I recently came across a very surprising effect with Oracle 11g R2 Enterprise Edition when I was testing with two digit years:

I convert a string with two digit year information into a date and then I convert this date into a string with four digit year format to see what the server made.

SQL> SELECT TO_CHAR(TO_DATE('07-11-58', 'dd-mm-yy'), 'dd-mm-yyyy') 
      FROM dual;

TO_CHAR(TO
----------
07-11-2058

The result is as expected: the ‘YY’ interpreted the ’58′ as belonging to the current century.

SQL> SELECT TO_CHAR(TO_DATE('07-11-58', 'dd-mm-rr'), 'dd-mm-yyyy') 
       FROM dual;

TO_CHAR(TO
----------
07-11-1958

Using the ‘RR’ format also does what what we expect, since 58 is more than 49 and we currently have the year 2012 which is less than 2050, the two digits of the year are interpreted as belonging to the past century.

So far so good and I agree with the server, but have a look at this:

SQL> SELECT TO_CHAR(TO_DATE('07-11-1958', 'dd-mm-rr'), 'dd-mm-yyyy')  
       FROM dual;

TO_CHAR(TO
----------
07-11-1958

I input a four digit year string and tell the server that it is a two digit year format. I am very surprised that the server is able to handle this anyway at all !!

And now let’s see what the server does with this:

SQL> SELECT TO_CHAR(TO_DATE('07-11-1958', 'dd-mm-yy'), 'dd-mm-yyyy') 
      FROM dual;

TO_CHAR(TO
----------
07-11-1958

This is strange, but obviously a feature, pls see the comment

The documentation and installation guides can be found here. 

The Advanced Tutorials Guide contains up-to-date How-Tos including:

• Create a Tabular Form
• Create a Parameterized Report
• Create a Drill Down Report
• Control Form Layout
• Work with Check Boxes
• Implement a Web Service
• Create a Stacked Bar Chart
• Upload and Download Files in an Application
• Incorporate JavaScript into an Application
• Build an Access Control Page
• Review a Packaged Application
• Create a Master Detail PDF Report
• Design an Issue Tracking Application
• Build and Deploy an Issue Tracking Application

The new features are documented here.

I will now update my courseware with the new features and deliver my courses as of August with the new version.

I was not aware that they are already online.

Congratulations!!!

=;-)

LH

It is possible to request a workspace now.

The documentation is still not available yet, instead the online docs for APEX 3.2 are linked.

Let’s test it.

=;-)

LH

It is a very fun class and I have some very interesting people in the course.

 Mark Anderson
is a highly skilled trainer and delivers the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for the Experienced Oracle Database Administrator course for internal Microsoft staff and is responsible for the high end Microsoft customers. This course is definitely one I would like to attend!

He is about to publish his latest  book on SQL SERVER for ORACLE DBAs shortly. I am pretty shure that this will be another candidate for my BOOKS WORTH THEIR MONEY category  and I will definitely get a copy ASAP..

=;-)

sysdba

Use this link to request a workspace as hosted environment:

I will post about my first impressions soon.

=;-)

Scenario is 10.2.0.1  Express Edition on Win32.

I have a table called job_history in the HR scheme which has a composit primary key : and there is an index for the primary key:

SQL> select index_name from user_indexes where table_name=’JOB_HISTORY’;

INDEX_NAME

Does the following info help to explain?

——————————
JHIST_EMP_ID_ST_DATE_PK
JHIST_JOB_IX
JHIST_EMPLOYEE_IX
JHIST_DEPARTMENT_IX

This is my constraint in the data dictionary:

SQL> select column_name , position
  2   from user_cons_columns
  3  where constraint_name=’JHIST_EMP_ID_ST_DATE_PK’;

COLUMN_NAME      POSITION
———————–    ———————————
EMPLOYEE_ID        1

START_DATE          2

Now I drop the primary key constraint

SQL> alter table job_history drop constraint
  2  JHIST_EMP_ID_ST_DATE_PK including indexes;

Table altered.

