The Oracle Blog

Monday, November 16, 2009

Oracle Database 11gR2 Available on Solaris (Sparc)

Oracle Database 11gR2 is now available on Solaris (Sparc). I have a number of customers that have been waiting for this. Oracle Database 11gR2 (11.2.0.1.0) is now available on the following platforms:

Linux x86
Linux x86-64
Solaris (SPARC) (64-bit)

Labels: Oracle Database 11g

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Oracle Open World - Changing Role of the DBA

One thing that stands out at Oracle Open World 2008 in San Francisco is the changing role of the Oracle DBA. There are a number of presentations showing how new Oracle technologies and the next generation of Oracle Grid Control are going to change how DBAs manage databases. Oracle DBAs that want to stay marketable are going to have to make sure their skills are consistent with the demands of the market. Oracle DBAs in demand are going to need to specialize in some of the following areas:

Oracle High Availability - RAC and Data Guard
Storage Management - Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
Oracle Streams
Oracle Grid Control - Using new tools, advisors and metholdologies for managing the enterprise.
Oracle Fusion Middleware - Ability to manage multi-tiered architectures.
Identity Management - Ability to work with Oracle Internet Directory and other LDAP servers.
Ability to support Enterprise Web 2.0
Ability to support multiple database platforms like MySQL.

The old days of an Oracle DBA being able to get by on just performance tuning and backup/ recovery skills are not going to be enough to stay marketable in the future. Basic skill sets are easy to find and easy to outsource. To get a better vision of the future you should look at new features in Oracle Database 11g that can greatly simplify database administration. Some of these include:

Automatic SQL tuning
New Diagnostics Advisor
RMAN Advisor
SQL Tuning Advisor

This list is a very small subset of all the diagnostic and advisor tools available in the Oracle Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 11g. These large set of tools are going to play a large role in managing Oracle production environments. The old days of writing custom scripts are almost over. DBAs are going to use more tools like Grid Control automate a lot of the day to day tasks DBAs typically perform.

Labels: George Trujillo, Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Open World

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Oracle Open World - Oracle Database 11g Expert Panel

There was an excellent expert panel on Oracle Database 11g New Features on Sunday that helped set the tone for Oracle Database 11g for the week. This panel had recognized leaders in the Oracle user community and key leaders that were part of the Oracle Database 11g beta program. Trubix has been part of the Oracle Database 11g Beta program since the fall of 2006. The panel included:

George Trujillo - Oracle Database 11g Beta Program Leadership Council
Dan Norris
John King
Charles Kim
Plamen Zyumbyulev

Oracle Open World is strongly emphasizing Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g throughout the conference. You can also expect that Oracle Database 11g will be emphasized at the upcoming Collaborate 2008 Conference in April, 2008 in Denver, CO. You can expect to see a quicker adoption of Oracle Database 11g with its outstanding features as well as its stability. This option will be a stronger consideration for leap frogging Oracle 10g.

There are blog entries below that summarize Oracle Database 11g New Features.

Labels: George Trujillo, Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Open World

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Oracle Database 11g Launch in New York City

An Exciting Launch!
It was exciting to be invited to the Oracle Database 11g launch in New York City. As part of the Oracle beta leadership council, it was great to see so much energy and interest surrounding the Oracle Database 11g release. One thing that is very important with the growth of data and the need of businesses to be able to be nimble and respond to change quickly, is that databases need to constantly get faster, improve diagnostics and troubleshooting, reduce the cost of ownership and improve manageability. The Oracle Database 11g release definitely succeeds in all these areas.

I thought one of the highlights was for the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) to get so much stage time with Charles Phillips. I felt is showed the tremendous input the IOUG has provided with the Oracle Database 11g product and Oracle's recognition of that. As a board of director for the IOUG and my involvement with the Oracle beta leadership council it was nice to see the important role the IOUG plays in the industry be recognized at such a high profile event. The IOUG is also continuing to play an ever increasing role in the Oracle 11g Middleware beta program due to the IOUG's profile in the Oracle Fusion middleware space.

Oracle Releases
Historically speaking the first Oracle release of Oracle Database 5, 6, 7, 8, 8i, and 9i were definitely bleeding edge releases. However Oracle 10g and Oracle Database 11g have been by far the most stable and well tested first releases in the history of Oracle. While a lot of people were talking about not moving to the first release of Oracle 10g, they did not realize that Oracle 10g had a lot of bug fixes for Oracle 9i and had a lot of improvements in the advanced features of Oracle.

