New scripts, tools and broken links

April 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

I have some broken links in my old blog entries right now, so if you’re looking for something, then download the whole zip file from here:

I have uploaded a .zip file (for Windows) and a .tar.gz file (for Unix/Mac). The scripts are all the same with differences in the CR/LF bytes in the files and the init.sql and i.sql which have some OS specific commands in them.

I also uploaded the latest PerfSheet there where I fixed an annoying bug which complained about some missing reference files when opening the file.

I plan to fix the broken links some time between now and my retirement.

 

Filed Under: Oracle Tagged With: , ,

Running SELECT … INTO :bind_variable from SQL

April 10, 2011 By 6 Comments

I just wasted a few minutes troubleshooting one of my scripts – and realized that while SELECT … INTO :bind_variable does not error out when executed as top-level SQL, it doesn’t seem to populate the resulting bind variable:

SQL> VAR blah VARCHAR2(10)
SQL> SELECT dummy INTO :blah FROM dual;

D
-
X

SQL> print blah

BLAH
--------------------------------

 
See, the bind variable is empty…
Now, let’s run the same statement via PL/SQL engine:
 

SQL> EXEC SELECT dummy INTO :blah FROM dual;

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> print blah

BLAH
--------------------------------
X

 

…and it works…

Filed Under: Oracle Tagged With:

Reminder and Public Appearances 2011

April 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

First, a reminder – my Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting v2.0 online seminar starts next week already. Last chance to sign up, I can accept registrations until Sunday :-)

I won’t do another AOT seminar before Oct (or Nov) this year. More details and sign-up here:

I have rescheduled my Advanced SQL Tuning and Partitioning & Parallel Execution for Performance seminars too. I will do them in September/October. Unfortunately I’m too busy right now to do them before the summer.

Public Appearances:

  • I will be speaking at the UKOUG Exadata Special Event in London on 18th April
  • I have submitted a few papers for Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco as well (end of Sep/beginning of Oct), all about Exadata. Let’s see how it goes, but I’ll be there anyway, which means that I’ll probably show up at the Oracle Closed World event too!

And that’s all the travel I will do this year…

Virtual Conferences:

I’ll soon announce the 2nd EsSN virtual conference too ;-)

Free online stuff:

Perhaps in a month or so I will do another hacking session (I’ll plan 2 hours this time, 1 hour isn’t nearly enough for going deep). The topic will probably be about low-level details of SQL plan execution internals… stay tuned!

Filed Under: Cool stuff, Oracle, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

Latch contention troubleshooting case study and Flashback Database performance issues with LOBs

April 4, 2011 By 1 Comment

Steve Bamber has written up a case study of library cache latch contention troubleshooting of an Apex application with LatchProf. I’m happy that others also see the value and have had success with my new LatchProf based latch contention troubleshooting approach which takes into account both sides of the contention story (latch waiters and latch holders/blockers) as opposed to the guesswork used previously (hey if it’s shared pool latch contention – is must be about bad SQL not using bind variables …. NOT always…)

Anyway, I’m happy. If you have success stories with LatchProf, please let me know!

As a second topic of interest, Laimutis Nedzinskas has written some good notes about the effect and overhead of Flashback Database option when you are using and modifying (nocache) LOBs. We’ve exchanged some mails on this topic and yeah, my clients have sure seen some problems with this combination as well. You basically want to keep your LOBs cached when using FB database…

Filed Under: Cool stuff, Oracle Tagged With: , ,

Oracle Database XE (Express Edition) 11.2 beta is out!

April 1, 2011 By 4 Comments

Oracle Database XE (Express Edition) 11.2 Beta has been released!

Here you go:

The documentation is here (the link at oracle.com/technetwork is broken right now…)

I’m sure you want to know about it’s limitations, these are documented in the license guide above, but here are the main figures from Oracle XE 11.2 license guide:

  1. Express Edition is limited to a single instance on any server;
  2. Express Edition may be installed on a multiple CPU server, but may only be executed on one processor in any server;
  3. Express Edition may only be used to support up to 11 GB of user data (not including Express Edition system data);
  4. Express Edition may use up to 1 GB RAM of available memory.
Filed Under: Oracle Tagged With: