Oracle Database 19c : Installations, RAC, Data Guard and Upgrades

I’ve been playing around with Oracle Database 19c on LiveSQL since it was upgraded, and I pretty much thought that would be what I was stuck with until the on-prem release, as I don’t have an Exadata and it’s not on Oracle Cloud DBCS yet. Having seen a bunch people doing stuff on VMs, I got a bit frustrated and looked on eDelivery and low and behold the 19c software is available for download, even if you don’t have a Exadata CSI. I’m sure 18c was restricted during this period…

I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be supported to use this for anything real (that wasn’t Exadata of course) until the on-prem drop, which will probably be 19.3 if they repeat what happened for 18c, but it does allow you to have a play.

Having a bunch of Vagrant environments for 18c already, meant it was pretty easy to test a whole bunch of 19c stuff within a few minutes, as most of the basics are very similar. Just minor changes to package recommendations. As a result I’ve pushed out the following stuff in the last couple of evenings.

Along the way I’ve committed a whole bunch of stuff to GitHub.

  • Vagrant build of 19c on OL7 with APEX and ORDS (here).
  • Vagrant build of 19c on Fedora 29 (here).
  • Vagrant hands-off build of 19c RAC on OL7 (here).
  • Vagrant hands-off build of 19c Data Guard on OL7 (here).
  • Docker 19c on OL7 build (here).
  • Docker compose (here) and swarm (here) stacks.

It should be obvious, but remember this is literally the first time I’ve done this stuff with 19c, so things will change over time. I just wanted to try some stuff out to see what happened, and have some test environments to play with while I’m checking out the new features. Once the real on-prem drop happens I’ll bring these up to date.

If nothing else, this is once again proof of how awesome automation is. A few minor tweaks and boom, there’s a new set of test environments. πŸ™‚

Now I can get back to doing what I was meant to be doing… πŸ™‚

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Override External Table Parameters and Inline External Tables in Oracle Database

Today’s video gives a quick demonstration of overriding external table parameters and inline external tables introduced in Oracle database 12.2 and 18c respectively.

There is a more general video on external tables here.

For those of you that don’t do YouTube, you can read all the articles here.

The cameo on this video is Ilmar Kerm, in a really noisy bar. πŸ™‚

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Real-Time Materialized Views

Today’s video is a quick demo of Real-Time Materialized Views,
introduced in Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2).

This is based on information from the following articles.

The cameo for today’s video is Maria Colgan. πŸ™‚

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Collation and Case-Insensitive Queries in Oracle Database

Today’s video is a run through the Collation functionality introduced in Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2).

If videos aren’t your thing, you can find a lot more information about this subject in my article here.

The cameo in today’s video is Kim Berg Hansen. πŸ™‚

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

OBUG Tech Days Belgium 2019 : Day 2

Day 2 started a little late for me and I missed the first block of speakers. Sorry Alex!

The first session of the day for me was Franck Pachot with “Microservices : Get rid of your DBA and send the DB into Burnout”. The session started with a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday” for Franck. My bad summary of the session would be, pick the right tool and the right approach for the job. The “obvious” solution for the job is not always so obvious. One size doesn’t fit all!

After that it was keynote time with Gurmeet Goindi and Maria (questions at the end) Colgan. Gurmeet started off with the key features of Exadata past, present and future. Maria continued with some of the optimiser goodness coming in “a future release”.

Next up was Roger McNicol with “Understanding Oracle External Tables”. This was one of those sessions where I sat smugly thinking, “I knew that”, until he started talking about some stuff I didn’t have a clue about. I’ll check out some of this stuff when I get home and sneak it into some existing articles, then act superior, like I always knew it. πŸ™‚

The next session was “REST enabling your Oracle database with Oracle REST Data Services” by Jeff Smith. Which Jeff Smith? That Jeff Smith! I’ve seen Jeff do this talk before, but he’s reworked his demos, so I wanted to see the new and improved version, and I was the next speaker in this room so… πŸ™‚

I was the next speaker, with my session, “Multitenant : What’s new in Oracle Database 18c and 12.2”. There is a lot of good stuff in the Multitentant architecture now. All my articles on the subject are listed here. I think the session went OK, but I did overrun. Sorry!

From there I popped out with some folks for a farewell drink, then it was off to catch my plane. I ended up on the same train as Maria. When we got to the airport I tried to get her case off the luggage rack and it destroyed my hand. For a totally accurate depiction of what happened, check out the “I’ve got his pig sticker” scene from Blade.

I had about 2 hours before my plane left, so I got out the laptop and played catch-up on life. We boarded about 10 minutes late, and then sat on the plane for about 35 minutes before we left. The flight was fine and we gained back a little time on the way. I got a taxi home and that was the end of the trip!

Thanks to everyone at OBUG for inviting me to come and play. Thanks to the attendees and speakers for making the event happen. This was a self-funded trip, but I’d like to thank the Oracle ACE Program and Groundbreaker Ambassadors Program for allowing me to fly the flag.

Cheers

Tim…

OBUG Tech Days Belgium 2019 : Day 1

The day started at my normal wake-up time. My flight wasn’t until 10:50, but I decided the leave for the airport really early to avoid traffic. It makes no difference to me if I’m at home on my laptop, in the airport on my laptop, or at work… πŸ™‚

The only thing of note from the airport was me trying to scan through boarding security with my conference ticket, which of course failed, but they let me through anyway. Interesting…

The flight was scheduled for 75 minutes, but it took about 55 minutes, so we clawed some time back. Once landed and through security I headed off to get a train to Antwerp. The train took about 45 minutes, then it was a 2K walk to the venue, arriving fashionably late for the first day!

I arrived in time to see Frits Hoogland presenting “All about Linux memory usage by the Oracle database”. I’ve seen him present this session before, but I’m so rubbish at the subject, it still felt new. πŸ™‚

From there it was Mike Dietrich presenting “Upgrade your Oracle databases fully unattended with AutoUpgrade”. I had a number of questions for Mike, both in the session and afterwards. From what I can see this features looks like it will be really useful.

Finally I watched Jonathan Lewis with “Why Oracle statistics aren’t enough”, where he showed a number of scenarios where statistics are ignored, leading to “interesting” decisions by the optimizer.

When the talks were done there was a social event with drinks and nibbles. We then went out to get some food, walked half way round the city by mistake, then went back to the hotel to crash!

Cheers

Tim…

OBUG Tech Days Belgium 2019

The BOUG Tech Days 2019 conference is happening on the 7th-8th February, which is Thursday and Friday this week. I see from the Twitter-verse that some people are already there and checking out the city.

I’ll be flying out on Thursday morning, and flying back Friday night, so it’s an overnight stay for me.

The list of speakers is pretty impressive, so it looks like it’s going to be a good one.

See you there!

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Extended Data Types in Oracle Database 12c Onward

Today’s video is a quick run through the Extended Data Types functionality introduced in Oracle Database 12c Release 1. Why such an old subject? Well, it’s a prerequisite for something I was planning to do a video on, so I thought I better do this first. πŸ™‚

For those that don’t like videos, you can find the same information and more here.

The cameo in today’s video is Martin Klier. πŸ™‚

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Subscribe to my YouTube channel here.