Friday, April 15, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Day 4

OAUG Database SIG Meeting - Various

Bylaws came up and were ratified and then the other 45 minutes were talking about issues like licensing around In-Memory and an idea to have Oracle give out free passes for the option to see if it works for customers.
Make sure to sign up on the SIG website http://dbsig.communities.oaug.org/ if you want to get on the mailing list!

Perl - A DBA and Developers Best Friend - Arjen Visser - founder of Dbvisit.com

Awk didn't have what he wanted so he created his own programming language!
Search.cpan.org - Perl app store
Interpreted - not compiled, get under the hood!
Cryptic, hard to master (true for most languages), doesn't have parameters (can get around this), doesn't look pretty GUI!
Use it for shell programming, probably not a new FB app.
Perl motto: there's more than one way to do it
Ten slides in 20 minutes to teach us the basics of Perl, and I think he did it!  I really got a lot out of this session and look to take it back with me to work as a new tool in my toolbox!
CPAN module File::Spec makes perl portable
Programming Perl by Larry Wall is the book Arjen used to learn and is highly recommended as Mr. Wall invented Perl!!
Dbvisit.com/content/freeTechGuides/FreeSpace - Base code for our homework!
Perl.org is the resource you need to know!

Near Zero Downtime Upgrades - Thomas Meeks @Oracle

I LEFT!!!  Why?  Because the session details indicated that this was going to focus on GoldenGate technology but the title slide said it was focused on backup strategy for JD Edwards which we do not have!

IoT Use Cases for Oracle E Business Suite - Samir Rathore w/Hitachi

Industry 4.0 - connecting physical to digital!
IoT is the transformational interconnection of devices and sensors.
Consumer IoT and Industrial IoT but the impact of IIoT is far more than CIoT.
Major obstacle of IoT is the amount of data involved!
IoT- IT disconnect - there were some slides from Oracle on this which seemed odd but were pretty useful to help get the point across!
What is happening in the middle?  Contextualization, filtering, action -comes from business analyst.
Use cases - operation management improvements, asset and material tracking, equipment condition based Preventative maintenance, real time asset health monitoring, procurement automation - these were pretty clear and had good examples!
Smart Logistics & Asset Management Solution from Oracle and Hitachi
EBS is in the Cloud!  This seemed to surprise him, but I am not that surprised and I do not know why as I assumed it was already there!

Formula One Performance on Exadata - Gold Standards & Best Practices, Tips & Tricks - @JimTheWhyGuy & @ExaOracleTariq

Oracle Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Handbook - an upcoming book that I think I will be ordering!
ioug.org/cloud - go sign up if you are interested!
Performance tuning approaches - TOP DOWN vs. BOTTOM UP, evaluate approach, most cases a hybrid approach works best!
Tune the waits!  The three As of tuning AWR, ASH, ADDM!
Use both moving and static baselines.
Keep copies of key files.
Track changes - Resource Manager/IORM can make or break your system!
TFA - what's that?  Packages up info to Oracle and supersedes ExaWatcher/RACchk
Use small page cache
1070954.1 exachk can be run via daemon!
Use Real Application Testing to destruction - find out how much your system can take!
Tablespaces should be auto allocated
Power, partitioning, parallelization - The three Ps of Oracle performance!
Use VARCHAR2 instead of CHAR.
LONG datatype is NOT supported by HCC!
Keep optimizer statistics fresh!
cell single block physical reads - this wait event is similar to db file sequential reads on non-Exadata systems.
Set PARALLEL on tables to force Smart Scans for large tables!
Global Hash Partitioned Indexes - need to look into this!
Storage indexes - on storage cells!
There is a v$ table for what is offloadable so need to find it!
Make indexes invisible to see how performance changes before removing - great story!
Can usually get rid of 30-40% of indexes in Exadata but not blindly.
INTERdatabase RM - Instance Caging, IORM, DBRM
INTRA - IORM, DBRM, Quality of Service, Parallel, Statement Quering

