Smarter DG Broker in Oracle 12c

In Oracle 11G, DG Broker needed to be told whether the standby database was physical or logical. The command to add database in 11G was something like this:

ADD DATABASE <DB Unique Name> AS CONNECT IDENTIFIER is <TNS Descriptor>

MAINTAINED AS [PHYSICAL|LOGICAL];

Oracle 12c is definitely smarter and can figure it out on its own. The “ADD DATABASE” syntax is simpler:

DGMGRL for 64-bit Windows: Version 12.1.0.2.0 – 64bit Production

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Welcome to DGMGRL, type “help” for information.
Connected as SYSDG.
DGMGRL> help add database

Adds a member to the broker configuration

Syntax:

ADD { BACKUP_APPLIANCE | DATABASE | FAR_SYNC } <object name>
[AS CONNECT IDENTIFIER IS <connect identifier>];

DGMGRL>

DG Broker will connect to the database and figure out what kind of a standby it is. The new version of DG Broker can also add Oracle’s “Zero Loss Backup Appliance”, and engineered system, or a “Far Sync Instance” for geographically dislocated standby databases. FAR SYNC looks like a very useful concept to me, but I haven’t yet had an opportunity to set one up. Here is a good article about it:

http://karandba.blogspot.com/2014/10/far-sync-in-oracle-12c-database.html

 

Synthetic Full Backup for Oracle

Synthetic full backup is a method for combining incremental backup into a full backup. It is not a new thing, many backup utilities can do that with file system backups. It is also well described:

http://www.techworld.com/storage/what-are-synthetic-backups-1149/

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/synthetic_backup.html

However, there is only one backup suite that can do that with Oracle RDBMS: Commvault 11.

How is it done?  Well, Commvault is a very well documented tool, the documentation is here:

http://documentation.commvault.com/commvault/v11/article?p=products/oracle/snap/backup_adv.htm

To perform a synthetic full backup, Commvault will use storage snapshot to snap LUN(s) on which database lives, then use their proprietary block level backup to backup the snapshot to designated backup storage and then combine the incremental backup with the previous backup, to produce a “synthetic full backup”.  Why is that a big deal which deserves a blog post? I am notoriously lazy when it comes to blogging and do not post very often. However, this is a big deal.  The reason why this is a big deal is that this backup method eliminates regular full backups. A full backup needs to be taken only once, as the baseline. All subsequent backups are only incremental. And that means fast.

This helps with multi TB data warehouses which contain huge amounts of data, but are only loaded every few days, with few GB of information. Incremental backup will be a few GB in size and will be combined with the previous backups to form a “synthetic full”. Synthetic full backup contains only the data blocks, not archive logs. Once it is restored, the log files will still need to be applied.  It can be used to restore either the entire database or just a part of it. I was lucky enough to test it and it works really well.

The backups are NOT combined on the database server, so the database users will not suffer. Backups are combined on another computer which is known as “media agent” in Commvault vernacular.  For all the gory details, please contact your friendly neighbourhood Commvault sales office.

A New Version of an Old Trick

A long, long time ago, people started using the following SQL idiom:

with t as (select /*+ materialize */ …..)

select …. from t

If my memory serves me right, Jonathan Lewis was the first person whom I saw using this idiom. The use of that idiom was to speed create a global temporary table and reuse the query results, without having to re-execute query again. Here is an example:

SQL> set autotrace on

SQL> set timing on

SQL> with t as (select /*+ materialize */ * from dba_objects)

2 select count(*) from t;

COUNT(*)

———-

87661

Elapsed: 00:00:02.67

Execution Plan

———————————————————-

Plan hash value: 3274171655

——————————————————————————–

——————————

| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | B

ytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time |

——————————————————————————–

——————————

| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 |

| 570 (15)| 00:00:01 |

| 1 | TEMP TABLE TRANSFORMATION | | |

| | |

| 2 | LOAD AS SELECT | SYS_TEMP_0FD9D6608_4A7EB2 | |

| | |

| 3 | VIEW | DBA_OBJECTS | 87374 |

13M| 239 (24)| 00:00:01 |

| 4 | UNION-ALL | | |

| | |

|* 5 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | SUM$ | 1 |

9 | 1 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 6 | INDEX UNIQUE SCAN | I_SUM$_1 | 1 |

| 0 (0)| 00:00:01 |

| 7 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | OBJ$ | 1 |

30 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 8 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | I_OBJ1 | 1 |

| 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 9 | FILTER | | |

| | |

|* 10 | HASH JOIN | | 87373 |

10M| 237 (24)| 00:00:01 |

| 11 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | USER$ | 99 |

1683 | 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 12 | HASH JOIN | | 87373 |

