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Delphix deals before the end of year

It's let's make a deal time at Delphix. If you have ever had the fun of closing an Oracle deal at their fiscal year end, you know what happens. Not only is it fiscal year end but Delphix is also millimeters away from adding an extra figure to their end of quarter total and I'm betting that now is the last time these low of prices will ever be seen - just my view point from being inside the castle.

I'm not sure if you can imagine the ease and savings of virtualizing databases

1) Super fast provision – three clicks and a few minutes to stand up a fully functional, point-in-time 10g/11g database copy/clone

2) Storage savings - a new database copy basically only consists of some pointers and the space it takes for private redo and temp

Delphix doesn't require filesystem snashots or EMC or NetApps. It only requires x86 box with about the same amount of the disk space of the database you want to virtualize. The source database is copied onto the Delphix machine with RMAN calls, the data is compressed and Delphix handles the snapshots and provisioning of virtual databases. Virtual database can be provisioned from the original source copy, or any incremental snapshot or if log shipping is used, then any SCN or date in between. Then you can make as many copies as you want, with in reason, for almost free in terms of storage.

If you are a departmental head and some extra budget that will be lost at year end then Delphix is a good way to use that budget.

For these cut rate deals, everything has to be in by Friday at the absolute latest. For best info contact

kaycee.lai@delphix.com and/or garrett.stanton@delphix.com

This idea is being harnessed by more and more companies across different industries - we've be implemented this at Shopping.com (part of ebay), Tivo (consumer tech), Corporate Express (retail), Tagged (social networking), Clearwire (telcom), KLA Tencor (hardware), Holland America (travel) .

When I talk to customers who don't have development or QA copies of production I cringe. Usually developers work on subsets of production and often query performance on these subsets don't reflect the performance in production. Even if production is a full copy of development there is often just one copy shared by all the developers and QA. Any change to this copy has to go through a number of hoops and signoffs which slows down the development process and de-motivates developers. I don't know if you can imagine having a copy per developer of production where each developer can make and test as many changes as fast as they want on an exact copy of production - it's awesome and inspires the developers. After the developers are confident of there modifications then they can submit the final change request for review.

Delphix makes all of this easy with no changes on production and creation of virtual databases just a few clicks of a mouse in GUI .

New Oracle Monitor - what language would you use?

I don't consider myself a programmer and my exposure to some of these languages is quite superficial, so please feel encouraged to jump into this discussion with your experiences, corrections and comments.

What language and UI would you use to create an Oracle monitor? Why?

What are the pros and cons ? I want a tool to be

• easy to install
• quick to program
• have interactive graphics
• run fast
• web enabled

These goals are hard, if not impossible, to achieve in the same product. A product's choice of programming language will be limited if interactive graphics are involved. I think graphics are the only way to make a tool easy to use and information easy to grasp but graphics definitely limits the coding options. A really nice option, and practically a commercial requirement is to run in a web browser and running in a browser even further limits the the coding options and and the possibilities of achieving all the goals

What programming languages could be used? Some choices are

• C
• SQL*Plus
• PL/SQL
• perl
• python
• tcl/tk
• ruby(on rails)
• Java fat client
• Java web app (with Flex)
• Delphi
• Visual Basic
• Apex

And tangential languages

• ksh(bash/sh/csh) with AWK
• HTML5

Here is a quick (5 minute off the cuff ) impression of the languages

Do they require an install? or can the be run immediately with simple executable?

Are interactive graphics possible (within reason)

Are they easy or difficult to program in?

Do they have cross platform support? (*nix, mac, win)

Are they web enabled?

Are the fast or are they memory (and CPU) hogs?

Do you have to pay for the development platform?

Installation:

To have an absolutely brain dead install would require the tool to be written in C, Delphi or VB as these are compiled into single executables. All the other languages, AFAIK, require the language interpreter or engine to be installed and generally require Oracle libraries to be there. Actually, C, Delphi and VB might require Oracle libraries as well, but at least for C, it seems like there would be a way to link a static executable. Oracle is not required for most Java applications as they are generally shipped with a JDBC driver for Oracle, though it's just another file to scatter about on your file system as part of a complicated install. On the other hand Embarcadero has a neat option where everything, even in a java app, is packaged into one executable called an "instant on" executable, much more akin to running a self contained executable on UNIX via some windows magic in the sauce.

The installs required by other products vary. I'd say most are pretty easy, though how easy depends largely on how the language environment is packaged along with the tool. If the tool does no prepackaging and lets the user set up the required packages then installation can be a nightmare. A tool like ASHMON written in TCL/TK for examples requires graphing package, thread package, math extension and an Oracle connection package. I've packaged all these up into a single download which still requires the Oracle client libraries to be pre-installed. All and all it takes a good bit of upkeep to maintain the binaries of all packages on the platforms people might use and even upon installation it doesn't have single executable, but an execution shell that has to launch and find the scripts which depend upon directory locations and it has to find the Oracle install and tnsname.ora. It would be so awesome if I could just make one executable with everything. So installation for Perl, Python and ruby would be similar, AFAIK. A java app is a bit better - one executable though it depends on java already being installed, and for APEX - I believe all sorts of stuff has to be installed and configured on an Oracle database and either installing a full Oracle database for the tool or requiring the target database to have APEX installed is a lot to ask for.

