Arrived at SFO and registered for OOW

After around 5 hours flight, I arrived at San Francisco at 12pm local time today (Sept.28). One of my colleague took the same flight. The plane was fully loaded, but we didn't know if it was because of Oracle OpenWorld.

To our surprise, we didn't see any crowd in the airport as well as taxi line. Traffic from airport to the down town hotel was not bad at all.

After check-in and having a late lunch, we walked to Moscone center to do our OOW registration. Again, we didn't see lots of attendees for registration. We were joking where those 60K+ people. Since we had our advance check-in QR code ready, we spent less 2 minutes to get our registration done. So efficient:-) Also we got our OOW package fast (no line).

Walking around Moscone West, South and North, the workers and exhibitors were still working hard to prepare the event.

The weather was really nice in SFO. Sunny and warm!

You can follow my Twitter @wliu211 to see my update and pictures.

OOW14 tips

I have been searching the tips to maximize my Oracle OpenWorld experience. Finally I found one from Alex Antonatos - This year’s OpenWorld expect 70000 attendees, 10 tips to maximize your conference experience.

I like the following tips particularly.

  3) Bring comfortable shoes. You can expect lots of walking and uncomfortable shoes can put a damper on energy very quickly.

  5) Bring business cards for the many drawings that are often offered in the exhibit areas.

For those have attended OOW before, do you any other tips to offer? I am leaving soon.

Update on Oct.11, 2014 after coming back from OOW14:

While I checked the news and blogs about OOW14 at home, I found an article First-timer tips for Oracle Open World written by the OOW14 attendee Robin Moffatt. I wish she could write it before the event, so I could benefit from it:-)

Oracle Database Cloud Service vs. Aliyun RDS

Since I have known (learned)  what Larry is going to talk about, I started to search the information about Oracle Database Cloud Service (ODCS).

From Oracle website about ODCS, "Oracle Cloud provides several Oracle Database offerings giving you the option of a single schema based service, or a virtual machine with a fully configured, running Oracle Database instance". The last option (below) is the "future direction", which Oracle will sell the most.

Database as a Service - Managed

• Essential management by Oracle
• Complete access to dedicated Oracle Database instance
• Full SQL*Net access
• Oracle managed backup with point-in-time recovery
• Oracle managed patching and upgrades

Recently a company named Alibaba is very hot so his founder Jack Ma.  By comparing Oracle's ODCS with Aliyun  (Alibaba's company) RDS (Relational Database Service), they are pretty much same in term of their offerings. The main difference right now is that Aliyun RDS only supports MySQL and MS SQLServer.

With those money getting from largest IPO in the history, Jack Ma can make the RDS business bigger and bigger in China and then compete with Oracle and Amazon directly outside China.

Larry, do you know Jack?

Numbers about OOW 2014

I have been wondering how big the Oracle OpenWorld will be.

According to Oracle OpenWorld 2014 official site, there will be

• more than 60,000 business and technology professionals from around the world
• more than 2,500 business and technology sessions, covering cloud applications, such as marketing, social, service, sales, and HCM as well as big data, database, middleware, and engineered systems

To better support and understand the above numbers, here is another Oracle official fact sheet about Oracle OpenWorld 2013.

There is also a 2011 article from NYTimes described how Oracle OpenWorld brought the impact on the city of San Francisco even 3 years ago.

" Commuters driving into this city on Monday morning will discover major downtown thoroughfares closed. More than 129,000 square feet of tents will have sprouted around the city’s convention center, where 4.25 miles of power cables, 300 miles of phone and Internet wires and enough beer trucks to sate 45,000 people are in place."

"The production, which runs through Thursday, requires a quarter-million cups of coffee and 14,700 hotel rooms, filling the city’s supply and spilling down the San Francisco peninsula past Redwood Shores, Oracle’s headquarters. "

What will Larry talk about in his keynote speech at OOW 2014?

Still as Oracle CEO, in his keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld 2013, Larry Ellison, announced "Oracle Database 12c In-Memory Database and M6 Big Memory Machine".  In the Content Catalog for OOW 2014, there will be lots of sessions talking about in-memory option like the one (Top Five Things to Know About Oracle Database In-Memory) by Maria Colgan.

To go back one more year, at OOW 2012, after telling the crowd about Oracle Cloud 2012, Larry announced Oracle Database 12c and next generation Exadata Database Machine.

