The ORACLE-BASE Blog

OK. I know I’ve posted lots of stuff today, but this is a new blog so I’m venting my spleen. Hopefully over time it will become a little more positive. I love Oracle. I really do, but…

When will Oracle get all their product certifications up to the same level?

Our plan was to have a single production RAC and application server cluster for all our systems, but we use one RAC for our main application, along with clustered 10g application servers with their own Cold Failover Clustered infrastructure. Sounds fine!

Trouble is we also run OCS. Now that needs an infrastructure and application server(s), but it can’t run on the same ones as our production applications. What’s more, it’s not certified against the 10g database, so it has to have a separate database.

We also run Oracle Payroll. Guess what? It doesn’t use standard application servers so it needs to be run on separate servers. Also, it’s not certified on 10g so it needs it’s own database instances.

We tried running grid control. Needs it’s own DB instance and is made up of 9iAS components by the look of it…

We’ve got two third party applications that are certified against various versions of Oracle, two more DB instances (OK, this isn’t Oracle’s fault).

I could go on, but I’m starting to bore myself and I guess by now you get the idea.

Now I know that all the products are produced by independent teams and there is a real “time to market” pressure on them, but how Larry Ellison can talk about product integration and keep a straight face is beyond me.

As a result of attempting to use a single vendor we are using about 3 times the hardware we should be, and all those boxes require Oracle licenses. I think we are single-handedly keeping Oracle UK in profit…

I’m off to Yoga to chill out 😉

Namaste

Tim…

I’ve been running Oracle 10g RAC in production since it was released, but in all that time I’ve probably had the DB Control running for about 10 minutes. Now admitedly we’re talking about an Oracle product on Tru46, but I can not believe how much memory it takes up. If I leave it on for more than a few minutes it grabs about 450M of memory. I don’t know about you but I can think of much better uses for that memory.

I foolishly decided to give grid control a go. Now the agents on database nodes were fine. They didn’t take up too much memory or CPU, but on the app servers they went berserk. We’re talking 500M of memory and 20-40% of the CPU. The crux of it is, in order to monitor the performance of your box you have to kill the performance of your box. I suppose the plus side of it is that it sends you an email to tell you that the agent processes are killing the box.

Needless to say, the whole OEM and grid control thing is not what I expected. Of course the TAR I raised about the problem resulted in a generic platform bug report that now claims it has been fixed in the next version of Grid Control, which I guess will come out soon after 10g Release 2.

So back to the question that is the title of this post, has anybody got this stuff to work without a massive investment in hardware just to run the agents?

Cheers

Tim…

My company has just bought several PL/SQL Developer licenses and it’s a pretty good tool, but every time I edit a source file I keep accidentally using my beloved UltraEdit (a posh text editor). I then compile the code using SQL*Plus.

Now I know that PL/SQL Developer is designed for the job, but I have everything I need with UltraEdit. I don’t need a code beautifier because I know how to indent code. I don’t need a debugger as I instrument my modular code. I’ve had syntax highlighting for years in UltraEdit.

I’m seriously starting to think I’m becoming an old fart.

Please, somebody validate me. Tell me it’s OK not to use posh IDEs…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’m thinking of switching from FireFox to Lynx as my main browser. Those new fangled graphical browsers will never catch on…

I had to laugh when I read Jeff Hunter’s blog entry entitled Backup Top 11. That’s not to say I don’t agree with him, in actual fact he’s right on the money!

I just imagined seeing him having convulsions when he saw the state of the backups here. It’s not a pretty site, but you can lead a horse to water…

I guess I should shut up now before I lose my job.

Cheers

Tim…

I’m having an intermittent problem with a Java Stored Procedure. I raised a TAR with Metalink who asked me to run oradebug against the process to pull out errorstacks. Doing this not only killed the session, but brought down the whole instance and OS!

Next I started to get errorstacks out using dbms_system.set_ev. This seemed to work, but it produced truncated errorstacks.

Now I’m debugging the errorstack production in order to allow me to debug the original Java issue.

The joys of running Oracle on Tru64…

Oracle support their products on a ridiculously large number of operating system platforms. It’s a statement of fact, but in reality what does this mean. Over the last coupe of years I’ve come to believe that Oracle “port” to many platforms, but they can only effectively “support” a limited range of those platforms.

These are my thoughts on the relevance of several operating systems on a per-product basis…

Oracle 10g Database:

Linux – Works very fast and is extremely reliable, provided you are VERY careful about what OS packages you update.

Solaris – I like Solaris, but I question using expensive Sparc hardware when Linux on x86 runs faster. Never used Solaris on x86, but then why would I? That’s what Linux is for 😉

HP-UX – Works well, but it’s a dead platform. Ask anyone within HP and you will know that Tru64 and HP-UX are not long for this world. HP-UX on x86? Yeah, right!

Tru64 – Contact Oracle support for help on Tru64 and you will soon find out they don’t have access to Tru64 instances to test anything worth doing. It’s a great platform but it’s already been end-of-lifed by HP so don’t even go there!

Windows – Oracle works well on Windows, but it’s not as fast as running it on top of Linux, so why put money into Bill’s pocket for lower performance?

Oracle 10g Application Server:

It’s a Linux product. Running it on any other operating system is a waste of time and money.

Please don’t try and run it on Tru64. You’ll spend months fighting it and eventually get HP to replace your Alpha kit with x86 kit for free. It happened to me 😉

Oracle Collaboration Suite:

It’s a messy and overcomplicated product built on 9iAS components. In my opinion 9iAS was a total abortion, and I’m not too fond of OCS.

Anyway, it’s a Linux product. To paraphrase a conversation with Oracle consultants, “It’s supported on a number of platforms but it’s a Linux product.” Enough said.

Oracle E-Business Suite:

See AS10g and OCS.

From this post you might conclude one of two things:

• I’m a rabid Linux fan.
• I’ve used Oracle on many platforms and always found the best way to get support is to use the latest version of a product on the platform Oracle prefer and Oracle currently have a love affair with Linux.

I like to think it’s the latter, but I do find myself foaming at the mouth in the presence of penguins…

Cheers

Tim…