Category: Oracle

Installfest and Downsizing…

Installfest

Tod Trichler from OTN sent me a mail this morning about a new Installfest section on the Oracle Wiki. I’m always a bit dubious about putting links to my content on the Oracle Wiki because it seems like a shameless plug, but this section of the Wiki actively encourages it, provided the links are relevant. If you are into Oracle on Linux try and get involved. 🙂

Downsizing

As part of our continuing assimilation a whole bunch of projects at work are being downsized at the moment. Many will run in a limited capacity before being shut down completely in the near future. As a result, I’m in the process of moving several databases from large, expensive and power hungry hardware to commodity hardware running Linux. In a couple of cases, applications are moving from RAC to single node databases.

It’s quite good fun installing loads of little boxes and transferring the data. Sometimes, having lots of little jobs to tick off the list is quite rewarding, although I’m sure it will get very old very fast. 🙂

While sitting running some Red Hat updates I found myself saying, “I love Linux!”, to a colleague. I can’t tell you exactly why. It just has the right combination of ease of use and geek appeal all rolled into one. I work with Oracle a variety of platforms (Tru64, Windows, Linux) here, an I’ve used a whole bunch more in previous jobs, but I think Linux ticks most of the boxes for me.

Cheers

Tim…

Estonia Day 2 Update…

I’ve just finished the second day of teaching in Estonia…

I didn’t have any database issues today, which was a relief. Everything went according to plan, but it was a struggle to get all the information across in the time. I think I’ve got more than 13 hours of material and only 12 hours to present it in, but I can’t really see what I can remove without missing out something important.

As it was, I managed to get through everything, but I did need and extra 45 minutes. 🙂

I enjoy doing these 2 day sessions, but they are extremely draining. Anyone who knows me will find this hard to believe, but it’s really hard work to talk for 12+ hours in 2 days. I’m not sure I could cope with teaching a 5 day course, or teaching every week. I take my hat off to anyone who is a full time trainer, because it’s a very difficult job…

So now I’ve got a couple of days sightseeing before I head home. I had a quick walk round the city last night and it looks really cool. The weather is great and the days are so long it’s unreal.

I think I’m going to head off to the hotel gym to do some yoga, the go and have another look round the city before I start my proper sightseeing tomorrow.

Cheers

Tim…

Estonia Day 1 Update…

I’ve just completed day 1 of my PL/SQL workshop in Estonia. The first few minutes proved especially eventful!

When I did my workshop in Copenhagen, I had a lot of trouble with the projector. This morning I plugged the projector into my laptop and all was well. I even made a joke about how well it was going. Little did I know…

I started the presentation and the first demo hung! I don’t think I can fully describe the panic that sets in when something like that happens withing a couple of minutes of starting a 2 day workshop. It’s like a little piece of you dies. 🙂 I did a little messing around to try and get it working, but quickly realised I had to keep things going or it was going to get really boring, really quickly, so I just rebooted the virtual machine.

Lookily, wiser men than me (Andrew Clarke and Mark Rittman) had warned me long ago about the dangers of live demos, so I always carry a backup plan. I had text representations and screen shots of the expected output from the demos, so I used those while I waited for the VM to restart. After a little while the VM was up again and was working fine, so with more than a small sigh of relief, things were back on track.

I wonder what fate will throw at me tomorrow. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, or gives you a heart attack…

You gotta laugh…

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 9 and Oracle 11g…

I wrote a couple of articles against a beta version of Fedora 9 before I went on holiday. I did a run through against the final release of Fedora 9 today and they seem fine, so here they are:

The installation process doesn’t give you the option to turn off SELinux or the firewall. You can do it after the installation, so it’s just a small annoyance, but I don’t like it.

If you want to know my opinions on the distribution itself, read my post on Fedora 8. It’s six months later and there is still no visible sign of a direction for this distribution. I don’t think my opinion has changed.

Cheers

Tim…

Multiplexed redo logs and archiving by default?

After yet another post by someone whose database has crashed without running in archivelog mode and without having multiplexed redo logs, it makes me think it’s about time Oracle changed the default installation to include both these things.

Over the last few versions, Oracle have consistently made the database easier to install and use, but they still leave these gaping holes. Yes, archivelog mode is set if you choose to setup backups during the installation, but there’s nothing to stop you defaulting this setting even when backups are not initiated during the installation.

I realise some people will react by saying it’s up to the DBA to make this decision, but there are obviously lots of people out there that either don’t understand the issue, or don’t even know about it. It would seem sensible to me that Oracle install the product in the safest mode possible. Afterall, it’s no problem backing them out if you don’t need them.

I for one would rather have people complaining about disks filled with archived redo logs, than having unrecoverable databases.

Rant over. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

SecureFiles in Oracle 11g…

I’ve just posted an article on SecureFiles in Oracle 11g. It looks like Oracle have done a pretty good job of improving LOBs in 11g. Depending on the LOB contents, and provided you can cope with the processing overhead, you can certainly save some serious space using the compression and deduplication options. Anyone who’s used Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) will recognize the encryption options.

I can’t see the old-style (BasicFile) LOBs lasting very long now this is in place. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…