Thursday, April 14, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Day 3

OAUG E-Business Applications Technology Stack SIG Meeting - Various +
Kevin Hudson, Elke Phelps and Steven Chan were part of the panel from Oracle!

http://ebsatssig.communities.oaug.org/ - Here is the website for the SIG and it should have the presentation uploaded!
WebLogic is made up of the following components: Node Manager, Domain, Administration Server, Managed Server, Deployments
New structure to find the log files that you need to know!
Change of the Node Manager and Admin passwords - done during install of R12.2, console (not recommended).
After using FNDCPASS/AFPASSWD you need to change password in WLS Datasource, or txkManageDBConnectionPool.pl
Elke Phelps said that AFPASSWD is recommended and the utilities use different encryption algorithms.
Be familiar with the AD scripts for managing WebLogic!
AppsDBA needs to know WebLogic pwd, could be an issue for SOX compliance.
Oracle working to make AutoConfig, other things, easier to manage for DBAs!
Read the Concepts Guide, and ALL the other Guides too - DO NOT SKIM THEM!!
100s of SRs per early adopter for R12.2, many bad SRs were put in by experienced DBAs that didn't read the new Guides and assumed they knew how to do it because they have been doing it for 20 years!
Does the R12.2.4 apps password change use FNDCPASS or AFPASSWD?  The panel did not know, but Elke will give us the information so stay tuned!
1905535.1
Soon to be Java 1.9, but that could be next year kind of soon.
Security, stability, performance in _0 Java releases, major releases give new features.
New tech in the labs to replace JRE because of Chrome, Windows 10, and soon Mozilla due to the core APIs they use, so there is a "Java webstart" being tested - will be a minimum version required!
Is webstart going to be installed on the desktop like J-Init?  No!
Query the certified database, let Steven know if not in there!
Don't need to uncompress before upgrading!

OAUG Upgrade SIG Meeting - Various (and Me!)

I am now the Program Director for the SIG - Yay a promotion (I thought I was the Secretary!)
12.1.3 fees waived for Extended support until 2019, but Extended means there is no obligation from Oracle to certify new platforms.
12.2 Premier until 2021, no Extended planned!
1495337.1
1494891.1
1583092.1
Do I have to enable EBR for my 3rd party schema?  No, BUT it may need to be EBR aware!
There was a bit more covered here, but I'm going to make you join the LinkedIn group to get it later!  :}

Ready to Start a BLOG? - @erik_benner

Look at comment choices - His opinion is moderating comments, which is kind of opposite from what Craig said the other day.
3-400 hits a day is normal for him!
If it is a chore, you'll stop - I can attest to that!
What do I blog about?
Be positive - great, and overlooked, tip!
Do you need a domain?  Should I use a blog hosting company?
Good blogging habits: formatting, edit your screen shots, be focused - can always be multi-part, read your comments, take your time, have fun!
Editors to blog with online?  Online, built into the blog engine, offline no blogging for you!
Editors to blog with offline?  Microsoft Live Writer!  This was awesome to see in action AND he showed the connection options and it hooks into Blogger/Blogspot!
Maximizing SEO - Yoast SEO plugin for WP & Google Analytics - entry page, what people are searching for - Both of these are making me rethink my previous choices and how to maximize what I can do going forward.

Oaktable World: Performance Feature Enhancements in Enterprise Manager 13c with DB12c - @DBAKelvar - Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman

AWR/ASH architecture review
rdbms/admin/awrrpt.sql, ashrpt.sql, awrsqlrpt.sql, awrinfo.sql, awrddrpt.sql, awrgrpt.sql
Do not mess with underscore parameters!
In-Memory support, like with SQL Monitor reports, AWR
OEM can run on iPad now that it doesn't run on Flash!
Average Active Sessions - new ASH Analytics!
Top ADDR findings now in ASH.
Top TEN foreground now instead of 5, CPU should be on top…to a point…
IO profile
New sections - GoldenGate, Xstreams, Resource Stats
Wait event alert 10 min sample, then example to show slices of CPU use - great example and along the lines of my hourly wait event script!
SQL Monitor, is it done yet? Did it use parallel? What important data do we know?
Exadata shows offload percentage, In-Memory info too if on
v$sql_monitor

