“You can’t prepare for everything – but you can prepare for anything.” – Paul Youngjohns Backup-Based Disaster Recovery is a low-cost DR option for databases with higher RTO tolerance. As Autonomous Data Guard is currently not supported for Autonomous JSON Database workloads, the natural questions is what are the alternatives: Option 1. The backup-based Disaster Recovery solution is one alternative. Backup-based DR uses database backups to instantiate a peer database at the time of switchover or failover. This enables you to have a lower cost and higher Recovery Time Objective (RTO) disa ..read more

The Oracle Database and in particular the Oracle Autonomous Database offers multiple technologies to accelerate queries and improve database performance over JSON data, including indexes, materialized views, in-memory column storage, and Exadata storage-cell pushdown. Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) is a NoSQL query language for storing, editing and deleting JSON documents. A SODA collection is a set of documents (in particular JSON) that is backed by an Oracle Database table or view. By default, creating a SODA document collection creates the following in the Oracle Database: Persistent ..read more

Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB) recently introduced a more advanced ECPU billing metric and is now retiring the legacy OCPU billing metric for Autonomous Data Warehouse and Autonomous Transaction Processing in the next 12 months. Oracle recommend switching from the OCPU billing metric to the ECPU billing metric, which will not incur any downtime or service interruptions. ECPUs will provide the same great price-performance as OCPUs and continuous improvements in price-performance over time. Updating to the ECPU billing metric provides the following benefits: 50% lower entry cost: The smalles ..read more

PL/SQL stands for Procedural Language for SQL. PL/SQL is Oracle’s procedural extension for SQL and is is loosely based on Ada (a variant of Pascal developed for the US Deptartment of Defense).  PL/SQL has been available in Oracle Database since version 6 (first released in 1992) while stored PL/SQL procedures/functions/packages/triggers became available with version 7. Read more here on the Origins of PL/SQL. Let us have a look at what is new with Oracle Database 23c. There are 5 main areas: 1. The SQL Transpiler A new init.ora parameters in Oracle Database 23c called SQL_TRANSPILER enabl ..read more

“Positive attitude plus effort equals performance.” Tommy Tuberville However, tuning a database using lots of LOBs (Large OBjects) can be rather challenging even for experienced DBAs. The following case was about slow database performance. I was asked to have a look. What was perplexing for me was the fact that more than 95% of the data in the database was LOBs some storing JSON data. Never seen a thing like that. BLOBs to be more specific. Calculating the size of the LOB segments in the database is almost straightforward. Here is the link to the note on “How to determine the actual size of th ..read more

The new 23c version of the Oracle Database comes with 3 new database architecture features: all targeted towards both DBAs and Developers. There are also new Oracle certifications which might be of interest to both parties in the sense that after OCM 12c, there has not been any (or clearly upcoming) master certification with the newer releases. Let me list the 3 new architecture changes in 23c and their restrictions and limitations, and at the end the provide a list of the new (free) OCI/Database certifications: Let us have a look at the three database architecture changes in Oracle 23c ..read more

Although the new Oracle Database 23c Free is in fact a Developer Release, there are still some interesting and useful DBA features. Here are 3 that I find simple and good to know: 1. Control PDB Open Order: DBAs can define a startup order or priority for each pluggable database (PDB) where the most important PDBs are started first. The priority is applied to PDB opening order and upgrade order as follows: Restoring PDB states when opening the CDB Setting PDB states when using the PDB OPEN ALL statement Setting the order for PDB database upgrade operations Starting PDBs in an Active Dat ..read more

If you have a tenancy in OCI, you probably know that the cost can be controlled and managed in most cases by either shutting down the nodes and the databases when not being used (and this can be even automated) but there is more to that. The main OCI console page contains the basis information about your tenancy (most right): name, usage, subscription number, used/left credits, etc: In terms of operational availability, I am usually interested in the Frankfurt region where my main tenancy resides: Under the health dashboard (worth checking on daily basis) there is an “Analyze costs” button w ..read more

Oracle Database 23c comes with 3 new (supplied) PL/SQL packages which are: DBMS_HCHECK DBMS_SEARCH DBMS_SQL_FIREWALL Here is a short description of what they can be used for: 1. DBMS_HCHECK is a read-only and lightweight PL/SQL package that helps you identify database dictionary inconsistencies that are manifested in unexpected entries in the RDBMS dictionary tables or invalid references between dictionary tables. Database dictionary inconsistencies can cause process failures and, in some cases, instance crash: such inconsistencies may be exposed to internal ORA-600 errors. DBMS_HCHECK assi ..read more

In Finland, vehicle registration plates consist of three letters and three numbers separated with a dash (e.g. ORA-600), there is actually a real car (a Saab) with this license plate. For 1000€ one can buy a vanity plate with 2-3 letters and 1-3 numbers. Often, in application forms, etc., you are asked to type your 6 character license plate and most of us insert it without the dash. How about if you want the application to be automatically able to show it (when needed) with the dash (even if the field is varchar2(6))? Here is an example showing a new feature of Oracle Database 23c called SQL ..read more