Orac --  an Oracle 7.3 and Oracle 8 DBA GUI tool for Perl/Tk

   Copyright (c) 1998,1999  Andy Duncan, England

   email:   andy_j_duncan@yahoo.com
   CPAN id: CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDYDUNC

   You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
   License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file,
   with the exception that it cannot be placed on a CD-ROM or similar media
   for commercial distribution without the prior approval of the author.

PLEASE NOTE:

   Some of the Oracle SQL scripts which come with this Perl program,
   are copyrighted to Brian Lomasky.  Please seek clarification from
   Brian before you extend the use of these SQL scripts beyond this
   Perl program.  Such scripts can be easily identified by the header:

   /* From Oracle Scripts, O Reilly and Associates, Inc. */
   /* Copyright 1998 by Brian Lomasky, DBA Solutions, Inc., */
   /* lomasky@earthlink.net */

WARNING:

   THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" IN THE HOPE THAT IT WILL BE USEFUL, 
   BUT WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; WITHOUT EVEN THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF 
   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

PREREQUISITES:

   You'll need perl5.005_02 & 
   modules DBD-Oracle-0.54, DBI-1.02 & Tk402.004
   In loading DBI, you'll have set ORACLE_HOME.  Please keep this set.

REALLY QUICK START GUIDE:

   perl orac_dba.pl <RETURN>


SLIGHTLY LESS QUICK START GUIDE:

*). Load perl5.005_02, DBD-Oracle-0.54, DBI-1.02 & Tk402.004
*). Unzip (gzip -d, gunzip) the ORAC-DBA-?.??.tar.gz file
*). Untar (tar xvf) the ORAC-DBA-?.??.tar file
*). cd ORAC-DBA-?.??
*). Set ORACLE_HOME in your environment
*). Run orac_dba.pl, first making sure the top line of the
    file has the right Perl string address, eg:
        => #!/usr/local/bin/perl
    Or run it with the Perl program directly, 'perl orac_dba.pl'.
*). Most things should be fairly straightforward after that.

ABOUT ORAC:

Preamble: This tool was developed on an Ultra-5 Sun Solaris 2.6 Sun 
workstation.  There may be incompatibilities on your workstation, 
which may need a little source code tinkering.  My apologies.  
Please mail me if this is the case.  Even better, email me the
coded up solution :-)

Orac is named after the original Universal Computer, 'Orac' from Blakes' Seven. 
It is a Perl/Tk tool written in order to store many different and hopefully 
useful SQL scripts within one central easy-to-use interface repository.  
It is a Read-Only 'as is' GUI tool (ie: no DDL, DML, transactions, commits or 
rollbacks, only selects) and will be updated continuously to improve its 
functionality and GUI-ness simplicity.  If you have any useful SQL scripts, 
which you would like to be included within Orac, or requirements which you 
think may be useful to others, please mail them to me and I'll try and embed 
them in the next release. 

If you would like to expand Orac into an Open-Source "Gimp-Like" internet
project, then even better.

Simple graphical ideas for turning difficult to read V$ table information 
into useful pictures are particularly welcomed, as is functionality 
not currently supplied within other GUI tools.  General ideas for improving 
Orac (which began life as a SQL script for killing rogue Oracle processes) 
are always welcomed.  Orac was built mainly upon Oracle 804 but should 
work equally well with anything Oracle 7.3 or over.  I hope you both enjoy 
using Orac, and save yourself some time by employing its scavenged 
collection of SQL scripts.

Revision History
----------------
Vers Date   Comment
---- ----   -------
0.01 Jan 99
0.02 Jan 99 Original code revised to make more stable on other platforms.  
            Removed all '-font' usage and wrapped some statements in 'eval' 
            statements to prevent premature shutdowns.  Also took all SQL 
            out of program and placed in flat files to be called 
            as-and-when necessary (also allows for easier SQL modification).
0.03 Feb 99 After further comments, radical revision carried out to
            shrink Orac into 1 Perl script, rather than numerous heavy
            modules.  Also revised Orac to use Tk4 partly to remove errors 
            for people using Tk4, and because the new 'Learning Perl/Tk' 
            manual recommends G. Sarathy's Win32 binary executable, which 
            currently uses Tk4.  Preparing code for first port away from 
            Solaris 2.6 UNIX.
            Thanks to Tim Bunce for constructive criticism.
0.04 Apr 99 Adjustments after first DBI-Users release.
0.05 Apr 99 More Adjustments after first DBI-Users release.
0.06 Apr 99 Cleaned up a few extraneous debug statements.  Decided to not
            attempt ports, after hearing from several Linux users that
            Orac ran "out-of-the-box", also NT and my mind do not fit
            together.
            Tasklist this time, resizing of windows should be better.
            Hit Ratios values should be clearer.

EOF
