DBAs-R-Us

wish list for 12c

2011-11-05T23:59:00.005+11:00

Back in 2008 my wish list included sparse object allocation (deferred allocation in Oracle's translation). And bingo, I got it in 11gr2! It was almost as if someone came here for inspiration! Prior to that in my "No Moore" series I actually described the Exadata architecture, long before it became public. Not that such a thing would ever be acknowledged by Oracle, we know that! After all, I

cloud services

2011-04-07T22:29:00.000+10:00

In the last 48 hours or so there have been two interesting events in the Oracle and IT front in Sydney. First one was the Oracle Cloud Summit at the Sofitel Wentworth. Like so many other marketing events it had its fair share of "ooh-aahh" stuff. You know, the usual: "Exadata can finish work before it started", "Exalogic can finish it before it was thought out in the first place",

cost claims and the law...

2011-03-23T20:39:00.000+11:00

Been a long time since last post. It's been a busy period since the start of 2011. Mostly because we are in a period of turmoil when apparently every man and his dog is trying to get into our site for "outsourcing". Even though that is most definitely not what we are doing. But never let reality interfere with a good dose of marketing... We've seen a lot of "cloud computing" and SaaS

last 2010 huzzah

2011-01-06T22:02:00.007+11:00

2010 was a bit of a roller coaster... First, the passing of four very good friends and colleagues: - John Alexander Wildgoose, a fellow dba and IT pro as well as my long time golf buddy and friend. - Dr. Paulo Abrantes, a very good adolescence friend I hadn't seen in many years, who quietly passed away recently. I do miss our talks about the future, Paulo. - Noel Vanspaal, my database

finally back!

2010-09-22T22:31:00.003+10:00

A thousand apologies for the lack of news. Well, it's been a wild ride since the last post, way back in March! On the work front:We finally finished the new DR site. And it's all working fine. Not just that, though: a LOT more!If you go here you'll see in the files area a presentation on how we do SAN-driven DR database replication. It works with SE Oracle, EE, or any other kind of Oracle

some interesting developments

2010-03-25T22:52:00.012+11:00

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last coupla months.Not only have I been very busy at work, but also a very dear old friend has passed away after a short tussle with cancer. That affected me a lot more than I thought. Vale, John Alexander Wildgoose. My fierce Scot friend, IT colleague of 29 years and long time golfing buddy. A master of the comic understatement, his last words to me were:

Vive la diference!

2009-11-25T19:59:00.007+11:00

And I'm not talking about the one between Mars and Venus!Some of the regular readers will no doubt recall my comments regarding the MOS introduction.Yes, dang right they were strong words! We pay Oracle YEARLY in excess of 6 figures in maintenance fees.A large chunk of which is for our access to Metalink/MOS/whatever.The last thing I need when that is unusable for a long period is some idiot

Quite frankly warticki, you should apologize!

2009-11-11T20:33:00.009+11:00

(edited to remove stronger words, no need for that and I apologize to my readers)Here we go. I already expected this...A perfect example of the low-life, unprofessional, kind of people that populate Oracle Support nowadays.chris - if that is indeed your name: 1- With the exception of a lonely voice, there has not been ONE SINGLE POSITIVE user community comment about the utter disaster that was

quick catch up on peoplesoft

2009-09-16T21:32:00.011+10:00

It's been a while since I posted anything to do with my "beloved" Peoplesoft...umm... well, you know what I mean...Some might recall this post a while ago? It's where I discussed our approach to this common problem with scratchpad tables in Peoplesoft.Anyways: some developments I reckon could be of use to anyone going through the same problem.I've since had a good exchange with Dave Kurtz where

11gr2: it looks like someone is listening, after all...

