Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Starting on a newly installed system
21. Creation of a tablespace
22. Creation of a user
23. Grant access to the database
24. Altering quota's on the tablespace for the user
25. Granting user access to create tables,indexes,views
3. Examples
4. Tips on using sqlplus
5. Resources

1 Introduction

This document is intended to be a help for those new to Oracle. The primary intention
with this little guide is to help people getting started on creating users and tablespaces in
their newly installed Oracle database. It's not intended to be a faq on how to install the
database, because there are a few of those out there already, for links see resource section.

Any use of this material is on own risk. There's no guarantee that any of the things
described in this howto works. The experiences this document describes where made on
an Oracle 8.0.5.0.0 Database server installed on a Debian GNU/Linux System.

2 Starting on a newly installed system

When you start of on a newly installed system you will need to create a user that will be
accessing the database. For security reasons you shouldn't be using the system user nor
the system tablespace. In the next sections you will learn how to create users and
tablespaces for them to use.

21 Creation of a tablespace

A tablespace is where Oracle stores the data you put into your tables.

Syntax: create tablespace <TABLESPACE> datafile

'<TABLESPACEFILE>' size <SIZE> M [autoextend on next <SIZE> M
[maxsize <SIZE> M]]

TABLESPACE is the name you want to call the tablespace you're about to create. It's
wise to give it a name that says something about what you're going to use it for.
TABLESPACEFILE is the file, with fullpath, on your filesystem that has to contain the
database. Depending on your installation it will probably reside in
~oracle/oradata/ORCL/ depending on what you set your Oracle SID to when you
installed. Name this file after what you call your tablespace and put a .dbf as suffix and to
do it the Oracle way you would generally add a number to the filename to, especially if
you know that you will have to make more datafiles later on. So that would make the
filename look like tablespace01.dbf. SIZE is pretty much self explanatory, depending on
wheter you put a K or M after it the size is either in KiloBytes or MegaBytes. The
autoextend on next command adds extra size to the tablespace when the amount of data
exceeds the current size of the tablespace. It adds more size to the tablespace according to
it's SIZE value and keeps extending until it runs out of diskspace. To avoid this you
would add the maxsize command, which defines the max size of your tablespace.

Example:

You want to create a tablespace that uses 20 MB of diskspace to start of with, if the limit
is hit it will need to add another 10 MB of diskspace to the tablespace. To avoid it from
using up all of your diskspace a max limit of 50 MB is made.

Solution:

create tablespace file_data datafile

'/home/oracle/oradata/ORCL/file_data01.dbf' size 20M autoextend on
next 10M maxsize 50M

22 Creation of a user

To be able to connect to an Oracle database you need a user. A user can have different
rights depending on what the user should be able to do.

Syntax: create user <USER> identified bye <PASSWORD> default

tablespace <TABLESPACE> temporary tablespace <TEMP>

USER is what you want to call the user you want to create, this username doesn't need to
have anything to do with your regular users on your system. PASSWORD is the clear text
password you want the user to be using to connect to the database. TABLESPACE is
where the user puts his tables by default. TEMP is the temporary tablespace used by
Oracle to store temporary tables, rollback, etc. Oracle per default has a temporary
tablespace called "temp".

Example:

You want to create a user that will be using the tablespace in the preceding example.

Solution:

create user file_user indentified by file_pass default tablespace

file_data temporary tablespace temp

23 Grant access to the database

For a user to be able to do anything at all you need to grant different priviligies to the
user. There are a lot of different priviligies a user can have, where the most important one
probably is being allowed to access the database.

Syntax: grant create session to <USER>

USER is simply the user you wish to give priviligies to connect to the database.

Example:
You want to give a user the possibility to connect to the database.

