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Home » Monthly archive

March 2009

Configuring VMWare on a Laptop

Submitted by julian on Sat, 2009-03-21 22:29

I have been using VMWare Server Linux VMs on my Windows XP laptop for over two years; with both single instance and RAC configurations across numerous VMs. Normally my laptop is connected to my home network (192.168.1.x) so I have been assigning VMs with IP addresses in the same subnet and configuring bridged networks. This worked OK while I was at home but I always had a problem when I was on the road and I could not find a suitable network connection. If all my adapters were reporting "media disconnected" I could not get a network connection between my host and the VMs.

I finally solved this problem (with help from Simon Haslam of Verition) last week. I have installed a Microsoft Loopback Adapter and configured a network address on this. The network address works even if the laptop is not connected to any networks.

The Microsoft Loopback Adapter can be installed using Control Panel -> Add Hardware which launches the Add Hardware Wizard

On the first page answer select "Yes, I have already connected the hardware"

On the next page select "Add a new hardware device"

On the next page select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)"

On the next page select "Network adapters"

On the next page in the Manufacturer drop down select "Microsoft" and then in the Network Adapter drop down select "Microsoft Loopback Adapter"

The Loopback Adapter will be installed.

You can then specify an IP address for the loopback adapter using Settings -> Network Connections. I used 192.168.5.100 for my host; 192.168.5.0 is a new subnet in my network.

Exadata front and center

Submitted by dannorris on Fri, 2009-03-20 04:52

Just in case you were like me and did not tune in for Oracle’s quarterly earnings concall, there were some interesting highlights. As many of you (well, there aren’t that many of you that read this, but…) know, I’ve been very interested in Exadata since its announcement at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 in October. While some observed that Larry’s introduction keynote was rather brief, I didn’t take it as a sign of disinterest at all. According to the concall earlier this week, quite the opposite.

Here are some choice excerpts from the transcript that I find telling about the future of Exadata:

Larry Ellison:

“So, that’s looking back. Now looking forward, I think the most exciting product we’ve had in many, many years is our Exadata Database Server.”

Congratulations New Oracle ACE, Jeremy Schneider!

Submitted by dannorris on Thu, 2009-03-19 04:29

I’ll be the first to offer a large congratulations to Jeremy Schneider on being the most recent appointment to the Oracle ACE program. He certainly deserves it (I nominated him, so I suppose I would think so) and I continue to look for great things to come.

small truths just when you need them ...

Submitted by robyn on Thu, 2009-03-19 01:00

Ever have one of those meetings? The ones where you *think* everyone is on the same page and is ready to bust out in the right direction to do great things, but there's a big old wet blanket that derails the whole thing?I had one of those last week and I returned to my desk utterly frustrated and questioning the role I'm expected to play these days. To get my mental state back on track, I

The Helsinki declaration: observation 4

Submitted by Toon.Koppelaars on Wed, 2009-03-18 22:25

So here is the last observation while looking back at 20+ years of (web) database application development. The fourth observation is about the required developer knowledge investment. How much time do you, as a developer, need to invest in learning and taking on the tools with which you can build database (web) applications.Similar to the DBMS (observation 1) it was real simple to learn the

SAPPU

Submitted by mno on Tue, 2009-03-17 13:21

SAP is a huge, mysterious, expensive animal.

In my very private opinion it is probably the worst ERP system you can buy today. Hence, most whiteshirts will choose it.

To compensate for the fact that it's old and silly technology, it's also exceedingly expensive. Introducing SAP to your company is the only reliable way to tell whether your company is so financially strong that it almost resembles a monopoly.

But what I really hate about SAP is that it removes people from the Oracle database field. I think most of us have experienced the following scenario:

A colleague or a bunch of colleagues are selected to help implement SAP. Until then they've been ordinary DBA's, fixing stuff, running databases and leading normal family lives.

Minimum Number of Application Server Processes

Submitted by davidkurtz on Mon, 2009-03-16 18:06

I have had two conversations recently about what happens if you have only a single PSAPPSRV process in a domain. One of which was on the DBA Forum.

Basically, you should always have at least two instances of any server process that has a non-zero recycle count.

It is rare to see only one PSAPPSRV process in Application Server domains that support the PIA, but customers who use the Integration Broker often have separate Application Server domains for the publication and subscription servers. These domains are often not heavily used, in which case they have been configured with just one of each server process.

This advice applies to the PSAPPSRV, PSQRYSRV, PSBRKHND, PSSUBHND, PSANALYTICSRV servers

The exceptions are

  • PSSAMSRV is only used by Windows clients in 3-tier mode (nVision and PS/Query)
  • PSMSGDSP, only a single process can be configured
  • PSAESRV, because in the Process Scheduler each PSAESRV has its own queue.

The problem occurs when the server process recycles. This occurs when the number of services handled reaches the recycle count. When the only remaining server process on a shared queue shuts down the queue is also deleted, and the advertised services are removed from the Tuxedo Bulletin Board. If a service requests arrives in the application server domain before the new server process has started, and updated the bulletin board with advertised processes, the Jolt handler (JSH) will determine that the service request is not advertised and will raise an error.

It is quite simple to demonstrate this in PeopleSoft. In my demo system, I set the recycle count on PSAPPSRV to just 10 and the minimum number of servers to 1.

The Helsinki declaration: observation 3 (Yafets)

Submitted by Toon.Koppelaars on Sun, 2009-03-15 10:00

After observation 1 "we-do-not-use-the-feature-rich-DBMS", and observation 2 "we-are-still-delivering-UFIs-only-in-ways-much-more-complicated-than-we-used-to-do-so", let's move on to the third observation on 20+ years of database application development. As you will see, all observations are (of course) somewhat related. They each just emphasize a different symptom of a single shared underlying

Happy Birthday...

Submitted by tkyte on Fri, 2009-03-13 15:30

To both the World Wide Web, age 20 years this day and Linux v1.0, age 15 years this day.  Two creations that have changed a lot of things.  Sort of neat that they happened on the same day, albeit five years apart...

Excellent Information on Exadata

Submitted by arupnanda on Fri, 2009-03-13 11:41

If you are interested to know more about the technology (not the marketing hype) behind Exadata - the datawarehouse appliance from Oracle, I just discovered a treasure trove of information on this blog:
http://www.pythian.com/news/1267/interview-kevin-closson-on-the-oracle-exadata-storage-server#comment-350433

Kevin Closson, one the lead architects of the Exadata machine has been interviewed by Christo Kutovsky and Paul Paul Vallée of Phythian. Kevin, in his usual detailed style explains the innards of the beast, aided by the excellent leading questioning by Christo.

I believe this is best writing I have seen on Exadata - all good stuff, no fluff. Thank you, Kevin.