2009-09-04T15:31:00.004+10:00

Some of you folks might recall my 2008 wishlist for Oracle.The number one pet peeve was the need to create the initial segment of any data object even when it is empty. A big no-no for products such as Peoplesoft, where in a typical installation one gets 25000 tables and 35000 indexes of which only around 1000 are ever filled with any data.Well, it appears someone at Oracle is reading this blog,

size sometimes does matter...

2009-06-01T09:37:00.005+10:00

Not really. Well... You know what I mean. ;)Anyways, sorry for the "catchy" title. This entry is prompted by some of the ongoing exercise in fine tuning our AIX db servers.AIX is a great OS but the information needed to eek out the last ounce of performance for Oracle dbs is sparse, or across many documents. This blog entry is for my future reference on how to make Oracle use large pages in

newspeak strikes again...

2009-05-08T08:06:00.006+10:00

Frankly, the amount of hype surrounding the "cloud" thing is reaching the limits of what is acceptable by anyone with half a brain and a working mind!If anything, it is only discrediting the architecture and reducing it to yet another "j2ee" scam.I recently found this in one of the blog feeds.“Private, on-premise clouds are also an option that that may lessen security-related concerns”I beg your

do as they do, not as they say...

2009-02-12T21:46:00.009+11:00

Yeah, well: I never said this blog would be a regular thing, so there!I'm not sure what is going to happen to the world economy. I keep hearing about these fantastic rescue packages that seemly no one has to pay for?Recently, I was reminded of why I am so cynical of modern theories of education and economy. I do have a lot of respect for the engineers who made the moon landings possible

stop fixing the symptom!

2008-08-06T21:02:00.005+10:00

Long time no post!Sorry folks: been busy with a lot at work and at home. It's Winter outdoor sports season here so all spare time is spent ferrying kids from venue to venue.Anyways: attended a recent Oracle seminar on high availability.Good stuff. And for once, we didn't get another "injection" of "Larry Ellison did or said this or that or the other": Hallelujah!!!Interesting also to see some

a blast from the past

2008-03-19T12:49:00.005+11:00

While going through the latest at Jerry Pournelle's, I bumped into this:Techniques of Systems AnalysisBack in my prior life as an Engineer, Herman's writings were some of the most prized. The Rand Corporation represented for many of us the creme-de-la-creme of top engineering and design skills.If you feel like getting enlightened on the seminal work that resulted in IT System Analysis as we knew

I told you so....

2008-02-19T11:56:00.002+11:00

In a very clear way: I hate to say this.But,I TOLD YOU SO, a long time ago!I've been saying precisely this for more than 5 years now.Chris has finally put the finger on the dot and said what almost everyone else has already figured out for years!Amazing it's taken this long for it to dawn into the minds of Oracle's marketing that the whole thing is overly complex, a horrible acronym soup created

2008 wishlist

2008-01-31T22:24:00.002+11:00

Been a while, folks. Basically, a holiday trip with the family back to old Portugal, with a jaunt to Rome and Singapore on the way back.Of course while I was gone, all sorts of things happened:1- HJR has once again demolished his site. It's a pity that such a great resource is now gone. Ah well: HJ is a grown-up and has his strong reasons. We should all respect them, even if we do not agree.2

predictability and other things

2007-11-21T12:24:00.000+11:00

I've been very vocal on the subject of predictability in the universe of database management, for many years now. Some of my posts on this subject in c.d.o.s. date back to 2000, just checked. Yegawds: time flies! :-)(actually it's been in my radar since the 80s, but that's another story...)Predictable response time and performance is what designing systems and being a dba should be all about!

10.2.0.3 not that bad, after all...

2007-10-28T22:31:00.000+11:00

Thought I'd never be able to say this again from an Oracle patch, but 10.2.0.3 is not that bad at all, at least in the AIX environment and running Peoplesoft.Been a while since my last post. Most of the time has been taken by a Peopletools upgrade - to 8.48.10 - that left our HR system in tatters!Suffice to say that it broke the 10.2.0.2 optimizer in various and serious places. We had a bit of

more on peoplesoft

2007-09-27T21:21:00.001+10:00

Following my last post, here is some more feedback on our Peoplesoft world.As I mentioned before, we're in the middle of a major rollout of new functionality on our payroll systems. Mostly to do with finally letting folks access their own information as well as letting managers preview and better plan for annual and other leave, reviews, promotions, new employees, etcetc.In simple words:

one for the peoplesoft folks...