The software that is most likely to be installed is SQL*Plus but even SQL*Plus may not always be available on a customers laptop or desktop. My laptop did not have SQL*Plus until yesterday, almost 2 months after I started using the laptop. I was just using SSH and other tools. Yesterday I finally installed SQL*Plus to start working on a new performance monitoring tool. Why a new tool? I want a new tool that will give me performance data from customer's Oracle databases that I can review at a later point in time. I want a tool that the customer can run as quickly and easily as possible and that requires the least amount of user knowledge and interaction. Beyond the goal of collection performance data, I would also want the tool to give some immediate feedback on performance. Of course SQL*Plus should be the easiest thing to use. Maybe the laptop or desktop does not have SQL*Plus installed, but in the realm of Oracle performance, nothing should be more reasonable than expecting the customer to have SQL*Plus installed on the desktop/laptop.

Graphics

AFAIK, the only reasonable interactive graphics options are Java Applications, Java in the web using FLEX (SGV was an option but is been shelved), TCL/TK, Ruby with RMagick, Visual Basic and Delphi. Not such luck for SQL, PLSQL, Perl or Python.

Apex may have some, but not sure how robust they are.

Java has gobs, but how good they are, not so sure and how do you find the right one? Many are pay for and I'd like to first commit to Java before paying and I want to be sure the package I'm buying is the best. Ideally I'd rather not have to pay

TCL's BLT package has a quite good graphing library.

For graphs, there are lots of small but important options - auto resize, filled area stacking, log scales, mixing bars and lines, easily adding and deleting items from the graph, actions on graph contents triggered by mouse passing over or clicking, etc. Sure, graphing can be done in almost anything, but having a package to take care of all the minutia is the only kind really worth my time. TCL's BTL graphs also use "vectors" or very efficient lists of numbers. I can act on these lists - divided two lists, add to lists, multiply a list by a value or modify points, add points, delete points and have the graph updated immediately.

Delphi and Visual Basic have graphic packages though, like JAVA, there are lots of options and many are pay for.

Ruby seems to have Rmagick. Not sure if there are other options.

Java web applications have Flex which requires Adobe's IDE.

Data Manipulation

SQL and PL/SQL of course are pretty simple - at least they provide the ability to collect and manipulate data in a far more powerful and easy way than any other language. The con with SQL of course is it's not procedure. PLSQL is of course procedural but often leads to creating things in the database like global temporary tables, packages and procedures and creating things in the target database is a "no no" for me. I want to affect as little as possible the database I'm monitoring. The best approach is to collect the data via SQL or even PLSQL with as little manipulation and then manipulate the data on a local, not target database. I've done this in the past with AWK but it's tedious and brittle. Similarly I've manipulated the data in TCL and again, though clearer than AWK it's still quite tedious. I've tried it in JAVA and JAVA just gives me the hebee jebees - it might not be as tedious, but I just get the feeling that the data structures are inefficient, non-scalable, slow and memory intensive. Another maybe better alternative is using a locals database but this requires installing a databases which is a bit overkill at least if the database is Oracle. The solution to this is to use an embeddable database like HSQL, H2, SQLite or firebird (is Derby embeddable?) For other languages we could also manipulate the data in local structures or objects but tacking aggregations, groupings, sums, averages, counts etc is just so tedious in code and so easy and effortless in a database. I assume it's pretty easy to embed a databases in almost all the languages except maybe C because then I'd assume we'd be loosing the advantage of having C be an easy to install executable, though maybe it's easy.

I started to play with SQLite and TCL a several years ago and though it may be simple it was certainly taking me more time than just interfacing TCL with a running Oracle database.

Beyond whether to use a database or not and how, there is the question of how productive is a coder in a language. The lower level the language the more tedious. For example C, though elegant and fast, is quite tedious. At the other end is something like Delphi which is a piece of cake. Another aspect is just how heavy the language is. I find Java heavy. The overhead to set up simple functionality feels simply crippling to me.

UI layout

Delphi is easy to layout UI.

TCL/TK is difficult.

I think Java is somewhere in between

For SQL the only UI is just hacking with ASCII - generally not pretty.

Ruby - I don't know.

Flex - not sure either though I'd guess its good though no where near as easy as Delphi.

VB - I assume it's like Delphi.

Perl and Python - not much options unless they are married to something like TK.

