Oracle NZ - Francisco Munoz Alvarez

DB_ULTRA_SAFE is a new parameter introduced with Oracle 11gR1, and a fantastic new GEM for High Availability, that using Data Guard to configure on both the primary and standby will trigger the most comprehensive data corruption prevention and detection (and repair on 11gR2, see **) tool in the market.

** Starting in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2), the primary database automatically attempts to repair the corrupted block in real time by fetching a good version of the same block from a physical standby database.

Speaking simple, what this new functionality will do is use your Standby Database as a backup to correct automatically any data corruption on your primary database and vice-versa (again on 11.2).

The DB_ULTRA_SAFE initialization parameter also controls other data protection behavior in Oracle Database, such as requiring ASM to perform sequential mirror write I/Os.

You basically need to understand that when setting DB_ULTRA_SAFE it will control the behaviour of DB_BLOCK_CHECKING, DB_BLOCK_CHECKSUM, or DB_LOST_WRITE_PROTECT parameters for you, which mean:

Lets’ Check  all the parameters affected by DB_ULTRA_SAFE:

• DB_BLOCK_CHECKING (Introduced with Oracle 8.1.6) prevents memory and data corruptions, but it incurs some performance overhead on every block change.
• DB_BLOCK_CHECKSUM (Introduced with Oracle 8.1.6) detects redo and data block corruptions and detect corruptions on the primary database and protect the standby database. This parameter requires minimal CPU resources.
• DB_LOST_WRITE_PROTECT (also introduced with 11gR1) enable or disable a physical standby database to detect lost write corruptions on both the primary and physical standby database.

Important: if you explicitly set the DB_BLOCK_CHECKING, DB_BLOCK_CHECKSUM, or DB_LOST_WRITE_PROTECT parameters in the initialization parameter file, then the DB_ULTRA_SAFE parameter has no effect and no changes are made to the parameter values. Thus, if you specify the DB_ULTRA_SAFE parameter, do not explicitly set these underlying parameters.

To activate it, all you need to do is follow the following steps:

On the Primary Database:  

1. Set the DB_ULTRA_SAFE=DATA_AND_INDEX initialization parameter using:
2. SQL> alter system set db_ultra_safe=dta_and_index scope=spfile;
3. SQL> shutdown immediate (Shutdown your Database)
4. SQL> startup (This will start your primary Database using your new parameter set in the SPFILE previously)

On the Physical Standby Database: 

1. Set the DB_ULTRA_SAFE=DATA_AND_INDEX initialization parameter using:
2. SQL> alter system set db_ultra_safe=dta_and_index scope=spfile;
3. SQL> startup nomount
4. SQL> alter database mount standby database;
5. SQL> alter database recover managed standby database disconnect from session;

If you are using your Standby Database on Read Only mode you also need to run the follow commands on your Physical Standby DB: 

1. SQL> alter database recover managed standby database cancel;
2. SQL> alter database open read only;

If you decide to change later the Read Only Standby to Standby again, you just will need to run the following command: 

1. SQL> alter database recover managed standby database disconnect from session;

Hoping this information could help you in the future,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

Example done on primary:

Example done at the Standby:

Technorati Tags: DB_ULTRA_SAFE,HIGH AVAILABILITY,BLOCK CORRUPTION,DATA CORRUPTION

The EM (Enterprise Manager) Desktop Widgets are lightweight internet applications that provide persistent desktop access to key Enterprise Manager monitoring and diagnostic information.

Oracle first released the EM Widgets at August 2009, now at December 2009; Oracle has already 3 different Widgets available, they are

• Target Search Monitoring - Provides access to Enterprise Manager Targets via quick and easy target-searching capabilities. Also allows you to mark targets as “favourites” and monitor their status in real time.

• High-Load Databases - Provides a summary of the top 5 databases ordered by the Average Active Sessions performance or load metric. Also provides access to recent ADDM findings (license required) and drill-down to performance pages of monitored databases.

• Service Level & Monitoring - Provides a snapshot of the health of the services, and presents a consolidated view of the most important service data such as availability and current alerts along with the service level. (Require apply the) Enterprise Manager patch# 8869802 before running this widget. 

