Creating a test database in 5 minutes

What is the most boring part of being a DBA? Many of us reply with “installing and creating a database”. Really, that is not true, at least not creating a database. If you think create database is a boring ad-hoc work and takes a whole day to do, that is because you used wrong tool or you misunderstood what is going on.

DBCA is what you need to create a test database in only 5 mins.

You don’t need X windows
You don’t need VNC
All you need is DBCA

The next time you are in the following familiar scenario:

Boss: I want a database to test the new application, do it ASAP!

You can reply 5 minutes later:

DBA: Boss, here’s your database!

Sounds cool? Here it is:

Syntax:

dbca -Silent -CreateDatabase -gdbName $you_oracle_db_name -templateName $template_name [-characterSet] [-nationalCharacterSet] [-datafileDestination] [-databaseType] ....

Tip:

dbca -h

will show you how to explore the power of DBCA!

Example: 5 minute database creation

C:\>%oracle_home%\bin\dbca -Silent -createDatabase -gdbName myoracle -templateName %oracle_home%\assistants\dbca\templates\General_Purpose.dbc -characterSet WE8MSWIN1252 -nationalCharacterSet ALU32UTF16 -datafileDestination c:\temp -databaseType MULTIPURPOSE
Copying database files
1% complete
3% complete
11% complete
18% complete
26% complete
37% complete
Creating and starting Oracle instance
40% complete
45% complete
50% complete
55% complete
56% complete
57% complete
60% complete
62% complete
Completing Database Creation
66% complete
70% complete
73% complete
85% complete
96% complete
100% complete
Look at the log file "c:\oracle\product\1020\cfgtoollogs\dbca\myoracle\myoracle0.log" for further details.