Apex - don't know, I've head good things but it is Oracle and from what I've seen of APEX it's not a cakewalk, at least to get up and running and ready. Maybe when all the pieces are in place its straight forward.

Coding

Java IMO seems like crap - it's like "new money" , you know those LA mansions that are gaudy fake, expensive and needlessly huge.

Perl is not pretty but at leasts it's efficient. You don't get any LA mansions in Perl. It's more like a souped up jalopy. It's sort of junky but it runs fast.

Python seems good to me.

Ruby seems like a cross between TCL and Python - seems nice - sort of zen, though I've only written a few lines.

TCL - little strange, but ok - might have been nice but it's been long forgotten.

Delphi uses a modified Pascal and what's easier than Pascal?

Performance

Java is a pig.

Flex is a pig.

OK, OK don't tell me that it's not the language its the programmer. I've never seen a C program take up 600Ms to collect a few K of data and I've never seen a Java program run under 50Ms. (more like 100M+)

Delphi is like 10M, runs fast. What's not to like? (pay for IDE and it's washed up, the UI looks like so 20 years ago)

C of course is lightning fast.

TCL seems fine, maybe at bit slow, but for the structures I care about like vectors and in graphs have been well optimized

Python seems fast.

Perl - I assume it's pretty fast. I tried to write a direct memory access program in Perl and it was slower than executing SQL but that's because the API attached and detached from the Oracle SGA for every bit of data I collected. I theoretically could have gone in and modified the Perl API for shared memory.

Web

Who works on the web for a GUI? Apex, Java with Flex, Ruby on Rails with Rmagick. Rmagick may or may not provide GUI interaction - I have yet to try it. I spent a couple hours last weekend trying to get it to work under Cygwin and eventually gave up and just installed it straight under windows, but have yet to play with it.

Java with Flex is probably the premier solution but it's fat and the IDE is payfor.

What about HTML5?

Is FLEX an option? maybe for an enterprise application but not for a desktop web enabled application as far as I can tell.

My Story

I've been thinking about this for years. I started programming TCL/TK graphics back in 1994. The only other option before 2000 or so was Visual Basic and Delphi . I didn't hear of Delphi till about 2007 (!) and Visual Basic never seemed like an option since it was limited to Windows. The windows limitation seems much less important now days, but back then I only worked on UNIX and didn't have a laptop, so TCL/TK was the only option until around 2000 when Java became an option. In 2002 when I started working on OEM 10gR1. When I arrived at Oracle in 2002 to work on OEM, I had no idea it was web based and pure HTML. HTML ?! I had thought that I would be working on the 9i java fat client. The 9i java client was relatively good at least compared to OEM 7 and 8 and I thought with a little facelift the 9i client could be good. I could hardly believe the 10g OEM was HTML. Pure HTML ? No interactive graphics?! and this was the monitor that was suppose to performance shoot, monitor and tune the some of the most important production databases in the world? Are you kidding me? The "solution" back pre-10gR1 was to have use gifs for any graphics. Any change in the gifs causes not a partial page refresh but a full page refresh. and these gifs would only be updated occasionally. The refresh rate on the Oracle home page could be as much as an hour out of date. Wow.

Well we change things - got SVG in, got the refresh rate to be much faster, but OEM is still slow and the data collection has hardly improved in the last 6 years. So much more could be done with some small changes, for example adding the average wait times for different kind of IOs, harnessing the wait histograms better, high lighting some key statistics , trending, forecasting, showing the differences between selected periods clearly, adding more drill down and aggregation options on the ASH data and externalizing in a clear graphical way the new extended row course data in ASH. I had want to get Adobe Flash/Flex into OEM but Oracle was reluctant. The compromise was SVG. OEM does use Flex but I've heard that Flex is going to be ripped out in lieu of ADF, and what's even more twisted is ADF builds it's graphic components upon Flex. Strange.

In all cases OEM is slow and huge and slow to change. Java, whether it's in the middle tier or a Java application is memory pig and generally slow.

Summary

I want the tool to run fast which means using as little CPU and memory as possible.

I want a tool that's fast to install.

I want a tool that has interactive graphics.

I want a tool that is easy to create and program.

I want the tool to be web enabled.

For collection, the best sounds like using SQL*Plus with anonymous PLSQL - this could possibly be wrapped in C for a single collection executable.

For aggregation, anything works as long as it has a database.

For UI Delphi sounds like the easiest to program *and* run (possibly VB - anyone know the pros and cons of VB verses Delphi?)

For web - it's either JAVA and FLEX and a memory pig and a pay for IDE or is RUBY on rails a possibility? Ruby has an Oracle , SQLite and UI packages.

What about HTML5 ? Too new? Does it have Oracle access? does it have an embeddable database? What graphic options does it have?

Solaris AWK still broken after all these years

It's amazing how time flies. I've got the above book sitting on my desk at work. It's the only book on my desk at work. Its probably my favorite computer book for it's terse clear style and simple power. I've keep it for about 20 years, and 20 years later, I'd expect any bugs in basic code examples to be worked out. For the most part on most platforms this is true, but not Solaris.