On September 18, Larry stepped aside  as Oracle CEO. As a Chairman and CTO, what important announcement will he deliver to the world in this year's OOW keynote speech?

From Forbes'article "Larry Ellison Is Still Here And 7 More Things About Oracle" written by Michael Hickins, a director of strategic communications at Oracle, we can get the taste of Larry's coming speech.

"... the company will roll out its new Database Cloud Service — a new multi-tenant database-as-a-service offering that will let customers migrate their existing apps and databases to the cloud “with the push of a button,” said Ellison. Data will be compressed ten to one and encrypted for secure and efficient transfer to the cloud, with no reprogramming. “Every single Oracle feature — even our latest high-speed in-memory processing — is included in the Oracle Cloud Database Service,” Ellison said. “Hundreds of thousands of customers and ISVs have been waiting for exactly this. Database is our largest software business and database will be our largest cloud service business.” "

Prepare for Oracle OpenWorld 2014

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 is fast approaching. This will be my first time to join this event. I will fly from Toronto to San Francisco on September 27.

Except the registration, hotel and flight booking, the most important preparation work was to schedule the sessions to attend during the event by using Schedule Builder.

There are 2027 sessions (by 3214 speakers) listed in Content Catalog. Which sessions should I choose? A big headache. I don't know how other attendees normally pick the sessions, but I chose the sessions mainly by speakers who I am interested in. As you can also see from the topics, they are mostly relate to Oracle 12c or performance tuning.

Here are some of those speakers and their sessions:

• Using Oracle Multitenant to Efficiently Manage Development and Test Databases by Alex Gorbachev - CTO, The Pythian Group Inc.
• Near-Zero Downtime Database Migration by Arup Nanda - Database Architect, Starwood Hotels  
• Adaptive Query Optimization by Christian Antognini - Senior Principal Consultant, Trivadis AG  
• Reading an Automatic Workload Repository Report by Jonathan Lewis - Sole Proprietor, JL Computer Consultancy  
• Top Five Things to Know About Oracle Database In-Memory by Maria Colgan - Master Product Manager, Oracle  
• How to Upgrade, Migrate, and Consolidate to Oracle Database 12c by Mike Dietrich - Senior Principal Technologist, Oracle  
• The Best New Oracle Database 12c Features by Rich Niemiec - Executive Advisor to the International Board, Rolta International Inc.  
• Expert Oracle Exadata: Then and Now by Tanel Poder - Technology Evangelist, Enkitec  
• What’s New in Oracle Database 12c Release 12.1.0.2? by Tom Kyte - Architect, Oracle  

For sure, I will watch the keynotes by Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd.

V$RESOURCE_LIMIT and Bug 3896119

In order to get the number of processes Oracle database uses, DBA can query the V$RESOURCE_LIMIT with RESOURCE_NAME equal PROCESSES. By knowing the max utilization, DBA can plan for the process increase if need since the parameter PROCESSES change need to bounce the database.

This view displays information about global resource use for some of the system resources. Use this view to monitor the consumption of resources so that you can take corrective action, if necessary.

Column	Datatype	Description
RESOURCE_NAME	VARCHAR2(30)	Name of the resource
CURRENT_UTILIZATION	NUMBER	Number of (resources, locks, or processes) currently being used
MAX_UTILIZATION	NUMBER	Maximum consumption of this resource since the last instance start-up
INITIAL_ALLOCATION	VARCHAR2(10)	Initial allocation. This will be equal to the value specified for the resource in the initialization parameter file (UNLIMITED for infinite allocation).
LIMIT_VALUE	VARCHAR2(10)	Unlimited for resources and locks. This can be greater than the initial allocation value (UNLIMITED for infinite limit).

Values for RESOURCE_NAME column

Resource Name	Corresponds to this Initialization Parameter
DISTRIBUTED_TRANSACTIONS	See <>
DML_LOCKS	See <>
ENQUEUE_LOCKS	This value is computed by Oracle. Use <> to obtain more information about the enqueue locks.
ENQUEUE_RESOURCES	See <>
LM_PROCESSES	Lock manager processes
LM_LOCKS	See <>
MTS_MAX_SERVERS	See <>
PARALLEL_SLAVES	See <>
PROCESSES	See <>
ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS	See <>
SESSIONS	See <>
SORT_SEGMENT_LOCKS	This value is computed by Oracle
TEMPORARY_LOCKS	This value is computed by Oracle
TRANSACTIONS	See <>

However, there is a Bug 3896119 -  CURRENT_UTILIZATION of V$RESOURCE_LIMIT may be too high - which affects the Oracle database versions less than 10.2 such as 9.2.0.5 and 10.1.0.3. The bug is fixed since 10.2.0.1 as well patching to 9.2.0.7 and 10.1.0.4.