EBS 12.2.x – Deep Dive into Online Patching Feature - @kaiglittenberg

Adop cycle - Prepare, Apply, Finalize, Cutover (users offline), Cleanup - users online during 4 phases!
EBR is one of the most important parts of R12.2!
Run Edition VIEW and Patch Edition VIEW - need to change development.
DBA_OBJECTS_AE / DBA_SOURCE_AE - all editions view with column edition_name
DBA_EDITIONS
GV$SESSIONS -> column SESSION_EDITION_ID
2 adop phase=prepare phases because 2nd one applies what was patched to the 1st file system.
Make adop work faster with workers=20, if you don't put in cm_wait=10 for cutover phase the CM will come down immediately, and don't use less than 5 because of odd behavior!
!!Adop kills all DB sessions in cutover phase!!
Adop phase=cleanup cleanup_mode=full followed by adop phase=fs_clone.
1366187.1 - all the log files
Cannot run adadmin in run fs while adop cycle is open, but can do it in patch fs!
Ad_adop_sessions
Ad_adop_session_patches
AD/TXK delta.7 - Has a lot of good changes, even talked about in the TechStack SIG!
Ad_zd.get_edition();
Ad_zd.set_edition('RUN');
Can I test my code in the patch fs?  No!
Admin and transaction tasks get slower with too many editions, around 20-30 editions at least so clean it up constantly

Getting Optimal Performance From Oracle E-Business Suite - Samer Barakat with Oracle

2125596.1 - The entire presentation is listed here at this MOS note, so go there because there were quite a few note IDs that I missed because he usually gives this talk in 2 hours so he was going pretty fast!

Application

1594274.1
1617461.1
244040.1
Reduce load on the DB server - avoid blind queries, provide selective criteria in find windows/LOVs so they can use indexes!
Minimize network traffic and form open times!
Size middle tier for concurrency - JVMs and Forms both!
40 MB is average memory used by each frmweb session - interesting, did not know that!
E22950 Guide for sizing
1905593.1
He had something on a slide about PCP and not automatically failover based on your setup, which I need to re-read and send over to our DBAs because I think our CMs need manual intervention here too!
Manage CM jobs lifecycle, CM Managers, CM Schedules, CM State Data!
842850.1 - I shared that in my presentation!
1375769.1
1616827.1
Inode and new environment APPLLDM
Concurrent manager reports have a new parameter SHELF_LIFE to tell what purge schedule to use!!
1583902.1
As in the previous session 20 editions is the threshold and what is actually slowing down in the system?  HWM issues!
blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/e_business_suite_technology_learning

Database

396009.1
216205.1
244040.1
744769.1
1392497.1
Only SGA benefits from Huge pages, not PGA (I think for just Exadata)
Pin top SQL if needed.
Check for cursor leaks!
Gather Application Stats!
1586374.1 - gathering stats
FND_STATS.LOAD_XCLUD_TAB - Allows you to exclude a table from being gathered and this should be useful for us because we do have a table that gets purged and then has stats gathered on it at the wrong time while empty!
Gather dictionary stats after major changes!
341788.1
1373500.1
810394.1
2029173.1
1311528.1
1129203.1
1362445.1
1499132.1
1633952.1
986690.1
1472716.1 - hot files in ExaLogic
1623879.1
1594274.1
1392527.1
1965343.1 In-Memory Advisor
2025309.1
Transactional, transient, reference/seed - different types of data!
FACT: More than 80% of data is inactive!!
Purge Portal - Make sure you know about this and use it!
752322.1
554539.1 - 200+ tables partitioned out of the box!
1110648.1

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Day 2 (and lots of Me!)