And here is the surprise:

SQL> select index_name from user_indexes where table_name=’JOB_HISTORY’;

INDEX_NAME
——————————
JHIST_EMP_ID_ST_DATE_PK
JHIST_JOB_IX
JHIST_EMPLOYEE_IX
JHIST_DEPARTMENT_IX

I do not see the point here. Why is the index still there?

Evern though I have explicitly written INCLUDING INDEXES.

BUG or Feature?!

Can anyone explain?

I have tried to run a  top level anonymous block in which assigned a value to a BIND variable and got kicked out of my session with an ORA-03113.

SQL> VAR lname VARCHAR2(4)

SQL> <<my_lable>>
 BEGIN
    :lname:=’LUTZ’;
   end;
/

ERROR:
ORA-03114: not connected to ORACLE
 <<my_lable>>
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel

THIS IS A BUG which exists in 10gR2.

Only top level blocks are affected by this BUG.
 After I wrapped the block into another block it worked.

Here is the workaround:

BEGIN
  <<my_lable>>
 BEGIN
 :lname:=’LUTZ’;
 END;
END;
/

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 I have tested only WIN 32 and LINUX32 =>  XE and Enterprise Edition on Win32.  It has been fixed in the meentime, but I am not sure with which patch.
In EE 11gR1  it works.

The Database Machine runs Oracle Database 11g and Real Application Clusters, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and includes all the required Infiniband infrastructure and related hardware.

This is the first hardware product ever Oracle marketed under its own name.
It integrates Oracle Database Software with highly suffisticated hardware using Linux and ASM to build a very fast database maschine.

You can find more detailed information on Kevin Closson’s blog where he maintains an FAQ page.
Kevin is Performance Architect in Oracle’s Systems Technology Group which is a part of Server Technologies.

A few impressions from OOW by Tim Hall can be found on his blog.

I will deliver a series of 11g Administration Courses for Oracle again.

One day after I arrived the there was a a big fire which burned down the house of the maglis ash-shura,  consultative councel    completely.

I was lucky enough to have my new camera with me to take some exciting shots.

It looked to me as if there were multiple fires burning at the same time.

Plus a sweater with the SELECT Journal Contributer logo:

Additionally I was granted a one year free membership for Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) for my article on DETECTING AND REPAIRING CORRUPT BLOCKS IN ORACLE DATABASE 11g WITH THE DATA RECOVERY ADVISER which is included in the curernt issue Volume 15 Number 3/2008.

Thanks IOUG and SELECT, this was a nice surprise.

=;-)

I am very happy that this has become such a successfull forum here.

Thanks for reading
I’ll keep on posting in the future!

   Oracle Unbreakable Linux.

 Before this the clusterware needed at least one Standard Edition License.

Now you can download the clusterware and use it as an extension of your Linux to make virtually any application highly available even without having an Oracle Database Server.

For more info on this and ready made scripts see my previouse post on how to protect a single instance database with the clusterware.

 This is really cool!

=;-) 

 yearly conference of the Swiss Oracle Usergroup.

The topics were :

- Real Application Testing with Oracle 11g
     REPLAY DATABASE and
     SQL PERFORMANCE ADVISOR

- SQL Plan Management and Automatic SQL Tuning in 11g

I have used my new courseware which
I have produced in the last few weeks for 11g New Features.

I offer to to deliver special courses for topics such as

- High Availability with Flashback and other 10g and 11g features
- Backup 10g & 11g
- Memory Management 10g & 11g
- Upgrade Issues 10g & 11g
- 11g New Features Overview

If you are interested in these topics please contact me by email:

info@sysdba.ch

I have a completely packed class with 21 students.

 Most of the students are Oracle Trainers, Support Agents and Consultants.

 Muhammad is an internationally recognized artist and has been painting since more than 25 years now. He had exhibitions in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Zurich and many other places.

He lives in a very poor area near the great basar Khan Al-Khalili.

In April he will have an exhibition in Talaat Harb Streeet in Downtown Cairo and I hope  that he will sell a great number of his beautiful naive paintings again.

I will deliver a number of Oracle 11g trainings here.