I feel the Oracle beta program has had a significant positive impact on the Oracle 10g and 11g releases. By getting industry leaders from user groups such at the IOUG allows recognized industry leaders to have direct input and to provide feedback directly to Oracle product managers and developers. It has been wonderful to see how open Oracle has been to listening to the user groups and the incredible effort the Oracle product teams have put into the release. As Charles Phillips mentioned, Oracle Database 11g is the gold standard of Oracle releases and the Oracle beta program has been a large part of that success.

Be Careful of Old Sages
I understand the important need to be cautious about upgrading and to minmize risk and downtime. Everyone understands it is important to be careful about upgrading. You'll see an old sage say, well the new software release is interesting but I think I will wait for a later release. You'll then see a number of DBAs nod their heads in agreement. That's also like saying I am going to save my company money and reduce risk by continuing to run my company with old techniques that are out of date. Companies like this are running their databases more like the way they did 5 or 10 years ago with a sprinkling of new features being used. They are bragging about their up time yet not leveraging features that would help the organization and save it money. Safe is important but so is maximizing your ability to be competitive in the industry. The old saying, "if it isn't broke, dont' fix it" isn't always the best approach.

Technology needs to leverage what businesses are doing and to give business a competitive advantages. Companies need to look more carefully at the benefits of new features and how these features can benefit the business. I am not saying take your highest profile database and move it to Oracle Database 11g when it first comes out. What I am saying is that customers looking to migrate lower profile Oracle 9i databases should strongly consider migrating to Oracle Database 11g to leverage the benefits of the new features. If the new features of Oracle Database 11g are used out of the box, a company has the opportunity to significantly reduce their cost of ownership, increase availability, improve performance and manageability.

Benefits of Oracle Database 11g
Oracle Database 11g definitely hits the mark in:

Making the database and database applications run faster in key areas.
Improves important features related to Real Application Clusters, Data Guard and Oracle Streams.
Reduces cost of ownership with Change Assurance (Database Replay) and Lifecycle Management.
Greatly improves manageability and diagnosability.

A few features I really like that may not make a top ten list but I really liked include:

PL/SQL gets faster and easier to adminster with native compilation without the need for an external compiler.
Java in the database gets significantly faster.
PHP in the database who would have ever thought.

If you are an organization that needs to leverage technology to improve the business and make it more competitive then I highly recommend a detailed review of Oracle Database 11g features to see what benefits can help your business. You may decide not to move to Oracle Database 11g but to keep your organization as competitive as possible, a through analysis of Oracle Database 11g should be done.

Labels: Oracle Database 11g

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Oracle Database 11g New Product Features: Summary

The Oracle database continues to evolve with key outstanding features that will provide a high return on investment immediately out of the box with the new features in Oracle Database 11g. Every database vendor offers a database that offers specific benefits. What I have always liked about Oracle, is the Oracle Database Server has by far more feature functionality than any other vendor. This offers the DBA an extremely rich set of tools to solve complex problems in today's environments. In Oracle Database 11g, Oracle takes a very large leap in innovation and feature functionality.

Key features that everyone will be interested in include:

Awesome change ensurance features with Database Replay and SQL Replay.
Secure Files (next generation LOBs). Significantly faster than LOBs with more flexbility.
SQL Plan Management.
Java, XML DB, PL/SQL, APEX and PHP add a lot of performance and feature enhancements.
Excellent enhancements in compression and encryption across the board.
Very nice enhancements to partitioning, including automatic partitioning. New Partition Advisor.
Read only tables, Virtual columns and invisible indexes
Upgrade and downgrade enhancements.
Solid enhancements in RMAN, RAC, Data Guard and Data Pump
Automatic Diagnostic Repository.
ASM enhancements include Fast Mirror Resyncs, rolling upgrades, new SYSASM role and migrations to ASM.
Enhancements to temporary tablespaces.
Read only tables.

The Oracle Database 11g New Product Features blog (below) goes into more details of Oracle 11g New Features.

