Oracle Hangs When Creating a Database

A database hangs when it fails to process data. Databases hang when the Oracle database is too busy to communicate with users, locked up or cannot resolve errors and complete transactions.

Communication errors between servers and remote clusters interfere and leave transactions hanging during the process of copying existing databases, creating new ones and restoring backup databases.

What can you do when Oracle hangs while you are creating a database?

Oracle uses a temporary tablespace to hold information on database users while the new database is created. If the temporary tablespace runs out of space during the creation process, Oracle will hang. This problem is solved by using the autextend feature to increase the datafile size.

Tablespaces hold the logical structure used to build Oracle databases. Tablespaces contain at least one data file that defines its table structure and indexes. Creating separate tablespaces for user data and database indexes reduces the risk of a database hanging due to corruption or loss. Copying multiple tablespaces allows them to be backed up, copied and restored more easily.

Oracle database creation via the export and import functions copies an existing database to create a new one. Database copying will hang if the source database has gone down or the network connection fails. If an Oracle table is deleted while it is being read, Oracle will hang or generate an error message. Copying corrupted databases will leave Oracle hanging.

The Oracle database may need to be restored from a backup file to get a clean database to copy. Lag monitoring scripts indicate when a database is slow to respond or stopped responding to copy requests.

The Database Configuration Assistant creates new, standalone databases and new databases on Real Application Clusters or RAC. When creating new databases in the RAC, the administrator must have the administrative and root level access. If the cluster is down, the database creation process may hang.

The Oracle Recovery Manager or RMAN creates backups of databases. Restoring a database requires the RMAN backup and archive redo log files. When the RMAN backup file runs out of space, the backup aborts. If the archive log file directory runs out of space, the database will hang because it cannot save changes made to the database.

If the archive redo log file is missing, the database restoration may hang. When an Operating System utility is copying the data files, database users may also be altering that information. This corrupts the backup data file. Waiting until users are not on the system to create backups prevents this problem.

Oracle Golden Gate Replicat captures real time transactions on Oracle databases and can be used to capture information as two databases share information. Replicat reads data from remote trail files on a database using SQL statements.

Relpicat hangs when it cannot access or process information on a target Oracle database. Replicat will hang if the source database has gone down or the network connection fails. Lag monitoring scripts indicate when a database is slow to respond or stopped responding.