Category: Oracle

Oracle 11gR2 RAC On Linux Using VMware Server 2

I’ve taken my first tentative steps into 11gR2 RAC and it was a big surprise.

11gR2 RAC feels very different to 11gR1 RAC. I can imagine quite a few people wanting to upgrade from 11gR1 thinking it will be trivial and getting a rude awakening…

The Grid Infrastructure (Clusterware + ASM) seems more complicated. There are more installation options, more prerequisites, more background processes and a bigger memory requirement…

I typically install 11gR1 RAC on VMware using 1G of RAM per VM. If you try that with 11gR2 you will get to the end of the Grid Infrastructure installation and have nothing left. The minimum recommendation for Grid Infrastructure alone is 1.5G, but if you want the RAC DB as well you are talking 2.5G. It actually worked fine with 2G of RAM allocated to each VM, but this is a whopping increase compared to 11gR1.

At this point I feel like I know nothing about 11gR2 RAC, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a patched version of 11gR1. If this had been released as 12g I would have still have been surprised by the level of change.

So over the next few days I’m expecting the dust to settle, my residual fear of all things new to subside and I’ll probably change my opinion completely and think it’s all the same as it was before… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Please don’t try this installation on your 32-bit Windows laptop with 2G of RAM then write to me complaining it doesn’t work and telling me the article is rubbish… 🙂

A quick thank you…

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone involved in making the 2-day PL/SQL workshop in Utrecht happen last week. Thanks to Miracle Benelux for staging the event, to Anjo for inviting me and to Annette for organizing everything, including Anjo. 🙂

Of course the biggest thanks go to everyone who came to the workshop, because without them it wouldn’t happen. See you all soon. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle games console…

What is this years big OpenWorld announcement?

It’s not Oracle Database 11g Release 2, that’s already been announced and released. It’s not Exadata 2, that’s already announced.

So what can be so important it has relegated 11gR2 and Exadata to pre-OOW announcements, so as not to detract from the real message?

The Oracle Games Console. Working title OBox-720…

Get your first hands-on at OOW 2009…

Cheers

Tim…

RELIES ON clause no more…

I’ve been running through my demos before my PL/SQL workshop in Utrecht and I noticed a change in the behaviour of the PL/SQL Function Result Cache. In 11gR1 it was necessary to specify dependencies using the RELIES ON clause, but now Oracle 11gR2 takes care of Detection of Sources for you. Neat. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Dipping my toe in 11gR2…

I’ve had my first play with 11gR2 today:

Nothing too unpredictable really.

I guess the most noticeable change is the new installer. I didn’t have an issue with the old installer, but a few friends from the Microsoft world had pointed out how dated it looked. The new is much cleaner, and although it will take some getting used to, I think it is a step in the right direction.

I’ve decided that I’m only going to do 64-bit installations from now on. I see little point doing the 32-bit installations, as I hope I will never work on one again. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

RTFM… If you can find them…

A certain something has been released today, so like any self respecting DBA/Developer I went straight for the manuals…

At the time of writing there are none listed on OTN or Tahiti. I tried cunningly altering existing URLs to match the new version, but to no avail.

I’m sure they will appear soon. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Thank you to Mathew Buttler for pointing out the documentation is available here:

http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/portal.all_books

Post-Conference Lull…

The conference finished yesterday at about midday, so I went into town with Chris Muir and Marcel Kratochvil to check out the aquarium. I managed not to get sunburnt this time. Later we met up for some food and basically chilled out.

I leave for San Francisco airport in a few minutes, then I have to look forward to an 11 hour flight, 2 hour wait, then a 1 hour flight. Lovely. 🙂

Thanks to the ladies and gents from OTN and the ACE program for getting me here and thanks to ODTUG for putting on a cracking conference. Not surprisingly, there was no mention of the new Oracle games console, which we are not allowed to mention…

Doing conferences is always a strange experience. They are a little daunting before you start, quite exciting while they are happening, then I get a post-conference lull. It’s like your brain says, “enough is enough”, and you close down for a few days. Having to travel home doesn’t help much.

Cheers

Tim…

ODTUG 2009 Update

I decided fairly early on that ODTUG would be an APEX conference for me. I’m trying to go to as many APEX talks as possible as a fact-finding exercise.

I’m a DBA and PL/SQL developer, so I don’t have a foot in either the APEX or ADF camp. I was expecting this conference to help me formulate some opinions on the relative merits of the technologies, but in actual fact it’s kinda confused me more. Why? Well, I’ve seen some really cool enterprise developments done in APEX, which look good and perform well. I guess I didn’t expect that and it certainly places a tick in the APEX box.

But then talking to some of the guys from the ADF camp, it seems the barriers to entry have been lowered substantially over the last few verisons, which makes that sound interesting too.

I think OpenWorld this year will be my ADF conference. Maybe at the end of that I will have a clear, but newbie, picture of both technologies and be able to say something intelligent about them. 🙂

All I know is, whatever method you choose for your developments you really need a PL/SQL API layer. Not that I’m biased of course. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle ACE Directors Briefing…

I spent the day in the Oracle ACE director’s briefing at the Oracle head office in Redwood Shores. We had to sign none disclosure agreements, so I can’t tell you all the “secrets” we were told.

Don’t tell anyone I said anything, but Oracle are releasing a games console. It looks amazing and will blow the competition out of the water. A hand-held version of the console is on the roadmap, but details are pretty sketchy.

Graphics and sound are “no-cost options”. The games controllers are shipped by default, but they are an Enterprise Edition option, so check your licensing before you attempt to play a game.

Remember, it’s a secret!

Cheers

Tim…

Exit mobile version