Sometimes understanding the Oracle Database Editions is a little confuse, and on my opinion know all the options available in the market is something very important and fundamental for any DBA. The main idea of this post is to help you to understand a little bit more about all available options in the Oracle market, learn some key differences and functionalities of each Edition.

Understanding the Different Editions

All the time I receive questions regarding Oracle Database Editions like:

• What’s the difference between Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition?  
• How complicate is to upgrade a Standard Edition Database to Enterprise Edition and vice versa?   
• Can you explain me the most important Options and Packages available with Oracle?  
• Is Oracle Express Edition really free? What are the limitations and what it can do?

So many people don’t understand the diversity of Editions available with Oracle Databases, most of the time everyone associate it with the Enterprise Edition only, saying “Oracle is so expensive! Let’s look to other brands due that we can’t afford it!”, That’s a huge mistake, if you want the best available in the market you need to pay for it, but you need to understand all the options available for you by Oracle Corporation before take a precipitate and wrong decision, you always can find an edition that is affordable for your budget, and I can guarantee that you will not find the same performance and functionality at any other product in the market.

This is like buy a car, you can always dream to have a top brand vehicle, but you don’t need to buy the most expensive model if you only need a compact one, it will be more affordable and you know that you can trust in the quality of the product. The same happens with Oracle Databases. Oracle have available several editions of their Database product, all are the same product (internal code) but depending of the edition it can have some limitations or additional options to improve the performance, security, availability, and management of your 11g Database.

Oracle Database 11g is available in a choice of editions tailored to meet your business, personal, or IT needs, and also offers several extra options to enhance your Database capabilities depending of your applications requirements. Oracle have basically 5 different editions available for you, all are build using the same reliable database engine architecture and are compatible with each other, making this way an upgrade to be a very easy task to the DBA and this will also help to make your database grow at the same speed of your business.
The Editions available are: Express Edition, Personal Edition, Standard One Edition, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition, now let’s take a quick look on each one:

• Oracle Express Edition (XE): This edition is an entry-level, small-footprint database based at the Oracle 10g release 2 Enterprise code that is free to develop, deploy, and distribute; due to it, this is an excellent option for developers, students, and very small organizations trying to initiate their journey in the Oracle world. Oracle XE is very easy to download and very simple to administrate, it can be installed on any host machine size, with any number of CPU’s and memory available, but it will have several limitations like: will storage only 4GB of data, will use up to 1GB of memory, and will use only 1 CPU in the host machine. Currently this edition is not supported by My Oracle Support (old Metalink), this means no patches available and support, but you can always refer to the OTN forums to ask your peers for any kind of help relate to this edition.
• Oracle Personal edition (PE): This edition supports single-user development and deployment environments that require full compatibility with Oracle Database Standard Edition One, Oracle Database Standard Edition, and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Oracle PE includes all of the components, options and functionalities that are included with Enterprise Edition with the exception of the Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) option. The negative side of this edition is that this is only available for Windows environments (Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003/32-bit and 64-bit versions), and the Management Packs are not included.
• Oracle Standard Edition One (SEO): Delivers an unprecedented ease to use, power, price/performance for workgroups, department-level, and Web applications. This edition is highly recommended to be used from single-server environments for small business to any highly distributed branch environments. Oracle Database SEO includes all the facilities necessary to build any business-critical applications.
• Oracle Standard Edition (SE): Offers a low cost alternative for small/medium business or departmental applications that want to have the power of Oracle, this Edition has all the benefits of Oracle SEO plus support for larger machines and clustering of services with Real Application Clusters (Free in this Edition); RAC was not included in previous Standard Edition releases prior to Oracle Database version 10g.
• Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE): It’s the top of the Oracle Editions line, provides the best in performance, availability, scalability, and security required for mission-critical applications such as high-volume online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, query-intensive data warehouses, and demanding Internet applications. Oracle Database EE contains all of the components of Oracle Database, and can be further enhanced with the purchase of several available options and packs.

Now let’s take a closer look to all availabilities and restrictions of each Oracle Edition:

Now you have a clear idea of all available Editions of Oracle in the market, in the next post I’ll go thru the most important options and packs available to enhance your database to achieve all your personal or company goals.

