Chapter 1. Simple Jobs

For this book, I carried out an out of the box installation on Enterprise Linux with the Oracle-validated package applied to it. I made a simple database using DBCA, complete with sample schemas and DB Console. For storage, I made use of an NAS and openfiler on a separate installation presented as iSCSI targets.

Let's get started with simple jobs.

Simple jobs are the jobs that can easily be created using DB Console with little or no extra object creations required. The quickest way to get you started is by making the database perform actions for you. A simple job is not the same as a useless job. Far from that, many tasks can be performed using simple jobs. Sometimes we can go back and use easy, single-step jobs rather than using advanced jobs based on complicated rules.

The DB Console does provide some support for the Scheduler, which can be used for simple tasks. However, for more elaborate things we need to use a PL/SQL editor. Any PL/SQL-capable tool will do. If you like, use SQL*Plus, SQL Developer, DbVisualizer, or TOAD for a Windows-centric client. Let's start using DB Console and see what this gives us.

This chapter covers:

• Creation of a user who can handle the tasks

• A job that runs PL/SQL code

• A job that can start a stored procedure

• A job that runs an executable

Creating a user

When working with simple jobs, our basic need is to create a user. In DB Console, there is a default user sysman. We can use this or the user system. However, it is better to create a dedicated user for different tasks. This prevents us from giving too many privileges to jobs and maintains auditability. So, let's first create a normal user who does the work for us:

create user marvin identified by panic;
grant create session, create job to marvin;
grant select any dictionary to marvin;
create user stats identified by nopanic;
alter user stats quota unlimited on users;
create table stats.session_log as select * from v$session where 1 = 2;
create table stats.session_stat_log as select * from v$mystat where 1 = 2;
grant select,insert,update,delete on stats.session_log to marvin;
grant select,insert,update,delete on stats.session_stat_log to marvin;
create public synonym session_log for stats.session_log;
create public synonym session_stat_log for stats.session_stat_log;

The select any dictionary privilege is mainly because we want to use DB Console. For this, it must view a lot from the dictionary. Now start a web browser and connect to the freshly created user marvin. The Oracle Scheduler support is provided in the Server tab of the DB Console.