Oracle Magazine - September/October 2007 - Marcelo Machado

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BOB ADLER technology. After beta testing the new management capabilities of Oracle Database 11g, Qualcomm DBAs determined that several features, including database replay, will make it easier to tune database applications to improve performance. “Right now our test environments might not give us the correct picture of what production will be,” says Shaik Hidayatullah, staff DBA at Qualcomm. “Database replay will allow us to be more comprehensive and systematic and will also give us a more accurate test experience.” Oracle Database 11g continues the effort to simplify and ultimately fully automate common DBA tasks. Oracle has introduced more self-management utilities, along with advisors for partitioning, database repair, streams performance, and space management. Thomas Knauber, an architect for Postbank Systems AG—the IT service provider for Deutsche Postbank AG, in Bonn, Germany—says these enhancements will enable the DBA team to work smarter and not always be driven by incidents. “We don’t want to be in a constant state of reacting to issues,” he says. “Clearly, Oracle sees the value in this outlook.” For example, Knauber looks forward to a new feature called snapshot standby, which will allow the DBAs to temporarily convert physical standby databases to snapshot standby databases for testing and maintenance. In addition, the database replay facility will allow Postbank Systems to capture production workloads at the database level and then play them back on a test system to fully gauge the impact of changes—including critical concurrency characteristics. Knauber says this type of realworld testing will be especially valuable when they need to evaluate changes to databases that underlie the bank’s critical applications. “We have a dedicated test network, but it has always been difficult to simulate the cash dispenser workload,” he says. “With these new capabilities of Oracle Database 11g, we can record everything that happens to the database during a particular period in the real world and then replay it on a test system to see how it reacts.” WORKING SMARTER One of the features that appeals to the Qualcomm DBAs is automatic memory tuning, which enables automatic, unified tuning of both system global area (SGA) and program global area (PGA) memory buffers. “Before, we used to look at each instance manually,” says Justin Ambrose, another staff DBA at Qualcomm. “Now, we can set one or two global parameters, and everything will be adjusted. Oracle automatically balances the memory allocated to each group of nodes, depending on the load.” Other features that Qualcomm DBAs expect will help improve database performance are database replay; automatic SQL tuning, which automatically chooses the workload and tests, implements, and retunes SQL profiles; and the SQL tuning set, which is used to store the SQL workload. “We can adapt database replay to most of our databases when we go from test to production,” says ORACLE DATABASE 11g FEATURES Oracle Database 11g helps companies protect information, reduce complexity of operations, and adapt to change. Here are just a few of the innovations and improvements. Oracle Real Application Testing. This new feature in Oracle Database 11g makes it easier to test systems before and after database upgrades and hardware and operating system changes so you can more quickly identify and fix problems, thus lowering costs. Oracle Real Application Testing includes ��Database replay, which lets you capture production workloads at the database level and replay them on your test system—so you can test the impact of system changes, including critical concurrency characteristics ��SQL performance analyzer, which identifies SQL execution plan changes and performance regressions Enhanced partitioning. These capabilities include partitioning by parent/child references; partitioning by virtual columns; more composite partitioning choices; and interval partitioning, which automatically generates new partitions based on intervals, such as every day or every month. Advanced compression. Oracle Database 11g supports data compression for update, insert, and delete operations commonly used in online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Oracle Database 11g table compression improves database performance with better use of memory for caching data and reduced I/O for table scans. With table compression, you can achieve two- to three-fold compression ratios with minimal processing overhead. Flashback data archive. Part of the Oracle Total Recall option, this feature lets you query data in selected tables “as of” earlier times, which adds a time dimension to your data for change tracking, information lifecycle management, auditing, and compliance. Flashback data archive stores change data automatically to enable fast query access to old versions of the data. Oracle SecureFiles. This feature lets you store large objects such as images, large text objects, or advanced datatypes— including XML, medical imaging, and geospatial raster objects—inside the database. Performance is comparable to file systems, and Oracle SecureFiles provides advanced functionality including intelligent compression, transparent encryption, and transparent deduplication. ORACLE MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 39
Ambrose. “Additionally, automatic SQL tuning and automatic memory tuning will reduce the amount of time we spend on tuning tasks by about 70 percent. The SQL tuning set will look at the overall picture of all our SQL statements and give us recommendations.” Online hot database patching is another feature that Manage More Data Manage your ever-growing database storage needs more easily with advanced partitioning and data compression, and efficiently manage the lifecycle of information inside your database. “Automatic SQL tuning and automatic memory tuning will reduce the Innovate Faster with Oracle Database 11g Ensure Security and Compliance Keep data secure and ensure regulatory compliance with transparent data encryption, flashback data archive, Oracle Database Vault, and Oracle Audit Vault. Maximize Availability Manage unplanned downtime from server, storage, or site failure and human error, perform online patch updates and rolling upgrades, and get more performance out of production systems using new Oracle Data Guard features. 40 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE Qualcomm DBAs are interested in, since it will allow many database patches to be applied with no downtime in both Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and non– Oracle RAC environments. “Right now we need downtime to do a patch,” Ambrose says. “That can be eliminated totally with Oracle Database 11g and the online patching facility.” Manage All Your Information Consolidate and integrate all your enterprise information including binary XML, RFID datatypes, DICOM medical images, 3-D spatial data, and other multimedia data into your business processes. Make Changes Faster Change with confidence and reduce the time it takes to change your IT systems with the realistic production workload testing and diagnosis capabilities of Oracle Real Application Testing. Performance and Scalability Deliver optimal database performance and scalability with enhancements and optimizations, including query result caches, new Oracle SecureFiles LOB storage architecture, and OLAP cubeorganized materialized views.
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Oracle Magazine - September/October 2007 - Marcelo Machado

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