Database Security - Case Study for Enterprise License Features - @aprilcsims

Oracle External Password Store - something worth looking into so you do not need to put passwords in clear text or pass them around.
Blogs.oracle.com/upgrade
Some features in Advanced Security Option now moved to Enterprise License (and free) because of Cloud encryption needs.
271825.1 - Passwords "Is the password encrypted when I logon"
Wireshark can see scripts in plain text if there is no encryption!
Database auditing - table privileges, system privileges, logon/logoff trigger- AUDIT SESSION WHENEVER NOT SUCCESSFUL is the base you need to start with.
dba_stmt_audit_opts - a new table I did not know about!
1299033.1, 553225.1
LogRotate on Linux - this might be worthwhile for our environment!
Open Source product LogSearch lets you collate log files for analysis later.
12c - DBMS_PRIVILEGE_CAPTURE
Use orapki to create the wallet with -auto_login_local so it can't be transferred to another server!
1114599.1 testing the wallet on another server
Sqlnet.ora parameter WALLET_LOCATION
Dead Connection Detection - zero length packets being dropped by the new Cisco router!
Some Unified Auditing is on with a fresh 12c DB installation so check v$options!

Blogging: The How and Why to Propel Your Career - Craig@orapub.com

You may ask yourself "why are you going to a session on blogging if you already blog?" and that would be a great question but I think there is always room for improvement in all things so I went to several sessions during the conference on this topic to try and pick up new tips or tricks that can make me deliver better content to my readers.

Craig redesigned his website to focus on Oracle performance because he had a site that was not focused at all and it was difficult to decide what to do.
The plan: making the best decision, getting started, what to write about, tuning your blog.
Are you interested in blogging?  You can download this from orapub.com soon!
Blogging takes time, so WHY do it?  Help others, help yourself, career goals - OracleACE, independent consultant, business owner, shift in career path, career development.
A blog is your living resume
"Inbound marketing"
What you can expect: perceived as an authority, develop a following, think a question through to completion, become a better writer and communicator, increased conference participation, develop thicker skin, encouragement (from readers) is a life giving.
Turned comments off - this was interesting to me, and made me think a bit!
Define your objectives: be honest about your market and impress them, do not do it just to be famous.
Measure your objectives: views, clicks and downloads, email volume, conference invites, career objectives, recognition, registrations for on-site training, memberships, consulting work.
Purposefully design your blog: reflection of you, aligns with objectives, easy to read, easy to be found, easy to migrate, easy to change format, easy to build content.
Choosing a platform: hubspot, wordpress, blogger, build your own.
Learn to create basic graphics - a good tip that I took away, and something I have heard in another arena and an obvious weakness in my armor.
How often to post?  Once a week, keep content size and scope very small 3:1 rule, break up larger topics into a series, mix "how it works" to "how to do" - this ws pretty interesting too, because when I fail to post I see it as a failure but Craig seems to be saying to reduce the amount of content so you do not burn out.
What to write about?  Watch and listen to what others are interested about, write what you have already written about, what interests you, what other people are wondering about (Cloud anybody?)
Tuning your blog, pictures, sign up, latest/popular posts, charts, video - all great tips to take away!
SEO: be easy to be found, be the answer to the question, create a title as if solving a problem, use Google to suggest titles, repeat key words in your post, content is king - don't try to fool Google.
Make it enjoyable, spacing easier to read!
Search "inbound Marcus" for an ebook about the topic.

Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for Increased System Performance - Me!

Right after lunch can be a difficult spot to be in, but I was pleasantly surprised when about 20 people showed up and seemed to be enjoying the session!  They even asked some really good questions which should give me some good ideas for the next version of this presentation.

OAUG Workflow SIG Meeting - Various (and Me!)

Check out the website http://workflowsig.communities.oaug.org/ for the presentation that John Peters put together!
We also had a visit from Oracle and they demoed the Mobile approval solution which was great!  I am thinking about trying to lead a project to get this going at work, that is how great it looks!!
Oh, and I am a Board Member of this SIG as well now!  I do not know what title or role, but I am there!

E-Business Suite R12: Application Lessons Learned for Support and Implementers - Me!