This is the first time I am in Egypt after 12 years.
In the middel of the ninetees I had been living here for a couple of longer times.
I am very interested in the developments in Egyptian society since then.

Hopefully I will meet a lot of interesting people. 

Yesterday I had organized a little dinner with Steven Feuerstein, my former collegue Christoph Burandt and his lovely wife Silvia as well as my dear friend Jenny.

Steven had delivered a two day seminar for Oracle University in Munich. Although he was very sick in the last days, he had caught  a chest cold and swollowed an enormaouse amount of remedies in order to be able to deliver anyway, he preferred not to hang around in his room alone and come for our little dinner.

Thanks for coming Steven! Hope you’re feeling better already.

We talked about everything but PL/SQL and had a lot of fun.
Christoph is the one who had introduced me to PL/SQL in 2000 and I was very happy to meet him once again.
I think that he is one of the best instructors in this field you can get in Germany.
His wife is from Peru and Steven adressed her in Spanish.

Everybody could speak Spanish except me!

=;-)

 This patchset not only contains bugfixes but also comes with a number of New Features.

One of the highlights is the possibilty to capture a workload in a 10.2.0.4 database and ship it to an 11g database for testing.

Only with this feature in place the 11g Real Application Testing Feature DATABASE REPLAY makes real sense.
Before this patchset it was only possible to capture a workload in an 11g database and run it for  testing in an also 11g database.

For more detailed evaluation please see my chapter on CHANGE MANAGEMENT in the forthcoming 11g New Features book.

 It will be shipping aroung middle of the year.

Now customers can check in front what an upgrade would bring for them.

Here is a brief desription of the new 1og Feature:

LUTZ AS SYSDBA @ orcl10g SQL> SELECT * FROM v$version;

BANNER
—————————————————————-
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 – Prod
PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.4.0 – Production
CORE    10.2.0.4.0      Production
TNS for Linux: Version 10.2.0.4.0 – Production
NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.4.0 – Production

In 10.2.0.4 a new paramter is used to enable workload capturing:

LUTZ AS SYSDBA @ orcl10g SQL> show parameter pre_11

NAME                                 TYPE        VALUE
———————————— ———– ——————————
pre_11g_enable_capture               boolean     FALSE
Note:
The PRE_11G_ENABLE_CAPTURE initialization parameter can only be used with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2). This parameter is not valid in subsequent releases. After upgrading the database, you will need to remove the parameter from the server parameter file (spfile) or the initialization parameter file (init.ora); otherwise, the database will fail to start up.

Oracle even has created the script $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/wrrenbl.sql which can be used to modity the parameter.  The script to disable workload capture is $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/wrrdsbl.sql.  

The package DBMS_WORKLOAD_CAPTURE has been added to the 10g RDBMS. This is the interface to workload capturing and filtering:

SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl10g SQL> desc dbms_workload_capture

PROCEDURE ADD_FILTER
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 FNAME                          VARCHAR2                IN
 FATTRIBUTE                     VARCHAR2                IN
 FVALUE                         VARCHAR2                IN
PROCEDURE ADD_FILTER
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 FNAME                          VARCHAR2                IN
 FATTRIBUTE                     VARCHAR2                IN
 FVALUE                         NUMBER                  IN
PROCEDURE DELETE_CAPTURE_INFO
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 CAPTURE_ID                     NUMBER                  IN
PROCEDURE DELETE_FILTER
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 FNAME                          VARCHAR2                IN
PROCEDURE EXPORT_AWR
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 CAPTURE_ID                     NUMBER                  IN
PROCEDURE FINISH_CAPTURE
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 TIMEOUT                        NUMBER                  IN     DEFAULT
 REASON                         VARCHAR2                IN     DEFAULT
FUNCTION GET_CAPTURE_INFO RETURNS NUMBER
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 DIR                            VARCHAR2                IN
FUNCTION REPORT RETURNS CLOB
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 CAPTURE_ID                     NUMBER                  IN
 FORMAT                         VARCHAR2                IN
PROCEDURE START_CAPTURE
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 —————————— ———————– —— ——–
 NAME                           VARCHAR2                IN
 DIR                            VARCHAR2                IN
 DURATION                       NUMBER                  IN     DEFAULT
 DEFAULT_ACTION                 VARCHAR2                IN     DEFAULT
 AUTO_UNRESTRICT                BOOLEAN                 IN     DEFAULT

And the data dictionary views DBA_WORKLOAD_CAPTURES and DBA_WORKLOAD_FILTERS can be used to monitor the captures.