9044K| 230 (23)| 00:00:01 |

| 13 | INDEX FULL SCAN | I_USER2 | 99 |

2178 | 1 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 14 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | OBJ$ | 87373 |

7167K| 224 (21)| 00:00:01 |

| 15 | NESTED LOOPS | | 1 |

29 | 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 16 | INDEX SKIP SCAN | I_USER2 | 1 |

20 | 1 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 17 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | I_OBJ4 | 1 |

9 | 1 (0)| 00:00:01 |

| 18 | NESTED LOOPS | | 1 |

105 | 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |

| 19 | NESTED LOOPS | | 99 |

105 | 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |

| 20 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | USER$ | 99 |

1683 | 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |

|* 21 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | I_LINK1 | 1 |

| 0 (0)| 00:00:01 |

| 22 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| LINK$ | 1 |

88 | 0 (0)| 00:00:01 |

| 23 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 |

| | |

| 24 | VIEW | | 87374 |

| 331 (8)| 00:00:01 |

| 25 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | SYS_TEMP_0FD9D6608_4A7EB2 | 87374 |

13M| 331 (8)| 00:00:01 |

——————————————————————————–

——————————

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

—————————————————

5 – filter(BITAND(“S”.”XPFLAGS”,8388608)=8388608)

6 – access(“S”.”OBJ#”=:B1)

8 – access(“EO”.”OBJ#”=:B1)

9 – filter(“O”.”TYPE#”<>4 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>5 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>7 AND “O”.”TYPE

#”<>8 AND

“O”.”TYPE#”<>9 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>11 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>12 AND “O”.”TY

PE#”<>13 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>14 AND

“O”.”TYPE#”<>22 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>87 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>88 OR BITAND(

“U”.”SPARE1″,16)=0 OR

(“O”.”TYPE#”=4 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=5 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=7 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=8

OR “O”.”TYPE#”=9 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=10

OR “O”.”TYPE#”=11 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=12 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=13 OR “O”.”TYPE

#”=14 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=22 OR

“O”.”TYPE#”=87) AND (SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’current_edition_name’)

=’ORA$BASE’ AND “U”.”TYPE#”<>2 OR

“U”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’cu

rrent_edition_id’)) OR EXISTS

(SELECT 0 FROM SYS.”USER$” “U2″,SYS.”OBJ$” “O2” WHERE “O2”.”OWNER#

“=”U2″.”USER#” AND “O2”.”TYPE#”=88

AND “O2”.”DATAOBJ#”=:B1 AND “U2”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U2”.”SPARE2″=TO_NU

MBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’current_

edition_id’)))))

10 – access(“O”.”SPARE3″=”U”.”USER#”)

12 – access(“O”.”OWNER#”=”U”.”USER#”)

14 – filter(“O”.”TYPE#”<>10 AND “O”.”NAME”<>’_NEXT_OBJECT’ AND

“O”.”NAME”<>’_default_auditing_options_’ AND “O”.”LINKNAME” IS NUL

L AND BITAND(“O”.”FLAGS”,128)=0)

16 – access(“U2”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U2”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’

current_edition_id’)))

filter(“U2”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U2”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’

current_edition_id’)))

17 – access(“O2”.”DATAOBJ#”=:B1 AND “O2”.”TYPE#”=88 AND “O2″.”OWNER#”=”U2”.”US

ER#”)

21 – access(“L”.”OWNER#”=”U”.”USER#”)

Statistics

———————————————————-

11 recursive calls

1279 db block gets

2384 consistent gets

1251 physical reads

928 redo size

528 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client

500 bytes received via SQL*Net from client

2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client

0 sorts (memory)

0 sorts (disk)

1 rows processed

SQL>

The lines in bold font are showing the temp table transformation. If the alias “t” is used repeatedly in the script, the “select * from dba_objects” will not be re-executed but the results will be loaded from the temp table. Now, there is a new version of the same trick:

