Connecting to an Oracle instance or service #
To be able to perform the diagnostic of an Oracle instance, d.side must first connect to this instance.
To connect, just click on the “Connection” button in the tool bar or connect using the “Database” menu.
The “Connection Manager” window then opens.
A usual JDBC connection string can be provided through following entries:
| Name | – The name of the Oracle instance to connect to, if selected connection type is “Instance“. – The name of the Oracle service to connect to, if selected connection type is “Service“. – Just an alias for the connection string fully described in the “Description” field, if selected connection type is “Alias“. |
| Username | – In d.side Live, the Oracle user name to be used to check Oracle behaviour. – In d.side Replay, the Replay schema owner, previously created using dscreate.sql script. – In d.side AWR Analyzer, the Oracle user able to read AWR history. |
| Password | The password of the selected Oracle user. If “Keep passwords” option is set in user preferences, then this password will be locally stored in a d.side file, an encrypted way, so the user no longer needs to enter it. Otherwise, the password is not stored. |
| Hostname | The name of the machine or server hosting the Oracle database to be connected to. |
| Port number | Oracle port number, matching the Oracle listener configuration. Default: 1521. |
A full connection string description can also be entered, exactly the same way as in an Oracle TNSNAMES.ORA file.
To enable the “Description” field, just select the “Alias” connection type, instead of “Instance” or “Service”.
An optional Tag can also be given to the new connection entry, in order to help you categorize your Oracle instances or services.
When all required fields are filled, just click on the “Connect” button to use d.side on your Oracle database.
Oracle user required privileges #
d.side Live and d.side AWR Analyzer only need an Oracle user who has been granted a SELECT role on the dictionary.
No DML, DDL or ALTER statement is executed from d.side.
So, to be able to connect to an instance or a service, the selected Oracle user must be granted only a few privileges:
CREATE SESSION to be able to connect
SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE to be able to read Oracle dictionary.
For example, the following statement gives the Oracle user named DSIDE_USER a full access to d.side:
grant create session, select_catalog_role to DSIDE_USER ;When connecting with d.side Replay, the selected user is the Replay schema owner that has already been granted the necessary privileges. For more details about d.side Replay setup, please refer to d.side Replay getting started.
If, for any reason, you’d like to connect with SYS user, then “SYS AS SYSDBA” must be mentioned as the user name.
Connections history #
When connecting to a new Oracle instance or service, d.side Connection Manager automatically stores the new entry in a Json connections history file, in d.side directory.
When (re)installing d.side on a new machine after having already used it, or when upgrading, it can be useful to copy this connections history file, in order to keep your history, as mentioned in the upgrade documentation.
Connection Manager also offers following features:
The “Add” button allows to add a new entry, without having to connect to it.
The “Delete” button allows to remove one or several selected entries from the History list.
The “Import” button allows to add several entries at a time, without having to fill all required information. See details below.
Importing connections #
An existing list of instances or services can easily be imported from a flat file and appended to the connections list, without having to enter each one or connect to each one.
This can be very useful for example when starting d.side for the first time and you want your main databases to already be present in the connections history list.
The provided flat file can have any name and extension, but its content must match a csv format, with fields separated by semicolons. So, the expected format of each row in the flat file is:
host;port;dbname[;inst]With:
| host | Oracle server name |
| port | Port number |
| dbname | Name of the service to be accessed |
| inst | Optional “inst” word specifies that dbname is an instance name, not a service. |
Example:
web-server;1521;WEBSITE
prod-srv;1522;HR_DB;instDefault user and password are required to populate connections list. They can be modified later.
This import process converts original csv entries to Json format that can be interpreted by d.side connections manager.
Connections strings are not checked during import. Only at connection time.