 As in 11g the packages captures all incomming requestes into external files which need to be shipped to a testing system and pre-processed on the testing system. Those files contain logical information to replay client requests in the appropriate sequence and with all contention and waiting as it happened on the capture site. On the testing site we need to start replay clients to run the test workload.

This is the interface for REPLAY DATABASE in the OEM GUI:

The executable $ORACLE_HOME/bin/wrc is only available in 11g.

 So we can now capture in 10g and replay in 11g.

 I am just downloading the latest patchset for RDBMS Server 10.2.0.4 for Linux x86.

It is documented in Metalink NOTE: 316900.1

 Components of This Patch Set

The following are the updated components of this patch set:

• Up to January 2008 CPU is included in this patch set.
• Platform-specific bug fixes as listed in the “Fixed Platform-Specific Bugs” section
• Generic bug fixes as listed in the List of Bugs fixed document
• Oracle Configuration Manager 10.2.7.1

I am very curiose about the possibility to capture a workload in 10g and run for Real Application Testing in 11g.

It should be included in this patchset.

I will try it and post about it here ASAP.

=;-)

All you need to do is threaten them!

They have removed the links to my content.

We’re Sorry – We Were Unable to Locate The Article You Requested.It’s possible that this article is no longer available, has been reported as a bad link or is currently being reviewed/edited by its author.

We apologize for the inconvenience! Please use the menu system or the search boxes to locate other items that may be of interest.

If you feel there has been an error, please contact us and let us know about the issue and we’ll get on it immediately!

This is the second time already that this strange organization steals my posts and demands money from their “MEMBERS” to look at it. I had them remove my posts already in 2006.

This so call usergroup does not have any publications of its own and there are no meetings of the members (if they had any, a lot of people would show up there and yell at their chairman I think). Their members seem to be just people who are not able to search the web by themselves and pay for a compilation of links to stolen content they could have for free in the web.

 It seems to be  basically just one person behind this organization:

I think that the expression usergroup should be a protected expression by law and that it should be possible to screw such crooks for making money with the intellectual property of other people.

I followed the link and found a website where someone had a blog which justs consists of stolen posts. He just had added my post to his blog and did not even mention me. His name is, oh no! I am not even going to mention it here because this would only increase his daily hits!

I contacted him by email and asked him to remove my post right away – nothing ever happened since more than a week now.

Theft of intellectual property seems to become a more and more fashionable practice.

Here is a link to a list of some recent popular cases of this kind of vandalism.

I am not sure if I want to continue blogging in the future.

Let’s publish books again
and let people pay for it!

 I had a look at his profile and found a very interesting link there, which I want to share here.
It is a website from Oracle Server Technologies. It gives very intersing information about how to protect against SQL injection, one of the most serios threats for DBAs.

Have a look here! You will like it!

 =;-)

Lutz

 We chatted about God and the world and we had lots of fun.

Amoung others we talked about things in Oracle 11g which do not really work yet and¦or are undocumented or documented wrong.
I was lucky to be able to tell him about things which he did not know about yet
like the not yet documented parameter DDL_LOGGING, see my post here.  I think that Oracle development just forgot to document it.

It is hard to catch up with Laurent sometimes!

I am the reviewer of Laurent’s yet to be published book on 11g SQL for advanced developers and DBAs and he demonstrated some features he had filed a BUG for in the last days.

Of course Oracle 11g was a big topic and we have found out some interesting things about system partitioning ( it is more that he found out than me, altough I teach the stuff to people in my New Features courses !!!!)

