Database Links Advanced Administration Tips

What is a Database Link and how do I configure one?

A Database Link is a named object created in one database which describes how to
connect to another, completely different, database. Using a Database Link, it is possible,
whilst connected to, say, the DB8 database to issue the command SELECT * FROM EMP@DB9,
and the data that is returned will be that from the EMP table in the DB9 database.

Links are thus a means of performing distributed database processing –the ability to
distibute data around many different databases, on many different machines, in many
different physical locations. Such an approach gives you redundancy (if the Melbourne
machine blows up, it takes the Melbourne data with it, but Perth and Sydney continue
working as before). It also gives you, potentially, performance benefits –with tables
distributed amongst many machines, no one machine has to do all the hard work of
resolving Users’ queries. (On the other hand, with data having to pass back and forth
across the network, which is usually relatively slow, the performance benefits of
distributed processing can easily be swamped by awful networking performance).

Database Links are thus at the heart of Advanced Replication, which is Oracle’s complete
infrastructure for distributed database processing.

Links are relatively easy to set up, but they do depend on having first configured all
aspects of inter-machine and inter-database networking and communication successfully.
If you don’t know one end of a LISTENER.ORA from a SQLNET.ORA, then getting Links to
work reliably is going to be awkward.

Getting Started with the Network

For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to assume that we have an Oracle 8i database
(called DB8) on a machine called MONTEVERDI, and an Oracle 9i database (called DB9) on
a machine called MOZART. Both machines are part of a networking domain called
‘aldeburgh.local’. (For the record, this is exactly how my test machines at home are
configured, using Windows 2000). We want to establish a link from the DB8 database to
the DB9 one, not the other way around (we’ll come to that later!).

Being such a simple network, we’ll use the ‘local naming’ method of connection, meaning
that we’ll use local copies of tnsnames.ora to resolve connection requests to the two
Instances.

You might pause at this. Surely, tnsnames.ora is a method of connecting clients to

Instances, and therefore it resides only on the client machine? No. One of the key
features of a Database Link is that it is the database that you are directly connected to
that has to be able to resolve the name of the database you want to link to. Therefore,
tnsnames.ora must also reside on one or more of the Oracle servers themselves.
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Since in this example it is MONTEVERDI that will require the ability to resolve a connection
request to the DB9 database on MOZART, we need a tnsnames.ora on MONTEVERDI that
looks like this:

DB9 =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = mozart)(PORT = 1521))
)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVICE_NAME = db9.aldeburgh.local)
)
)

Now the tnsnames.ora merely points the connection request off to the Listener which is
running on MOZART. So the listener.ora on MOZART must look like this:

LISTENER =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = mozart)(PORT = 1521))
)

SID_LIST_LISTENER =
(SID_LIST =
(SID_DESC =
(GLOBAL_DBNAME = db9.aldeburgh.local)
(ORACLE_HOME = d:\oracle\ora91)
(SID_NAME = DB9)
)
)

This is fairly standard stuff. The Listener is listening on a standard port for TCP/IP
connection requests, on behalf of the db9.aldeburgh.local database. When it receives one,
it will connect to the “DB9” Instance, and we should be in business.

One final configuration trap: the file sqlnet.ora is used to establish a variety of default
parameters for all connections made from one machine to another –for example, whether
encryption should be used. One of its parameters is NAMES.DEFAULT_DOMAIN. If this is
allowed to be set to anything at all, we’ll have problems, because Oracle appears to
append this default on to the end of otherwise fully-specified global database names.
Since we’ve specified our global names exactly, we have no need for a default. Therefore,
we need to remove that line (if it’s there) from the sqlnet.ora file. That leaves sqlnet.ora
looking like this:

SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)
NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (TNSNAMES)
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Instance Configuration

Technically, when you come to create your Database Links, you can call them anything you
like. But Oracle strongly recommends that you follow the ‘global names’ convention,
because Advanced Replication (and some other advanced features) won’t work unless you
do. What that convention means is that your links are named in the format <database
name>.<domain name>. To do that might require some editing of your init.ora, however.

Three parameters are crucial.

