Nested data structures have come up several times now, almost always in the context of log files.

• Google has published about a project called Dremel. Per Tasso Agyros, one of Dremel’s key concepts is nested data structures.
• Those arrays that the XLDB/SciDB folks keep talking about are meant to be nested data structures. Scientific data is of course log-oriented. eBay was very interested in that project too.
• Facebook’s log files have a big nested data structure flavor.

I don’t have a grasp yet on what exactly is happening here, but it’s something.

Having gotten a number of questions about Teradata’s acquisition of Xkoto, I leaned on Teradata for an update, and eventually connected with Scott Gnau. Takeaways included:

• Teradata is discontinuing Xkoto’s existing product Gridscale, which Scott characterized as being too OLTP-focused to be a good fit for Teradata. Teradata hopes and expects that existing Xkoto Gridscale customers won’t renew maintenance. (I’m not sure that they’ll even get the option to do so.)
• The point of Teradata’s technology + engineers acquisition of Xkoto is to enhance Teradata’s active-active or multi-active data warehousing capabilities, which it has had in some form for several years.
• In particular, Teradata wants to tie together different products in the Teradata product line. (Note: Those typically all run pretty much the same Teradata database management software, except insofar as they might be on different releases.)
• Scott rattled off all the plausible areas of enhancement, with multiple phrasings – performance, manageability, ease of use, tools, features, etc.
• Teradata plans to have one or two releases based on Xkoto technology in 2011.

Frankly, I’m disappointed at the struggles of clustering efforts such as Xkoto Gridscale or Continuent’s pre-Tungsten products, but if the DBMS vendors meet the same needs themselves, that’s OK too.

The logic behind active-active database implementations actually seems pretty compelling: 

• You may well be keeping a second copy of your database for high availability/hot standby.
• You might even be keeping a third copy for off-site disaster recovery.
• In some cases, you might have reasons beyond disaster recovery to distribute a database around the world.
• So why not allow queries to be run against all the copies?
• And by the way, splitting the workload up a bit by kinds (e.g., long-running vs. short query) might let you optimize the implementation of each copy of the database. (This last point becomes even more important with the rise of solid-state memory.)

Analytic DBMS vendors pretty much all need to offer this. (Possible exception: If they have a data-mart-only positioning so extreme that customers will never care about any form of failover.) That said, I must confess to not having done a good job of tracking who does or doesn’t have which features in this area to date; informative comments to this post in that regard would be much appreciated!

This post originally appeared over at Pythian. There are also some very smart comments over there that you shouldn’t miss, go take a look!

This should have been the easiest task on my todo list: Install Oracle 10.2.0.3 EE standalone on a new Linux RHEL 5 server, later to be used as a standby for a production RAC system. This means 2 lines of “runinstall -silent …”, less than 5 minutes of DBA work and maybe 20 minutes of waiting. I did not expect to spend over 5 hours doing this.

Problems started when I discovered that I don’t have the 10.2.0.3 patchset and another patch that exists on production and should be installed on the standby. I had to wait for my Metalink credentials to be approved for this customer CSI before I could download the patches for them.

“Why don’t you just clone the software from production?” asked a helpful colleague.

Sounds like a great suggestion. I cloned Oracle software before and it is a simple process: tar $ORACLE_HOME, copy the tar file to the new server, untar, run the cloning script which will register the new home with the inventory, and you are done!

In theory, at least.

Here is what actually happened:

