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upper/lower case usage of database name

EdStevensOct 9 2013 — edited Oct 9 2013

Oracle database 11.2.0.2.11, SE-One, 64-bit

Oracle Linux 5.6

First, I'll admit this post is tied up with my OCD side .. ;-)

For reasons known only to him, my predecessor decided he wanted all database names/references to be upper case.  This has not caused any day-to-day operational issues, but has caused a particular discrepancy being discussed at https://forums.oracle.com/thread/2590894.  There have been a couple of other minor 'gotchas' that fell out as I wrote some shell scripts, so decided I'd revisit this.

As a base-line, I created a clean, absolutely default database.  When dbca asked for a name I gave it in lower-case, and never deviated from default selections the rest of the way.  I then had a series of sql queries and cli commands to reveal as many uses of the database/instance/sid name as I could find, and ran those against my 'baseline' db, the production db, and the two test/dev db's related to the prod.  From what that revealed I was able to determine that only the two test db's have been altered.

Below is the result from one of the altered db's.  I've highlighted the occasions where the name shows up in upper-case as a "non-default" value.  I thought it an interesting observation that even on the baseline database, 'name' from v$database is shown as upper-case. 

I'm vaguely fishing for ideas on how my predecessor might have gotten to this point, and how I might restore things back to a 'default' state.  I'm also studying how the use of the 'nid' utility plays into this.

FWIW, this test db is refreshed weekly from prod, via an rman 'duplicate target database to ORCL' operation.

What the db says about itself:

SQL> select database_name, instance_name from v$database, v$instance;

DATABASE_NAME INSTANCE_NAME

------------- ----------------

ORCL          orcl

SQL> select name, value, isdefault from v$parameter where lower(value) like '%orcl%' order by 1;

NAME                      VALUE                                                   ISDEF

------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- -----

audit_file_dest           /u01/app/oracle/admin/orcl/adump                        FALSE

background_dump_dest      /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/orcl/orcl/trace              TRUE

control_files             +DEV_SMALL/orcl/controlfile/current.292.772046119       FALSE

core_dump_dest            /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/orcl/orcl/cdump              TRUE

db_file_name_convert      +SMALL/orprd, +DEV_SMALL/ORCL, +SAN/orprd, +DEV_LARGE/  FALSE

                          ORCL

db_name                   ORCL                                                    FALSE

db_unique_name            ORCL                                                    TRUE

dg_broker_config_file1    /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.2/dbhome_1/dbs/dr1ORCL.  TRUE

                          dat

dg_broker_config_file2    /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.2/dbhome_1/dbs/dr2ORCL.  TRUE

                          dat

dispatchers               (PROTOCOL=TCP) (SERVICE=orclXDB)                        FALSE

instance_name             orcl                                                    TRUE

log_archive_dest_1        location=/backup/orcl/archive                           FALSE

service_names             ORCL                                                    TRUE

spfile                    /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.2/dbhome_1/dbs/spfiledwd TRUE

                          ev.ora

user_dump_dest            /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/orcl/orcl/trace              TRUE

15 rows selected.

Directories created for dbcontrol configuration.  Note it actually creates two directories, though only the one in caps is used.  And if I do an emca -deconfig, only the one in caps is removed.

oracle:orcl$ cd $ORACLE_HOME; pwd

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.2/dbhome_1

oracle:orcl$ ls -l |egrep -i $ORACLE_SID

drwxr-----  3 oracle oinstall  4096 Oct  9 09:04 myserver.mycompany.org_orcl

drwxr-----  3 oracle oinstall  4096 Oct  9 09:03 myserver.mycompany.org_ORCL

Various views from Oracle Restart

oracle:orcl$ srvctl config database |egrep -i $ORACLE_SID

ORCL

oracle:orcl$ srvctl config database -d $ORACLE_SID |egrep -i $ORACLE_SID

Database unique name: ORCL

Spfile: /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.2/dbhome_1/dbs/spfileorcl.ora

oracle:+ASM$ crsctl status resource ora.orcl.db -p|egrep -i orcl

NAME=ora.orcl.db

DB_UNIQUE_NAME=ORCL

GEN_AUDIT_FILE_DEST=/u01/app/oracle/admin/orcl/adump

GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME=orcl

SPFILE=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.2/dbhome_1/dbs/spfileorcl.ora

USR_ORA_INST_NAME=orcl

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Locked on Nov 6 2013
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