UKOUG DBMS SIG July 2009

According to me, the best part of being in UK as a DBA is, to have the opportunity to join UKOUG events.   I started to join SIG events this year and DBMS SIG July 2009 was the third and the best one so far, I joined as a delegate.

Here is my review of presentations and the event.

Upgrading Oracle Estate by Phill Brown.

This was a lucky presentation for me, because it was related with Oracle Failsafe, which we are currently having problems with. Phill explained the issues they faced during upgrading Oracle Failsafe, Oracle Database and filestructure  on windows clusters at the same time at one of their clients .  My highlights from the presentation are  some metalink notes like   Failsafe Errors (108442.1)  , Oracle DB and Windows memory (46001.11)  and 10G Agents on Failsafe (330072.1).   I asked Phill if they tried to configure DB Console apart from grid configuration but he said they did not try it. The problem we are having with Oracle Failsafe is, if you have your Oracle Home on local disks, DB Console is having problems with Oracle Failsafe, because its configuration repository sits in Oracle Home and for that reason Oracle suggest to put Oracle Home to network drive but that causes other problems to us.  I wish they found a solution during this project but I am not lucky enough 😦

Oracle Support June Update by Phil Davies

This was the second time I listened this presentation series from Phil and again it was very helpful.  I think  He is from Oracle support and his summary of available patches and patch bundles are very good for the ones who doesn’t have time to look available patches from metalink.
First news is that 10.2.0.5 will be terminal patch release and probably will be available in 2009 Christmas .
He mentioned that one of his clients having a very fast growing repository problem after 10.2.0.5 EM Grid Control release. He warned us not to collect everything available in templates, and  instead collect what you actually need, to not have this problem.

He gave a good list of available patches, bugs and Here are the ones caught my eye at the first place

Generic Support Status Notes  (strongly recommended to keep an eye on  notes below)

• For 11.1.0   Note id  454507.1
• For 10.2.0   Note id  316900.1
• For 10.1.0   Note id  263719.1
• For 9.2         Note id  189908.1

Dataguard Merged Patches

11.1.0.7

Physical/redo Note 7676737.8

Logical Standby Note 7628387.8

Data Guard Broker Note 7628357.8

10.2.0.4

Logical standby Note 7937113.8

Physical Bundle #1 Note 7936993.8

Broker Recommended Note 7936793.8

10.2.0.3

Physical/Redo Transport Patch 6081547

Logical Standby/Logminer   Patch 6081550

Data Guard Broker Patch 6048286

RMAN 10.2.0.3 Bundle Patch 6081556

11.1.0.7

• Physical/redo Note 7676737.8
• Logical Standby Note 7628387.8
• Data Guard Broker Note 7628357.8

10.2.0.4

• Logical standby Note 7937113.8
• Physical Bundle #1 Note 7936993.8
• Broker Recommended Note 7936793.8

10.2.0.3

• Physical/Redo Transport Patch 6081547
• Logical Standby/Logminer   Patch 6081550
• Data Guard Broker Patch 6048286
• RMAN 10.2.0.3 Bundle Patch 6081556

Recommended Patch Bundles  Note 756388.1

Bits and Pieces
This time slot is arranged for free talking about experiences of delegates and it was very successful.  Chris Dunscombe from SIG committee  did a small presentation about the problem they had with Delayed Cleanout and ORA-1555 problem.  End of his presentation there was a perfect discussion between Joel Goodman and Jonathan Lewis.  I was sitting in the middle  and they were at right and left edge of the room.  It was like watching Wimbledon Final from the middle of Center Court.  I think  Jonathan Lewis will cover this issue but I still plan to write a post to cover it more detailed.
DB Links Master Class Part 1 by Joel Goodman

This was the second time I watched  this part of the Master Class . I was in Edinburgh DBA SIG when I first watched  this presentation  and it was just after AOT by Tanel Poder,  so I couldn’t not focus that much.
This time I listened better and I plan to review it as another post, after listening the second part .

Graphing AWR Data in Excel by David Kurtz

This was presentation of this blog post.  His approach has the smilar idea of PerfSheet of Tanel Poder which is using excel instead of getting lost in a pool of  the metric values. If you ask me I am happy with PerfSheet.

Lunch

Best lunch I had at any SIG so far 🙂

Row Migration can Aggravate Contention on Cache Buffer Chain Latch.

This is again presentation for David’s another blog post.  This presentation was about using method from the previous presentation to catch the abnormality. I suggest you to read the blog post for more info. I think missing part of the story was, how come he got the idea to check row migration after detecting the abnormality.  David said it was idea of the DBA which does not depend on any hot block analysis.

How to Read Your Statspack/AWR Report  by Jonathan Lewis

Perfect as previous 3 presentations I watched from Jonathan Lewis.  He covered 5 Statspack reports in 1 hour time which were brought by delegates. It was very nice and a bit hard  to watch him while he is doing his job. Although  This session was very helpful,  I think you need to have 20+ years of Oracle Experience with supporting Math Degree to catch the possible problems as fast and as right as  he does.  To cover more you need to start with this blog post of him and read all 11 of his  series.  One good advice I caught, do not create index in last update date columns this will cause high redo generation because of index leaf splits if the row has high updates.

I found chance to ask Jonathan’s advices for  DBA who started after 9i (when features of Oracle DB and the Documents is too big comparing to v5) . Here are his advices

1- Read concepts guide and Admin guide, min of 2 times to cover the topics. Try the thing you learn

2- Spend time on OTN forums. You don’t have to reply just try to solve other peoples problems. Don’t give up and chase the problems which means have the enthusiasm to wake up at 3am 🙂

3- Do not focus on internals because 99% of the time they are useless

4- I asked him how many hours he sleeps, his answer was 6.  1 more than I thought 🙂

Thanks to the SIG committee and sponsors (Guardian)  for this nice event.  I hope one they I will be brave enough to do a presentation in English at one of these SIGS.