He  talked about something in one of the chapters in his book which he had found about system partitioning in 11g and which did not work. 

I got suspicious because I was so sure that it was possible, since it was something I teach to my students in my 1day 11g New Features Overview classes.
But I had to back down and confess again that I did not really verify every single bit of code of the Oracle Coureseware.

This is why I want to share the lecture I had to take tonight (luckily with a couple of beers!):

Oracle has introduced a number of new partitioning algorithms with release 11g.  One of these new features is called SYSTEM PARTITIONING. This is very handy if you want to partition a table but cannot make uo your mind about a partitioning key for some reason. Maybe there is only one column holding xml data in the table or what so ever.

The current version of the courseware for the 11g New  Features Courses says that the following syntax is valid and Laurent showed me that it is not:

– I create a table which is system partitioned:

SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> create table lutz.t3 (col1 number, col2 number)
  2  partition by system
  3  (partition p1);
Table created.

– I create a bind varable (first time a number second time a string)
– which I want to use to tell Oracle which partition to user for an INSERT
–and assign it the value 1 and try an INSERT:

SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> var par number
SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> exec :par:=1
SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> insert into lutz.t3 partition (:par) values (1,2);
insert into lutz.t3 partition (:par) values (1,2)
                               *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-14108: illegal partition-extended table name syntax

– I try another time with a bid variable of type string:

SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> var par varchar2(2)
SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> exec :par:=’p1′
SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> insert into lutz.t3 partition (:par) values (1,2);
insert into lutz.t3 partition (:par) values (1,2)
                               *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-14108: illegal partition-extended table name syntax

– I try it for a last time and now I try to use the partition number directly:

SYS AS SYSDBA @ orcl SQL> insert into lutz.t3 partition (1) values (1,2);

insert into lutz.t3 partition (1) values (1,2)
                               *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-14108: illegal partition-extended table name syntax

The same error pops up!

And here is the explanation of the error:

[oracle@rhas4 ~]$ oerr ora 14108
14108, 00000, “illegal partition-extended table name syntax”
// *Cause:  Partition to be accessed may only be specified using its name.
//          User attempted to use a partition number or a bind variable.
// *Action: Modify statement to refer to a partition using its name

You can only reference a system partition with its name not by its number or even via a bind variable! At least not in 11.0.6!!!

Sorry people but I just could not yet test all of the more than 500 New Features in the courseware. But I will keep on hitting the road, for sure!

=;-)

In his courses he always encourages his students to send their comments to Bryn Llewellyn the project manager for PL/SQL at Oracle.

A while ago Steven already has launched a PL/SQL forum in OTN where people can directly ask him questions.

Now Steven has put together a website to make it really easy for developers to communicate their concerns and priorities to Bryn (with his support, of course).

 Seems to become an interesting place and I will add it to my blogrole. 

I was especially pleased to see that almost all of the delegates had already attented at least one or two trainings from me last year, so we were already familiar with each other.

Since I did not have the chance to attend the UK Oracle Usergroup meeting it was nice to have Luca Canali again in the class. He had delivered a speach about the ASM internal  in Birmingham last December and I would have really loved to listen to it. He is one of the few persons I know who can really tell about the limits of ASM from real life experience.

Also I was so happy to meet Christopher Lambert again. He just seems to know everything about Oracle Enterprise Manager and I always learn from him.

Here are a few snapshots from the classroom I have taken with my cellphone.

 I hope that I was able to meet their expectations once again and will be invited again.

It is a great honor for me to deliver for you guys!

On the way back we had a stop over at Istanbul airport where

  Tonguç Yilmaz waited for me
to chat and have a coffee. Can you immagine that there is somebody waiting for you at 6:15h in the morning just to hug you and have a chat at the airport.
This is real friendship and hospitality!

He updated me about the latest gossip from the bloggers community and we talked about OOW and UKOUG meeting and who we have met and who is new to the scene. 
 Thanks for coming Tonguç, you are such a nice guy!

=;-)

 Swiss Oracle Usergroup’s Newsletter 1/2008.