If you are a DBA and want to try them, please refer to this link to download them: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/widgets/index.html

Kind Regards,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

A good friend of mine present at OOW’09 send me these interesting picture, can you see something strange here?

Cheers,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

SANGAM’09 at Bangalore, India is already behind and I don’t have words to express how wonderful experience it was, I just can say I’ll never forget. India is a fantastic country and a beautiful place to visit. I want to say thank you to the AIOUG directors for the invitation to speak in their first conference, it was fantastic  and I’m 100% sure that AIOUG have a great future and I’ll be more than glad to help and participate any time requested!

Regarding my ACE program presentation in the end of my “Logging or No Logging” speech, I’ll love to see more Indian nominations for ACE Awards, due to the great capacity and knowledge of all professionals in the region, please, if you know someone that fit on this category, please submit a nomination and help Oracle to detect and award the best of the best on your country. (Nominations here)

Download SANGAM’09 presentations and script here

Francisco Munoz Alvarez  

Finnaly we are able to test and check the new release of APEX (3.2), this version will enable you to load your Oracle Forms and Report source into an Oracle Application Express project and generate an initial APEX application.

To see more about this and other release 3.2 new features details, please click here!

Currently Oracle Application Express 3.2 is only available from Oracle hosted development site for   test it. It is not available for download yet, when ready, it will be released to download from the Oracle Technology Network  (OTN Web) at http://otn.oracle.com/apex.

Also check David Peak blog for more info about it: http://dpeake.blogspot.com/ 

Don’t lose more time, and let’s try it now!

Enjoy it,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

As one of Auckland’s most popular summer events, the Auckland Lantern Festival brings Chinese New Year celebrations to a glowing finale with hundreds of beautiful lanterns, including brand new designs from China, some performers from New Zealand and overseas, as well as crafts, fortune-telling, fireworks and martial arts displays.

2009 is the Year of the Ox, great I’m an OX , here are some pictures of my family on these beatiful event:

Happy New Year!!!!

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

The New Zealand Conference was a great end for my tour of conferences, was a small conference with around 200 delegates only, because this was not a big event the organization team was allow to include in the price of the event a great evening in the Luge (a fun place to drive no motorized cars and have some fun. I recommend this place if you have the opportunity to visit Rotorua, NZ) and a great buffet dinner in a very relax environment to end the evening.

My presentation was improving with some little problems when I tried to include some live demos on my presentation (only 50 min. L it’s not enough time, you can download my presentation here). But no problems, by the end I got some good feedbacks from people from Oracle and other fellow DBAs present (around 35 assistants, not bad if you have other 6 sessions running at the same time).

This also was the first time a bring with me my older son Gonzalo, he loved the experience and he is already asking me when we go out again J , the part of the conference he most loved was at the end when I won a 16GB IPod Touch J .

I want to say thank you to the NZOUG committee for the invitation and I’ll look forward to try to join this team and try to give them a hand if possible.

Here are some pictures of the event:

Cheers,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

“Real Application Testing is Now Available for Earlier Releases“

Oracle Database 11g introduced Database Replay and SQL Performance Analyzer as part of the Real Application Testing option to enable businesses identifies issues with system changes before production deployment in other words, Oracle Real Application Testing facilitates the testing and validation of system changes by recording a workload from a production system and replaying it with all the original characteristics such as timing, concurrency, and transaction dependencies, on another system for testing purposes, also it will analyze the impact of a change on application performance by identifying degraded SQL statements and advising how to remediate them.

When released, the only previous release of Oracle that you was allowed to use it was 10.2.0.4. Now RAT is available for earlier (for pre-11g database) release like:

• 9.2.0.8,
• 10.2.0.2,
• 10.2.0.3.

This are great news for us, and will allow us to test and get more information to evaluate any probably upgrade to 11g.

This functionality for pre-11g database releases is installed using the “opatch” utility and following instructions for the generic and platform specific in the “README” for the patches.For more information and to know what patches you will need to use, please refer to Metalink Note:  560977.1

Cheers,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez