Oracle 11g Technical Briefing

I know some of you who are currently (or in the past) working on Oracle related projects will be interested in this feedback especially access to the session slides. I am posting this hoping that it will be useful to some of you. You can also respond with your own experience of one of the Partner, Customer or User briefing and training sessions.

Background

I attened one of the Oracle 11g Technical Briefing event recently. If like me, you yawn through some of the Oracle Partner or Sales briefing event, I think I can say that this was more technical and interactively packed with some examples and Q&A triggered by an inquisitive Technical audience.

One of the main reasons I attended was to interact with current Oracle 11g users and technical team to understand their current experience and see how an upgrade to 11g will add value to some of our customers currently running on 10g Release 2.

The event

It started at 9:30 with registrations and completed at 16:30 with Questions, Answers and the usual completion of feedback forms. You may be able to guess what my feedback about the event would be after reading this piece. The sessions were lead by Robin Murgatroyd - Technology Partner Enablement Manager, Oracle Core Technologies and Richard Jacobs - Senior Principal Technologist – Oracle Platform Technology Solutions.

Topics Covered

It covered as much as possible on Oracle 11g Features, future developments and releases. These included:

High Availability - High(er) availability
Maximum Availability and new Flashback Features
Flashback Transaction
Flashback Data Archive
Data Guard
Streams
Online Maintenance

Grid and OLTP
Real Application Clusters
Automatic Storage Management
Improve Performance with Caching
Result Caches
Query Caching
Function Caching
SQL Plan Management and Optimizer Enhancements
New Optimizer Features
Statistics enhancements
Oracle TimesTen

Information Management
Partitioning
Compression
SecureFiles
Miscellaneous
New Development features
Unstructured data

Application Development
PL/SQL Enhancements
SQL Developer Enhancements

Database Security
User Management
Access Control
Data Protection
Monitoring
Vault
Audit Security

Database Manageability and Real Application Testing
Memory Management
AWR Baselines
Automatic SQL Tuning
Advisors
Upgrade Considerations
Enterprise Manager Management Packs Enhancements
VLDB Enhancements in Oracle Database 11g
Real Application Testing

Improvements in Maximize Storage
Oracle Exadata
Advanced Compression

Business Intelligence

Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g
New 11g Background Processes,
Upgrade Considerations,
Other Features Enhancements

Expectations

As you would expect from the above long list of topics, some of the sessions were followed by Hands-on examples while others were the usual theoretical whizzing-through of the slides. A few of the later sections were rushed through while some the earlier ones were very much delayed due to questions and answers from interested parties in the audience. Although I already had some knowledge of the Oracle 11g Features and have tried my hands on some of them while doing personal R&D and installation testing, the Technical Briefing session was a more useful session that gives you the opportunity to interact one-to-one with the Oracle technical personnel. As opposed to normal Training sessions where most of the Audience are there to learn, most people had long list of questions to ask the facilitators.

Attendance

There were over 40 attendees of whom most are DBAs and Technical team from other Oracle partners in the UK. The attendees included teams from the top Oracle Partners, IT, Management Consulting and Outsourcing firms in the World.

Product Releases

For those interested in Data Modelling, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler (2.0.0.57.0) was released on July 1, 2009. This is now available for Download from OTN.

There was a hint that Oracle 11g Release 2 is expected to be available sometime from September. This could mean that Oracle 11g Release 2 will be one of the major highlights at Oracle OpenWorld 2009 in October. If you may remember, all predictions for the unveiling of Oracle 11g Release 2 at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 proved to be false alarms and it has taking another one year and we are still talking of “hints”.

Interests

One of the areas I was interested in was Database Manageability and Real Application Testing. Real Application testing helps you fully assess the effect of system changes on real-world applications in the test environments before deploying the change in production.

I would encourage everyone to make out time to attend one of the Oracle Partner Events (especially the free ones) when it is announced notwithstanding your level of knowledge in the subject area. It will give you access to a platform to ask pressing questions that you would normally not get quick answers from Oracle Forums or Oracle Metalink especially in relation to product stability, experience from those already upgraded from the older release (Oracle 10g in our customer's case) and lessons learned from those who have been using it since Release 1 started shipping.

Session Notes

As you would guess, I did take a few notes during the sessions. The important question is how can I share it with you? Well, the bad news is that some of the texts I wrote on a notepad are unreadable because I was rushing them at some point. I normally would not have written a line, but I was curious to use some as reminder of questions I asked at the end. The good news is that you can find the slides for the entire presentation more useful in the usual place online at Oracle Partner Events and Training.

The slides for the event will normally be available within a week of the event. You will also find slides of similar 11g briefing held in April and other subjects that may interest you at the same place. Also useful will be the January 2009 Oracle Database 11g Product Family White Paper.

Feel free to check and read through whenever you can

Changing Segment Space Management from MANUAL to AUTO Using Enterprise Manager

You can reorganise the Tablespace online or offline to change Segment Space Management from MANUAL to AUTO

Assuming you are using Oracle 10g, the best way to do this is to Use Enterprise Manager.

1. From Enterprise Manager, select Tablespaces.
2. Select the Tablespace you want to change for Manual to Auto.
3. From the Actions drop down, select Reorganize and click GO.
4. From the next screen, click on Set Attributes.
5. Under Segment Space Management change the Manual to Auto and Click OK
6. Click Next and change the required settings for Method (Online or Offline rebuild)
7. Click Next to generate the reorganize script and sh0w recommendation
8. Click Next Schedule. To Review the script
9 Click Submit job to reorganize

One of the important things to note is that if you want to use Online reorganise, tables in the Tablespace must meet certain requirements like having integrity constraints defined on them (Primary Keys etc). If they do not meet this, it will warn you than it cannot be reorganised online. Therefore the best in this case is to use Offline reorganize.