It contains my article on some 11g New Features related to DDL.
I had posted about them a while ago in my 11g Top New Features Series.

You can read about DDL LOGGING and DDL LOCKING in 11g in my 11g posts.

Thank you SOUG!

=;-)

for download on Edelivery

This patchset does not only contain bugfixes but also a number of NEW FEATURES .

Here is an overview of the new features if you upgrade from 10.2.0.3:

• Provides data masking, that is the capability to replace sensitive data with false but realistic looking data on test and development databases.
• Allows usage of commonly-used privileged delegation software, such as sudo or pbrun, to fit into the existing credential subsystem in Enterprise Manager.
• Allows bidirectional flow of events between Enterprise Manager and third-party products.
• Provides users through the Service Level Management Pack the capability to record transactions on Forms 6i-based applications and periodically replay these transactions to monitor performance and availability.
• Provides DHTML transaction recording and monitoring features that allow you to record and playback DHTML-based applications. The features help you to capture mouse and keyboard actions, in addition to the HTTP requests.
• Allows you to monitor and manage Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition (Maui release). You can discover Oracle BI EE servers, view configuration information, monitor performance, and so on.
• Provides, through the Diagnostics Pack for Non-Oracle Middleware, Java Applications Diagnostics Expert (JADE) that allows you to diagnose performance problems in production Java applications with minimal performance overhead and without shutting down the applications.
• Provides improved SOA management capabilities that enable you to automate the provisioning of BPEL Processes using the deployment procedures. Also ofers configuration management of BPEL Process Manager.
• Provides out-of-box plug-in support for Microsoft Exchange targets. Allows you to monitor performance, availability, usage statistics, and administration of Exchange Servers.
• Offers support for the following plug-ins:
• • EMC CLARiiON System: You can view storage, configuration, and performance information for laying out best practices, analyzing performance bottlenecks, and resolving issues.
  • VMware ESX Server: You can monitor configuration and performance data of VMware ESX Server 3.
  • Microsoft SQL Server: You can access core administration capabilities.
  • IBM DB2 Database: You can monitor IBM DB2 Release 9.
  • EMC Symmetrix DMX System: Provides fixes for certain performance-related issues found in Reports and enhances its capability to function better in a larger environment that may consist of over 3000 disks.

You can download the versions for
- WIN 32 bit
- Linux x86

The documentation is here.

Also there is a new version of the agent available for download for WIN 32 and Linux x68.

as well as a number of new PLUGINs for the OEM.

=;-)

This software validates a checksum which Oracle created for a buffer before it started writing it to disk. If the checksum of the block which NetApp is to write to the storage is not the same than the one Oracle has produced Snapvalidator creates an error message and prevents the data from being written to the storage.

Only with such a check we can be sure that exactly what we sent from the buffer cache is what arrives on disk in the end.

Let’s test it!

=;-)

Here are a few impressions:

  Elzbieta Gajewska 
is an outstandingly fast learning young computer scientist from Poland. She was already in my RAC course a few months ago.  And again she asked me brilliant questions, some of  them could be good for challenging the Oaktable Network.

Some of the delegates are already taking part in the second class from me. It is always fun to deliver a course for CERN since it is never boring since these people are so highly motivated.

And again I met Anton Topurov
who is already testing with 11g in CERN and has also the Beta Version of the yet to come soon 10.2.0.4. patch already. But he does not talk about it yet. 
He also was in my RAC class recently.

I am very greateful that he has managed to get me into a group of people who can visit the CMS experiment.

Download sources

Oracle Virtualization Homepage

Official Discussion Forum for VM

Documentation for VM

VM Wiki

Pre Configured Templates

FAQ

Podcast with Kurt Hackel (Oracle VM Architect)

I have asked Wim Coekaerts  during his Meet the Experts session
in the OTN lounge last week at the OOW about trainings on Oracle VM.  He said that there will be new courses on this available soon from Oracle University.

the latest DOAG NEWS   4/2007 in my mailbox.
It contains the German version of my article on 11g New Features of the Cost Based Optimizer.

