PL/SQL Beautifier…

I think Oracle should include an SQL and PL/SQL beautifier (formatter) in the next version of the engine. I know there are lots of third party tools to do this, but it would be nice to produce readable output from queries against the v$ views, rather than having to cut & paste blocks of SQL output into a 3rd party tool to format it.

Why put it in the engine?

Remember the days when everyone and their dog had scripts to pull out object definintions from the database by querying the data dictionary? It became a real pain keeping them up to date, so Oracle released the DBMS_METADATA package so each version of the engine had the correct method for returning the object definintions.

In the same way, each version of the engine comes with new and modified syntax, which will often require modifications to beautifier code. Put it on the database, and let external tools access it. Added to that, it would solve my problem that prompted this post.

I’m sure they already have the code in Raptor. If they don’t want to write it in PL/SQL, they could always wrap up the Java code as a Java Stored procedure and make it available from the engine.

Cheers

Tim…

Disaster Recovery Testing Update…

So far it’s been a very long and very tiring week. Lots of standing up in very cold server rooms.

The disaster recovery testing has highlighted quite a few interesting points about our kit and our backup and recovery approach. I think this session will stand us in good stead for the second round of testing in a few weeks. By then I’m sure we will have ironed out some of the creases 🙂

One more day to go, then home…

Cheers

Tim…

Disaster Recovery Testing and stuff…

I’m off to HP for the rest of the week to help test our disaster recovery strategy, so I guess things will be a little quiet here for a few days.

OEM Grid Control Update:
So far things look pretty good. The agents still use a stack of memory, just under 1 Gig resident for the Grid Agent and IAS Console together on a Release 1 AS 10g server. Personally I think this is more than a little excessive, but the CPU load isn’t too bad at all, not like the previous version…

I knocked up a quick example of DBMS_PIPE in answer to a question on my forum. Personally, I use AQ for all my messaging these days, but each to their own 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

DBMS_ASSERT and stuff…

I saw a post about the DBMS_ASSERT package on Pete Finnigan’s Oracle security weblog and I couldn’t find any documentation about it, so I thought I’d have a little play and write something about it:

DBMS_ASSERT – Sanitize User Input to Help Prevent SQL Injection

I’m not sure I’ll find a use for it, but it’s always good to know what new bits have been added 🙂

This made me laugh: Counterfeiters send jammed printer for repair

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 10g Release 2 Grid Control Installation On Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS…

I’ve been having a play with the latest version of the Grid Control:

Oracle 10g Release 2 Grid Control Installation On Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS

It installed no problem and appears to be working right out of the box.

The big question is, does it soak up all the CPU and memory on my servers?

The first version of the Grid Control was a complete nightmare for me. The agents worked fine on the database nodes, but they gobbled up loads of memory and CPU on the application servers, making them unusable. I raised a TAR and was told it was a bug that was fixed in the next release.

I’ve only installed an agent on one development application server at the moment. I’ll add a few more to non-critical servers tomorrow and see how it gets on. Fingers crossed! I’ll post the outcome of this test in a few days.

Cheers

Tim…

Setting the record straight…

In my previous post (Support goes on, and on, and on…) I mentioned that the latest version of the patch in question was issued with some missing directories. Infact, this was incorrect.

I don’t know how, but I was able to see the new directory structure with the old readme file. I can only assume they my text editor, which has remote editing via FTP, was having a bad day. I hear a chorus of, “You should have used vi!”, coming.

Anyway, the latest version of the patch applied successfully to both the development and test environments, so I’m going to schedule it for production some time soon.

My sentiments over the last post remain unchanged, but certainly the last incident was in no way the fault of Oracle Support. I thought it was only fair to set the record straight!

Cheers

Tim…

Support goes on, and on, and on…

Just to set the scene:

04-APR-05 – I opened a TAR because the RACGIMON process was taking 20-40% of the CPU on the cluster root node of our Tru64 production RAC (10.1).

05-SEP-05 – A backport of a fix in 10.1.0.5.0 was produced. Note. 10.1.0.4.0 is still not released for Tru64. The patch failed to install on either the development or test systems, so I didn’t go near the production one.

24-OCT-05 – It was decided that the installation documentation was incorrect and the patch was reissued.

