Oracle Sql tracing
Posted by Uberto Barbini on April 15, 2008
Have you ever felt completely stupid, after desperately searching for something that you know there must exists. But utterly unable to find it?
And then discover it exactly under your nose?
Here, it happens twice a month. I’m still unsure if I’m getting worse in not seeing things or getting better to find them eventually.
Anyway I suppose that everybody know Oracle. That is everybody who knows what a RDMS is.
So we have this nice XE version that allows you to try it and test your application on your laptop, without having to buy expensive licenses.
Probably they know that developers are completely morons when it comes to configure stuff like db server or http servers… hey, I was unable to configure my VCR until I bought one with fancy on-screen menus.
So after installing XE you are left with have a nice web configuration tool, with a convenient entry from your start menu.
If you download also SqlDeveloper, you have a complete and powerful enviroment to test your application against Oracle, including SP debug, completely free (as in beer).
Now let’s say that you want also trace sql statements from your application… no way to do so from SqlDeveloper, although there are two tabs called “DBMS output” and “OWA output” with a “trace on” button, thery must be there for something else. At least I wasn’t able to see any output there, same thing with the “show logs” window.
After some time spent on google I came out with a faq and some instructions: it’s not that I don’t like SQL*plus but… common guys, we’re on 2008 now! There ought to be something fancier than that!
To make a long story short, go to your “Database Home Page” and click on:
home / administration / monitor / sessions / sql
and that’s all folks!
bad_r said
actually i think as a developer you should be able to install the enterprise version of oracle, and actually its free as long as you dont use to for production systems, and installing it on windows isn’t that complicated, all you need is a relatively fast machine and there you go, and once you’ve got that done its easy to trace the exact performance of your sql quereies even better the enterprise manager gives you pointers on how to speed up your oracle statements.