Do we need CDOS?

The usenet newsgroup comp.databases.oracle.server ("CDOS") can be a contentious place. Posters there tend to be very opinionated, and sometimes (actually, frequently in my estimation) very rude. It occurred to me that most countries in the world desire to be free. As a result, "big brother" type message board moderators don't tend to go over well with computer types, who are normally free thinkers. However, I have seen good contributor after good contributer driven away from CDOS by what I frequently call the "self appointed Oracle police". There are a few very prominent posters on the newsgroup who consistently become what I would call angry with "newbies" for asking questions they (the "police") don't feel should be asked.

This creates (at least) two problems in my mind:

1. Newbies are reluctant to ask questions for fear they may not be posting "correctly" (don't we all have enough to worry about in our lives without complaining about if someone "top posts"?), or are asking question for which they should already know the answer, but "they are too lazy to read the documentation", etc.
2. Good posters (good, technical contributors to questions posted for discussion) are driven away by the rudeness of these posters (I can't tell you how many times I have seen this over the years...)

It occurred to me that if we don't want to be policed by a "big brother" moderator, and if we don't want to spend time in the jungle of the self appointed Oracle police, there is an answer.

Why not have a forum where readers vote posters off the board in a democratic fashion? Although this may sound somewhat inhumane on the surface, it makes sense to me. Users who don't want to confront the Oracle playground bullies could anonymously cast a vote which would contribute to the deactivation of the bullies account(s). This could be done by restricting IP, username, etc., with a voter only being able to cast one vote against any given "problem child". This would allow the group to moderate itself, giving the "unheard" voice a say in what it looks like. Granted, I haven't completely thought this out (once a week purge?), but it's a start...

Of course, this idea relies on the ability (or lack thereof) of Oracle aficionados (or just newbies looking for an answer to a one time "simple" question) to act like human beings, and not "have it in for" a given poster.

Are there legal issues with this? In other words, what if a "scorned poster" posts things from a different IP, etc., which get the forum owner in legal hot water? Would this idea itself drive away good contributors (the stooges are normally very sound, technically)?

Having said all of that, it sounds like a cool app to write, anyhoo!!!

Standby created without a standby controlfile?!!

Today, a junior DBA created a standby database by copying the controlfile to another host, restoring the 4TB database it serves, and recovering all available logs via RMAN. Sounds good, right? Well, it was until we went into SQL*PLUS and found that a "RECOVER STANDBY DATABASE;" command returned an exception that we were not using a standby controlfile. At this point, we were thinking that we had lost an entire day, when we were already behind on the project.

My initial thought was to issue a "alter database convert to physical standby;". However, I then found that the DBA had created the controlfile for the standby as a "normal" backup controlfile. Was this a good thing?...yeah, not so much. Oracle will not allow you to convert a backup controlfile to a standby, since a backup controlfile implies you are doing incomplete recovery, which a standby database, by definition, should not be.

To complicate matters, we were putting the datafiles on the standby in ASM, where they were on raw devices on the primary host. As a result, RMAN set newname commands were required.
After copying a "real" standby controlfile to the standby host, I found the set newname commands did not work, as this controfile did not "know" about our previously restored and renamed files into ASM on the standby. Since we obviously did not want to re-restore 4TB of datafiles, we ended up cataloging the datafile copies on the standby host so the new standby controlfile "knew" about them, i.e.,

catalog datafilecopy '+ASM_TIER2/XWCBMW/DATAFILE/AEID_LB1_4K.285.621280543' level 0;

...

This worked, and gave us much joy, as out set newname commands in RMAN now worked, and allowed recovery to commence :)