Solution:

grant create session to file_user

Didn't get any further today. 03.11.99

3.3 Altering quota's on the tablespace for the user
alter user <user> quota <size> on <tablespace>
<user> username to alter quota for
<size> the size on the users quota. To get unlimited size use "unlimited"
<tablespace> tablespace where the user is having his quota changed for
Example:
Needs:
A user needs to have unlimited access to a specific tablespace
Solution:
alter user file_user quota unlimited on file_data"
3.4 Granting user access to create tables,views,indexes
grant create table to <user>
<user> username of user to give access to create tables
Example:
Needs:
A user needs to be able to create a table in his default tablespace
Solution:
grant create table to file_user"

--

4.0 Examples
Example: You want to create a user that can only connect to the database and select on a
specific tablespace.
Solution:
Add a user that can create the tables you want you user to select on and then:
create user select_file_user identified by select_file_pass default
tablespace file_data temporary tablespace temp;
grant create session to select_file_user;
grant select on <thetableyouwanthimtoselectfrom> to select_file_user;
An easier thing would be to do a special script after all the tables in the database has been
created an run this command as the table-owning user:
select 'grant select on ' table_name ' to select_file_user' from
user_tables;
This will "create" the grant statements you need to run to make the select_only user able
to select on the tables.
It would be a little wiser to redirect those tables to a sql script that will be able to run
afterwards. This is done like this:
set echo off;
set heading off;
set feedback off;
set pagesize 0;
spool grant.sql;
select 'grant select on ' table_name ' to select_file_user' from
user_tables;
spool off;
set feedback on;
set heading on;
set echo on;
@grant.sql;
Summary of the howto:
To create a user with it's own tablespace:
create tablespace file_data datafile
'/home/oracle/oradata/ORCL/file_data01.dbf' size 20M autoextend on next
10M maxsize 50M;
create user file_user identified by file_pass default tablespace
file_data temporary tablespace temp;
alter user file_user quota unlimited on temp;
alter user file_user quota unlimited on file_data;
grant create session to file_user;
grant create table to file_user;
--

5.0 Tips on using sqlplus

if you're constantly bother by sqlplus showing up all of the empty space in the columns
try using a "set linesize 300" and experiment a bit with the number to achieve your goal.
"set echo off" / "set echo on" - Can't figure this one out ;-)
"set heading off" / "set heading on" - Removes the column names and all the fancy
formatting stuff on results
"set feedback off" / "set feedback on" - Removes feedback about number of rows
affected.
Special commands:
sqlplus has not got a built in shell like enviroment like for example the mysql client has.
Instead you can use your favorite editor to edit the commands you execute, ie make
multiline queries look better and more readable.
To use this function your shell has to have the enviroment variable editor set. If you want
to use emacs then you would have the following line in your ~/.profile depending on
which shell you use.
export EDITOR=emacs
For using this functionality you simply have to type ed on the command line. After
editing the sql query like you want you just save the file and exit the editor. To execute
the sql query you just enter simply press r.
Special functionality:
a column with a data/timestamp:
"timestamp date default sysdate null"
will create a column which defaults to system time with second precission.
select sysdate from dual;
dual table is a single column value table.
alter session set nls_date_format='MM/DD/YYYY HH24:MI:SS';
select to_char(timestamp,'MMDDYYYY') from lastchecked;
select count (id) from answer where data like '%mail%';
under create table:
boolean varchar(1) default 'N' null
check (boolean in ('N','Y'))
select location from locations start with id = '$page[0]' connect by
prior parent = id order by id asc
To connect to the Oracle database from a remote computer you need to add the hostname
for the remote computer in the tnsnames.ora file on your local computer
for instance:
NAME=(DESCRIPTION=
(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=fqdn)(PORT=1521))
(CONNECTDATA=(SID=ORCL))
)
Then you connect with:
~oracle/bin/sqlplus user/pass@NAME
set timing on / off slår timing af query til/fra desc <- mysql describe funktion drop user
[cascade] select * from mq_users where trunc(created) > to_date('23-FEB-00');
set escape \
if you want to insert special chars in sql (like &) then use set escape \ and use \&

LIMIT!
To create the effect of limit function in MySQL you need to use the automatically-on-the-
fly created rownum column. You can select and have a where clause that limits the
amount of rows you want. Like: 'select id,name from table where rownum >= 1 and
rownum <= 10' would get the first 10 results from the database.

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