John R Pierce wrote:
and, for that matter, someone running Oracle in production should have an Oracle support contract, and should work through them.
Yeah both right, didn't even think about that.. I'd be pretty scared to run an Oracle DB with a newbie system admin. Not knowing what sort of data is in the DB, if it's even a little important I'd strongly suggest the OP getting someone more experienced to manage the system, Not knowing where the OP is I recommend Blue Gecko, a U.S. Oracle/Linux consulting shop based out of Seattle, used them for Oracle DBs I had at my last company.
Oracle is a big complex beast, really powerful, and a real good product if you use it right. When I first started using it I really didn't like it and wanted to get rid of it, but it's grown on me a lot over the years and I've gained a lot of respect for it as a product and the technologies behind it. And while Enterprise edition is really expensive, Standard edition is dirt cheap by comparison and still very capable.
nate