management instance as the SYS user with the SYSASM privilege and start the instance if necessary:

   DRIVE_LETTER:\>sqlplus /nolog
   SQL> CONNECT SYS as SYSASM
   Enter password: SYS_password 
   SQL> STARTUP
   

4. Enter the following command to view the existing disk groups, their redundancy level, and the amount of free disk space in each one:

   SQL> SELECT NAME,TYPE,TOTAL_MB,FREE_MB FROM V$ASM_DISKGROUP;
   

5. From the output, identify a disk group with the appropriate redundancy level and note the free space that it contains.

6. If necessary, install, or identify the additional disk devices required to meet the storage requirements listed in the previous section.

   Note:

   If you are adding devices to an existing disk group, then Oracle recommends that you use devices that have the same size and performance characteristics as the existing devices in that disk group.

4.3.1 Installing from a Remote DVD Drive

If the computer where you want to install Oracle Database does not have a DVD drive, you can perform the installation from a remote DVD drive. You must complete the following steps:

• Step 1: On the Remote Computer, Share the DVD Drive

• Step 2: On the Local Computer, Map the DVD Drive

4.3.2 Installing on Remote Computers Through Remote Access Software

If you want to install and run Oracle Database on a remote computer (that is, the remote computer has the hard drive and runs Oracle Database components), but you do not have physical access to the computer, you still can perform the installation on the remote computer if it is running remote access software such as VNC or Symantec pcAnywhere. You also need the remote access software running on your local computer.

You can install Oracle Database on the remote computer in one of two ways:

• If you have copied the contents of the Oracle Database DVD to a hard drive, you can install the software from the hard drive.

• You can insert the DVD into a drive on your local computer, and install the software from the DVD.

4.3.3 Downloading Oracle Software

You can download the trial version of the installation files from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) or Oracle Software Delivery Cloud Web site and extract them on your hard disk. Ensure that you completely review and understand the terms of the license. Most downloads include the Development License. This section contains the following topics:

• Downloading the Installation Archive Files from Oracle Technology Network

• Downloading the Software from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud

• Extracting the Installation Files

4.3.4 Copying the Oracle Database Software to a Hard Disk

To copy the contents of the installation media to a hard disk:

1. Create a directory on your hard drive. For example:

   C:\> mkdir \install
   C:\> mkdir \install\database
   

2. Copy the contents of the installation media to the directory that you just created.

3. After you have copied all of the required installation files, see the "Installing the Oracle Database Software" section.

4.6.1 Cloning an Oracle Home

Perform the following steps to clone an Oracle home:

1. Ensure that the Oracle Database installation whose home you want to clone has been successful.

   You can check the success of the installation by reviewing the installActionsdate_time.log file for the installation session, which is normally located in the C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory\logs directory.

   If you have installed patches, you can check their status by running the following commands at a command prompt:

   C:\ORACLE_HOME\OPatch> set ORACLE_HOME=ORACLE_HOME_using_patch
   C:\ORACLE_HOME\OPatch> opatch lsinventory
   

2. Stop the Oracle-related services on this computer.

   You can stop Oracle services by using one of the following methods:

   • Oracle Administration Assistant for Windows: From the Start menu, select All Programs, then Oracle - HOME_NAME, then Configuration and Migration Tools, then Administrative Assistant for Windows, then Oracle Managed Objects, then Computers, and then machine-name. Select Databases, then right-click global database name, select Stop Service.

     Note:

     Choose Startup/Shutdown Options to control whether a database instance should be stopped along with the service.

   • Microsoft Windows Services utility: From the Start menu, select Control Panel, then Administrative Tools, then Services. Right-click any service that begins with Oracle, and then from the menu, select Stop.

3. Create a ZIP file with the Oracle home (but not Oracle base) directory, selecting the Save full path info option.

   For example, if the source Oracle installation is in C:\app\username\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1, you zip the dbhome_1 directory, leaving out the admin, flash_recovery_area, and oradata directories that are under 11.2.0. These directories are created in the target installation later on when you create a new database there.

4. Copy the ZIP file to the root directory of the target computer.

5. Extract the ZIP file contents, selecting the Use folder names option.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each computer where you want to clone the Oracle home, unless the Oracle home is on a shared storage device.

7. In the source Oracle home, restart the services that you stopped in step 2.

8. On the target computer, cd to the unzipped Oracle home directory, and perform the following steps:

   1. Remove the *.ora files that are present in unzipped ORACLE_HOME\network\admin directory, such as listener.ora, sqlnet.ora, and tnsnames.ora.

   2. From the clone\bin directory, run clone.pl for the unzipped Oracle home. Use the following syntax:

      C:\ORACLE_HOME\clone\bin>%ORACLE_HOME%\perl\bin\per.exe clone.pl
      ORACLE_HOME="target location" ORACLE_BASE="target Base location"
      -defaultHomeName 
      

      For example:

      C:\ORACLE_HOME\clone\bin> clone.pl 
       ORACLE_HOME="C:\app\username\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1" -defaultHomeName
      ORACLE_BASE="C:\app\username"
      

   Oracle Universal Installer starts, and then records the cloning actions in the cloneActionstimestamp.log file. This log file is normally located in C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory\logs.

9. To configure connection information for the new database, run Net Configuration Assistant.

   To start Net Configuration Assistant, select Start, then All Programs, then Oracle - HOME_NAME, then Configuration and Migration Tools, and then Net Configuration Assistant.

10. To create a new database for the newly cloned Oracle home, run Oracle Database Configuration Assistant.

    To start Oracle Database Configuration Assistant, select Start, then All Programs, then Oracle - HOME_NAME, then Configuration and Migration Tools, and then Database Configuration Assistant.

4.6.2 Configuring Oracle Configuration Manager in a Cloned Oracle Home

Perform the following steps to configure Oracle Configuration Manager for a cloned Oracle home:

1. Run the following command from ORACLE_HOME\ccr\state:

   del *.ll*
   

2. Run the following command from ORACLE_HOME:

   copy ccr\inventory\core.jar ccr\inventory\pending
   

3. Run these commands from ORACLE_HOME\ccr\bin:

   emSnapshotEnv
   deployPackages
   

4. If new credentials are needed, run this command from ORACLE_HOME\ccr\bin.

   configCCR
   

If Oracle Configuration Manager was manually configured using setupCCR, then perform the following in the cloned Oracle home:

1. Delete all the subdirectories of the ORACLE_HOME\ccr\hosts directory to remove the previously configured hosts.

2. Run the following command from ORACLE_HOME\ccr\bin:

   configCCR -a
   

If you have installed Oracle Configuration Manager in the original Oracle home but have not configured it, then run the following command in the cloned Oracle home to configure it:

setupCCR