DB_NAME is pretty self-explanatory, and has to be set whenever you create a new
database. Not a lot of choice here, therefore –ours will be set to “DB9”.

DB_DOMAIN is not compulsory though, yet it’s of extreme importance for linking databases.
It defaults to a null string so in our case we’ll need to set it explicitly to “aldeburgh.local”.
If you’ve got a registered Internet domain, then that’s probably what you’d use (I don’t,
which is why the ‘.local’ is there).

If you put DB_NAME and DB_DOMAIN together, you’ve got yourself a Global Database Name.
In our case, it will be “db9.aldeburgh.local” –though this isn’t actually set as an init.ora
parameter in its own right, but is merely constructed from the other two whenever needed.
It’s important that the global database name as implied in the DB9 init.ora is what the
GLOBAL_DBNAME setting in MOZART’s listener.ora is set to, and also what the
SERVICE_NAME is set to in MONTEVERDI’s tnsnames.ora. If you check all these entries
above, you’ll see that this is indeed the case here. Failure to make sure that they match
will mean that the DB8 database will request a connection to an Instance which can’t be
identified in the first place or, if identification is possible, can’t be connected to.

One last parameter now needs to be set. It’s GLOBAL_NAMES, and it needs to be set to
TRUE. There’s no absolute requirement for the parameter to be set in this way: but
Advanced Replication won’t work without it. What it does is to force that all Database
Links must have names which match the global name of the database they’re connecting
to. In our case, since we’re connecting from DB8 to DB9, it needs to be set to TRUE in the
init.ora for the DB8 database on MONTEVERDI.

One final warning: databases are created (or should be –the default appears to be
“us.oracle.com”!) with a global name that needs to match what you configure as the
Global Database Name in the way described above. If you change your init.ora settings so
that the DB_NAME+DB_DOMAIN combination no longer matches what was set as the global
name at database creation, you’ll need to rename the database. That’s relatively easy to
do:

Alter database rename global_name to <something>;

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Database Links Advanced Administration Tips

In our case, we may therefore need to issue this command whilst connected as SYS to the
DB9 database:

Alter database rename global_name to db9.aldeburgh.local;

Once all that is set up, we should be able to create our links without too much trouble.

Creating the Database Link

This is the easy part. The basic syntax for creating a Database Link is:

Create database link <link name>

Connect to <schema> identified by <password>
Using <tnsnames alias>;

The real question is what goes in all those variable entries –the link name and so on?

Well, the link name is the fully-qualified global database name that was discussed earlier.
In our case, that’s “db9.aldeburgh.local”. There’s no rule that says it must match the
global name, remember –except that, following Oracle’s advice, we’ve set GLOBAL_NAMES
to be TRUE for the DB8 database. If we therefore specified anything other than
“db9.aldeburgh.local” as the link name, the first time we tried to fetch data across the
link we’d get the following error message:

ORA-02085: DATABASE LINK DB9.MADEUPNAME CONNECTS TO DB9.ALDEBURGH.COM

The <schema> and <password> entries of the syntax are fairly self-explanatory: which bit
of the DB9 database do we want to connect to? If you just want to select from Scott’s
tables over the link, for example, then ‘Scott’ and ‘Tiger’ would be sensible entries. You
might not want to limit yourself in this way, though: suppose you want to be able to select
from tables that happen to reside in multiple schemas? Well, that can be done, too… but
I’ll describe that in my paper “What are the different types of Database Links that can be
created?”. For now, let’s keep it simple.

Finally, the <tnsnames alias> entry is hopefully pretty obvious. It’s whatever is in the
tnsnames.ora file on the machine where DB8 resides as the alias for the connection to
“db9.aldeburgh.local”. Being an alias, you could have set it to anything –but if you refer
back to the discussion about our specific tnsnames.ora file, you’ll see that we’ve set it to
“db9”. Bear in mind that it’s what is on the DB8 machine that’s important. It’s this
machine, after all, that has to resolve the connection request, and pass it on to the
Listener running on the DB9 machine.

All of which means that we can now issue the following command:

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Create database link db9.aldeburgh.local

Connect to scott identified by tiger
Using ‘db9’;

Notice how the tnsnames.ora alias goes inside single quotes, but nothing else does.