Even though there were about 100 people that had showed interest in this in the application, I was REALLY surprised when I had around 40 people show up for this session!  I did get time to add some new information to the presentation, even something I have not blogged about yet, and was able to cover all of the content in 46 minutes (obviously shooting for 45 so I was happy) with a lot of people writing MOS notes down or making notes about some of the project lessons that came from our experience (and did not have MOS notes)!

Deep Dive into the Internals of a SELECT Statement - Michaelwcunningham.com

I was really interested to get a lot more on this topic after the session I had the day before that was all talking about finding out when a parse is hard, soft, soft hard, or harder soft, if you are having issues running a SQL statement and while I did not get as much out of it as I thought, I really was inspired to start digging deeper into the internals!

Cursorttrace level 580, address <hash_value from v$sql>
Oradebug setmypid
Oradebug set library_cache 4
obj$, tab$, ind$, seg$, objauth$ - Data Dictionary information
10053 trace shows a lot of this data
ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS 'IMMEDIATE TRACE NAME TREEDUMP LEVEL 20679
ALTER SYSTEM DUMP DATAFILE 4 BLOCK 8531
x$bh is the buffer header structure

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

COLLABORATE16: Pre-Day + Day 1

After weather delays leaving Phoenix, due to thunderstorms over Las Vegas, I missed a few sessions I wanted to attend on Sunday but I luckily was able to attend fellow Upgrade SIG Art Dowd and then make the Meeting of the Members!  On Day 1 there was a lot to take in, so that has a much fuller download to share with you, but I am going to have to skim and give you the high level takeaways or MOS notes you should look up later - if you are an OAUG member look these presentations up later!  Not a member but interested in some of the things I posted?  Change that and sign up!

Upgrading to R12.2 - Lessons Learned and Tips That You Need to Know to be Successful - Art Dowd - o2works.com

Great point that there are 2 types of projects, technical and full "business-aligned", and there is an 8 piece plan to build a repeatable process for both of them.
269.1
461705.1
aaplcust.txt 889733.1
At least 3 iterations of upgrade before go live.
Add 50% time to previous 11i project for R12.
416699.1
12.2.2 is the Holy Grail of patching with 2 file systems - 1 run, 1 patch.
SYSTEM and SEED tablespaces double!
Going to the cloud?  Need to adopt SaaS and PaaS, and a full reimplementation.

General Session - Trends & Technologies Shaping Your Future

The big takeaway here was only about 20% of companies are going to the Cloud, and most of the rest are not due to security and cost reasons.

Linux/UNIX Tools for the Oracle DBA - Tim Gorman - @timothyjgorman

Why CLI?  GUI not supported, vendor support, automation and scripting.
Unixtools.com is a good resource.
Sar is really underneath what you see in OEM/TOAD!
Mpstat gives you information per CPU, can show a busy system for instance XTTS is single threaded no matter how parallel you make it - interesting!
Uptime and w give you uptime and user stats.
jstat shows JVM memory usage displays.
Dtrace.org is a free tool.

Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices - Zeeshan Baig - @IamZeeshanBaig

What is Cloud computing?  gMail has been SaaS for a while we just didn't realize it at the time!
Hybrid, private, public, community - different cloud deployment models!
Core concepts for Cloud, elasticity - allows you to scale up and out!
Business benefits of cloud - low up front costs, in time infrastructure, efficient resource utilization, usage based cost, reduce time to market.
Technical benefits of Cloud - automation, auto-scaling, proactive scaling, efficient development lifecycle, DR and business continuity.
Design for failure - remove single of failure, design for automatic recovery, graceful failures, consistent backup and recovery strategy, don't fix - start a new instance, avoid stateful sessions.
Decouple components!
Elasticity + parallelization = WIN

Productivity Enhancing SQL*Plus Scripting Techniques - Bert Scalzo - @bertscalzo

set linesize 512 produces a larger file than set linesize 256!
set trimout on is different when going to the screen.
Do not forget about the BREAK or the COMPUTE commands.
Dynamic scripting is the most important technique where you can have SQL producing other SQL to run!!