Labels: Oracle Database 11g

Oracle Database 11g New Product Features

I was telling a friend about the new Oracle Database 11g server and they said, "You're kidding, we haven't even moved all of our databases to Oracle 10g. Why should I care about Oracle Database 11g? I hope to be retired by the time the Oracle Database 11g is introduced into my company". I answered with, I've spend the last five years watching companies make bad hardware, software and database management decisions because they did not know how the new features in Oracle 10g could impact their database environments. Or understand the high cost of ownership of their databases because they are managing their databases today pretty much the same way they were ten years ago. Reasons why you should care about features in a new release of the Oracle database:

It is very important that a company understand how features in a new release of the Oracle database server will impact their current database management practices and decisions.
The correct decisions made today will reduce migration issues in the future.
The only way to make the right decisions today, is by understanding where database management is going in the future.
Understanding current and future skill sets needed for IT staff.
I believe you don't always have to be moving in the right direction, but you should always try to be pointed in the right direction.
With Oracle Database 11g Database Replay and SQL Replay, the migration to Oracle Database 11g might be done at significantly reduced costs versus Oracle 10g.
As Oracle 9i moves towards being desupported, Oracle Database 11g may be a stronger migration path than Oracle 10g.

I have been working with Oracle since version 4, so I've seen a lot of new releases. I still remember having to install over 20 5.25" floppy disks, when referential integrity was only declared and not enforced, as well as the old max extent limit of 121. The old days weren't always the good old days. I have helped customers with the rollouts of new Oracle software versions for a good part of my career. This includes internal rollouts to Oracle Corporation for 5.5 years. I was a lead in the internal rollouts of Oracle 8.0, 8i, 9i, JDeveloper, RAC, Streams and new releases of the Oracle Application Server. Since then I have had a leadership role in the Oracle Beta program for Oracle 10g and 11g.

For the most part, DBAs have been a little frustrated by the number of bugs and feature restrictions in Oracle 6, 7, 8 and 9i in the first releases of each version.

The issues with previous first releases of a major version of Oracle database software has taught DBAs to historically stay away from the first release and to be very careful when using new features.
I think Oracle put too much advertising in the Object-Relational features of the Oracle 8 database when the object features were not mature enough in the first release instead of focusing on features that would help DBAs in their day to day jobs.
Oracle did the same thing with Java in the database with Oracle9i. Although Java in the database has turned into a fantastic feature especially for Oracle product and feature development, most DBAs didn't initially see the value of Java in the database.

However, Oracle 10g was by far the most stable release of a new version of Oracle software. Oracle 10g also had a large number of bug fixes for Oracle 9i, so Oracle 10g was even a more stable version of Oracle9i. Oracle 10g also had a lot of enhancements and bug fixes for advanced features of Oracle such as RAC, Data Guard, Streams, etc. The Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) took a gigantic leap from a tool in Oracle 9i that most DBAs snickered at, to a strong Enterprise solution with Grid Control in Oracle 10g. DBAs should have been moving to Oracle 10g to take advantage of the important new features and increased stability, instead they were using the old pattern of moving slowly to a new release and to using the new features of a new release.

Oracle 10g has by far more new features that should be used out of the box than any previous release of Oracle. The features in Oracle 10g are so significant, the Oracle 10g features should change the way DBAs are managing their systems. Yet, DBAs have been very slow in adopting these new features. If you look at a lot of Oracle 10g shops, they are running their databases closer to Oracle 7 features than Oracle 10g features. The release of Oracle 10g added tremendous functionality to database environments that Oracle DBAs need to leverage.

I have been involved with Oracle Database 11g since the summer of 2006, so I can tell you the upcoming release is very interesting. Its amazing how many new features there are in this new release. There are brand new features, existing feature enhancements and a lot of enhancements to make Oracle faster. Oracle Database 11g has added some very interesting enhancements in RMAN, Streams, Data Guard, RAC, diagnosability, RMAN repairability, XML, security, Java, PL/SQL, Data Pump, tables, tablespaces, partitioning, performance and management to name a few area highlights.

As I looked at the Oracle Database 11g release of the database server one thing stood out to me. Organizations really need to look at their database management strategies and how they are going to manage all their databases in their environment. I think it is VERY important that companies leverage the new features in a database and tie the use of the new features into their best practices. I have a tendency to buy the hottest high technology gadgets but historically I never use more than 10 percent of the features. I find most customers are the same way with their databases. This is bad because the new features in Oracle 10g can significantly reduce their cost of ownership if organizations would use them correctly. I cannot state strongly enough that as organizations move to the Oracle 10g and Oracle Database 11g they really need to look out how they are going to tie these new features into their database management practices and leverage these features to minimize down time and reduce their cost of ownership.

As our multi-tiered database environments get more complex we need enhanced tools for managing these environments and for improving performance as our databases get bigger. There is also a strong need for improving the management of advanced database features such as RAC, Data Guard and Streams. Oracle Database 11g strongly addresses these areas.

This is not a comprehensive list of all of the new features in Oracle Database 11g. Below is more of a summary of key areas I like in Oracle Database 11g of the database server.