AWK is an awesome utility always available on UNIX and makes a perfect tool to for scripts that will run anywhere with no need for dependencies nor if's, and's or but's. For that reason it's all the more dissapointing that the default awk on Solaris is broken for syntaxes that were valid over 20 years ago. On the default awk on Solaris the following are broken

1. awk -vVAR=value
2. if ( $0 ~ "string" )
3. gsub , sub

Probably the most useful thing to know is for point 1, passing in a shell variable, you can do it by setting a variable in the shell such as "VAR=10" and accessing it in the awk script with:

 VAR="'"$VAR"'"

Point 2, the if construct can be gotten around a bit less elegantly  with

 /string/   { ...

Point 3, gsub and sub are broken is just plain annoying and it takes writing your own routines with index and substr.

Which was too bad for me. I wanted to write a script to eliminate more than 2 redo logs from database creation for "scratch" databases. I don't know if you can imagine a create script like:

STARTUP NOMOUNT pfile='/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/initredo2a.ora.provision'

CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE SET DATABASE "redo2a" RESETLOGS ARCHIVELOG

MAXLOGFILES $MAXLOGFILES

MAXLOGMEMBERS $MAXLOGMEMBERS

MAXDATAFILES $MAXDATAFILES

MAXINSTANCES $MAXINSTANCES

MAXLOGHISTORY $MAXLOGHISTORY

LOGFILE

GROUP 1(

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/redo01.log',

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/redo01a.log'

) SIZE 52428800,

GROUP 2(

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/redo02.log',

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/redo02a.log'

) SIZE 52428800,

GROUP 3(

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/redo03.log'

) SIZE 52428800

DATAFILE

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/system01.dbf',

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/undotbs01.dbf',

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/sysaux01.dbf',

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/users01.dbf',

'/mnt/provision/redo2a/datafile/opt/oracle/oradata/homer/t1.dbf'

$CHARACTER_SET

;

I just wanted 2 redo logs and one member for group, so I wanted to pull out all that's highlighted in orange. Simple with AWK:

cat ${MNTDIR}/doCreateControlFile.sh | \
awk -vNREDO="$NREDO" '
BEGIN {
 output="on"
 members="off"
 nlogs=0
 last="no"
}
{
# members
if ( $0 ~ "GROUP"     ) { members="on" ; nlogs=0}
# output
if ( $0 ~ NREDO       ) { last="yes" }
if ( $0 ~ "DATAFILE"  ) { output="on"  }
if ( $0 ~ "SIZE"      ) { members="off" ; nlogs=0}
if ( output == "on"   ) {
   nlogs++
       gsub(/,/,"")
 }
 if ( nlogs < last ="=" last = "no" output="off"> /tmp/redo2.$$

The script works on AIX, HPUX, Redhat but not on Solaris. For Solaris I had a few choices. I could try and use nawk or gawk which would require me using some sort of "ifdef" and even then using nawk would require some changes. AFAIK gawk would have to be installed on the machines, thus ruling it out. For me, I wanted the safest option. The safest option for me was just to re-write the code in a way that worked around the bugs on Solaris default awk.

cat ${MNTDIR}/doCreateControlFile.sh | \
awk  '
BEGIN {
output="on"
members="off"
nlogs=0
last="no"
size="no"
NREDO="'"$NREDO"'"
}
/DATAFILE/               { output="on"  } # turn output back on
/SIZE/                   { members="off" ; nlogs=0; size="yes"}  # end of group members
/GROUP/                  { members="on"  ; nlogs=-1 }  # start counting group members
{ if ( index($0,NREDO) )   last="yes"    } # reach the maximum  of redo logs to recreate
{
if ( output == "on"   ) {
str=$0
if ( members == "on"  ) { # we are in the log member section
   nlogs++             # count members
   i=index(str,",");   # get rid of comma at end of line
   if ( i > 0 ) {
       str=substr(str,0,i-1)
   }
}
if ( nlogs < size ="=" last ="=" str="$0" i="index(str,"> 0 ) {
                str=substr(str,0,i-1)
            }
            last = "no"
            output="off"   # we reach max # of redo logs, turn output off till we see DATAFILE
         }
      }
      print str
   }
}
}
{ size = "no" }
'  > /tmp/redo2.$$

Job Openings for Oracle experts

You know it's a good company when the support desk looks like this:

Delphix, the company I've been at for the past month, is hiring! We are interested primarily in Oracle expertise centered around backup and recovery, rman, dataguard and ASM.

Big plus for solid knowledge of NFS, storage systems, zfs and networking with an eye for performance tuning.

We are looking for sales consultants, support, engineers and QA.

I'm super happy with this new position - small company where everyone makes an impact and the people are super smart, motivated and experienced.