Maclean Liu's Script Collection

The words are in Chinese. For sure, the script is in English.

Here is the link to the blog.

How to install Grid Control 11gR1 on Linux 5 - complete reference

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control (EMGC) is a system management software that delivers centralized monitoring, administration, and life cycle management functionality for the complete IT infrastructure, including systems running Oracle and non-Oracle technologies, from a single console.

Before releases 11g, all software necessary for the GC installation was packaged into a single installation. The 11g GC's significant difference from an earlier version is the introduction of Web logic Server. Web logic Server replaces OC4J which was used prior to 11gR1. So before installing Grid Control 11gR1, you must first prepare the Weblogic Server (its prerequisite jdk for 64bit platforms) and repository database.

Repository database version needs to be any one of the following versions:


10.2.0.4.0
11.1.0.7.0
11.2.0.1.0
11.2.0.2.0


Oracle official documents about EMGC 11g:

Oracle® Enterprise Manager Concepts 11g Release 11.1.0.1 (E11982) Oracle® Enterprise Manager Grid Control Basic Installation Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.1.0) (E15838)  Oracle® Enterprise Manager Grid Control Advanced Installation and Configuration Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.1.0) (E16847)

Oracle Useful Metalink Notes about EMGC 11g:

Master Note for Grid Control 11.1.0.1.0 Installation and Upgrade [ID 1067438.1]

Complete Steps to Install 11.1.0.1 OMS Using 11.2 Database on 64 Bit RedHat 5 or OEL5 [ID 1130958.1]

Some useful sites about the EMGC 11g installation:

• How to Build a Grid Control Environment (11g) (Step by step documentation from oracle-wiki, it is based on Oracle Linux 5)

• OEM Grid Control 11g(11.1.0.1.0) Installation (A popular Step by step documentation from learnwithme11g - SRIKRISHNA MURTHY, very good note about the installation)

• How to Install Oracle Grid Control 11g (Step by Step Guide) - Gokhan Atil Oracle Blog

• Installing Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11gR1 on Linux (by Eric Jenkinson)

• OEM Grid Control 11gR1 Installation on Oracle Linux 5.5 (64-bit) (Step by step documentation from oracle-base, based on Oracle Linux 5.5, including OS, Java, Database, Weblogic and GC installations)

• Installation Guide  Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g on RHEL 5.5 x86-32 (a PDF document about the installation including the screenshot, from Martin Decker, an independent Oracle consultant. )

• Installing Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.1.0) Linux x86 (from Oracle APPS DBA, based on Oracle Linux 5.4)

• Oracle Grid Control 11gR1 Installation (Step by step documentation from Justin)

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Install 11g R1 11.1.0.1 (a YouTube video about GC 11g Installation from MASTERSCHEMA)

• Oracle DBA – Tips and Techniques (em-grid-control) (a blog site about Oracle stuff from Gavin Soorma, an Australian)

Oracle official site about EMGC (now focus on 12c):

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/overview/index.html

New ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool

Yesterday (Nov.09, 2011) Oracle delivered a web seminar to talk about the new tool. The tool has similar purpose of "ORA-600/ORA-7445 Error Look-up Tool" and can provide DBA an easy way to diagnose the ORA-4031 errors.

By uploading your problematic database's alert log file and trace files, the tool can automatically provide the issue identification and suggested solution based on its established guidelines.  Actually, you can get to read those guidelines without really uploading anything. So, you can even use the guideline to troubleshoot the database by yourself.