12-NOV-05 – The reissued patch is missing some directories. As a result the installation is impossible. (Update: Not Oracle’s fault. See Setting the record straight…)

Conclusion:

So far it’s been 7 months, during which time we’ve been loosing between one tenth an one fifth of our total processing power on our production system, and still no resolution. Great to know that Oracle are on top of their game… NOT!

Cheers

Tim…

UK OUG – The freeloaders view…

I’m currently on holiday and I promised myself I would stay away from the UK OUG, except for the bloggers dinner. Well, I’m rubbish at keeping promises so I agreed to meet up with a friend and do a quick tour of the exhibition stands, and I’m glad I did. It was fun, in a geeky way…

The first person I bumped into was Tom Kyte. I didn’t get to speak with him at the bloggers dinner, so it was cool to hook up and have a quick chat. I got to speak to Peter Scott and Mark Rittman again, which was cool.

Whilst walking around the exhibition I noticed the Net 2000 Ltd stand. A few years ago I received an email asking me to add DataBee to the tools page of my website. At the time it was the only product they had and it was free. It also came at a time when I was trying to get referentially intact subsets of data. Bingo! Since then they’ve created DDL Wizard for extracting DDL from export files and Data Masker for sanitizing production data for use in test and development environments. I spoke to Dale Edgar at the stand and he gave me a demo of the DDL Wizard. It’s pretty cool and the real bonus is that it’s free 🙂 The thing I like about this company is that they have specific tools for specific jobs. They’re not throwing out the one-size-fits-all type of stuff that everyone else is doing. Nice ideas, well executed products. I hope they continue to do well and keep coming up with good ideas. I’ve also just noticed that they are based in Bromsgrove, just down the road from me.

There were numerous consultancy companies around, but my friend pointed out that JoraPh Consulting Ltd were based in Shropshire. It turns out they’re based quite close to my home town. For no reason other than that, I had a quick chat with Jane McCulloch, a director of the company. They do performance tuning, remote DBA work and training, amonst other things. A couple of the staff presented at UK OUG, which is a good sign. The UK economy is still very much centered around the south, so midlands-based companies tend to stand out when I notice them. Us midlanders have to show a bit of solidarity. Keep up the good work 🙂

The Quest stand was very slick, and they were giving away some cool freebies, but I didn’t get hold of any 🙁 I was interested to see the new Spotlight on RAC stuff. I nearly bought Spotlight recently, but backed out when I found that alot of the graphs and alerts had not been revised to recognize the renamed wait states in 10g. Not very useful to have a performance monitoring tool that says everything is OK when it’s actually falling apart. This has been rectified in the latest version and the RAC stuff looks really nice. I think I may have to re-demo it.

The funniest thing I saw was a guy walking out with a bean-bag. The registration area was full of black bean-bags for people to sit on and I guess some people decided they were fair game. One lady was carrying three. As I walked out I heard one of the security guards say they weren’t supposed to be taken off site, but it was too much hassle to stop everyone. I guess next year I’ll hire a truck and furnish my house 🙂

I got a free OK OUG bag containing a folder and a notepad. Free notepads are what I live for. If anyone wants a plug, just send me a notepad… Just kidding 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Almost Famous…

Guess what happens when you hang around with a bunch of Oracle geeks?

http://static.flickr.com/25/58719510_e05dddb87b_d.jpg

You become part of Tom Kyte’s keynote speach at UKOUG. I’m the one on the left with the chopsticks. Hopefully this will lead to my first movie roles as, “guy with chopsticks on the left of the action”. You can but hope 🙂 This picture is from Mark Rittman‘s blog.

I went out last night to see two of my friends (Jodie and Mel) who sing backing vocals in a Meat Loaf tribute band called “Maet Loaf” (pronounced “mate” with a black country accent). I’m not a Meat Loaf fan so I thought I wouldn’t know any of the stuff, but I ended singing along to every track. It’s pretty scary how much stuff gets into your head without you knowing it. I guess that’s how advertising works! They were brilliant. The lead singer is awsome. When he sings he sounds just like the records. It wouldn’t surprise me if this guy sounds more like Meat Loaf than Meat Loaf himself, if you know what I mean. The girls did a great job, as did the rest of the band. The whole night went down really well.

Cheers

Tim…