We've got an amazing team from the the creators of Dtrace and zfs to principle players in the development of Oracle RAC, cache fusion and dataguard to the founder of Avamar and the marketing VP who took VMware public. Come join us !

If interested, contact me at kyle.hailey @ delphix dot com.

---

Delphix turns physical database infrastructure into software that can run in a fraction of the space, automating some of the most challenging and time consuming operations in the datacenter: refreshing and provisioning of databases. With our database virtualization software, enterprises can reduce complex provisioning tasks from 10 days to 10 seconds and shrink 10 TB into 1 TB.

Enterprises typically create multiple copies of production databases for development, testing, QA, staging, UAT, pilots, training, operational reporting, etc. By linking with production databases via standard APIs, Delphix enables the benefits of consolidation and virtualization for all supporting database infrastructure—with no need to make changes to production systems. As a result, an investment in Delphix can generate a high-impact ROI with very low risk.

The team at Delphix has been responsible for developing products that have generated billions in annual revenue, including Oracle RAC, used in more than 20% of Oracle deployments, and EMC Avamar, the solution that pioneered data de-duplication, one of the fastest growing technologies in datacenters today. Our board of directors includes founding board members for Oracle, Business Objects, Informatica, Riverbed, Brocade, and Avamar. One of our lead investors was the co-founding chairman of Oracle, founding chairman of Business Object and founding chairman of Informatica. Our Advisory board has a number of recognized industry icons including the original WW VP’S of Field ops from Oracle and VMware. I We are head quartered in Palo Alto. Delphix will be hard to beat in terms of working on very interesting technology, a great business, and the ability to grow both your career and technical ability.

NFS and IO testing : Bonnie++

Been spending time lately testing out and trying to tune NFS mounts.

For testing IO, I've been using

• dd
• iozone
• bonnie++
• orion

This first option, dd, is fine for file creation tests and/or sequential reads but less flexible for random reads or random writes

To test random reads I thought I'd use iozone but don't see a solely random read test.

Then I thought I'd use the Oracle supplied tool, orion, to do random read test on an NFS mounted file system, but this doesn't work, at least on AIX 6.1, with my mount settings.

First orion test gave this error

$ orion -run simple -testname orion

ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.1.0.7.0

orion_20101123_1503

rwbase_read_luncfg: SlfFopen error on orion.lun

orion_parse_args: rwbase_read_luncfg failed

OK, have to create "orion.lun" with either my lun locations or my file locations. I put in file locations:

$ cat orion.lun

/tmp/system01.dbf

Now get another error

$ orion -run simple -testname orion

ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.1.0.7.0

orion_20101123_1508

Test will take approximately 9 minutes

Larger caches may take longer

orion_spawn: skgpspawn failed: Error category: 27155, Detail: 2

orion_main: orion_spawn failed

Non test error occurred

Orion exiting

Illegal instruction(coredump)

Looks like the "orion" executable wasn't being found, at least not by execve

$ truss -f orion -run simple -testname orion

...

700502: execve("orion", 0x0FFFFFFFFFFBF2D0, 0x0FFFFFFFFFFFFB30) Err#2 ENOENT

so I ran it from my bin directory where the orion executable could be found. Now get another error

$ orion -run simple -testname orion

ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.1.0.7.0

orion_20101123_1510

Test will take approximately 9 minutes

Larger caches may take longer

storax_skgfr_openfiles: File identification failed on /kyle/system01.dbf

OER 27054: please look up error in Oracle documentation

Additional information: 6

rwbase_lio_init_luns: lun_openvols failed

rwbase_rwluns: rwbase_lio_init_luns failed

orion_thread_main: rw_luns failed

Non test error occurred

Orion exiting

If the datafile was on "/tmp" it word fine but if it was on my NFS mount it failed with the above error. Hmm - doesn't work over NFS?

Finally I decided to try bonnie++. I download, unziped, tar extracted bonnie++ , ran "./configure" and then make, but got error

$ make

make: 1254-002 Cannot find a rule to create target bon_io.o from dependencies.

Stop.

For some reason the rule for the ".o" doesn't seem to work:

%.o: %.cpp %.h bonnie.h port.h

$(CXX) -c $<

Not feeling like trying to figure make out I just did it by hand

$ for i in *cpp; do

name=`echo $i | sed -e 's/.cpp//'`

echo "g++ -c $name.cpp $name.h bonnie.h port.h"

done > makeo

$ sh makeo

$ make

That worked. Test results coming

Virtual Conference on Oracle Performance!

Check this out ( from http://tech.e2sn.com/virtual-conferences )

The E2SN Virtual Conferences are webinar-style online training sessions, but just like at conferences, you can listen to multiple top speakers within a single event.

The standard conference consists of 4 x 1.5 hour presentations with 30-minute Q & A sessions after each presentation. The four sessions are spread across two days, so the conference takes only four hours per day. So, in addition to not even having to leave your desk for learning from world's top experts, you can still get your important work done in the office, too!

