About the author — and how this site started.

I'm an Oracle Database Administrator. DBHeart started in 2014 as a place to write down what I learned on the job — the kind of mid-incident detail you don't find in the docs because no one writes a manual for "the listener service was running but the database wasn't registered with it."

Everything on this site is something I personally ran into and figured out, then wrote up afterwards. Where it makes sense, I include screenshots from the actual SQL*Plus and RMAN sessions. The articles aren't long for the sake of being long — most are under ten minutes — and the goal is always for you to walk away with something you can run.

What you'll find here

• Oracle fundamentals — architecture, SQL*Plus, PL/SQL, instance recovery.
• Backup & recovery — mostly RMAN scenarios, plus flashback and 12c single-table recovery.
• Errors — the ORA codes that have actually shown up on my screen, with the fixes I used.
• Unix for DBAs — awk, sed, vi, and the SQL*Plus + shell patterns that come up.
• Certification — OCA and OCP prep tips, the path I took, and how to decide between DBA and PL/SQL.

Get in touch

If something is wrong on a page, or out of date, or you want to ask about a scenario I haven't covered — email me at dbheart.tech@gmail.com. If your mail client is already configured, you can also click here to compose.

I read every message and reply to almost all of them.