Thanks everyone,
I won't do individual replies but some good info.,
Mladen, I had thought of your idea and I like it very much, but upper
management will take that as a cowboy tactic and in the event of actual
downtime if its still being used then they will get stoppy, its already
hard enough to promote IT as having good service, but that will give the
end users more ammo against IT. But yes switch off and wait for the screams.
Iggy is also correct there are a few edge cases that for legal reasons
(contracts) some are required for 7 years after project close, but I'm sure
there are more and it will be a slog to once identify a unused database to
then locate the correct people who know about the contract. Can always
backup and restore if they need it down the track.
Ian, DBA_AUDIT_TRAIL is great, but does miss 40% of our estate. Work is
now in progress to turn on DB Auditing on those remaining also our 9i
databases appear to be empty AUD$ table
Niall already using logons_Current but some only have a single App Server
user connected so while its a good indicator of how many connections are
connected, it does miss a bit, but combined with the redo generation does
give us some candidates.
Raza, a lot of the database accounts cannot be mapped back to their Windows
accounts so thats a bit tricky, I suppose I could start digging into the
application tables and hope to find internal app logins and email addresses
and then start emailing the users for clarification. Documentation is being
kept for new install, but our Company has gone through a number of
acquisitions and has also acquired a number of other companies over the
last 10 years and through redundancies etc MOST of that local knowledge is
now gone. Documentation is wonderful given you have enough time to do it.
On 14 April 2016 at 05:00, Iggy Fernandez <iggy_fernandez@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Some companies (e.g. Big Pharma) keep some databases around for compliance
reasons.
Iggy
------------------------------
From: mark.powell2@xxxxxxx
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: How to determine if a database is in use?
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2016 19:12:28 +0000
I think it might be wiser to leave the database in restricted mode for a
while before removing it permanently. Some databases are only kept around
for historic use and as such may only be accessed infrequently. I would
want to get through a month-end / quarter-end period as part of my removal
process. It depends on how well you were able to monitor the database to
get a feel for usage.
*From:* oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Mladen Gogala
*Sent:* Wednesday, April 13, 2016 1:52 PM
*To:* oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* Re: How to determine if a database is in use?
On 04/12/2016 08:33 PM, Oracle DBA wrote:
Question – How to determine if a database is in use.
Well, here is a simple way:
1. Ask around.
2. Take a full offline backup. If someone objects, the database is in
use.
3. If nobody complains by time the backup is finished, start it up
using the following command: "startup mount restrict" and when the database
comes up, execute "drop database" command. That will provide immediate
savings in space and machine resources.
4. If nobody complains, the database is not used.
5. If somebody does complain, you have a full offline backup and can
bring it back.
--
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA
http://mgogala.freehostia.com