Using the Database Link

Now that the link exists, we can select data across it. In our case, whilst still connected to
the DB8 database, we can issue the following command:

Select * from emp@db9.aldeburgh.local;

The rows you see returned will be those coming from the DB9 database. Notice the syntax
here. Firstly, I haven’t needed to qualify whose EMP table we’re selecting from, because
the Link itself was created as pointing directly to Scott’s schema. Second, the full
database link name is then supplied after an “@” symbol.

Now let’s try some simple DML:

SQL> update emp@db9.aldeburgh.local set sal=7000 where empno=7369;

1 row updated.

SQL> commit;
Commit complete.

So DML commands follow the same rule: fully qualify the object names you are updating,
deleting from or inserting into, with an “@” and the link name. Commits, as you notice,
are perfectly happy to work across the link too. (Incidentally, just in case you’re
wondering, all the rollback and redo generated by this transaction was raised in the DB9
database, not the DB8 one. In other words, the command was processed exactly as if it
had been issued whilst connected normally to the DB9 database).

What about DDL? Let’s try this:

SQL> truncate table emp@db9.aldeburgh.local;

truncate table emp@db9.aldeburgh.local
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-02021: DDL operations are not allowed on a remote database

So no DDL commands of any type are permitted across the link. Try a “create index”, a
“create table newemp@db9.aldeburgh.local as select * from emp@db9.aldeburgh.local”, a
“drop table” or any other piece of DDL you can think of, and the same error message will

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Database Links Advanced Administration Tips

appear. (Again, in case you were wondering, a “create table newemp as select * from
emp@db9.aldeburgh.local” will work fine: the DDL bit of the statement is taking place in
the local DB8 database, and only the select is taking place across the link).

So the general rule is that queries and DML across a link are permitted, but DDL isn’t.
When DML is performed, by the way, all referential integrity constraints are checked and
applied as normal (though if it happens that the parent table, say, is in a different schema
than the one referred to in the ‘create database link’ command you’ll have trouble).

Finally, what does the link look like as far as the DB9 database is concerned? If we query
v$session after the link is created, but before it is actually used, we get this sort of result:

SQL> connect system/manager@db9

Connected.

SQL> select sid, serial#, username from v$session

2 where username is not null;

SID SERIAL# USERNAME

---------- ---------- ------------------------------
8 12 SYSTEM

1 row selected.

Here we see only SYSTEM’s session, in which this query has just been issued. If we now (in
a different session) connect as SYSTEM on the DB8 database, and issue a select across the
database link, we’ll see this:

SID SERIAL# USERNAME

---------- ---------- ------------------------------
7 5 SCOTT
8 12 SYSTEM

Notice the new session here: it’s listed as Scott’s even though I just stressed the fact that
I’d connected to the DB8 database as SYSTEM. The reason for that again lies in the way we
issued the ‘create database link’ command. To remind you, it was:

Create database link db9.aldeburgh.local

Connect to scott identified by tiger
Using ‘db9’;

So the link itself dictates that, whoever we happen to be connected as on DB8, the
connection to the DB9 database must be made as Scott.

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Database Links Advanced Administration Tips

Things also get interesting when you select the OSUSER column from v$session, instead of
the plain old USERNAME:

USERNAME OSUSER
-------- ----------------------
SCOTT ALDEBURGH\MONTEVERDI$
SYSTEM ALDEBURGH\howardjr

Notice that the OSUSER column contains the name of the Windows 2000 machine hosting
the DB8 database (MONTEVERDI), not (as in the last line displayed) the actual operating
system name of an individual user. This is about the only way to spot the difference
between a ‘real’ user connected to the remote database in the normal fashion and a user
connecting to it via a database link.

Managing Database Links

Having created a Database Link, you need to be able to find out which links have been
created, and how to modify them or get rid of them altogether.