2007-09-13T21:35:00.001+10:00

Yeah, we use that software. The EPY - Payroll HCM - variety.And if you do too, you know what a RPITA the pay calc COBOL program can be...and it doesn't help when Oracle's CBO and its bugs joins forces to make it plain unbearable!Here is an example of what can happen and a possible approach to cope with it.First, the disclaimers:1- you may see this if you run Peopletools 8.48 or later and Oracle

the trouble with blind faith

2007-09-06T00:20:00.000+10:00

10g introduced the new job scheduler, presumably to replace the previous dbms_job functionality.I wish someone had told all RDBMS developers about that, because there are still a lot of functions inside Oracle that use the previous dbms_job. But that is not the subject of this entry.Now, one of the new pieces of functionality that makes use of the scheduler is the "maintenance window" and its

back to the SAN

2007-08-29T00:11:00.000+10:00

yeah, I should have done this a long time ago.Unfortunately, been busy as heck with a Peoplesoft upgrade that somehow degenerated into installing and setting up two additional servers and a load balancer with the usual plethora of problems, compatibility glitches, version clashes, appserver performance issues, etcetc...Had to put my foot down and explain very clearly that my field is databases

10.2.0.3 revisited...

2007-08-22T00:01:00.000+10:00

been faffing around with a 10.2.0.3 upgrade in one of our test boxes.Eventually gave up on it: got to get this box out to the testers and I don't have time to debug a perl script that wasn't finished after 5 hours of solid running!And then mr oracle complains when I tell them they should get their act together before flights of fancy on new releases!If nothing else, at the very least the option

just my luck...

2007-08-06T22:38:00.000+10:00

when everyone is having fun watching a royal slugfest, while I'm stuck with a Peopletools upgrade for days and days...Barely catching up with what's been happening in the blog community in the last few weeks. And I still need to go back to Kevin's great series on SANs and NAS/NFS.Ah well, I'll get there eventually.It appears Don has once again managed to ruffle Jonathan's feathers. And

finally, something worthwhile!

2007-07-22T20:08:00.000+10:00

Most of you folks would have heard all the 11g hype: we've been bombarded with it for weeks now!Almost all of it is just more marketing blurb, rehash of old functionality with a new gloss paint, same-old-same-old "you don't need no dbas" nonsense, etcetc.However, IMHO this is truly amazing!Thanks for pointing this out, Patrick. If it works indeed like this and Doug Burns says it does, it's the

A vs B, the grand final

2007-07-14T20:22:00.000+10:00

Sorry for the delayed conclusion folks, been incredibly busy with a Peopletools 8.48 upgrade. Did you know that DESC indexes are actually FBIs? Create one and then check out the USER_IND_EXPRESSIONS view!Was quite surprised when suddenly nearly 8000 indexes sprouted an entry there with only the column name string as the expression: didn't even know that was possible. But yes, that is a DESC

A vs B part II

2007-07-08T21:20:00.000+10:00

OK, so what is the average day for a SSr9 dba?Among many other things, for us it starts with reviewing the email trail. Most of our SS servers are configured to send us a daily summary of errors if any, plus a summary of any scheduled jobs that have failed. Same with Oracle, db2-AS400 and Notes.Our operation involves extensive extraction off AS400 and Oracle-based main servers into either ETL

