Technical Blog

Virtually everyone in data space today claims that they are a Big Data vendor and that their products are Big Data products. Of course — if you are not in Big Data then you are legacy. So how do you know whether a product is a Big Data product?

While there might not be fully objective criteria (and mainly because Big Data definition is still in the air and people interpret it as they see fit for their purpose), I think I can provide one good suggestion on how to determine when a certain product is NOT a Big Data product. Of course, it will depend on the definition of Big Data that you believe in.

Among the most critical but often most neglected database administration tasks is testing restore from backup. But sometimes, you don’t have a test system handy, and need to test the restore on the same host as the source database. In such situations, the biggest fear is overwriting the original database. Here is a simple procedure you can follow, which will not overwrite the source.

By now, the Denver Convention Center is probably cleaned up from IOUG Collaborate. The signs directing thousands of attendees to top-notch technical presentations have been removed, the twenty rental laptops which composed the classroom for Pythian’s RAC Attack class have been returned, and the vendor exhibition floor has been completely cleared out. Flight delays notwithstanding (thanks to some midwest weather), attendees are generally home by now – even those coming from places as far away as Germany and Australia.

Now that the buzz is dying down, I’ve finally found a few minutes to post my personal highlights.

Friends Old and New

First off, my favorite part of Collaborate is the opportunity to meet so many old friends and make new acquaintances who are all using Oracle technology. It’s both fun and informative to hear about the ways others are using Oracle software.

I was recently involved in an upgrade project to go from 11.2.0.2 to 11.2.0.3 on an Exadata V2. We hit some snags during the upgrade specifically related to OEM 12c Cloud Control. We performed an out-of-place upgrade and OEM 12.1.0.1.0 had some difficulty in dealing with this.

12c Cloud Control is supposed to run a daily check that looks for new targets on each server. When it finds something new, it places this in a queue to wait for admin approval. With a single click, you can promote the newly discovered target to an OEM managed object.

I recently helped set up an Exadata X2-8 Database Machine with the latest version of OEM Cloud Countrol (12.1.0.2). A few documents do exist for this process – the most useful of which are the Exadata Discovery Cookbook and the Setup Automation Kit. However, I found a few inconsistencies and problems; I think the existing documents I found were written on older versions of OEM and older versions of the tools. Also, there are some additional steps for older Exadatas which didn’t apply to my case.

This is just a small bug-fix release of the plugin. It has actually been quietly released for a while now. If you have downloaded the plugin recently, you have the latest version. To be sure, check the version in the Console, or you can see it in the file name.

There are two bugs fixed:
1. Deployment on an OMS hosted on Solaris didn’t work. (And I suspect it could be the same for Agents on Solaris.)
2. Changing thresholds on the metrics caused the error “Modification of Target Monitoring Settings has Failed”. Also, applying monitoring template was failing for the same reason.

Disclaimer: Much of what follows is pure speculation on my part. It could be completely wrong, and I’m putting it out there in the hopes that it’ll eventually be proven one way or the other.

Announcing the IOUG Big Data Special Interest Group (SIG)!

We have the SIG meeting at Oracle Open World. Come join us with your morning coffee! There’s nothing better than starting your Big morning with Big Data talks! Yes — we actually managed to get the room at this busy times at OOW thanks to IOUG.

What: IOUG Big Data SIG Meeting

When: 8:45-9:45am, Tue., 2-Oct-2012

Where: Moscone West Level 3, Overlook 3 (OOW12)

Everyone is welcomed. Gwen Shapira is the SIG leader and expect lots of great things in that space. The SIG is also looking for volunteers — that’s going to be a hot space so if you want to engage early, come and let us know.