The DOAG (Deutsche Oracle Anwender Gruppe) is the German Oracle user group which celebrates its 20 aniversary this year.

Congratulations DOAG!

I have recceived a number of comments on this post by Peter about the AUTO mode of the parameter who asked if it really works because he had tewsted and did not find the result he had expected. This made me test as well and I had the same experience as Peter.

So I went to the demo ground here at the OOW yesterday and asked the guys from Server Technologies directly what the algorithm used is and received a surprising answer:

They told me that only MANUAL and FORCE are supported settings for the parameter. AUTO is neither documented nor supported!!!!

I asked them why it is possible to set the parameter to AUTO in the Enterprise manager and also there is an error message telling me this:

SYS AS SYSDBA @ ocrl11 SQL> show parameter result_cache

NAME                                 TYPE        VALUE
———————————— ———– ——————————
client_result_cache_lag              big integer 3000
client_result_cache_size             big integer 0
result_cache_max_result              integer     5
result_cache_max_size                big integer 1280K
result_cache_mode                    string      MANUAL
result_cache_remote_expiration       integer     0
 

SYS AS SYSDBA @ ocrl11 SQL> alter system set result_cache_mode=nonsense;
alter system set result_cache_mode=nonsense
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00096: invalid value NONSENSE for parameter result_cache_mode, must be from among FORCE, MANUAL, AUTO

And as Peter has found out: IT DOES NOT WORK WITH AUTO obviousely!
Very good catch Peter!

The guys from Server Technologies told me that it will probably never work and will never be supported with AUTO. And if I think it over it is not bad to manually control which statements are cached and which not.

=;-)

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/virtualization/index.html?rssid=rss_otn_news

Virtualization Technology Center Virtualization is the process of abstracting computing resources such that multiple operating system and application images can share a single physical server, bringing significant cost-of-ownership and manageability benefits. Through its Oracle VM product, Oracle offers scalable, low-cost server virtualization for heterogeneous applications.

Topic: How to migrate a DB from file system in to ASM storage
Time: 5:00 pm
Location: uncoference overlook II @ Moscone West Level 3 (next to OTN lounge)

 It will be life demo with open end Q&A.

Borders bookstore just provided me with two copies of the new book on ASM
which I will raffle at my little presentation today.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management  by Nitin Vengurlekar, Murali Vallath & Richard Long

Good luck!

Looking forward to meeting you all there

=;-)

Here is one which is a MUST READ for everybody who is interested how Automatic Storage Management (ASM) really works:
Oracle Automatic Storage Management  
What makes this book especially interesting is the fact that the authors are the Oracle developers of ASM themselves, Nitin Vengurlekar and  Richard Long, and Murali Vallath., the president of the RAC SIG,  plus the architect of the technology Bill Bridge who wrote the foreword for the book .

This book keeps its promises and covers the 10g and 11g features of ASM in detail.
And it is an easy reader with a sence of humor:

“The ACD is a log that allows ASM to make atomic changes to multiple data structures. It is similar to the redo logs used by the Oracle RDBMS. Each instance gests a 42 MB chunk of the ACD. (As Douglas Adams explained in Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galary, “42″ is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Univese and Everything.) …

 This is the way of reading I like!!

Thank you guys, I love it

patchset 10.2.0.4 which will be available very soon!!!

which will allow to mask sensitive data in a captured workload 
so it is not possible to read the data in plain in the testing environment, but still run the workload for testing anyway. This will definitively make it more attractive for a number of customers to use Database Replay, one of the Real Application Testing (RAT) features in 11g.

Also it will be possible to capture a workload on a 10.2.0.4 database and run it on an 11g database for testing!!!

I want to share two of them:   The first is SQL Real Time Monitoring:
With OEM 11g it is possible to monitor every sql statement in real time while it is running.

 We will soon have a graphical interface which we can use to monitor sql statements while they are running and can drill down into the statement’s steps     

  and see which step takes how much DB-TIME and what does it consume: is it CPU is it I/O and so forth. This makes it very easy to find out which step needs tuning exactly. In the demo yesterday they executed a long runnig parallel select and showed how easy it is to find out which full table scan need tuning in order to improve the performance of teh entire statement.