A vs B, part I

2007-07-07T01:00:00.000+10:00

Just finished the first SQL Server dba training.There is a lot to be said, so I'll have to split this into multiple posts. And I still NEED to catch up with Kevin's important stuff on SAN's and NAS/NFS! I need 48 hour days...Anyways: those of you who know me from the c.d.o.s days will recall I didn't use to take lightly to Microsoft's wild claims about SQL Server. And that was definitely the

normality resumed

2007-06-21T08:44:00.000+10:00

or at least what passes for it in my life...Been an interesting few weeks. I've been doing the rounds of the Oracle bloging world and quite frankly: either the Usenet kranks have joined in force or the level of intelligence in the community has dropped markedly!What passes for "Oracle blogging" nowadays is nothing short of blatant company-sponsored, ill-disguised, outright marketing. The number

a short break

2007-05-29T15:00:00.000+10:00

Due to family reasons, I'll be away from posting for a while.Someone very close passed away and I had to travel extensively and on short notice.Will try to resume normality as soon as possible, folks.Thanks to all who sent their condolences via other means or here.

Oracle v7 bad blocks, disk capacity and other things

2007-05-11T11:00:00.000+10:00

Been a while, folks. Busy as heck here.A coupla weeks ago we found that one of our interim reporting databases, left over from a third party venture a few years ago, was playing up. A few ODBC Access reports were erroring off with a strange error message.After a lot of crystal ball gazing we found the problem. A very old v7.3 database in an equally old Windows NT4 server had a bad block in a

another year, another cycle

2007-04-23T10:49:00.000+10:00

It's funny how every year the issue of training and knowledge transfer seems to crop up around this time. Must be something in the change of weather? :-)Anyways, over the last few weeks a lot of folks have commented on the need to re-examine the training of new DBAs and more in general, the issue of training people for future IT positions.Because there is a very definite fall in enrollment

early start...

2007-04-06T00:17:00.000+10:00

Very early start, this morning! 3am. Mobile - cell phone, for the Murricans - goes off and wakes me up. Half asleep I try to figure out what a heavy Indian accent is telling me.External link to our DC was out at 2am. Someone from Telstra has just replaced the hardware and it's back. They need me to check that everything is fine with the db servers.So I go into my usual routine: vpn to

beyond belief...

2007-03-28T09:42:00.000+10:00

What happened to Kathy is just plain unacceptable. I've been very vocal for many years now on the subject of anonymous posting. To me, anyone using anonimity in the name of "freedom of speech" is just trying to fool themselves. Democratic freedoms come with responsibilities. One's right to voice an opinion should not EVER preempt one's responsibility to the rest of the social structure that

grid lock

2007-03-26T21:02:00.000+10:00

Been testing the grid control in EM.Part of our current monitoring tool eval.Hmmm, call me a ludite: but I prefer the Spotlight GUI look to the drab old web-based UI of grid control. By a country mile!If there is one thing that all this web-mania of the last 5 years has done is create some very boring, incredibly convoluted and hard to navigate user interfaces! Sorry folks: GC is so hard to

the san is in

2007-03-18T20:05:00.000+11:00

This weekend the new SAN hardware was installed.Apart from a minor hickup in communications - someone assumed changing disk storage infra-structure didn't imply downtime of databases... - the whole exercise was almost easy. It did help the folks who did the installation knew what they were doing. I worked for this company for a few years. They have some very competent people there, when it

surprises and more surprises, rman!

2007-03-09T13:56:00.000+11:00

It's been a week of very pleasant surprises in the new job.First of all, I met again a very old friend: Thiyagarajan Radakrishnan. We first met many years ago when I left Oracle and started out on my own. This company was my first client. Thiyag was at the time just coming out of an IBM-only world and had the misfortune(!) of meeting me as his adviser in the Oracle and relational db world. It

collective madness...

2007-03-05T21:54:00.000+11:00

Here we go with another bout of collective IT madness:"Vista is here, looks 'kewl', so it must be installed no matter what."Never mind it costs an arm and a leg, requires in most cases expensive hardware upgrades and breaks just about every stable application other than M$'s little stable. Therefore requiring costly upgrades of those as well.Can anyone spell T-C-O? One wonders where all the

why are LOBs dangerous?