The first scheduled virtual conference is focusing on a walk-through on Systematic Oracle SQL Optimization, with emphasis on practical applications and real-life scenarios.

Systematic Oracle SQL Optimization virtual conference:

• The speakers are: Cary Millsap, Jonathan Lewis, Kerry Osborne and Tanel Poder
  
  
• The conference takes place on 18. and 19. November ( 2 x 0.5 days )
  
  
• The time of the conference sessions is: 08:00am - 12:00pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) on both days
  
  
• For this inaugural event we have a special launch price of 475 USD per attendee!

Click here for agenda, abstract and registration....

SVG and OEM on windows 64 bit

Anyone try to use OEM from a windows 64bit machine? Looks like there is no SVG install for windows 64bit so the charts on the performance pages are all just gifs.

Seems surprising but alas with Oracle and their dealings with UI, its not that surprising.

I wanted Oracle to use flash in OEM 10g but that got nixed. I was glad to have SVG in OEM 10g rather than nothing, but SVG has been EOLed and so unless Oracle does something then there will be more and more cases where OEMs SVG components don't work in browsers as OS's advance.

On a good note though, in 11g I was happy to see some FLEX components but word has it that these will be pulled - hmpf!

I'm happy to see that my current company, Delphix, is using FLEX (not that FLEX is the only way to go but it's a nice way, at least until HTML5) . Here's an example of Delphix's interface

http://www.delphix.com/resources.php?tab=product-demo

After working at Oracle for 13 years , UI seemed to be some of the worst in the valley often harking back to web pages from 1992, it's nice to be at Delphix, a company that seems to appreciate UI and aesthetics. I never understood why Oracle's UI wasn't better since Larry was such good friends with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs and Apple are so good at look and feel. I figured Steve Jobs would have influenced Larry and Oracle to have great UI, but alas there has never been any indication of that other than the fun demos Larry and Steve use to do around Oracle and the NEXT machine back in the day.

ASHMON on 64bit Oracle 11gR2

It's been years since I've changed any ASHMON code though I have used ASHMON whenever I didn't have access to DB Optimizer or when I wanted to specifically access v$active_session_history graphically. Yesterday, though, I just got a new laptop that is 64bit and I couldn't get ASHMON to run! So after only sleeping 4 hours last night I finally got it to run. (a lot of time was just getting Oracle to install which is a separate story - suffice it to say the 11gR2 full database download installed where as the 11gR2 client gave an error that main wasn't found).

The fix to make ASHMON run on 64 bit turns out to be pretty easy. To make ASHMON run on 64bit requires two 32bit dlls as well as forcing TNS_ADMIN to the directory with the tnsnames.ora (unfortunately oratcl doesn't seem to accept explicit database addresses , ie name:port:sid, that could bypass the tnsnames.ora) ASHMON for some reason wasn't picking up the tnsnames.ora in the Oracle 11gR2 directory. I could have forced ASHMON to use the Oracle 11 tnsnames.ora with TNS_ADMIN but figured it was easier to just point ASHMON to a tnsnames in the ASHMON install with TNS_ADMIN. You can edit ashmon/funcs/begin.tcl to change TNS_ADMIN to point to a different tnsnames.ora.

I have now made a new compressed file of ASHMON including the two dlls, oci.dll and oraocius10.dll, as well as changing the variables ORACLE_HOME and TNS_NAMES to point to ./ashmon and ./ashmon/network/admin respectively.

Here is the new "rar" file (I don't have gzip on my new laptop so just downloaded rar)

http://www.perfvision.com/ftp/ashmon_2010_10_22_64bit.rar

This version of ASHMON should run on any windows box within reason. The only "gotcha" is that you have to edit the tnsnames.ora file in the ./ashmon/network/admin to add your targets.

Oracle on VMware webinar tomorrow (Sept 30)

Tomorrow I'm on an Embarcadero hosted webinar about the pros and cons of hosting Oracle on VMware. If interested the link is at

http://www.embarcadero.com/oracle-database-performance-licensing-dynamics-in-a-virtualized-environment

It's an interactive Q&A webinar with Dave Welch the main guy at VMware's booth at Oracle Open World last week. Dave is pro VMware as one might imagine.
If you have any burning questions about VMware and Oracle and/or positive/negative experiences with Oracle on VMware, drop me a line and I'll try and get your content, questions and feedback into the webinar. (during the webinar questions can be posted in the online chat)

The current list of questions center around performance overhead on VMware, Oracle's attitude toward supporting VMware, whether RAC is appropriate and/or supported on VMware and how VMware compares to Oracle's VM server.