Remember to read more on this and only do it if you know what you are doing.

Running Oracle 9i EM Console from a Web Browser

Oracle 9i Enterprise Manager Web Site

As usual, I want to share this information that a lot of DBAs and Users were not aware of. Before Oracle 10g Database Control and Grid Control, Oracle already introduced EM Management via HTTP using the Oracle 9i Enterprise Manager Website.

This instruction references the document Running the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console from a Web Browser

Apart from the Use of the Management Server via the Java Console, with Oracle 9i Enterprise Manager, an administrator is not limited to managing targets from a particular machine where the product has been installed. Instead, administrators can deploy the Enterprise Manager Web Site in order to run the Enterprise Manager Console from any supported web browser.

In order to run Oracle Enterprise Manager from a web browser, you must perform the following installation and configuration steps.

Client Install

Ensure that a supported web browser is installed on the client machines that will run web-enabled Enterprise Manager.
Supported web browsers can be equal to or above the list below:
Netscape Navigator Release 4.7 for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 98
Microsoft Internet Explorer Release 5.0 for Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows 98
Microsoft Internet Explorer Release 5.5 for Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows 98
Microsoft Internet Explorer Release 6.0 for Windows XP

Server-Side Install
Ensure that the Enterprise Manager web site component has been installed.
By default, it is installed with the Management Server under the Oracle_Home/oem_webstage/ directory. In addition, the Enterprise Manager web site automatically installs a preconfigured Oracle HTTP server to act as its web server. The Oracle HTTP server is automatically started. This is the same HTTP server that is used by the Enterprise Manager Reporting web site.
Start the Oracle HTTP Server by performing the following steps:

On Windows:
To start the Oracle HTTP Server:
From Control Panel > Administrative Tools.
Double-click Services.
Select the OracleHTTPServer_ service.
Click Start to start the Oracle HTTP Server.

On UNIX:
You can start the Oracle HTTP Server from the command line using the command:
$Oracle_Home/Apache/Apache/bin/apachectl start

To stop the Oracle HTTP Server, perform the following steps:

On Windows:
To stop the Oracle HTTP Server:
From Control Panel > Administrative Tools.
Double-click Services.
Select the OracleHTTPServer_ service.
Click Stop to stop the Oracle HTTP Server.

On UNIX:
You can stop the Oracle HTTP Server from the command line using the command:
$Oracle_Home/Apache/Apache/bin/apachectl stop

If you want to use a web server other than the default configured Oracle HTTP Server Release 1.3.22.0.0a for the browser-based Enterprise Manager, you must install and manually configure another supported web server. Additional supported web servers include:
Oracle Internet Application Server Release 1.0.2.2.2 for Sun SPARC Solaris, Windows NT, and Windows 2000
Apache Release 1.3.22 for Sun SPARC Solaris, Windows NT, and Windows 2000
Microsoft Internet Information Server Release 4.0 for Windows NT
Microsoft Internet Information Server Release 5.0 for Windows 2000

Starting OEM with Internet Explorer

It is possible to run Web Version of Enterprise Manager Console on the current Management Server.

You can do that by using http://servername:port.

The default port is 3339.
This will present you with the Enterprise Manager home Page with "Launch the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console" and "Access Oracle Enterprise Manager Reports”

If the above Page does not come up, check to see if the OracleTTPServer service is started. Ensure that this is started.

Click on the Launch Console Button for the Oracle Management Server entry.
You will see the following pop-up screen

The above will be followed by the Logon prompt below. If the Logon prompt does not come up, then check that you have Oracle Jinitiator installed.

If it is not installed, download the Jinitiator using the Download Plug-in link under Useful links on the OEM home page above. When prompted, Click open to install directly or save to install later.

After Installing Jinitiator, Click on the Launch Console Button for the Oracle Management Server entry again. This should pop-up the Logon Screen.

Logon as you would normally do with the Desktop version. This will present you with the normal Enterprise Manager Console. Note that it will look like the Standard Desktop version.

Hint. This must use Oracle Jinitator to function properly. For more information, read the Enterprise Manager Documentation on how to configure and use within Firewall. If you want to use a web server other than the default preconfigured Oracle HTTP server for browser-based Enterprise Manager, you must install and manually configure another supported web server. See OEM documentation for details.

Troubleshooting the Web Browser

This section contains information about troubleshooting the web browser.

Console Hangs

If you start the web browser, log in to the Console, but the Console hangs, and the following is displayed in JInitiator Console:@org.omg.CORBA.INITIALIZE[completed=MAYBE, reason=java.net.BindException: Cannot assign requested address]
You must perform the following steps:
Check that the JInitiator uses browser settings for the proxy.
From the Windows Start menu, click Programs-> JInitiator Control Panel. A window appears.
Choose the Proxies tab.
View the contents.
Append the domain name to the web server address you type in the browser, for example, @.us.oracle.com
Edit the browser settings and add that domain to "no proxy settings for" or edit the browser settings and choose Direct Connection to Internet.

Console Does Not Open Web Browser

If user.browser is not defined properly in the clientconfig.properties file, the Netscape Navigator will not open from within the Enterprise Manager Console. The default Enterprise Manager browser will be opened instead.

If viewing reports from the Console does not work, it may be because the Netscape Navigator is using a script and not the actual program.
You must perform the following task in order for Unix to know how to open the Netscape Navigator.

Set the following property in ClientConfig.properties:user.browser=/usr/local/packages/netscape/netscape
The user.browser should be set to the actual name of the browser, not a script.
/usr/local/bin/netscape is a script and not an executable.
user.browser should be pointed to an executable and not to a shell script.