1 with t as (select /*+ result_cache */ * from dba_objects)

2* select count(*) from t

SQL> /

COUNT(*)

———-

87661

Elapsed: 00:00:01.90

Execution Plan

———————————————————-

Plan hash value: 1250653294

——————————————————————————–

——-

| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Tim

e |

——————————————————————————–

——-

| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | | 237 (24)| 00:

00:01 |

| 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | | |

|

| 2 | VIEW | DBA_OBJECTS | 87374 | | 237 (24)| 00:

00:01 |

| 3 | UNION-ALL | | | | |

|

|* 4 | FILTER | | | | |

|

|* 5 | HASH JOIN | | 87373 | 9385K| 236 (24)| 00:

00:01 |

| 6 | INDEX FULL SCAN | I_USER2 | 99 | 396 | 1 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

|* 7 | HASH JOIN | | 87373 | 9044K| 230 (23)| 00:

00:01 |

| 8 | INDEX FULL SCAN | I_USER2 | 99 | 2178 | 1 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

|* 9 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| OBJ$ | 87373 | 7167K| 224 (21)| 00:

00:01 |

| 10 | NESTED LOOPS | | 1 | 29 | 2 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

|* 11 | INDEX SKIP SCAN | I_USER2 | 1 | 20 | 1 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

|* 12 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | I_OBJ4 | 1 | 9 | 1 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

| 13 | NESTED LOOPS | | 1 | 17 | 1 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

| 14 | INDEX FULL SCAN | I_LINK1 | 1 | 13 | 0 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

|* 15 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | I_USER2 | 1 | 4 | 1 (0)| 00:

00:01 |

——————————————————————————–

——-

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

—————————————————

4 – filter(“O”.”TYPE#”<>4 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>5 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>7 AND

“O”.”TYPE#”<>8 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>9 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>11 AND “O”.”TYP

E#”<>12 AND

“O”.”TYPE#”<>13 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>14 AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>22 AND “O”.”T

YPE#”<>87

AND “O”.”TYPE#”<>88 OR BITAND(“U”.”SPARE1″,16)=0 OR (“O”.”TYPE#”=4

OR

“O”.”TYPE#”=5 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=7 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=8 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=9 O

R

“O”.”TYPE#”=10 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=11 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=12 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=

13 OR

“O”.”TYPE#”=14 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=22 OR “O”.”TYPE#”=87) AND

(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’current_edition_name’)=’ORA$BASE’ AND “U”.

“TYPE#”<>2

OR “U”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,

‘current_edit

ion_id’)) OR EXISTS (SELECT 0 FROM SYS.”USER$” “U2″,SYS.”OBJ$” “O

2″ WHERE

“O2″.”OWNER#”=”U2″.”USER#” AND “O2”.”TYPE#”=88 AND “O2″.”DATAOBJ#”

=:B1 AND

“U2”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U2”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’

current_editi

on_id’)))))

5 – access(“O”.”SPARE3″=”U”.”USER#”)

7 – access(“O”.”OWNER#”=”U”.”USER#”)

9 – filter(“O”.”TYPE#”<>10 AND “O”.”NAME”<>’_NEXT_OBJECT’ AND

“O”.”NAME”<>’_default_auditing_options_’ AND “O”.”LINKNAME” IS NUL

L AND

BITAND(“O”.”FLAGS”,128)=0)

11 – access(“U2”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U2”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,

‘current_edition_id’)))

filter(“U2”.”TYPE#”=2 AND “U2”.”SPARE2″=TO_NUMBER(SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,

‘current_edition_id’)))

12 – access(“O2”.”DATAOBJ#”=:B1 AND “O2”.”TYPE#”=88 AND

“O2″.”OWNER#”=”U2″.”USER#”)

15 – access(“L”.”OWNER#”=”U”.”USER#”)

Statistics

———————————————————-

0 recursive calls

0 db block gets

1115 consistent gets

0 physical reads

0 redo size

528 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client

500 bytes received via SQL*Net from client

2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client

0 sorts (memory)

0 sorts (disk)

1 rows processed

SQL>

The difference is in the /*+ result_cache */ hint instead of /*+ materialize /. The purpose is exactly the same, the difference in general should be marginal, coming from not having to create a temporary object in the dictionary. However, it is my general experience that the scripts with the /*+ result_cache */ hint behave a little bit better and perform a little bit faster than with the old material girl version.