Here is the example information taken from the guideline:

Fault: Insufficient SGA Free Memory at Startup
	Your instance SGA configuration has been flagged as having too little memory available for the automatic memory manager to make adjustments in the SGA component sizes. This issue could occur if in the init.ora parameters of your Alert log, (shared_pool_size + large_pool_size + java_pool_size + db_keep_cache_size + streams_pool_size + db_cache_size) / sga_target is greater than 90%. With the introduction of automatic memory management (ASMM in 10g, AMM in 11g), i.e. when SGA_TARGET > 0 or MEMORY_TARGET > 0, memory granules can be moved from one SGA component to another, depending on which component has an immediate need to grow. The memory components are: shared pool, buffer cache, streams pool, large pool, java pool, log buffer. The most common sharing of memory granules occur between the shared pool and the buffer cache and so these components can increase and decrease in size. In order to limit how much any component will decrease in size, we set a minimum value by specifying a size in the parameter file. For example, when SGA_TARGET >0 or MEMORY_TARGET > 0, then SHARED_POOL_SIZE=nnnn and B_CACHE_SIZE=nnnn become minimum sizes of these components. The sum of all the minimum sizes determine the minimum size of the SGA at start up. If the SGA_TARGET (or MEMORY_TARGET) is only slightly larger than the sum of the minimum settings, there will be very little memory to do any resizing, and this can lead to a ORA-4031.
Relevant Observation(s):
	Inital SGA Utilization Too High
Resolution Action Plan
	1) Reduce the minimum values for the dynamic SGA components to allow memory manager to make changes as needed For example, either set: shared_pool_size=new value in the database INIT.ORA file, or connect as SYSDBA and issue statements: alter system set shared_pool_size=new value scope=both; NOTE: Explicit settings (as minimums) can be changed while the database is online. and 2) Modify auto-tuned configuration 10g: Increase value of SGA_TARGET to provide more SGA memory Either set: sga_target=new value in the database INIT.ORA file, or connect as SYSDBA and issue statements: alter system set sga_target=new value scope=both; Note: It will be necessary to restart the instance. That will mean that associated database will have to schedule an outage as well. 11g: Increase value of MEMORY_TARGET if used. If SGA_MAX_SIZE has been set remove the explicit setting and allow MEMORY_TARGET to manage the SGA sizing. Either set: memory_target=new value (remove explicit setting if applicable) sga_max_size=value in the database INIT.ORA file, or connect as SYSDBA and issue statements: alter system set memory_target=new value scope=both; (if explicitly setting SGA_MAX_SIZE) alter system reset sga_max_size scope=spfile; Note: It will be necessary to restart the instance. That will mean that associated database will have to schedule an outage as well. or 3) both of the above. 4) See these notes for further information regarding automatic memory configuration. NOTE:781630.1 - How to configure ASMM (Auto Memory) on 10g and 11g - Best Practices NOTE:452512.1- 11g MEMORY_TARGET Parameter Dependency NOTE:443746.1- Automatic Memory Management(AMM) on 11g NOTE:295626.1- How To Use Automatic Shared Memory Management (ASMM) In Oracle10g

Also, in the seminar, the presenter mentioned Oracle is also building the ORA-4300 troubleshooting tool. By promoting these tools, Oracle is not only helping DBA to do the work by themselves, but also saving money from support. In the end, Oracle can make more profit and get more customers.

Oracle Internal Research深入研究Oracle内部原理

以下是刘相兵(Maclean Liu)个人原创或总结的一些深入研究Oracle Internal内部原理的文章post列表:

Oracle Internal Event:10200 Consistent Read诊断事件

了解Oracle RAC Brain Split Resolution

了解Oracle内核代码层的作用

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(九):维护MON_MODS$字典基表

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(八):Transaction Recover

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(七):清理IND$字典基表

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(六):Instance Recovery

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(五):Recover Dead transaction

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(四):维护col_usage$字典基表

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(三):清理obj$基表

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(二):合并空闲区间

了解你所不知道的SMON功能(一):清理临时段

Know more about commit

Find INTCOL#=1001 in col_usage$?

Buffer Lock Mode and Compatibilities

关于V$OPEN_CURSOR

Advanced Diagnostic using oradebug dumpvar

还原真实的cache recovery

Oracle内部视图:x$targetrba

Oracle内部视图:x$ktfbfe

Oracle内部视图:x$ktfbue

Only ARCH Bgprocess may create archivelog?

Oracle Latch:一段描绘Latch运作的伪代码

Who pulls the background process dbwr’s trigger?

基于行跟踪的ROWDEPENDENCIES ORA_ROWSCN信息

Oracle闩:Cache Buffers chains

Latches and Tuning:Latches

Latches and Tuning:Redo Log Buffer and Latches

Latches and Tuning:Buffer Cache

Latches and Tuning:The Library Cache

Oracle Database Links Master Class

Oracle等待事件:Data file init write

What’s the Point of Oracle Checkpoints?

How does RECORDLENGTH affect your exp speed?