Cheers,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

Well after I nice weekend, I started my week with a car accident when going to work , here are some pictures when recovering my car from the trees. yes, the trees. To avoid crash with several other cars  that stopped on front of me (due to a nice guy crossing the high way with a baby in a bike) I end out of the street with a lot of lucky to find a tree to stop my car to go down hill.

Cheers,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

One of my DBA’s just ask me why he was receiving the following error each time he tried to setup the host information thru the dbconsole (OEM):

- RemoteOperationException: ERROR: NMO not setuid-root (Unix-only)

The answer is very easy, this error occurs when you forgot to run the root.sh after you finished your installation, you can solve this problem easily running the root.sh  which is located in $ORACLE_HOME/root.sh (as root) and the  error will disappear.

Kind Regards,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

By Francisco Munoz Alvarez

How to find Sessions Generating Lots of Redo

To find sessions generating lots of redo, you can use either of the following methods. Both methods examine the amount of undo generated. When a transaction generates undo, it will automatically generate redo as well.

The methods are:

1) Query V$SESS_IO. This view contains the column BLOCK_CHANGES which indicates how much blocks have been changed by the session. High values indicate a session generating lots of redo.

The query you can use is:

SQL> SELECT s.sid, s.serial#, s.username, s.program,

2 i.block_changes

3 FROM v$session s, v$sess_io i

4 WHERE s.sid = i.sid

5 ORDER BY 5 desc, 1, 2, 3, 4;

Run the query multiple times and examine the delta between each occurrence of BLOCK_CHANGES. Large deltas indicate high redo generation by the session.

2) Query V$TRANSACTION. These view contains information about the amount of undo blocks and undo records accessed by the transaction (as found in the USED_UBLK and USED_UREC columns).

The query you can use is:

SQL> SELECT s.sid, s.serial#, s.username, s.program,

2 t.used_ublk, t.used_urec

3 FROM v$session s, v$transaction t

4 WHERE s.taddr = t.addr

5 ORDER BY 5 desc, 6 desc, 1, 2, 3, 4;

Run the query multiple times and examine the delta between each occurrence of USED_UBLK and USED_UREC. Large deltas indicate high redo generation by the session.

You use the first query when you need to check for programs generating lots of redo when these programs activate more than one transaction. The latter query can be used to find out which particular transactions are generating redo.

Useful Scripts

To see the redo generated since instance started:

col name format a30 heading ‘Statistic|Name’

col value heading ‘Statistic|Value’

start title80 “Redo Log Statistics”

spool rep_out\&db\red_stat

SELECT name, value

FROM v$sysstat

WHERE name like ‘%redo%’

order by name

/

spool off

pause Press enter to continue

ttitle off

The redo generated during my session since the session started:

select value redo_size

from v$mystat, v$statname

where v$mystat.STATISTIC# = v$statname.STATISTIC#

and name = ‘redo size’

/

The redo generated by current user sessions:

select v$session.sid, username, value redo_size

from v$sesstat, v$statname, v$session

where v$sesstat.STATISTIC# = v$statname.STATISTIC#

and v$session.sid = v$sesstat.sid

and name = ‘redo size’

and value > 0

and username is not null

order by value

/

Provide a current status for redo logs:

column first_change# format 999,999,999 heading Change#

column group# format 9,999 heading Grp#

column thread# format 999 heading Th#

column sequence# format 999,999 heading Seq#

column members format 999 heading Mem

column archived format a4 heading Arc?

column first_time format a25 heading First|Time

break on thread#

set pages 60 lines 132 feedback off

start title132 ‘Current Redo Log Status’

spool rep_out\&db\log_stat

select thread#, group#, sequence#,

bytes, members,archived,status,first_change#,

to_char(first_time,’dd-mon-yyyy hh24:mi’) first_time

from sys.v_$log

order by thread#, group#;

spool off

pause Press Enter to continue

set pages 22 lines 80 feedback on

clear breaks

clear columns

ttitle off

/

Provide redo log groups and log switch (archive generation) information:

set echo on

set linesize 150

set pagesize 500

column day format a16 heading ‘Dia’