This is a very cool feature!

My next post will be about Data masking for testing.
=,-)

Microsoft Windows (32-bit) (1.7 GB) 
Microsoft Windows (x64) (1.7 GB)
Linux x86 (1.7 GB)
Linux x86-64 (1.8 GB)
Solaris (SPARC) (64-bit) (1.9 GB)
AIX (PPC64) Disk 1, Disk 2 (2.3 GB) 
HP-UX Itanium Disk 1, Disk 2 (2.3 GB)

Wim told me that the software for the OVS will be
available for download latest Thursday this week (Nov. 15th. 2007).

I asked him whether OVS is zertified for RAC and he said
that it is not right now but it will be soon, sometime beginning next year.

The software is not downloadable yet as far as I understood but will around soon as well.

Here are a few slides from the presentation:

With this technology it will be possible to store virtually everything in ASM storage and it is even possible to migrate running live VMs from one physical maschine to another one within minutes.

I cannot wait to test it!

who is right now recording a Pod Cast with Laurent Schneider.

OTN handed out T-shirts,. have a look, can you believe it? It is not even executable!!

 ”Its hearting my eyes” Laurent says

There are a number of very intersting people here some of them under cover as it looks like  Tom will deliver an expert session this afternoon at the OTN lounge.

Here are a few impression of the Moscone Center from today:
  

Today in the evening Larry Ellison will deliver a key note and
I hope that he will announce some intersting new features.

This time I had chosen US Airways and UA which was much better then my last trip which was with AA and Delta and which was a torture.

When I was on the way from the airplane to the baggage all of a sudden my cellphone was ringing.
  It was Laurent Schneider who called me 
and told me that he was waiting for me at the exit with his coleague Daniel from LC SYSTEMS to pick me up and take me downtown for a nice dinner. What a nice surprise!

Tomorrow I will take part in the 11g Exam Cram and
in the evening I will go to the ACE dinner.

In previous releases a DDL statement always errors out respectively hangs in a hold if an exclusive lock (X) on a required resource is not available.

Let’s have a look at a little example:

The user HR looks a table in shared) mode by acquiring ROW LOCKS (RS) on 0 rows:

HR@orcl SQL> select * from employees where 1=2 for update;

no rows selected

User SYSTEM tries to acquire an EXLUSIVE LOCK (X) on the table:
SYSTEM@orcl SQL> LOCK TABLE hr.employees IN EXCLUSIVE MODE;

Here SYSTEM will wait until the shared table lock is released by HR although there are no rows locked explicitly!!! The SELECT FOR UPDATE does not only lock rows explicitly but also requires a shared table lock.

Already in 10g it was possible to specify NOWAIT in order not to hang in a hold situation but to let the statement error out immediately:

SYSTEM@orcl SQL> LOCK TABLE hr.employees IN EXCLUSIVE MODE NOWAIT;

*ERROR at line 1:ORA-00054:
resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified or timeout expired 

As of Oracle 11g it is possible to specify a timeout period for which a lock request should wait before erroring out. This can be very helpful because it is very likely that just a few seconds later the EXCLUSIVE ENQUEUE might be available. We now have the chance to wait for it before the DDL statement fails:

SYSTEM@orcl SQL> LOCK TABLE hr.employees IN EXCLUSIVE MODE WAIT 10;

ERROR at line 1:ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified or timeout expired

Here the DDL statement errors out only after 10 seconds if the requested lock is still not available!

Forthermore Shared exclusive locks (SRX) have been improved in Oracle database 11g.
They are used now instead of Exclusive locks (X) for the following operations:
-          CREATE INDEX ONLINE
-          CREATE MATARIALIZED VIEW LOG
-          ALTER TABLE ENABLE CONSTRAINT  NOVALIDATE
In 11 g transactions can be active and hold implicit (RX) or explicit (RS) row locks on a segment which is undergoing one of the above mentioned operations. This can reduce wait times in highly concurrent configurations for example for rebuilding online indexes.