1. Tar, copy, untar, script
2. Ran OPatch to verify that the new oracle home is in the inventory and that I see the correct version and patches.
3. OPatch is showing two nodes. Oops. I didn’t realize oracle home has information about the cluster – didn’t Oracle move the inventory elsewhere? Spend an hour looking for the cause of this.
4. Found that the two nodes are mentioned in  $ORACLE_HOME/inventory/ContentsXML/oraclehomeproperties.xml
5. Removed this file.
6. Deattached Oracle Home to clean inventory without deleting the software.
7. Ran the clone script again
8. Yay! OPatch looks good now.
9. Decided to create test database  to be extra sure everything is fine
10. NETCA failed with linking error. Spent an hour figuring out why. Cursed a bit.
11. Had to install libc-devel, 32 bit version. Too bad RDA didn’t catch this.
12. Created test database, but SQLPLUS now fails with linking error.  More cursing. Wondered what I did to deserve this.
13. libaio.so.1 was missing so I had to install the 64 bit version of libaio. Too bad RDA was silent about this as well.
14. Couldn’t start the database because the database couldn’t find the cluster. Why was it even looking for a cluster? Spent an hour figuring out why. Ah, because I copied the software from a RAC server and it was linked as RAC database.
15. Relinked everything with RAC_OFF option.
16. Finally things are working. Too bad it is 8pm already.

What I should have done: (I’m not sure if it is supported by Oracle, but at least it works)

1. Double check that we have all RPMs.
2. Tar, copy, untar
3. remove $ORACLE_HOME/inventory/ContentsXML/oraclehomeproperties.xml
4. run clone.pl: clone/bin/clone.pl ORACLE_HOME=/appl/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1 ORACLE_HOME_NAME=OraDb10g_home1
5. Relink as non-RAC:  make -f ins_rdbms.mk rac_off
6. Verify with OPatch.
7. Create test DB:
   netca /silent /responsefile ~/netca.rsp
   dbca -silent -createDatabase -templateName General_Purpose.dbc -gdbName TST -sid TST -SysPassword xxx -SystemPassword xxxx -emConfiguration NONE -datafileDestination /appl/oracle/oradata  -storageType FS -characterSet WE8ISO8859P1 -nationalcharacterSet AL16UTF16 -memoryPercentage 40
8. Go for a nice afternoon ride.

I hope that I’m not the only DBA who always have to find the most difficult way to accomplish a task, and that this post will be useful to others. Perhaps the best piece of advice I can offer is to avoid this type of cloning in the first place.

Log Buffer #197 marks the middle of summer, and the fact that we’re a mere two weeks away from our 200th edition.

To begin this week’s reading, I’d like to highlight two Oracle blogs maintained by Sam J. DeFilippis: Oracle Notes, where he’s recently posted about troubleshooting GoldenGate and positioning a read of Extract/Replicat Trail file or Oracle redo log. Sam volunteered to host a future edition of Log Buffer (thanks, Sam!). You can too, by sending an email to the Log Buffer coordinator, we’re always looking for volunteer publishers.

Brad Hudson a points that PostgreSQL test servers have moved from Oracle to EnterpriseDB.

Marc Fielding posts Part 2 of his series A Grand Tour of Oracle Exadata. He’s also hosting a webinar on how to successfully implement Exadata, Aug. 11th.

Cary Millsap explains why thinking clearly is more important than being correct.

On PL/SQL Challenge, Steven Feuerstein and his readers try to figure out where to find a list of all the tables and debate what is a table these days.

Sheeri Cabral catches up on her blogging this week with posts datawarehousing best practices, comparing Oracle and MySQL. Part 1 covers introduction and power, and Part 2 talks about partitioning. Another, explains Pythian’s method for continuously verifying replication sync, and lastly is a farewell post, as Sheeri forks off…. Pythian wishes Sheeri all the best in her future pursuits.

Iggy Fernandez tries to decide whether to use correlated subquery or join in a query.

Always wanted to learn more about Google’s BigTable database, but find the google papers intimidating?
myNoSQL blog links to a slide-deck that makes it all clear.

Ronald Bradford outlines clear evidence that in the short to medium term Oracle will continue to promote and enhance MySQL, and invites readers to chime in to his discussion on will Oracle kill MySQL?

And, on a side note, Pythian is looking for senior systems administrators who have RedHat Linux administration experience in Australia & other international locations. Visit our candidate system to match your skills with all of our current openings or submit your resume.

For those in Canada – enjoy Civic holiday weekend.

I finally finished my first Exadata performance troubleshooting article.