Oracle Database Networking Basics - Eric Siglin - @ESiglin

What is a DB?  That is where we start, and if you do not know the answer go look it up.  :}
Access challenges - must be connected, logging into the host is impractical, security challenges with DB.
What is a client?  Anything that connects to a DB, even another DB!
Two ways to register performance stats: response time and throughput.
Shutting the listener down does nothing to current connections, only new connections - important to know!
Creating and destroying database session is one of the biggest things to ask the DB to do!
docs.oracle.com - Database Net Services Administrator's Guide (Part I: Understanding Oracle Net), Database High Availability Overview

OAUG E-Business Suite SysAdmin SIG Meeting - Various

Drew Chiaiese and David Heisler from Oracle joined us!
We went over and adopted the bylaws for the group and then I was put forward for Secretary of the SIG!
432.1
1939637.1
1584210.1
1581299.1 - 12.2 Information Center
1633974.2
793436.2 - Hot Topics
1580100.1 - MOS Accreditation

Arizona/New Mexico OAUG - Kickoff Meeting - Various (including Me!)

This was a really positive meeting!!  There were individuals in attendance which had run groups in both states before, so I think we will have a lot of good information about what works and does not so going forward we will be more successful!

The Bad One In Your Crop - SQL Tuning Analysis For DBAs - Martin Klier - @MartinKlierDBA

If you can do it, submit abstracts for the DOAG conference in Germany, but even if you do not do that make sure to follow the hashtag #DOAUG2016 later this year!
SQL -> Syntax -> Semantic -> Library Cache check -> Optimizer -> Execution is a hard parse!
Soft parse avoids the Optimizer because it has been found in the Library Cache.
Great story about bad weather affecting DB performance, and something I have seen happen in person (not with bad weather, we never have that in Arizona).
Bind peeking is a harder soft parse.
Before you tune, analysis is mandatory!
Starts with "What's the problem?"
His style is to simplify your toolset by using AWR/ statspack, SQL*Plus, SQLci, SQL Developer, dbms_xplan.display_cursor; being suspicious; looking thoroughly; having situational awareness; using intuition (over time you will get the right approach 80%); going down to the second, one hour has 3600 seconds which is a static and common measurement.
Finding the culprit (unfortunately this is where I had to step out and take a phone call, but I cannot to download the presentation and finish it!)

Monday, April 11, 2016

COLLABORATE16: How to follow along with the home game!

I've been quite busy the past few nights so no posts about what I've attended just yet, BUT if you want to play along at home you can always follow the #C16LV Twitter hashtag at home and get great content and commentary from the community while they are attending!  Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow night to transcribe my notes a bit for you to give you a few days of interesting factoids I picked up here and there!

Sunday, April 10, 2016

My COLLABORATE16 schedule!

Are you going to OAUG's COLLABORATE16?  Awesome, me too!!  Here is my schedule of events, and I'm sure you'll be able to find me at many other times and places too.  :}

Sunday

Meeting of the OAUG Members - 4:45 PM - South Seas F - Obviously this is something for all the OAUG members and I'll be there, so it might be a good chance to catch me today!

Monday

Arizona/New Mexico OAUG Kickoff Meeting - 3:15 PM - Mariners AB - I'm the Chairman of this brand new Geo, and tomorrow is our first real meeting (outside of the several phone planning meetings we've had over the past few months)!

Tuesday

Analyzing Oracle Workflow Data for Increased System Performance - 1:00 PM - South Seas A - This is the standard bearer, but the first time I'm bringing it to COLLABORATE!

E-Business Suite R12: Application Lessons Learned for Support and Implementers - 3:30 PM - Breakers B - A "Best of COLLABORATE" from last year makes a return, maybe with a few new surprises in store!

Wednesday

OAUG Upgrade SIG Meeting - 9:15 AM - Reef F - I'm a Board Member of this SIG and will be helping to moderate the panel discussion!