The numbers in the script above prove nothing, because the table rows have already been read by the previous version, so the fact that the /*+ materialize */ version did some physical reads and the /*+ result_cache */ version didn’t didn’t do any physical reads was to be expected and proves nothing. Again, it is my impression that the result cache behaves better than the “material girl” version.

After startup trigger on RAC

Recently, a colleague of mine had some problems with pinning application procedures into the shared pool. His database was upgraded to RAC and he wanted to pin the application procedures and packages into shared pool upon the database startup.
The non-RAC version of the database was using a shell script, something like $ORACLE_HOME/local/scripts/pin_procs.sh in the script that was starting DB when the system was booted
However, RAC starts the database automatically and no user scripts are invoked during startup. The alternative mechanism is to use a startup database trigger. The only question that remains is whether the trigger will file once for each instance or once for the database? The trigger will fire once for each instance. Let’s demonstrate the statement:

mgogala@umajor:~$ ssh oracle@rac1
Last login: Sat Aug 8 19:36:48 2015
[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl start db -d orcl
[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl status db -d orcl
Instance orcl2 is running on node rac1
Instance orcl1 is running on node rac2
[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl config db -d orcl
Database unique name: orcl
Database name: orcl
Oracle home: /home/oracle/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1
Oracle user: oracle
Spfile: +DATA/orcl/spfileorcl.ora
Domain:
Start options: open
Stop options: immediate
Database role: PRIMARY
Management policy: AUTOMATIC
Server pools: orcl
Database instances: orcl2,orcl1
Disk Groups: DATA,REDO
Mount point paths:
Services:
Type: RAC
Database is administrator managed
[oracle@rac1 ~]$

This is a little 11.2.0.4 RAC database, running on two nodes. The proof will be achieved by creating a trigger which inserts the instance id and the host name into a table. If the table contains only a single record, the trigger have fired only once. If there are two records, with two different instance numbers and machine names, the trigger has fired twice, just as was the original statement. So, let’s first create a table in the SCOTT schema:
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP,
Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create table startup(
2 inst_num integer,
3 inst_host varchar2(128));

Table created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.11
SQL> grant insert on startup to system;

Grant succeeded.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01

Next comes the trigger in the SYSTEM schema, because login triggers can only be created by the schema with the DBA privilege.

SQL> connect system@rac11
Enter password:
Connected.
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER system.start_me_up AFTER startup ON DATABASE
DECLARE
instance_num INTEGER;
host VARCHAR2(128);
BEGIN
SELECT instance_number,host_name INTO INSTANCE_NUM,HOST FROM v$instance;
INSERT INTO scott.startup VALUES (instance_num,host);
END;
9 /

Trigger created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.26

Now, the moment of truth. Let’s restart the database and see what is in the SCOTT.STARTUP table. First, the restart:

[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl stop db -d orcl -o immediate
[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl status db -d orcl
Instance orcl2 is not running on node rac1
Instance orcl1 is not running on node rac2
[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl start db -d orcl
[oracle@rac1 ~]$ srvctl status db -d orcl
Instance orcl2 is running on node rac1
Instance orcl1 is running on node rac2
[oracle@rac1 ~]$

Now, let’s check SCOTT.STARTUP:
mgogala@umajor:~$ sqlplus scott/tiger@rac11

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Wed Aug 12 18:32:01 2015

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP,
Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> column inst_host format a10;
SQL> select * from startup;

INST_NUM INST_HOST
---------- ----------
2 rac1
1 rac2

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01
SQL>

The table contains two records, once for each instance. That proves that the startup trigger will fire once for each instance. This also provides the mechanism for doing different things after starting different instances because it would be trivial to add IF … THEN clause based on the instance number. However, in this particular case, the task was to pin the same set of the application procedures in both instances. This was accomplished by the database trigger.