This explains one bug I did hit when stress testing an Exadata v2 box, which caused smart scan to go very slow – and how I troubleshooted it:

• Troubleshooting Exadata v2 Smart Scan Performance

Thanks to my secret startup company I’ve been way too busy to write anything serious lately, but apparently staying up until 6am helped this time! :-) Anyway, maybe next weekend I can repeat this and write Part 2 in the Exadata troubleshooting series ;-)

Enjoy! Comments are welcome to this blog entry as I haven’t figured out a good way to enable comments in the google sites page I’m using…

1. Profiler - view database load, find top SQL and send SQL to SQL Tuner for tuning
2. Tuner - supply a SQL statement and have DB Optimizer's SQL Tuner automatically tune the query
3. Editor - write and debug SQL code with code assistance and quick fixes
4. Load Editor - test SQL code with multiple concurrent users

DB Optimizer XE product demo from Kyle Hailey on Vimeo.

If you missed yesterday's live webcast Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g Release 2, the replay is now available.

Click now to watch the free on-demand webcast in which Roy Swonger, Senior Director of Database Upgrades & Utilities at Oracle walks through the best kept secrets of successful upgrades to Oracle Database 11g. In addition, Roy shares common pitfalls to watch out for and answers user's upgrade questions during the 20-minute Q&A section at the end of the webcast.

Note: (1) Turn off pop-up blockers if the slides do not advance automatically. (2) Slides are available for download.

Last month we announce the new Sun Fire X4800 which can have 64 cores/128 threads in the current maximum configuration.

We also announced, of course, that Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM are fully supported/certified on this product.

On the Oracle VM side we were able to fully utilize all 64 cores, but without hyperthreading enabled. We just now released a hypervisor update on ULN to also enable all the threads. So with Oracle VM 2.2.1 + the latest xen version in the channel (xen-3.4.0-0.1.21) you can run 1TB RAM, 128 threads.

Today marks my last day at Pythian. I have been at Pythian for almost three years. In those three years, Pythian’s already thriving MySQL practice has grown even more. I have worked with big and small clients alike, across many industries, managed a team of up to 4 DBAs, and learned a lot not just about MySQL, but what my goals are in general.

Though I am leaving, everything I said in the blog post I made when I announced I was coming to Pythian still holds true. Pythian is a challenging environment and one I would recommend to anyone who finds their current DBA environment boring that they should come to Pythian and experience what it is like to work here. I had lunch with Paul Vallee yesterday and we even discussed possible future collaborations (hence the title, a joke that I am “forking” off of Pythian).

So if it is so great, why am I leaving? It’s simple, really — Pythian is growing by leaps and bounds. I started when Pythian was about half the size it currently is. There is a lot of change happening within Pythian, and I believe it is very good change. However, I enjoyed the environment Pythian was when I started almost three years ago, and personally I am not ready to go with Pythian on the journey it is taking.

So where am I going next? For starters, I will take the month of August off paid work. I have an idea of where I might go for paid work in September, but you will have to watch Planet MySQL for the announcement. During August I will be doing some conference planning and organizing, for OpenSQLCamp in Boston in October first, and then for conferences in 2011. I will also be moving apartments, which is a big task. And I will be focusing on some personal goals, such as spending more time with my husband and becoming more active.

I am excited about having a month off, even though I have a lot to work on in that month.

Most of what I get paid for is in some form or other consulting. (The same would be true for many other analysts.) And so I can be a bit stingy with my advice toward non-clients. But my non-clients are a distinguished and powerful group, including in their number Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and most of the BI vendors. So here’s a bit of advice for them too.

Oracle. On the plus side, you guys have been making progress against your reputation for untruthfulness. Oh, I’ve dinged you for some past slip-ups, but on the whole they’ve been no worse than other vendors.’ But recently you pulled a doozy. The analyst reports section of your website fails to distinguish between unsponsored and sponsored work.* That is a horrible ethical stumble. Fix it fast. Then put processes in place to ensure nothing that dishonest happens again for a good long time.