2007-02-17T02:38:00.000+11:00

because for the last 5 years, Oracle has heard from many users that the way they get updated is broken and needs recoding. And they have done preciously nothing about it.In 8i, 9i and 10g. Heck, they don't even use them in their dictionary itself!Have a look at just one of many problems - for more, go to Metaclick and search on LOB in the bug database. It starts off mild and sedate:SQL> create

design by rote....

2007-02-09T12:28:00.000+11:00

One of the things that upsets me no end is to see good ideas given the "dumbass" cookie-cutter treatment!This is a perfect example.Notice option 4. "Can add only 10 sites (the value of increment by)" is a "disadvantage"?Duh?, is anyone home? Has anyone stopped to think that changing the increment value to 1000 for example allows 1000 sites? Has anyone stopped to write a proper explanation of

just a short note

2007-02-06T14:18:00.000+11:00

By sheer accident found this.Of course, those of you with a little bit more of a clue than silly old me will recognize Jonathan straight away, from O'Reilly books.That article on domains is absolutely brilliant: may I recommend a second, third and fourth reading and a little bit of poking around at the concepts explained there?Long overdue someone starts exploring the Oracle TYPE functionality

hoping they find him

2007-02-01T11:44:00.000+11:00

I blogged about Jim Gray not too long ago.Today, I learn of this from Greg's blog.Guys like Jim just don't crop up that often...A dark day indeed if they don't find him.Update:nope, not looking good.A dark week for IT indeed. And notice how little attention was paid to it by the so-called "mainstream" media! Had it been some sorry-arsed soap-star or hotel heiress that had a brain-dump of some

something new, something old

2007-01-28T00:31:00.000+11:00

Sorry for the long break, folks. Been quite busy with family matters. Nothing major, just routine stuff that needed done.Well, there's going to be some changes in my professional life. I've thought long and hard about where I want to be in the next 5 years and reached a few conclusions. One of them is that the managed services market in NSW is very slow, if not dying. For some reason that

keys, more keys and nothing but keys...

2007-01-18T13:20:00.000+11:00

Yours truly and Jonathan will not agree on this one. Read the comments section. Don't get me wrong: I fully respect his arguments and I know he's not about to do less to anyone else! We can agree to disagree on anything without any ruffled feathers.Having been mostly on the side of the fence that deals with the consequences of design - good or bad is irrelevant - I can't possibly see what

no moore (part 2)

2007-01-15T17:24:00.000+11:00

I was going to call it "the sequel"... :-)Part 2 it is, then.OK, so let's make a few things clear upfront:1- Jim Gray's "Personal Petabyte" was used here as a metaphor to facilitate the discussion and increase awareness of the incoming problem: the ELDB - as in Extremely Large Data Base. It doesn't mean that everyone will store all your videos somewhere! Think blurfl RFID data here for a

no moore (part 1)...

2007-01-11T20:18:00.000+11:00

A recent string of comments in Alex's blog at Pythian got me into thinking about this whole subject of "where is database technology heading".Sure: it's true that Moore's law has been valid for a long time.Fact is: it ain't no more! I don't often use wikipedia as a reference as there is far too much plain incorrect content there. But in this case, it's spot-on. Read the whole entry, not just

and now, something different

2007-01-08T20:15:00.000+11:00

allow me a small trip down memory lane.took these more than 20 years ago, when I started underwater photography and scuba diving. been a while since I last did anything with any of this.mostly, the kids got in the way. It's good to see good old Ekta64 resisted the ravages of time!Click on each image for an enlarged view."I am not an animal!"(these guys are all around the place in the Winter