column d_0 format a3 heading ‘00′

column d_1 format a3 heading ‘01′

column d_2 format a3 heading ‘02′

column d_3 format a3 heading ‘03′

column d_4 format a3 heading ‘04′

column d_5 format a3 heading ‘05′

column d_6 format a3 heading ‘06′

column d_7 format a3 heading ‘07′

column d_8 format a3 heading ‘08′

column d_9 format a3 heading ‘09′

column d_10 format a3 heading ‘10′

column d_11 format a3 heading ‘11′

column d_12 format a3 heading ‘12′

column d_13 format a3 heading ‘13′

column d_14 format a3 heading ‘14′

column d_15 format a3 heading ‘15′

column d_16 format a3 heading ‘16′

column d_17 format a3 heading ‘17′

column d_18 format a3 heading ‘18′

column d_19 format a3 heading ‘19′

column d_20 format a3 heading ‘20′

column d_21 format a3 heading ‘21′

column d_22 format a3 heading ‘22′

column d_23 format a3 heading ‘23′

column Total format 9999

column status format a8

column member format a40

column archived heading ‘Archived’ format a8

column bytes heading ‘Bytes|(MB)’ format 9999

Ttitle ‘Log Info’ skip 2

select l.group#,f.member,l.archived,l.bytes/1078576 bytes,l.status,f.type

from v$log l, v$logfile f

where l.group# = f.group#

/

Ttitle off

prompt =========================================================================================================================

Ttitle ‘Log Switch on hour basis’ skip 2

select to_char(FIRST_TIME,’DY, DD-MON-YYYY’) dia,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’00′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’00′,1,0))) d_0,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’01′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’01′,1,0))) d_1,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’02′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’02′,1,0))) d_2,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’03′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’03′,1,0))) d_3,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’04′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’04′,1,0))) d_4,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’05′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’05′,1,0))) d_5,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’06′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’06′,1,0))) d_6,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’07′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’07′,1,0))) d_7,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’08′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’08′,1,0))) d_5,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’09′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’09′,1,0))) d_9,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’10′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’10′,1,0))) d_10,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’11′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’11′,1,0))) d_11,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’12′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’12′,1,0))) d_12,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’13′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’13′,1,0))) d_13,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’14′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’14′,1,0))) d_14,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’15′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’15′,1,0))) d_15,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’16′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’16′,1,0))) d_16,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’17′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’17′,1,0))) d_17,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’18′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’18′,1,0))) d_18,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’19′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’19′,1,0))) d_19,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’20′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’20′,1,0))) d_20,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’21′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’21′,1,0))) d_21,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’22′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’22′,1,0))) d_22,

decode(sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’23′,1,0)),0,’-',sum(decode(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’HH24′),1,2),’23′,1,0))) d_23,

count(trunc(FIRST_TIME)) Total

from v$log_history

group by to_char(FIRST_TIME,’DY, DD-MON-YYYY’)

order by to_date(substr(to_char(FIRST_TIME,’DY, DD-MON-YYYY’),5,15) )

/

Ttitle off

How to check for LOGGING/NOLOGGING objects in the DB:

Two example methods of querying the database for this information:

select owner , table_name, index_name
from dba_indexes
where logging=’NO’;

select tablespace_name, logging
from dba_tablespaces

/

Kind Regards,

Francisco Munoz Alvarez

Don’t miss the global launch webcast of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5, this will be the 03/03/2009 09:00 AM (Pacific Standard Time), to assist please register here.

In the webcast you will learn about key new capabilities like:

• New Siebel 8.1.1 support, New management capabilities for Oracle Beehive and Oracle BRM
• New monitoring accelerators for Oracle Applications
• Comprehensive management for Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Service Bus
• More Oracle Database advisors, Real-time SQL monitoring, New security management, New cloning and masking automation and New change management automation
• New grid automation capabilities
• New virtualization management with an application perspective - manage both physical and virtual environments in a single console!

You can Download the OEM 10GR5  for Microsoft Windows 32-Bit and Linux x86  here.

Save this date on your agenda, and enjoy it

The big day for the APEX community is here! The new version of Apex (v3.2) is now available for download here.  (The apex_3.2.zip file size is only 97.3M)

• For New features, please refer to here.
• For New APEX 3.2 Oracle by Examples, please refer to  here.