Change assurance (important for saving money during testing and migration)

Change assurance new features of Database Replay and SQL Replay can play a large role in reducing costs, testing and issues when migrating to Oracle Database 11g. This is one of the best new features in this release.
Database replay - captures actual production workload and replays it on a separate system.
SQL performance analyzer - finds and fixes SQL performance degradations
10gR2 will have a patch set, that will allow the replay to occur.

Secure Files (Next generation LOBS)

Eliminates need for file systems. Very fast access of files.
Just as fast as file systems with all the capabilities of the Oracle database (it’s a new LOB type). It is very fast at accessing the files from a file system.
Store all your data in the database with one consistent:, Security and auditing model
Backup and recovery mechanism
Storage management (ASM)
Transaction and concurrency model
Interface and protocol
Values added services like encryption, compression, and de-duplication

LOBS

Fast bulk data transfers
LOB prefetch (where was this in Oracle8 when we needed it)
InterMedia enhancements to LOBs
SecureFiles compression, encyrption and optimization
Installs/Deinstalls and other fun on weekends

High Availability (RAC, Data Guard, LifeCycle Management)

Fast-Start Failover for maximum performance mode in a Data Guard configuration.
Compression of redo traffic (for Gap Resolution) over the network in a Data Guard Configuration.
Real-Time query of a physical standby database while redo apply is active.
Dynamic setting of Oracle Data Guard SQL apply parameters.
A physical standby database can be opened temporarily for reporting and testing. Redo is still applied while database is in this state.
Online database upgrades for data guard physical standby. Can upgrade logical standby database, then run both in parallel, then switch them.
Can take standby databases, and take them out of standby to do testing and can then move them back into standby modes.
RAC enhancements in OEM for monitoring and diagnostics. A lot of nice enhancements.
Improved metrics.
Next generation RAC cache fusion is even more scalable.
Query results caches
Fast caching of query/function results for read-mostly data
Good enhancements to ADDM for diagnosing and tuning an entire RAC cluster as well as individual instances.. This includes improved diagnostics with Global cache interconnect issues and global resource contention, I/O bandwidth and hot blocks.

RMAN

A Virtual Private Catalog can now make sure an RMAN user can only see databases they are authorized to use.
Archive log management for Streams and Data Guard
Network aware DUPLICATE
Optimized undo backup
Improved corrupt block detection

Manageability

A new MEMORY_TARGET parameter that will improve the automatic memory management across shared and private memory areas.
Simplified Temp Space Management
Enhanced OFA Support
Server side connection pooling.
Secure configuration install option
Stronger Password Protection
Improved statistics generation for partitioned objects.
Security enhancements with transparent tablespace and LOB encryption.
SQL Repair Advisor
Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR)
Fast ANALYZE: Finding Table-Index Corruptions
Automatic SQL Tuning with Self-Learning Capabilities that can identify top SQL statements and tunes them automatically by creating SQL profiles.
Better SQL plan management allows the optimizer to maintain a history of
execution plans for a SQL statement. The optimizer can move to a new plan when it able to verify it is more efficient than an old plan.
Streams management improves with automated alerts for Streams, a new DBMS_COMPARISON package than can help evaluate the consistency of data across databases, splitting and remerging of streams, LCR marking and tracking for diagnosing configuration issues, views and interfaces for understanding a Streams topology and a Streams Performance Advisor.
Migration of DBMS_JOB jobs to the Oracle scheduler.
SQL Test Case Builder
Automatic Health Monitoring
Manage and schedule jobs across multiple databases. This includes external jobs (i.e. shell scripts).

Automatic fault diagnostics

New facilities to capture and manage relevant information for incidents to speed support processes
Support workbench.
Repair advisors (coming in future releases)
Speed analysis of root cause for faults
Advice dbas on repair strategy
The goal is to cut down on the trace files that are sent to Oracle.

Enterprise Manager Enhancements

Support for ASM File Access Control, ASM Manageability, ASM Rolling Migrations, OCR and Voting, Disk in ASM, Disk Resync, Disk Zones, and Infrastructure. Security enhancements with ACL and Security Classes.
Database cloning enhancements.
Expected enhancements to the Database Home Page and Performance change as well as improved metrics, archiving and purging tracing and alert files, group copy of tnsnames.ora and viewing trace files, management of Oracle Text Indexes,
New LogMiner enhancements in Enterprise Manager.
Fine-Grained Access Control on Network Call-outs from the Database. New packages DBMS_TCP_AMIN and
DBMS_IMADDR_ADMIN can control which hosts on the Internet an Oracle user can access with PL/SQL packages.
Secure service registration with the listener out of the box.

