Oracle Database Consultants led by Oracle Certified Master John Watson

20+ Years of Oracle Database Consulting Services

Our Oracle Database consulting team can help by designing, implementing elegant solutions to issues large or small. And, we’re happy to mentor you in the process.

From small administrative tasks (e.g. patching, APEX installations) to complex design and build projects, on-premise or cloud-based, SkillBuilders can dramatically reduce your project time and cost. Either Remote DBA or on-site presence can be provided. Please call us to discuss your requirements. 1-401-783-6172.

For defense against prolonged downtime and meeting SLA’s, SkillBuilders provides 24x7x365 Support – or support tailored to your organization’s needs and budget. We have consultants around the globe ready to respond. This includes immediate response to automated database and system alerts.

Read our Success Stories!

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Oracle Database Experts with Extensive Experience, led by Oracle Certified Master John Watson

Day-to-day Database Administration (John and Dave started with Oracle Database Release 7. We are competent in all releases from 7 to 19c and 21c.)
Database Security / Hardening including CIS Security Audits, SCAP Scans, Encryption, Redaction, Privilege Analysis, OS Configuration and more.
Database Auditing
Oracle Database and Environment Technical Health Checks (more info below)
Implementing EE Features into SE2. Watch our Transparent Data Encryption in SE2 Tutorial!
APEX Administration and Security
APEX Turnkey Solutions
Stress Tests , TPC-C Benchmarks
APEX Stress Tests, Benchmarking
Oracle Internet Directory, SSO
RAC and Grid Infrastructure
ASM
Data Guard / Active Data Guard
Manual Failover Implementations for Oracle Standard Edition 2 (SE / SE1 / SE2) Database
SQL and Database Performance Tuning including Data Warehouse Tuning
Database Installations, Upgrades, Patching and Cloning
E-Business Suite Administration
Data Warehouse and VLDB Design and Tuning
Database Design
Partitioning
Resource Management
Database Security including Advanced Security Option
Database Auditing
Licensing
Oracle Enterprise Manager, Grid Control and Database Control
Unix, Linux, Solaris, AIX, Windows

Testimonials

“I would recommend SkillBuilders and especially [Oracle DBA] John Watson. His Oracle expertise is exceptional, plus he is a pleasure to work with on any level project” – Kevin J Borges, Chief Information Officer, SEA CORP July 2021

“We have a longstanding relationship with SkillBuilders. They feel like part of the team and not just another vendor. John Watson is very knowledgeable and passionate about his work. He truly cares about customer success and has the skills to make it happen.” – Kelly Foster, Decision Support Manager, Shoe Carnival, Nov 2020

“Thanks again to John for opening SRs and following up with Oracle Support – you do have a lot of patience! Looking forward for more future engagements with SkillBuilders – you guys rock!” – Vijay Nair, Pharma/BioTech Marketing Firm, August 2019

“I’m excited that we have another chance to bring you in. There are a handful of vendors that I truly enjoy working with, and SkillBuilders is definitely one of them.” – IT Manager, Global Medical Corporation, September 2019

SkillBuilders in the Cloud

We saw the potential in cloud-based computing early on. In mid-2010, we ran our first classes using cloud-based servers for hands-on workshops, greatly reducing class setup time and cost for our customers.

In addition to our experience with Amazon AWS, in January 2019, we completed our first consulting services project on Oracle Cloud. We configured a full stack Oracle APEX database environment followed by mentoring so the customer became self-sufficent on Oracle Cloud (OCI).

And, since 2015, we’ve been providing Fully Managed Cloud Hosting for Oracle Database and Oracle APEX applications to a Worldwide customer base! We can provision you on a dedicated or shared AWS Oracle Database environment, often within 24 hours or less. By the way, we do mean fully managed. We take complete care of the cloud infrastructure, database, operating systems and APEX stack so you can focus on application development! (We can help with that too.)

Learn more about our Cloud Hosting Services!

In February, 2011, SkillBuilders migrated our web site – a ColdFusion web server backed with an Oracle SE database – to the cloud, and turned off the power in our data center.

