Oracle 12c – Where am I

In the good old days it was relatively easy to figure out what database you were in.  If you do a quick select on v$instance, you are good.

However, in 12c, when we introduce pluggable container databases things get a little more complicated.  When you issue a sqlplus / as sysdba, you will be placed parent container.

Once you are logged in you can change to a pluggable database by issuing:

alter session set container=<my_pluggable_db_name>;

if you issue the command:

show con_id con_name

It will report the container id & container name:

Now that you are in the pluggable database you can use the new view v$pdbs which will report information for the pluggable database that v$instance does for the container database.

If you log into the container database you can select from v$pdbs and it will report all the pluggable databases within the container.