Oracle Closed World Presentations Downloads

Presentations from Oracle Closed World will be posted to

http://www.perfvision.com/ftp/OCW/

Links to scripts from Tanel Poder's presentations at

http://blog.tanelpoder.com/2010/09/20/oracle-closed-world-presentation-links/

Some photos from OCW 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylehailey/sets/72157625018583630/

Thanks all to an awesome Oracle Closed World and the Oaktable, Miracle Consulting and Embarcadero for sponsoring this event.

PS stay tuned for the 10 important database ideas black paper that we will be putting together from Oracle Closed World. (if you would like to contribute please email me kyle.hailey@embarcadero.com)

Kerry, Karl, Kyle

Link to a few more OCW 2010 photos from Karl : http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylehailey/sets/72157625025196338/

DB Optimizer vs OEM

Oracle OEM is slower, more complicated and it if it breaks, which has plenty, it’s super hard to fix.

OEM has nothing like visual sql tuning diagrams. If OEM can’t tune a query they you are at a dead end street with no way out. With DBO you’ve got the VST diagrams which explain tons about what is going on with the query

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoDnR02S2WA - VST demo from webinar with Jonathan Lewis
• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/09/db-optimizer-251-released.html
• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/09/sql-tuning-best-practice-visualizing.html
• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/07/product-design.html

There is no load testing or SQL IDE in OEM

• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/07/14-minute-video-overview-of-db.html

OEM’s SQL Tuining Advisor (STA) has a solid history of not being able to tune queries or worse still “tuning” the query and making it run slower

• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/07/oracles-sql-tuning-pack-how-well-does.html
• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/07/oracles-sql-tuning-pack-part-2.html
• http://db-optimizer.blogspot.com/2010/07/oracles-sql-tuning-pack-part-3.html

Oracle Closed World: last minute additions Exadata any MySQL talks

We've just added talks on Exadata and MySQL starting at 1:15-2pm today.

In summary

1:15-2pm Exadata and MySQL

2pm Gwen Shapira on webscale, /dev/null http://www.pythian.com/news/author/shapira/)

3pm Kevin Closson on SMT and Flash (http://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/)

Beer served the whole time and lunch around 2:30

Oracle Closed World 1-4 Thirsty Bear, Sept 22, 2010, directions http://tinyurl.com/2dzjkh5

Oracle Closed World: last day with Kevin Closson as well as Gwen Shapira

Rest assured, Kevin has left his bow and arrow at home this time. We are working on a hands on presentation complete with hunting tutorial for next year!

Wednesday Sept 21 1-4pm will be the last day of Oracle Closed World 2010

Highlights of the last day will be

3PM - 4PM Keynote Speaker Kevin Closson will present on SMT and Flash (http://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/)

as well as Gwen Shapira (http://www.pythian.com/news/author/shapira/) who will be talking convincingly about webscale, /dev/null

direction to Oracle Closed World at the Thirsty Bear:

http://tinyurl.com/2dzjkh5

Beer, Brains and Mayhem

Oracle Closed World 1:30-2:30 Sept 20, 2010 I'll be speaking

I'll be speaking tomorrow at Oracle Closed World 1:30-2:30 at the Thirsty Bear, Sept 21, 2010

http://tinyurl.com/2dzjkh5

Database Performance Made Easy Through Graphics

Average Active Sessions (AAS) Formulas, Interpreting Load Charts and Visual SQL Tuning (VST)

Kyle begins his presentation with a discussion of the use of sample data to create Active Sessions History (ASH). But ASH is dense, multidimensional data, which makes it difficult to analyze. Fortunately, ASH can be simplified using a metric called Average Active Sessions (AAS). AAS shows the load on the database and allows you to drill down with precision and clarity into the cause of each bottleneck.

Most often, bottlenecks are caused by poor-performing SQL statements. For analyzing suboptimal SQL statements, Kyle will show you how to lay out the query graphically in a Visual SQL Tuning (VST) diagram. Through the VST, you’ll learn how to quickly visualize any coding errors in the query, discover flaws in the underlying database schema, and most importantly, find the best execution path through the query.

Oracle Closed World : Lots of hacking and undocumented stuff! , 30 minutes and counting !

Tanel Poder, world expert on Oracle performance tuning and internals will be speaking live from Oracle Closed World on "Lots of hacking and undocumented stuff!"

Find out how to do things like trace a sql statement only across all sessions in the database. The presentation will be offered live by podcast if you are unable to join in person at the Thirsty Bear in San Francico.