*Merv Adrian’s “report” listed high on that page is actually a sponsored white paper. That Merv himself screwed up by not labeling it clearly as such in no way exonerates Oracle. Besides, I’m sure Merv won’t soon repeat the error — but for Oracle, this represents a whole pattern of behavior.

Oracle. And while I’m at it, outright dishonesty isn’t your only unnecessary credibility problem. You’re also playing too many games in analyst relations.

HP. Neoview will never succeed. Admit it to yourselves. Go buy something that can. 

Smaller BI vendors. Analytic DBMS evaluations commonly include BI strategy and tool selection as well. If an analytic DBMS expert tells you he needs to learn more about your product line, don’t blow him off. In fact, you should be particularly embracing anybody who’s shown a fondness for small DBMS vendors; maybe he or his clients will like small BI vendors as well. That means (among others) you, Jaspersoft, Endeca, and Tableau.

Information Builders. Is there anything about your BI products that is in any way technologically differentiated? If so, you might want to mention some examples to somebody some time.

Kalido. I’ve said this to you before, but it bears repeating — your positioning translates to “I-CASE for analytics,” and that’s not a good thing. If your product is not as cumbersome and entrapping as that sounds, you need to do a much better job of explaining why not.

SenSage. You are what you are. Sell out while the selling is good. You don’t have the corporate personality to make it into the analytic DBMS mainstream on your own.

Ingres. You need to be more engaged with analysts than you are. Ingres navel-gazed too much 25 years ago, and evidently you haven’t outgrown it yet.

TIBCO. You probably have a lot of cool analytic technology, but I don’t know of an influencer who has much relationship with or trust in you. Rethink how you’re approaching influencer relations top to bottom.

Tableau. You had a lot of mindshare, but it’s fading. Do something.

MarkLogic, graph DBMS vendors, etc. You’re clinging too hard to the NoSQL label. Nobody is out there deciding among Cassandra, neo4j, and MarkLogic. They might be deciding between MongoDB and MarkLogic, I guess, but if you admit to yourself that’s all it is you’ll probably change your messaging somewhat.

Objectivity. Get real about marketing. Infinite Graph is a cool opportunity. But I didn’t even ping you for a meeting when I’m in your area next week, because I wouldn’t have known who to reach out to.

Everybody (especially Objectivity). “First X deployed in the cloud” is almost surely an inaccurate claim. Don’t make it. And by the way, even if it were true, it probably wouldn’t be interesting.

Earlier this year, Blue Gecko designed and implemented an Oracle EC2 solution for Sage Manufacturing, an Oracle E-Business Suite customer.  Download the white paper here, and read how Blue Gecko leveraged the flexible, cost-effective Amazon EC2 platform to improve Sage’s Oracle E-Business Suite infrastructure.

Related Links:

Oracle processor licensing on Amazon EC2

Oracle E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud

Related posts:

1. Oracle E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud
2. Blue Gecko named Amazon Web Services partner
3. New whitepaper: Proactive Maintenance for E-Business Suite

Hi, this is Eric Maurice.

On August 11th at 11:00AM Pacific / 2:00PM Eastern, the Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) will host a webcast on Database Server security patching. Speakers include Bruce Lowenthal, Director for Security Alerts for Oracle, and Lois Price, Director for Product Lifecycle Services for Oracle.

The purpose of this technical webcast is to discuss the various aspects of the Critical Patch Update program (CPU) that are specific to Database Server. The speakers will outline the difference between the Patch Set Update (PSU) and traditional CPU patches. An overview of the CPU program will also be provided.

Register for the webcast here

For more information:

• Patch Set Updates for Oracle Products [ My Oracle Support Note 854428.1] is located at https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=854428.1 (My Oracle Support subscription is required)


• The Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts page is located at http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm

WordPress 3.0.1 has been released. Happy upgrading…

Cheers

Tim…

Just when I was writing the last post, I saw the notification that WordPress 3.0.1 is available for the download. Its not much time since the last upgrade was released but nonetheless, I have upgraded my blog to the current release and it happened like a charm .