Please RTFOM !

Today I opened two SR about flashback archive in 11g. In one of them, I complained that user SCOTT was not allowed to create a flashback archive. In the doc that I downloaded a few weeks ago I read :
Prerequisites
You must have the FLASHBACK ARCHIVE ADMINISTER system privilege to create a flashback data archive. This privilege can be granted only by a user with DBA privileges. In addition, you must have the CREATE TABLESPACE system privilege to create a flashback data archive, as well as sufficient quota on the tablespace in which the historical information will reside.

So as I was getting an ORA-55611, I opened a SR. The support engineer pointed me to the online documentation where I was astonished to read :
Prerequisites
You must have the FLASHBACK ARCHIVE ADMINISTER system privilege to create a flashback data archive. In addition, you must have the CREATE TABLESPACE system privilege to create a flashback data archive, as well as sufficient quota on the tablespace in which the historical information will reside. To designate a flashback data archive as the system default flashback data archive, you must be logged in as SYSDBA.

Well, Read The Fine Online Manual !!!

The second tar is related to long retention (about the age of the earth)

SQL> alter flashback archive fba01
modify retention 4106694757 year;

Flashback archive altered.

SQL> select retention_in_days
from DBA_FLASHBACK_ARCHIVE;
RETENTION_IN_DAYS
-----------------
1

:mrgreen:

4 thoughts on “Please RTFOM !”

  2. Laurent Schneider Post author

    well, the amount in months is actually an amount of 30 days periods and the amount of years is an amount of 365 days period.

    I have hit a similar bug with intervals

    select to_yminterval('P2147483649M') from dual;
    TO_YMINTERVAL('P2147483649M')
    +000000000-01
    select to_dsinterval('PT2147483649H') from dual;
    TO_DSINTERVAL('PT2147483649H')
    +000000000 01:00:00.000000000

  3. A.- Kamel Imadalou

    Hi Laurent,

    Among restrictions,
    You can not use a tablespace (obvious for other technical tablespaces) named as USERS (even when it’s empy) as flashback archive.

    You just get the well known: ORA-55603

    Regards,
    A.- K. Imadalou

  4. Laurent Schneider Post author

    Flashback archive seems fairly strict with keywords, as no keyword in V$RESERVED_WORDS can be used.

    You should better use double-quotes to bypass that problem

    CREATE FLASHBACK ARCHIVE FA1
    TABLESPACE "USERS"
    RETENTION 1 DAY

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