Oracle网络TNS协议介绍(revised)

logfile switch causes incremental checkpoint?

Know more about redo log buffer and latches

How does cpu_count parameter affect instance?

How to trigger ORA-00600,ORA-7445 by manual

Basics of C code within the Oracle kernel

Know more about Oracle Latches

Know more about Buffer Cache and Latch

Know More About Libarary Cache and Latches

Oracle内部视图:X$BH

Know more about DML

Known Oracle Internal Stack Call Meaning

深入了解ASMM

_shared_pool_reserved_pct or shared_pool_reserved_size with ASMM

PL/SQL Virtual Machine Memory Usage

Slide:深入了解Oracle自动内存管理ASMM by Maclean Liu

Know GCS AND GES structure size in shared pool

How does SGA/PGA allocate on AMM?

理解Oracle在AIX平台上的内存使用

Probe how does your PGA consume

ora-4031 and “obj stat memory” component in Shared Pool

直接路径读取对于延迟块清除的影响

How to make BBED(Oracle Block Brower and EDitor Tool) on Unix/Linux/Windows

隐藏参数_high_priority_processes与oradism

Oracle等待事件Enqueue CI:Cross Instance Call Invocation

Oracle常用的几个父栓

ddl操作是否会产生undo?

kgl simulator，共享池simulator以及缓冲simulator相关解释

Source: Oracle Internal Research深入研究Oracle内部原理

OOW 2011

If you didn't attend this year's OOW, you still can download the presentation for free. Click here.

Demo about Oracle Parsing

This is a good demo from Andrew Holdsworth, Senior Director of Oracle’s Real World Performance (RWP) team. He showed us how soft parsing, hard parsing and direct logon/off from app (no using connection pool) to degrade the db performance (comparing with that without any parsing at all).

Patching for Exadata: introducing oplan

Patching for Exadata: introducing oplan

Oracle ORION

ORION is a standalone tool for calibrating the I/O performance for storage systems that are intended to be used for Oracle databases.

To find out the detail and play with it, you can find the detail here.

DBA 2.0

While the whole world is talking about the web 2.0, DBA 2.0 is also not a NEW thing. To learn more about it, here is a good article: Performing an Oracle DBA 1.0 to DBA 2.0 Upgrade. Actually, it was a dialogue between 2 Oracle gurus.

pga_aggregate_target and db_cache_size

In his blog article Analysing Statspack(8), Jonathan Lewis has talked about 2 rules:

pga_aggregate_target - A comfortable figure for an OLTP system would be in the 2M - 4M range per process.

db_cache_size - is always at least as large as 1M per process.

Take a note first and check reason later.

Oracle 9.2.0.8 and 10.2.0.4 Patch download list

Oracle 9.2.0.8 patch:
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_AIX64-5L.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_AXP.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_HP64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_HPUX-IA64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_LINUX-S390.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_LINUX.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_Linux-IA64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_Linux-x86-64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_MVS.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_SOLARIS.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_SOLARIS64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_TRU64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_WINNT.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/4547809/p4547809_92080_WINNT64.zip

Oracle 10.2.0.4 patch:
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_AIX5L.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_HPUX-IA64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_HPUX-64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_Solaris-64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_Linux-x86-64.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_Linux-x86.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_Win32.zip
ftp://updates.oracle.com/6810189/p6810189_10204_MSWIN-x86-64.zip

Search Oracle Book on Google Book and Read online

Nowadays there is no much time to read Oracle books (I mean the real books). We rather to search in Metalink, Google or other Oracle related sites. As we all know, those books are not cheap. If we do want to buy them, we would like the company to pay for the bills:-)

Actually, we can find lots of Oracle books for online reading. Here is an example. You can search Oracle book by using Google Book:

http://books.google.com/books?q=Oracle&lr=&sa=N&start=0

You can even fine-tune your search. Here are some books for your reference:

Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 10g
Oracle Performance Tuning
Oracle High Performance Tuning for 9i and 10g
Oracle Performance Troubleshooting: With Dictionary Internals SQL & Tuning

Be aware: you can NOT read full pages of the above books. If you feel those books really good, you will have to buy by yourself or company. Anyway, enjoy!

How to Misuse SQL's FROM Clause

http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/5220
Stéphane Faroult first discovered the relational model and the SQL language in 1983.


http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsqlpro05/html/sp05a1.asp


http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/ateQuestionNResponse/0,289625,sid41_cid611283_tax301455,00.html