create your database with dbca

With dbca you can fasten the procedure of creating databases in your company. You can also run this in silent mode and create exactly the database you want, with your redo/undo size, with your parameters settings. You create the template once, and use it many times. Fast and easy 😀

I have one database which I created with SQL*PLUS called LSC01.

1) Create template lsc-template
dbca
–> Manage Templates
–> Create a database template
–> from an existing database (structure as well as data)
–> LSC01
–> lsc-template
–> convert the file locations to use OFA structure
This takes some place on disk and will speed up database creation. Technically speaking, it is doing a compressed backup with RMAN that will be restore, and restore is way faster than create database

2) Create database LSC99 in silent mode or progressOnly mode.
dbca -silent -createDatabase -templateName lsc-template.dbc -gdbName LSC99.lcsys.ch

It took me only two minutes to create my database on my notebook !

Try it ! Of course I expect comments on this post :mrgreen:

12 thoughts on “create your database with dbca”

  1. maol

    Here’s a comment for you, Laurent!
    We’ve also played around with the creation of dbca templates, and liked it very much. The next generation of our DB Create script will be based on it.

  2. Sidhu

    Laurent

    I was also using DBCA to create databases. But once there was a moment when I couldnt keep the datafiles,control files and all that stuff at default locations (due to space issues), while giving non default locations in DBCA, it troubled me a bit. Sometimes there was some little issue with the path or something, it will start the creation of database but in the end throw an error 🙁

    After 3-4 tries I finally did it using standard “CREATE DATABASE” 🙂

    Sidhu

  3. Laurent Schneider Post author

    Thanks for your comments.
    Sidhu, in my example I have created the database with standard “CREATE DATABASE”, with my own paths. I use DBCA only for deployment not for the initial database. I do not specify anything else than global name in dbca.
    Anyway, dbca is getting better over the years, did you try with 10.2?

  4. Sidhu

    Laurent

    I used dbca with 10.1, actually I needed to change the path of datafiles,control files and redo logfiles due to space issues and there might be some problem with the new paths that I gave. It threw an error in the end, then I dropped the database with “DROP DATABASE” and created again from SQL Plus. Other its fun creating databases with DBCA. One can see the progress bar and all and this template things is really helpful. In future, in my assignment I have to create around 50-60 databases. This thing will be really helpful in that scenario 🙂

    Sidhu

  6. Sidhu

    Yups, me too hoping for the best 😉

    BTW your post about “not using” “select *” and “*” in general was really good one.

    Sidhu

  7. Gan Kang Ling

    I created a new database using dbca, however, both tnsnames.ora and listener.ora were not updated with the new database information. Last time, it worked properly when I created a new database.

  8. Laurent Schneider Post author

    you can use netca or netmgr to configure those files. However, if you edit them manually, netca/netmgr will either remove your formatting or even fail if your edit was too heavy

  10. Charles Schultz

    I like DBCA as well; I was surprised at how robust it is when we started doing RAC stuff. However, we did stumble upon a problem when attempting to use a template to clone a RAC database, as described by Julian Dykes. I opened a case with Oracle Support on 12-JUL-07, submitted as a bug on 13-JUL-07 and I have been waiting 4 months for a response.

    Have you ever run across anything like that (not Oracle Support, but with DBCA)?

Comments are closed.