been busy

2007-01-07T23:07:00.000+11:00

hi folks. sorry for the long absence. been hectic over what most call the "break". it isn't a break, for us: our clients go on hols and that means we get busy filling in.some examples of the stuff I've been doing:SQL> @prob01Press return to continue...COUNT(*)---------- 71 row selected.Elapsed: 00:00:52.13Statistics---------------------------------------------------------- 0

seasonal

2006-12-24T10:06:00.000+11:00

Hectic few days nearly over. Some of our clients have the busiest period of the year right now. That means extra time spent making sure everything is hunky dory.The usual: keep an eye on weird take-offs in CPU usage, watch disk space, particularly those pesky temp tablespaces that suddenly take off in disk usage when someone fires off the "mother of all queries for the year". That sort of

wishlists

2006-12-18T17:15:00.000+11:00

Howard Rogers blogged recently about a simple feature that would greatly simplify his Oracle dba tasks. In his case if roles worked properly in Oracle and/or user authentication methods were not linked to the user name itself, life would have been a lot easier.Yes, there are heaps of these small enhancements that were requested from Oracle over the years. Very few made it to the latest versions

attitude

2006-12-10T02:38:00.000+11:00

not sure anyone should be laughing, but:(if you're using Firefox, click on image to see the detail)what sort of mindset prompts anyone to plonk a witch's hat like this in the main entrance to their business address?I suppose it's the same mindset of the support person who gets a call from a client complaining that something is running slow or using up too much CPU, then proceeds to do a few

weird...

2006-12-07T11:19:00.000+11:00

this showed up in one of our 10gr2 alert logs:Tue Dec 5 10:00:58 2006Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 1411 Current log# 5 seq# 1411 mem# 0: /u209/oradata/ZOT/ZOT_redo05.logTue Dec 5 10:21:56 2006Some indexes or index [sub]partitions of table SYS.WRH$_SEG_STAT have been marked unusableTue Dec 5 10:30:37 2006Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 1412 Current log# 1 seq# 1412 mem# 0: /u209/oradata

more scripting fun

2006-12-04T00:48:00.000+11:00

it's been a week of exercising my old shell scripting skills, this one...well, picture this:. someone installs a new test instance called "zot10". . prior to this, there was a "zot" test instance there.. a week later cron fires off the cold backup of "zot" . . cold backup fails, complaining that there was a left-over process after shutdown still connected to the "zot10" instance! WTH???this is

on oraenv and more

2006-11-26T23:13:00.000+11:00

first clients upgrading to 10gr2 this week.a few problems...mostly to do with environmental settings.which brings me to this week's rant:once again I see *n*x sites out there with their own home-baked "oraenv" or .profile replacement.folks, dudes:I know you're all very good and gifted shell scripters. but LEAVE "oraenv" ALONE, for chrissakes!!! by all means add custom code AT THE END of it,

weirdness

2006-11-20T07:48:00.000+11:00

After right-clicking on desktop->properties->themes, I get this screen:then what happens when I click on the link at the bottom?Yes, you got it: Microsoft Help opens!And they wonder why their "OS" has a bad name?Not that Oracle is faring any better, mind you! When will this company learn that forcing their clients to upgrade in order to fix bugs is not conducive to the best customer relations?It

scanners and partition restores

2006-11-13T01:50:00.000+11:00

Just got the new scanner. Haven't made much yet, too busy this weekend ferrying kids to-from parties. They are like that at this age and I have too much fun watching them. Besides, the garden needed some serious attention as well.But so far, very promising. Some stunning results already. Check my photo pages.Work-wise: a very demanding week. A lot of little problems that needed clearing and

2006-11-07T18:32:00.000+11:00

Not much here to talk about yet, folks. Not at this stage.What I have to say in the photography sphere is in my deviant art and olhares logs, the two sites where I regularly inflict new images on the unsuspecting world.If you want to spend some good dba time: follow the blogs on Oracle by the nice folks from the Oak Table as well as the Dizwell site. I'm usually thereabouts. There are a few