Automatic fault diagnostics

New facilities to capture and manage relevant information for incidents to speed support processes
Support workbench.
Repair advisors (coming in future releases)
Speed analysis of root cause for faults
Advise DBAs on repair strategy
The goal is to cut down on the trace files that are sent to Oracle.

Performance - Some areas that stand out as getting faster include:

Faster Data Guard.
Faster simple SQL operations. Faster SQL with caching of frequently used SQL results.
Faster DML triggers.
Faster upgrades.
Faster PL/SQL and Java (auto native compilation). Caching of frequently used procedures and functions results.
Faster statistics generation.
Faster sort operations.

Java, PL/SQL, XML, .NET, PHP, APEX

PL/SQL Native Compilation Without Needing a Third-Party C Compiler.
Native PL/SQL use of Seq.Nextval in a PL/SQL program.
PL/SQL can use CLOBs to get around 32KB limitation of SQL character strings.
Enhanced PL/SQL warnings and error messages.
PLSTIMER identifies hotspots and performance tuning opportunities in PL/SQL.
New package DBMS_HPROF controls the recording of raw PLSTIMER data.
Continued support of standards with JDBC 4.0 and JVM 5.0. Capability to upgrade to JVM 6.0 will be available in the future.
Oracle JVM JIT supports transparent native Java compilation without a C Compiler.
Significant performance improvements with JDBC performance especially with Advanced Queuing.
JDBC supports server side result cache alone with OCI client side result cache. Additional things I liked included the "big" improvements in the JIT and RAC support for JDBC.
New command line interface to OracleJVM making it a lot easier to work with the JDK in the database.
Support for database resident JARs.
JDBC support for starting and shutting down the database.
Performance enhancements to XPath query for Java.
XML applications can now process larger XML documents by loading and saving .
DOM nodes in memory and using a page manager for physical binary data management.
Unified Java API for XML allows mid-tier Java programs to leverage lazily loading by allowing a disconnected mode of operation that allows a XMLType to be used with a session pool model of connection management.
APEX will be standard with an embedded PL/SQL gateway.
APEX will have an application packager for packing and deployment of APEX applications.

Data Pump Enhancements to use when you're moving data

Compression and encryption enhancements
Support for XML Schemas and schema-based tables.
Transportable partitions

Data Warehousing and Analytics to use on a Friday night

New DETECT option for unusual records.
New MAP option for detecting profiles.
New PROFILE feature for find defined patterns.
New analytics and data mining

Partitioning Enhancements that you'll like

Partition by parent/child reference
Partition orders and order_lines together
Virtual column partitiong
Parition on virtual order status, active, less active, derived from multiple status fields in order record
Referential partitioning
More composite partitioning
List/range, range/range, list/hash, list/list
Ex: order status/month, month/day
Automatic interval partitioning supports the automatic creation of time-based partitions.
Single partition transport tablespace

Automatic Storage Management

Convert Single-Instance ASM to Clustered ASM by allowing ASM to be configured on all nodes.
ASM gets even better in Oracle11. Some of the new features include:
A new SYSASM role allows the separation of database management and storage management responsibilities.
ASM Fast Disk Resync brings a repaired ASM disk on line in a much shorter time.
ASM manageability gets better with enhancements to the ASMCMD utility, a new mount mode for rebalance performance, disk group metadata backup and improved disk group compatibility across software versions.
Support for ASM Rolling Migrations for different versions of Oracle11g and upward.

XML DB

XML index enhancements ( very important!)
XSLT performance enhancements
NFS v4.0 support
Enable the XDB HTTP Server for SOA (the Oracle database is a service)
Updates to registered XML Schemas
Optimizations for XQuery and XPATH
XML DB repository trigger
Recursive XML Schema handling
Support of SQL/XML standards (SQL 2005)
XBRL validation and XLink validation
Binary xml storage
Enhanced xml indexing
Schema evolution

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Virtual columns (functions) on tables. Indexes on virtual columns.
Enhancements to DBMS_SQL supporting LOBS, user-defined types and bulk operations.

Security

Enhanced passwords (case sensitive and enhanced password algorithm).
Security on ports and URLs for FGAC (i.e. UTL_HTTP, UTL_SMTP, UTL_TCP).

Installs/Deinstalls

9iR2 <-> 11g upgrade/downgrade
10gR1 <-> 11g upgrade/downgrade
10gR2 <-> 11g upgrade/downgrade

Labels: Oracle Database 11g