ASM 12c, OCR and voting devices II

I finished the installation of 12c cluster and noticed that I haven’t been asked for voting and registry devices as was previously the case. I had to create a single disk group. John Franklin, from LinkedIn RAC SIG suggested running ocrcheck command, so I did:

[grid@rac1 ~]$ ocrcheck -details
Status of Oracle Cluster Registry is as follows :
Version : 4
Total space (kbytes) : 409568
Used space (kbytes) : 1612
Available space (kbytes) : 407956
ID : 1368218241
Device/File Name : +DATA/scan11/OCRFILE/registry.255.886021581
Device/File integrity check succeeded

Device/File not configured

Device/File not configured

Device/File not configured

Device/File not configured

Cluster registry integrity check succeeded

Logical corruption check bypassed due to non-privileged user

[grid@rac1 ~]$

So OCR file is still there, only lumped as a single file in the disk group created during the installation. So, let’s see what else is there:

ASMCMD> ls +DATA
ASM/
ORCL/
_MGMTDB/
orapwasm
scan11/

ORCL is the name of my Oracle 11.2.0.4 database, scan11 is the cluster name. Registry is precisely where ocrcheck said it would be:

ASMCMD> ls scan11
ASMPARAMETERFILE/
OCRFILE/
ASMCMD> ls scan11/OCRFILE
REGISTRY.255.886021581
ASMCMD>

What in the world is MGMTDB? Turns out that it is pretty well documented:

Mike Dietrich’s blog

Management database contains cluster health information and is a full fledged Oracle database which uses 4.5GB:

I finished the installation of 12c cluster and noticed that I haven’t been asked for voting and registry devices as was previously the case. I had to create a single disk group. John Franklin, from LinkedIn RAC SIG suggested running ocrcheck command, so I did:

[grid@rac1 ~]$ ocrcheck -details
Status of Oracle Cluster Registry is as follows :
Version : 4
Total space (kbytes) : 409568
Used space (kbytes) : 1612
Available space (kbytes) : 407956
ID : 1368218241
Device/File Name : +DATA/scan11/OCRFILE/registry.255.886021581
Device/File integrity check succeeded

Device/File not configured

Device/File not configured

Device/File not configured

Device/File not configured

Cluster registry integrity check succeeded

Logical corruption check bypassed due to non-privileged user

[grid@rac1 ~]$

So OCR file is still there, only lumped as a single file in the disk group created during the installation. So, let’s see what else is there:

ASMCMD> ls +DATA
ASM/
ORCL/
_MGMTDB/
orapwasm
scan11/

ORCL is the name of my Oracle 11.2.0.4 database, scan11 is the cluster name. Registry is precisely where ocrcheck said it would be:

ASMCMD> ls scan11
ASMPARAMETERFILE/
OCRFILE/
ASMCMD> ls scan11/OCRFILE
REGISTRY.255.886021581
ASMCMD>

What in the world is MGMTDB? Turns out that it is pretty well documented:

Mike Dietrich’s blog

Management database contains cluster health information and is a full fledged Oracle database which uses 4.5GB:

ASMCMD> du _MGMTDB
Used_MB Mirror_used_MB
4365 4365
ASMCMD>

Ti instance is, of course running:

[grid@rac1 ~]$ ps -ef|grep smon
grid 3579 1 0 10:02 ? 00:00:00 asm_smon_+ASM2
root 4818 1 0 10:02 ? 00:00:17 /app/grid/12.1.0/bin/osysmond.bi
grid 5388 1 0 10:03 ? 00:00:00 mdb_smon_-MGMTDB

So, let’s see what’s in there:

[grid@rac1 ~]$ export ORACLE_SID=”-MGMTDB”
[grid@rac1 ~]$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Mon Jul 27 10:37:43 2015

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 – 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Automatic Storage Management and Advanced Analytics options

SQL> select username from dba_users;

USERNAME
——————————————————————————–
ANONYMOUS
DBSNMP
WMSYS
XDB
APPQOSSYS
GSMADMIN_INTERNAL
GSMCATUSER
SYSBACKUP
OUTLN
DIP
SYSDG

USERNAME
——————————————————————————–
ORACLE_OCM
SYSKM
XS$NULL
GSMUSER
AUDSYS
SYSTEM
SYS

18 rows selected.

SQL> alter session set current_schema=GSMADMIN_INTERNAL;

Session altered.

