TRACE OUTPUT - Please help

Question

hi there from Portugal
I am running a trace using toad over an oracle 8 database which runs in a remote location.
I do not have an account to acess that machine - Only can connect to database with toad or sql plus.
Is there any other way to see the output of a trace command without accessing the server machine and opening the file stored in the user dump destination?!?!
For example output the trace result to the toad editor screen!?
PS: i do not have permissions to change the user dump destination
I'm sure you guys will find me a solution
Grateful for your help
Regards from Portugal
Edited by: user6364639 on 2/Fev/2009 11:29

Answer 1

When I've been in this unfortunate situation (like on a hosted database) I have been able to create an external table that will give me access to the trace file.
First, look up user_dump_dest so you can create a directory object for this location.
Next you need to get the spid (from v$process) for the session that you are tracing - the default file name for the trace file is ${ORACLE_SID}_ora_${SPID}.trc
So if your spid is 12345
Create the directory and external table like this:
DECLARE
  UDumpDir  VARCHAR2(200);
  SID       VARCHAR2(16);
  MySpid    NUMBER := 12345;  -- ***CHANGE THIS
  ObjectExists EXCEPTION;
  PRAGMA EXCEPTION_INIT(ObjectExists,-955);
BEGIN
  -- get the udump dir
  SELECT value
  INTO UDumpDir
  FROM v$parameter
  WHERE name='user_dump_dest';
  -- create the directory for the udump dir
  EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY udump_dir AS '''||UDumpDir||'''';
  -- grant the necessary privileges
  EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'GRANT READ ON DIRECTORY udump_dir TO system';
  -- get the SID
  SELECT instance_name INTO SID FROM v$instance;
  EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'CREATE TABLE system.TRACE_'||MySpid||'_EXTERNAL
    (TEXT VARCHAR2(255)
    ) ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
    (TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
     DEFAULT DIRECTORY UDUMP_DIR
     ACCESS PARAMETERS
     (records delimited by newline
      nobadfile
      nologfile
     LOCATION ('''||SID||'_ora_'||MySpid||'.trc'')
    REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED'
-- ignore ORA-955 errors (object already exists) 
EXCEPTION WHEN ObjectExists THEN NULL;
END;
/Now that you have the external table (trace_12345_external). Select from it, spooling the output into a local copy of the trace file.
like this:
set pages 0
set linesize 255
set trimspool on
spool MyLocalTraceFile.trc
select * from trace_12345_external;
spool offYou can now tkprof (or otherwise analyze) your trace file on your client machine.
Don't forget to clean up after yourself and drop the external table when you're done.
Good Luck