11gR2

I mentioned the day before Open World I put a Virtual RAC on Oracle Linux 6.1 article live. Although the procedure was complete, some of the screen shots were from an old article as I didn’t have time to redo them before my flight. I’ve just run through the procedure again and taken new screen shots. As a result, I’ve allowed the article to display on the front page of the website, which is why you will see it listed as a new article there.

• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) RAC On Oracle Linux 6.1 Using VirtualBox

This kinda rounds out the whole Oracle on 6.1 stuff as there has been a single instance installation guide out for ages and more recently the Cloud Control installation, which references it.

• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) Installation On Oracle Linux 6
• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 1 Installation on Oracle Linux 5.7 and 6.1

Remember, it’s still not certified yet, but it’s coming.

• Oracle Database 11gR2 on OL6 / RHEL6: Certified or Not

Cheers

Tim…

There seems to be a little confusion out there about the certification status of Oracle Database 11gR2, especially with the release of the 11.2.0.3 patchset which fixes all the issues associated with RAC installs on OL/RHEL 6.1.

Currently, 11gR2 is *NOT* certified on OL6 or RHEL6. How do I know? My Oracle Support says so! Check for yourself like this:

• Log on the My Oracle Support (support.oracle.com).
• Click the “Certifications” link.
• Type in the product name, like “Oracle Database”
• Select the product version number, like “11.2.0.3.0″.
• Select the platform, like “Linux x86_64″ or a specific distro beneath this.
• Click the “Search” button.

From the results you will see that Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 is certified on OL and RHEL 5.x. Oracle do not differentiate between different respins of the major version. You will also notice that it is not currently supported on OL6 or RHEL6.

Having said that, we can expect this certification really soon. Why? Because Red Hat has submitted all the certification information to Oracle and (based on previous certifications) expects it to happen some time in Q4 this year, which is any time between now and the end of the year.

With a bit of luck, by the time I submit this post MOS certification will get updated and I will happily be out of date…

Cheers

Tim…

It’s all a bit last minute, but today I decided to do an Oracle 11gR2 (11.2.0.3) RAC installation on Oracle Linux 6.1 using VirtualBox. The 11.2.0.3 patch has fixed all of the installation issues related to RAC on OL6.1, so it was pretty smooth. The procedure can be seen here.

• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3.0) RAC On Oracle Linux 6.1 using VirtualBox

As noted in the article, the screen shots of the GI and DB installers are from an 11.2.0.1 article. I’ll update these screen shots when I get back from OpenWorld. Like I said, it was all a bit last minute. Normally I wouldn’t put an article like this live (and you can see it’s not on the homepage yet), but I get lots of questions about this subject, so I thought I would make it available to make my life easier.

Cheers

Tim..

PS. There is no suitable oracle-validated package available for this at the moment, so the prerequisites have to be done manually.

Just a quick post that the 11.2.0.3 patch set for Oracle Database Server has been released for x86 and x86-64 platforms (other ports will soon follow). The patchset number is 10404530 and is available for download from My Oracle Support.

Also be sure to check out the 11.2.0.3 New Features Guide.

I just made use of the very cool OTN Virtual Developer Day Database site. In this environment you can follow OTN Developer Day sessions, for example, at home, while making use of all the material available on that site plus the downloadable Virtualbox OTN Developer Day Appliance. Despite you can choose for tracks like Java, .Net, APEX, there is also a database section which handles (as you might expect it from me regarding interest) Oracle XMLDB functionality.

The STATISTICS_LEVEL parameter controls a bunch of features. In addition to the documentation, also the V$STATISTICS_LEVEL view provides a list of the ones it controls.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve kinda ignored the fact that any operating system other than Linux (specifically Oracle Linux) exists. It’s quite easy to do when you are working with Oracle products and you get to choose your own environment.

As a vague nod to the fact that Windows does actually exist, I’ve finally got round to updating my Windows virtual RAC article.

• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 RAC On Windows 2008 Using VirtualBox

Windows 2008 is an unusual operating system in some respects. The RAC installation is pretty simple really, but finding some of the config dialogs is a complete nightmare. Chains of menus, dialogs, buttons and hyperlinks to get you to the dialog you need. What’s worse, some of the menus are hidden unless you remember to “Alt” or “Alt+N”. Crazy! If I was using Windows on a regular basis I think I would just memorize all the dialog program names and start them directly from the Run menu. It’s got to be easier than traversing that nightmare. I remember when Windows was considered the easy option. It doesn’t feel like the case anymore.

In related news, yesterday I got an invite from Jeremy Schneider to help out at RAC Attack at OOW 2011. That should be fun. See you there!

Cheers

Tim…

At page 189 of TOP I wrote the following piece of text:

In summary, with the initialization parameter optimizer_secure_view_merging set to TRUE, the query optimizer checks whether view merging could lead to security issues. If this is the case, no view merging will be performed, and performance could be suboptimal as a result. For this reason, if you are not using views for security purposes, it is better to set this initialization parameter to FALSE.

What I didn’t consider when I wrote it, it is the implication of predicate move-around related to Virtual Private Database (VPD). In fact, as described in the documentation, that parameter controls view merging as well as predicate move-around.

Active SQL Monitor Reports require some files from the Internet to render the report in the browser. That’s no big deal if you have an Internet connection, but what if you do not? Generally if you load an Active SQL Monitor Report without an Internet connection, you will just see an empty page in your browser. There is a little trick I use to work around this issue — it’s to have a copy of the required swf and javascript files locally. Here is how I do that on my Mac assuming a couple of things:

Many Oracle DBA’s are probably familiar with what Optimizer trace files are and likely know how to create them. When I say “Optimizer trace” more than likely you think of event 10053, right? SQL code like this probably is familiar then:

alter session set tracefile_identifier='MY_10053';
alter session set events '10053 trace name context forever';
select /* hard parse comment */ * from emp where ename = 'SCOTT';
alter session set events '10053 trace name context off';

In 11g, a new diagnostic events infrastructure was implemented and there are various levels of debug output that you can control for sql compilation. ORADEBUG shows us the hierarchy.