Secret Oracle Closed World Presentation

Mogens (left) and Tanel (right) working on the Oracle Closed World webinar broadcast masterplan (it was very hard work) Lots of hacking and undocumented stuff! Join us for a Webinar on September 20 2-3pm PST This session doesn't have any slides, but Tanel will show you lots of (undocumented) ways to hack Oracle instead. Some of this stuff may even be useful, but some is just fun ;-) Topics will range from how to read systemstate dumps, how to perform in-memory conditional tracing and how to trace a single SQL etc as time permits! Title: Lots of hacking and undocumented stuff! Date: Monday, September 20, 2010 Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM PDT Seminar delivered by Tanel Poder (the guy below): About the speaker: http://tech.e2sn.com/team/tanel-poder

Arup Nanda on RAC - live from Oracle Closed World

Oracle Closed World has kicked off and Arup Nanda, http://arup.blogspot.com/, is presenting on RAC

Full house but we can sqeeze in some more. Come early while there is still free beer and Oracle Closed World T-shirts.

Arup Nanda is presenting on how cache fusion works, difference between row locks and RAC block locks, and answering questions like can I buffer my whole database in memory.

Arup Nanda has been an Oracle DBA since 1993, which has exposed him to all facets of database administration&emdash;from modeling to disaster recovery. He currently leads the global DBA team at Starwood Hotels, the parent of chains such as Sheraton and Westin, in White Plains, NY. He serves as a contributing editor of SELECT Journal, the publication of Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG); speaks at many Oracle Technology&emdash;related events such as Oracle World and local user groups such as New York Oracle User Group; and has written many articles for both print publications such as Oracle Magazine and online publications such as Oracle Technology Network. Arup has coauthored two books: Oracle Privacy Security Auditing (Rampant, 2003) and Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs (O'Reilly, 2005). Recognizing his professional accomplishments and contributions to user community, Oracle chose him as the "DBA of the Year" in 2003. He lives in Danbury, Connecticut, with his wife Anindita and son Anish. He can be reached at arup@proligence.com.

Oracle Closed World live, now!

Click here for the lastest info: Oracle Closed World 2010 !

Mon, Tue, Wed 1pm-4pm at the Thirsty Bear during Oracle Open World.

OCW is bigger and better this year. That means more beer, more technical goodness, chicken wings and 3+ keynotes.

The agenda will include a lot of spontaneity and improve. No telling who will show up to talk on what, but here is a brief idea, and plan for some of the talks:

Monday, September 20: 1PM to 4PM

Of special interest, check out Tanel's presentation, available on podcast, on Oracle Secret internals, called "Lots of hacking and undocumented stuff!", more info here http://tech.e2sn.com/secret

1-2 PM: Keynote Speaker Arup Nanda

Cache Fusion Demystified
Cache Fusion the fundamental to performance in RAC by reducing the need to go to disk for the data and getting it from the memory of another instance directly. But it is also a source of a lot of mystery, myths and misconceptions.
Full Abstract

2-3 PM: Keynote Speaker Tanel Poder
This session doesn't have any slides, but Tanel will show you lots of (undocumented) ways to hack Oracle instead. Some of this stuff is actually useful, some is more fun ;-) Topics will range from how to read systemstate dumps, how to perform in-memory conditional tracing and how to trace a single SQL etc as time permits! More on Tanel's thought leadership here: http://tech.e2sn.com and his blog http://blog.tanelpoder.com
Full Abstract

3-4 PM: Keynote Speaker Riyaj Shamsudeen will present on RAC Advanced Trouble Shooting.http://orainternals.wordpress.com

Also on the Agenda for Monday:

Karl Arao will spend 5 to 10 minutes on each of the following topics:

Graphing the AAS with Perfsheet a la Enterprise Manager
http://karlarao.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/graphing-the-aas-with-perfsheet-a-la-enterprise-manager/

Linear Regression with AAS
http://karlarao.tiddlyspot.com/#r2project

____________________________________________________________________________________

Tuesday, September 21: 1PM to 4PM

1:30 - 2:30 PM: Keynote Speaker Kyle Hailey
Database Performance Made Easy Through Graphics
Average Active Sessions (AAS) Formulas, Interpreting Load Charts and Visual SQL Tuning (VST)
Full Abstract

Also on the Agenda for Tuesday:

Martin Nash will present a 5-Minute presentation "Helping MOS to Help Me", which is about diagnosing the cause of an ORA-600 error and then working around the error until a patch is available/applied. Obviously it's not applicable to every ORA-600, but the approach to identifying the source of the problem is Martin feels is worth sharing.http://oraganism.wordpress.com/author/martinpaulnash/

Arjen Visser will present a 5-Minute presentation on how to use DBvisit to implement a standby database without Data Guard. When using Oracle Standard Edition and Standard Edition One, Data Guard is not available. Dbvisit can be used as an alternative to implement and managing standby databases to ensure complete protection for your primary database. This is a quick overview of the Dbvisit solution. http://blog.dbvisit.com

OPEN MIC - 5-MINUTES-OF-FAME AND 5-MINTUES-OF-HELP

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Wednesday, September 22: 1PM to 4PM

AWARDS!

3PM - 4PM Keynote Speaker Kevin Closson will present on SMT and Flash

Also on the Agenda for Wednesday:

Gwen Shapira will talk convincingly about webscale, /dev/null