Standby database init parameters

[Mike Donovan]

Question:
I have a question about using a standby database when it is in read only mode for reporting purposes.

Our standby database is in read only mode during most of the day. We apply archive logs to it between 8PM and 9pm everyday. I can generate reports on the database as I do from our primary database but the performance isn’t quite what it is on our production server. Looking at task manager on this backup server it is clear that the 16 gigs we allocate on our production server to oracle are not being allocated on our standby server.

Is it possible to have settings from the initprod.ora file applied to a read only database? I am looking to maximize performance on our read only database first and foremost.

Answer:
Yes there are separate init.ora parameters for the primary and standby databases, and these are independent from each other.

So you can change the init.ora parameters for your standby and these settings will only apply to the standby database. These settings will apply when it is in normal recovery mode and when it is in read only mode. The location of the init.ora parameters is usually within the $ORACLE_HOME directory on the local server.