This chapter describes a little
homegrown utility called Remote DBA_Helper.
I wrote the utility because there was a lack of open source
utilities for managing Oracle databases. The two most popular open
source utilities available are Henrik Johnson’s, Tora (Tool for
Oracle) and Andy Duncan’s and Jared Still’s, Orac_Remote DBA. Both of these
tools were originally written for Oracle7, and the updates ceased
with the Oracle8i.
As a Remote DBA who utilizes Linux, I needed a
new tool to do my job efficiently. The only solution was to write one
myself. Because Orac_Remote DBA
and Tora were written using the most popular scripting language of
today, Perl; and both tools are large, well thought programs with many
options, menus and sub-menus, they were chosen to pattern my tool
after.
I wanted the tool to be easily extended and to
consist of many small files produced rather quickly by using copy and
paste techniques. Colors and menu groupings were kept consistent with
the other tools, to retain the familiar interface and options.
Remote DBA_Helper is written using PHP, ADOdb, and two PEAR modules:
HTML_Table and HTML_Form. All of the techniques used to write this
tool have been amply demonstrated and the reader should be familiar
with the techniques by now.
This tool is not a finished program; it is a work
in progress. Features of the program are being added and changed as
necessary, and many features are still missing. In particular, I am
planning to implement the reverse engineering capabilities of Orac_Remote DBA
by using DBMS_METADATA. Remote DBA_Helper and future updates for this tool
will be available on the Rampant Books web site.
As this tool was influenced and motivated by great
open source tools written by using a scripting language, it is only
fair for Remote DBA_Helper to be an open source tool as well. Thus, you are
granted the license to use and redistribute the tool under the
conditions specified in the FSF’s GNU General Public License (GPL).
The full text of GPL is available on the GNU main site:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
Here is an overview of material covered in this
chapter:
