Category: Oracle

A dose of the real world from Andy C…

I had to smile when I read Andy C’s latest post.

I don’t doubt the intention of the BAAG movement. I think most people would agree it makes sense, but sometimes you are forced into making decisions without the full weight of evidence behind you. In an ideal world you would go away, study the problem and come up with the correct solution, but management and customer demands don’t always make that possible.

It reminds me of a scene in Alien:

Ripley: Ash. Any suggestions from you or Mother?
Ash: No, we’re still collating.
Ripley: [Laughing in disbelief] You’re what? You’re still collating? I find that hard to believe.
Ash: What would you like me to do?
Ripley: Just what you’ve been doing, Ash, nothing.

And we all know who was the hero and who was the bad guy in that movie! 🙂

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we should all be gung-ho random DBAs, but Andy’s post serves to remind me that my lofty ideals are not always possible or practical.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 10g RAC using NFS…

I’ve mentioned it before, but I really like Kevin Closson‘s blog. For some time he’s been evangelizing about Oracle RAC over NFS, so I thought I would give it a go to see what it’s all about and here is the result.

Oracle 10g RAC On Linux Using NFS

I was only using two machines, and I didn’t have access to a NAS that supported NFS, so I was forced to use one of the RAC nodes as my NFS server. I know it’s a dumb idea, but it proves the technology.

If you are just playing about, the nice thing about this solution is you don’t need to worry about “real” shared storage. I prefer it to the VMware approach because you don’t need a single server with loads of memory to fake two virtual machines and the shared storage. Finding two poor machines is always easier than 1 good one. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

When is Oracle 11g released?

So all the pomp and ceremony is over and Oracle 11g is launched, but as yet I’ve not heard anything about a release date. Does anyone know when it is likely to hit the shelves. I kind-of though that was the big news, but as yet I’ve not seen any press releases or blog entries that specify a date. It’s not available for download on OTN yet, so I’m assuming the “Launch” and the “Release” are not the same thing.

Have I missed something?

Cheers

Tim…

Noons is channeling me, or vice versa…

I read the latest post by Nuno Souto (Noons) and it felt like he was channeling me, or maybe I’ve been channeling him. I guess everyone knows my thoughts on the fiasco that is J2EE, so I won’t go there. After over 12 years in the business, I’ve still never found a development technology as simple or productive as Oracle Forms. Maybe I’m looking at things with rose coloured spectacles, but it’s been 10 years since I’ve used Oracle forms regularly and I can still open it up and knock out an application in a couple of minutes. I don’t think many people could say the same of other technologies.

Those were the days… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Coming down off my 11g high…

I guess if I was honest with myself, I didn’t really expect to be downloading 11g database software on 11th of July, but to see my doubts confirmed is a little deflating:

Get Ready for Oracle Database 11g – July 11th 2007

It takes me back to a discussion with Tom Kyte at last years UKOUG where his estimate for the release date was, “Between 1st July 2007 and 31st December 2007”. 🙂

I know Oracle need months of hype before a release, but I’ve still got my fingers and toes crossed for something earlier than Christmas.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Licensing…

We’re trying to figure out what Oracle licenses we have to buy to add another node into an application server cluster. Sounds easy doesn’t it!

Trouble is, we need to load an old version of the application server, and the whole product set has been renamed and re-jigged since this version of the application server was released. The components we’re using sound like a match for the cheaper Java Edition, but that didn’t exist when we bought the product originally, so we are really not sure if we can get away with this.

We contacted sales yesterday, and the lady we spoke to was very pleasant, but was unable to confirm what we need to do. We’re now waiting for an account manager to investigate it and make a decision.

This just confirms to me that Oracle’s licensing is a total mess, and repeatedly renaming their product ranges along with the components they include only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Cheers

Tim…

Start with the simple things and work up…

We had a problem with one of our application servers on Friday. There was a long trail of breadcrumbs, which I followed all the way back to a blindingly obvious problem. We had run out of disk space. Doh!

Why did this happen?  There were two contributing factors:

  1. Unknown to me, marketing had requested we stop cleaning up the Apache access logs about two years ago, so they had been commented out of the automated cleanup script. Over that period, they had built up to over 7.5G.
  2. The tool for monitoring disk space usage was configured to send warning messages out via the wrong mail server.

Well, you have to chalk it down to experience, but it has served to remind me once again that often it is the most simple and obvious things that cause problems. Sometimes, the more you know, the easier it is to lose sight of the obvious.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 11g…

Eddie Awads has posted that the 11g launch is on July the 11th. I have a feeling his hit rate is probably going mad at the moment.

Previous announcements said the release was planned for second half of this year, so I was expecting it to be December 31st. Coming so early in second half of the year is a rather pleasant surprise.

I like to think that in some way I am responsible for the early release. My constant moaning about being bored and wanting 11g to be released soon has obviously done its job. It’s truly wonderful to be the center of my universe. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 10gR2 on Fedora 7…

I had a quick go at this installation and it worked OK. I had to load a bunch of FC6 packages to get Oracle to install, link and run properly. It looks like lots of the “compat_*” packages have been removed from Fedora 7, which is a problem as Oracle 10g needs them. The “libaio” package is no longer present. I’m sure the functionality is there somewhere, but I couldn’t get the listener to work without loading the old package. Also, the “libXP” package is necessary to get the installer to run. It has also been removed, along with some deprecated X11 packages that were present in FC6.

I’m sure the cleanup makes sense going forward, and 10g is getting a little old in Fedora timescales, but I wonder how many other applications will be broken by this.

Of course, I’m no Linux expert, so maybe I’ve missed something and these extra packages are not really needed.

Cheers

Tim…

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