Oracle Application Express 3.2 is supported on all Standard and Enterprise Edition versions of the Oracle database, 9.2.0.3 and higher, and specifically support the following platforms:

• Linux x86
• Microsoft Windows (32-bit)
• Mac OS X Server
• Linux on Power
• Linux x86-64
• z/Linux
• Linux Itanium
• Solaris x86
• Microsoft Windows (64-bit Itanium)
• Microsoft Windows (x64)
• Solaris Operating System (SPARC) (64 bit)
• AIX5L
• HP-UX PA-RISC
• HP Tru64 UNIX

Enjoy it

I’m very proud to announce that this morning I’ve been awarded the Oracle ACE Director   status, an Oracle ACE Director is someone who is not only recognized for past efforts and achievements but is also willing to commit themselves to ongoing participation and involvement in assisting the Oracle community.

I’d like to thank Lillian Buziak for all her help and support on this process, this will help me to intensify my activities around Asia Pacific and LAD in general.

Kind Regards, and  bye bye    welcome

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

By Francisco Munoz Alvarez

Before you start with an installation of Grid Control, I’ll recommend you to go thru the documentation to understand all the minimum requirements and the installation process. For reference purpose, I’ll resume some important points of it here.

Let’s start taking  a close look in the components of the Grid Control  and some important information:

The Management Service uploads the monitoring data received from the Management Agents to the Management Repository. The Management Repository then organizes all data collected, so that it can be retrieved by the Management Service and displayed in the Grid Control console, making our life easy. Because all data is stored in the Management Repository, it can be shared between any number of administrators accessing the Grid Control console.

Licensing Information

Although the installation media in your media pack contain many Oracle components, you are permitted to use only those components for which you have purchased licenses. Oracle Support Services does not provide support for components for which licenses have not been purchased. For more information please refer to Oracle Enterprise Manager Licensing Information.

Oracle Directory

If you choose to install Enterprise Manager Grid Control using a new database on a computer with no other Oracle software installed, Oracle Universal Installer creates an Oracle base directory for you. If Oracle software is already installed, then one or more Oracle base directories already exist. In the latter case, you must specify the Oracle base directory into which you want to install Oracle Database.

You are not required to create an Oracle base directory before installation, but you can do so if desired. You can set the ORACLE_BASE environment directory to point to this directory, which the Oracle Universal Installer will recognize.

Multiple Oracle Home Support

Enterprise Manager is installed on multiple Oracle homes within the Oracle base directory. This means that a typical Enterprise Manager Grid Control installation creates three Oracle homes in different Oracle home directories. For example, oms10g, db10g, and agent10g.

Permissions Required for Executing UTL_FILE

The management audit log package of the scheme owner uses the UTIL package. For this package to function properly, the Enterprise Manager schema user (for example, sysman) must have permissions to execute this package.

To grant permissions, run this command (where sysman is the schema user):

grant execute on utl_file to sysman;

Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification Matrix

Before you download the software, Oracle recommends you to read the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification matrix. The certification matrix shows the operating systems and browser versions on which Enterprise Manager Grid Control and Management Agent are certified.

The Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification matrix is available on Oracle Metalink at:

https://metalink.oracle.com/

Login and select the Certify tab. On the Certify page, click View Certifications by Product and select Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control, and then click Submit.

Preinstallation Requirements for Enterprise Manager

For small environments (100 monitored targets):

• 1 Host with 1 CPU (3GHz) 2 GB RAM and 2 GB Space to install the Oracle Management Service.
• 1 Host with 1 COU (3GHz) 2 GB RAM and 10 GB space to the Oracle Management Repository

Note: On small environments it’s ok to share the same host for the Oracle Management Service and Repository.

• 400 MB hard disk space to install the Oracle Management Agent for all Unix platforms and 500 MB for Windows,

For information regarding Preinstallation requirements, please refer to the OEM Documentation here.

Certified Enterprise Manager Targets

This is a resume of the list, for full list, please refer to the documentation.

Note: Oracle recommends that the target host on which you are installing the Management Agent have a static IP address and not DHCP.

Reference material: Enterprise Manager Grid Control Installation and Basic Configuration Guide.