To view which links exist, select from the DBA_DB_LINKS views (there are equivalent
USER_ and ALL_ views, of course):

SQL> select * from dba_db_links;

OWNER DB_LINK USERNAME HOST CREATED

------- --------------------- ----------- --------- ---------
SYSTEM DB9.ALDEBURGH.LOCAL SCOTT db9 03/MAR/02

Notice that the ‘host’ column doesn’t tell you the host at all (not in the sense of the
machine being connected to, at least). Rather, it tells you the tnsnames alias being used
to make the connection.

Be aware that selecting from the same view in the DB9 database produces no rows at all.
In other words, you can’t tell from within a database what other databases might have
links connecting to it (unless those links are used, of course, at which point –as we’ve
seen- it becomes obvious in v$session).

You can’t actually modify a Database Link once it’s been created. Instead, you have to
drop the entire thing, and re-create it from scratch:

SQL> drop database link db9.aldeburgh.local;

Database link dropped.

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SQL> create database link db9.aldeburgh.local

2 connect to hr identified by hr
3 using 'db9';

Database link created.

Finally, you need to know how to close down a database link once it’s been finished with –
remember that v$session shows the link from DB8 however many hours have passed since
the last ‘select * from emp@db9.aldeburgh.local’! That means there’s a Server Process
ticking away on DB9, chewing up some memory and CPU cycles, which we might prefer not
to waste.

Issue this command (again, this is done on the database to which you are directly
connected –in our case, DB8):

Alter session close database link db9.aldeburgh.local;

That closes the link (but obviously doesn’t drop it from the database altogether). Links
are re-opened by performing some select or DML activity across them again. One minor
nasty with this: you can’t close a link (hopefully for obvious reasons) if someone is in the
middle of doing some work across it. If you try, you’ll get an ORA-02080: database link is
in use error message. What’s a bit tricky about this is that a select statement counts as
doing some work –and selects have to be committed before the link is determined not to
be in use.

As a simple example:

SQL> select empno, ename, sal from emp@db9.aldeburgh.local;

EMPNO ENAME SAL

---------- ---------- ----------
7698 BLAKE 2850
7839 KING 5000
7844 TURNER 1500
7900 JAMES 950
7902 FORD 3000
7934 MILLER 1300
9999 ROGERS 8888
7 rows selected.

SQL> Alter session close database link db9.aldeburgh.local;

ERROR:
ORA-02080: database link is in use

SQL> commit;
Commit complete.
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Database Links Advanced Administration Tips

SQL> Alter session close database link db9.aldeburgh.local;

Session altered.

That could prove a bit awkward to remember if, like me, you’ve grown accustomed to
ordinary select statements not requiring commits to make them do their stuff! Obviously,
it’s much less of a hassle with ordinary DML statements.

Notice, too, that the command is an ‘alter session’ one. That means the User wishing to
close the link has to possess the alter session privilege. It also means that a link that one
User happens to be using to perform a substantial piece of DML cannot be summarily closed
by someone else (thus causing general consternation, transaction failure and massive
rollback all round!). The link is session-specific, and only your own session can be used to
close it.

Making Links Easier to Use

One final point I’ll mention briefly here. It’s frankly a bit of a pain always to have to
qualify your select statements (or DML) with long-winded fully qualified link names.
Remember that public synonyms and views created in the local database can come to your
rescue:

SQL> create view fred as

2 select empno, ename, job from
3 emp@db9.aldeburgh.local
4 where sal>500;

View created.

SQL> select * from fred;

EMPNO ENAME JOB

---------- ---------- ---------
7499 ALLEN SALESMAN
7521 WARD SALESMAN

…is one approach. You might not like having to create lots of views in DB8 to reference
tables in the DB9 database, however.

Instead, you could try this:

SQL> create public synonym ginger

2 for emp@db9.aldeburgh.local;
Synonym created.

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Database Links Advanced Administration Tips

SQL> select * from ginger where rownum<4;

EMPNO ENAME JOB MGR HIREDATE

---------- ---------- --------- ---------- ---------
7369 SMITH CLERK 7902 17/DEC/80 …
7499 ALLEN SALESMAN 7698 20/FEB/81 …
7521 WARD SALESMAN 7698 22/FEB/81 …

Both of these approaches to what is laboriously known as ‘location transparency’ mean

that Users don’t get RSI everytime they want to access remotely-stored data!

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