Licensing

We are Oracle Database technicians (and masters to boot) who sell Oracle Database licenses. We are database experts. We listen; we take the time to understand your requirements, then we’ll suggest a solution.

Often that solution is Standard Edition – saving our customers tens of thousands of dollars in licensing costs. SkillBuilders alerts and notifications system replaces the costly Enterprise Edition Diagnostics pack Event/Alert Notifications system.

Our skill at database and SQL tuning can make the EE Advisors unnecessary as well. Bottom line: We can often save you a ton of money.

Oracle RAC Consultants

John Watson, Oracle Certified Master and SkillBuilders Director of Oracle Database Services, has been working with clustered databases (Parallel Server) since version 7.

Our consulting team, led by John, can provide the following Oracle RAC-related services:

Oracle RAC and Grid Infrastructure Strategy Review
(Why Are You thinking about RAC? Fault Tolerance? Scalability? Performance?)
Oracle RAC Installations / Implementations
Performance Tuning
Automatic Storage Management (ASM) Disk Tuning and Configurations
Patching and Upgrades
Load and Scalability Testing
Transparent Application Failover, Implementation and Testing

Contact us at 1-401-783-6172 or email us to see how we can help you.

Oracle 12g RAC and Grid Infrastructure Strategy Review

Before you plan your migration to 12c RAC and Grid Infrastructure, ensure that the implementation strategy decided upon is appropriate for your organization’s present and future needs.

Oracle 12c Grid Infrastructure (Clusterware, Flex ASM and the ASM Cluster File System) combined with Real Application Clusters provide amazing scalability, stability and flexibility for Enterprise database management. However, it also introduces new concepts, complexities and a possible paradigm shift for an organizations DBA’s and System/Storage Administrators.

This poses new questions. Grid Infrastructure is comprised of many components – which are best for your organizations current and future needs? Whereas in the past, the DBA and System Admin roles where clearly defined and delineated; how – and who – will manage storage for your Oracle databases?

SkillBuilders’ Oracle Certified Master DBA John Watson will work with your management and key technical personnel to answer these questions.

Your organization’s personnel will

Gain an appreciation of the major Grid Infrastructure facilities
Gain the knowledge required to make informed decisions regarding how Clusterware, ACFS, and RAC – and the key components of each – should be used. This will ensure that the implementation strategy decided upon is appropriate for present and future needs.
Help the organization decide how the separation of job roles (e.g. system administrator vs DBA) will best be handled in their organization given the new integrated architecture presented by Oracle Grid Infrastructure (i.e. Oracle Clusterware and ASM Cluster File System).
Help define the training requirements for Oracle Database Administrators and System and Storage Administrators.

The lectures and discussions will be technical and will assume knowledge of Oracle database and instance architecture. If available environments permit, possibly a few demos but generally chalk-and-talk.

Topics

The SA (System Admin) domain and the DBA (DB Admin) domain

Grid infrastructure includes facilities for managing IT components that traditionally have been within the SA domain: storage, networking, and clusterware. A decision needs to be made on whether responsibility for these components should lie with SA staff, DBA staff, or both.

Which GI components should be implemented?

Implementing the Grid Plug and Play functionality is potentially very useful, but not all sites choose to use it. A decision needs to be made early in the project on whether to implement GPnP. It would not be easy to change the decision later.

Policy managed databases

Policy management allows the clusterware to determine where instances should run, automating the distribution of resources across available nodes. Again, a decision needs to be made early on whether to implement this.

The database listening architecture

Whatever decisions are made in 1 through 3 above, the 12c (actually 11.2 and up) listener model is very different from earlier releases. An appreciation of this is necessary to inform the design of the cluster(s).

Storage technologies

Various technologies are usable as database storage, such as clustered file systems, SAN, NFS, and iSCSI. Grid Infrastructure can replace or work in harmony with facilities such as third party clustered files systems and file servers for non-database applications. There may be significant cost and functionality implications that need to be considered.

High availability

Oracle’s HA architecture consists of one or more of RAC, Data Guard, ACFS, RMAN, Streams (and other products) working together. Network, SAN, and operating system technologies are also relevant. All of these need to be considered together when deciding how to meet whatever service levels are required.