SQL> desc database
Name Null? Type
—————————————– ——– —————————-
NAME NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
POOL_NAME VARCHAR2(30)
REGION_NUM NUMBER
GSM_PASSWORD NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
CONNECT_STRING NOT NULL VARCHAR2(256)
DATABASE_NUM NOT NULL NUMBER
STATUS NOT NULL CHAR(1)
SCAN_ADDRESS VARCHAR2(256)
ONS_PORT NUMBER
NUM_ASSIGNED_INSTANCES NOT NULL NUMBER
SRLAT_THRESH NUMBER
CPU_THRESH NUMBER
VERSION VARCHAR2(30)
DB_TYPE CHAR(1)
ENCRYPTED_GSM_PASSWORD RAW(2000)

SQL> select name,version,db_type from database;

no rows selected

SQL> select * from database;

no rows selected

SQL> select * from verify_history
2 /

no rows selected

SQL>

So, nothing is in there yet. I will have to follow the documentation and set up monitoring and diagnostic data collection.  I am slightly worried because another full fledged EE Oracle instance is added to my RAC nodes, thereby increasing CPU and memory consumption. On the other hand, the metrics described in the manual page looks very useful. A system monitoring repository can be a treasure trove of the information. My feelings are mixed, let’s wait and see.

ASM 12c – no voting/quorum device and OCR?

I installed my first 12c ASM (database is still 11.2.0.4) and I made the 11G disk layout: 2GB for voting/quorum, 2 GB for OCR. However, the installation procedure did not ask me for the voting and OCR devices. ASM came right up without them. So, the devices are not needed for 12c? What about upgrading from 11g, which did need the devices? The “crsctl” utility confirms that voting and OCR devices are not there:

——————————————————————————–
Name Target State Server State details
——————————————————————————–
Local Resources
——————————————————————————–
ora.ACFS.ORASHARE.advm
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 Volume device /dev/a
sm/orashare-453 is o
nline,STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 Volume device /dev/a
sm/orashare-453 is o
nline,STABLE
ora.ACFS.dg
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.DATA.dg
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.FRA.dg
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.LISTENER.lsnr
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.REDO.dg
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.acfs.orashare.acfs
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 mounted on /orashare
,STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 mounted on /orashare
,STABLE
ora.asm
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 Started,STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 Started,STABLE
ora.net1.network
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.ons
ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
——————————————————————————–
Cluster Resources
——————————————————————————–
ora.LISTENER_SCAN1.lsnr
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ora.LISTENER_SCAN2.lsnr
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ora.MGMTLSNR
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 169.254.244.71 10.1.
1.10,STABLE
ora.cvu
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.mgmtdb
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 Open,STABLE
ora.oc4j
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.orcl.db
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac2 Open,STABLE
2 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 Open,STABLE
ora.rac1.vip
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ora.rac2.vip
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac2 STABLE
ora.scan1.vip
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
ora.scan2.vip
1 ONLINE ONLINE rac1 STABLE
——————————————————————————–

That is a very big departure from the classic architecture. Voting and registry devices have been used since the OPS times. The question, still unanswered, is how will CRS determine which node to evict in case of failure. Voting device was used, just as in the “Survivor” show to determine who gets voted off the island.

Oracle Database Transactions and Locking Revealed, by Tom Kyte and Darl Kuhn

I recently came across the book called “Oracle Database Transactions and Locking Revealed” by Tom Kyte and Darl Kuhn. Usually, any new book by Tom Kyte is a big deal and acquires a huge following very quickly. Strangely enough there was only a single review on the Amazon, before I added my own.

For the reasons unknown to me, this book is literally ignored. I haven’t seen posts on the oracle-l about it, on the LinkedIn forums or Usenet. This book is relatively new, became available in November 2014, but it’s enough time for the book to be widely commented or recommended. There are no reasons not to recommend the book. The book is very short, 150 pages, and is not one of those 700+ pages monsters that Oracle books of today frequently turn into. I would wholeheartedly recommend the book to developers, developing Oracle applications. It deals with critically important subjects like locking, transactions, undo and redo.  The only thing missing from the book, which in my opinion should have been there, is flashback.

However, the book is primarily dedicated to applications developers, not meant as an in-depth study for the aspiring DBA hopefuls. The main strength of the book lies precisely in its brevity and clarity. It covers the topics of critical importance for the application development. How many times did I hear the myth about the need to commit frequently? How many times did I see “WHEN OTHERS” exception handler in its most atrocious form (“WHEN OTHERS THEN NULL”)? Tom and Darl do an excellent job explaining these things. They also provide tools to investigate redo and undo, all in 150 pages. Excellent job, must have for any application developer.