# Introduction

**DMK** is the acronym for **D**atabase **M**anagement **K**it. It is a tool to simplify and standardize the work with Oracle. It will set the correct shell-environment, offers scripts for starting/stopping Oracle components (database, listener, ...) and to show database related information.

To work with Oracle, e.g. to start the instance or to run sqlplus, you will use a shell (bash or ksh on Unix 🐧, cmd or ps1 on Windows 🪟). And in this shell you need variables like ORACLE\_HOME, ORACLE\_SID, NLS\_LANG, TNS\_ADMIN, PATH.\
DMK will dynamically set these SID-specific variables. To switch the environment to another SID, there is an alias with the name of the SID.

Additionally, DMK offers aliases to simplify and standardize complex commands for more efficiency. Examples:

* sqh is an alias for "sqlplus / as sysdba" (or "as sysasm" if ASM). Additionally, it enables a history function and keyword completion for sqlplus. And if we set the environment for a PDB, it will automatically switch to this PDB.
* cdh is an alias to cd to the current $ORACLE\_HOME
* taa is an alias to do a "tail -f" on the current alertlog.

It is a tool for standardization. On all systems the same variables and aliases are available. As long as technically possible, it hides differences between the platforms, e.g. between Linux and AIX or Solaris and Windows.

## Document convention

| Item                | Description                                     |
| ------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| :warning:           | This icon informs of a warning                  |
| `echo Hello World!` | This style stands for a command or a script.    |
| 🪟                  | This icon stands for a Windows-only action      |
| 🐧                  | This action stands for a Unix/Linux-only action |

## Software Overview

🐧 The software is provided as a small ZIP archive `oracle_dmk-<version>-unix.zip` for Linux/Unix. It contains ksh- and perl-scripts, plus a "rlwrap" binary (as a fallback if there is no OS-specifig rlwrap). It has to be extracted in the destination directory (usually in the ORACLE\_BASE /u01/app/oracle/**local/**)

🪟 The software is provided as a small ZIP archive `oracle_dmk-<version>-win.zip` for Windows. It contains cmd, ps1 and perl-scripts, plus some Unix-like utilities (e.g. tar, grep, tail, gzip) and a minimal version of the `vi` editor. It has to be extracted in the destination directory (usually in the ORACLE\_BASE C:\app\oracle\\**local\\**).

## Support

In case you have questions, want to raise a request, bug or any for any other purpose:

* For customers: Contact your dbi services consultant
* For dbi services employees: Ask a colleague, or raise a new issue in <https://gitlab.com/dbiservices/dmk/dmk\\_oracle/oracle\\_dmk/-/issues/>

:information\_source: In case you encounter a bug, we strongly recommend enabling the DEBUG mode before raising a bug (Set the environment variable DEBUG=1\`). It is also helpful to provide the following files/information:

* /etc/oratab
* oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml
* $etc/ora\_homes
* $etc/ora\_sids
* output of "env"
* output of "ps -efwww" (linux; Unix similar)

***

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