Internals

This blogpost is about the Oracle database row or dictionary cache. This is a separate cache that caches database metadata, like database object properties or user properties.

There is surprising little in-depth technical detail about the row cache. To some degree I understand: issues with the row cache are rare.

I noticed a column in V$ROWCACHE called ‘FASTGETS’. Whatever FASTGETS means, in my database it is being used:

For the difference between Oracle database versions 12.2.0.1.191015 and 12.2.0.1.200114 this too follows the line of a low amount of differences.

There have been two spare parameters that have been changed to named undocumented parameters, and no data dictionary changes.

parameters unique in version 12.2.0.1.191015 versus 12.2.0.1.200114

NAME
--------------------------------------------------
_fifth_spare_parameter
_one-hundred-and-forty-eighth_spare_parameter

parameters unique in version 12.2.0.1.200114 versus 12.2.0.1.191015

NAME
--------------------------------------------------
_bug29825525_bct_public_dba_buffer_dynresize_delay
_enable_ptime_update_for_sys

On the C function side, there have been a group of AWR functions that have been removed and a group of SGA management functions, among other functions. There functions that have been added are random and diverse.

This post was created when trying to understand how the Oracle executable works. Specifically the logwriter, which, if it is posted by a process, which is done using semop(), signals that process back using semop() if the logwriter happens to be in post/wait mode, and is not using the ‘scalable logwriter mode’, which means it is not using additional worker processes.

To be more specific, I tried investigating something that is not Oracle specific, but specific to the usage of semaphores on linux with an executable for which you do not have the source code and is not compiled with debugging symbols.

I attached to the process using gdb, and put a break on semop:

For the difference between Oracle database versions 18.8 and 18.9 this too follows the line of a low amount of differences.

As always, there are some parameters that have changed from being undocumented spare to being undocumented with a name.

Also, the DBA and CDB table (DBA|CDB)_REGISTRY_BACKPORTS is back again. The disappearance of this table in 18.8 turned out to be a bug. There is a patch for 18.8 if you need this table.

As expected, there aren’t any really drastic differences between Oracle database version 19.5 and 19.6. Now that I am doing these series on differences for all the versions every quarter the new release updates are coming out, there is a certain line, and this release does follow that.

As always, there are some parameters that have changed from being undocumented spare to being undocumented with a name. There is one documented parameter that was added: optimizer_session_type, which has gone official from “_optimizer_auto_index_allow”; see bug 29632611.

This post is about how to use gdb, which is a debugger, so very simplistically put an aid for looking at C programs, as a profiler. I use gdb quite a lot for profiling because it’s the easiest way for profiling for me.

Lots of people which I know use other tools like perf, systemtap and dtrace for the same purpose and that’s fine. Each tools has its own advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage of gdb is that it’s using ptrace to attach to a process, which makes it dead slow from a machine perspective, because everything it then does goes via another process, which is the debugger. That is how the debugger works.

Also lots of people use gdb like I do, and use basic functionality, which is breaking at functions, which makes it possible to find out the sequence of how functions are called, generating backtraces (stack traces) to understand the stack and maybe looking at functions arguments.

The Oracle database log writer is the process that fundamentally influences database change performance. Under normal circumstances the log writer must persist the changes made to the blocks before the actual change is committed. Therefore, it’s vitally important to understand what the log writer is exactly doing. This is widely known by the Oracle database community.

The traditional method for looking at log writer performance is looking at the wait event ‘log file parallel write’ and the CPU time, and comparing that to the ‘log file sync’ alias “commit wait time”. If ‘log file parallel write’ and ‘log file sync’ roughly match, a commit is waiting on the log writer IO latency, if it isn’t then it’s unclear, and things get vague.

This post is about a change in how the time is measured for the event ‘log file parallel write’. This is important for the performance tuning of any change activity in an Oracle database, because with the default commit settings, a foreground session that commits changes waits in the wait event ‘log file sync’, which is a wait on logwriter activity, for which the wait event ‘log file parallel write’ always has been the indicator of the time spend on IO.

Log file sync
First things first: a foreground session normally waits on the wait event ‘log file sync’ when it commits waiting for its change vectors to be written to the online redologfile(s) by the logwriter. It is wrong to always assume a ‘log file sync’ will be present. If, somehow, the logwriter manages to increase the ON DISK SCN to or beyond the foreground session’s commit SCN, there will be no ‘log file sync’ wait event.

This blogpost is about an inconsistency I found in the X$ tables X$KQFTA and X$KQFCO. This is very specific. If you don’t care about that, you can skip this post.

The Oracle database’s “dynamic performance views” are views that are prefixed with “GV$” and “V$”. The “G” with “GV$” stands for “global” and gets you the results from its “V$” equivalent for all instances. In most cases, but that’s not the purpose of this blog. In most cases, the “V$” version simply is the “GV$” view with inst_id (instance id, used in RAC to specify the instance id) set to the current instance. I’ll refer to both simply as “V$” for simplicity.

The “V$” views are mostly build on top of “X$” tables. The “X$” tables are Oracle internal tables, and not officially supported, therefore you should use the “V$” views.

It seems that the most eye-catching difference between Oracle database versions 19.5 and 19.4 is three underscore parameters spare parameters being changed to specifically named underscore parameters, two of them have a bug number in them which is not publicly visible.

In v$sysstat/v$sesstat, a group of statistics are renamed from ‘OS %’ to ‘Server %’. All these statistics are about networking. One changed parameter directly points to networking (tcpinfo). These statistics are added in version 19.

One DBA view was added: DBA_DV_COMMON_OPERATION_STATUS. This view is specific and owned by to DVSYS.