Feed aggregator

After table maintenance, like move or split partition, underlying indexes are marked as unusable.

This boils down to segment reorganisation, not dictionary change.

For instance :

CREATE TABLE t(x NUMBER)
PARTITION BY RANGE(x)
(PARTITION p1 VALUES LESS THAN (MAXVALUE));

CREATE INDEX i ON t (x);

INSERT INTO t VALUES (1);

ALTER TABLE T SPLIT PARTITION p1 AT 
  (100) INTO (PARTITION p2, PARTITION p3);

SELECT index_name, status 
FROM user_indexes 
WHERE index_name = 'I';

INDEX_NAME STATUS  
---------- --------
I          VALID

The partition p1 is splitted into two p2 and p3, all rows from p1 belongs to p2, p3 is created empty, no data manipulation, the index remains valid

delete from t; 
INSERT INTO t VALUES (250);

ALTER TABLE T SPLIT PARTITION p3 AT 
  (200) INTO (PARTITION p4, PARTITION p5);

SELECT index_name, status 
FROM user_indexes 
WHERE index_name = 'I';

INDEX_NAME STATUS  
---------- --------
I          VALID

Same here, all rows from p3 moved to p5, p4 is created empty, no problem

delete from t; 
INSERT INTO t VALUES (250);
INSERT INTO t VALUES (350);

ALTER TABLE T SPLIT PARTITION p5 AT 
  (300) INTO (PARTITION p6, PARTITION p7);

SELECT index_name, status 
FROM user_indexes 
WHERE index_name = 'I';
INDEX_NAME STATUS  
---------- --------
I          UNUSABLE

One row goes to p6, one row to p7, the index is invalidated.

To avoid this, use ALTER TABLE T SPLIT PARTITION p5 AT (300) INTO (PARTITION p6, PARTITION p7) UPDATE INDEXES;

What are the consequences?

INSERT INTO t VALUES (320);
1 row inserted

It does not prevent DML in this case.

select * from t where x=320;

         X
----------
       320

Execution Plan
---------------------------------------------------
 0   SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer Mode=ALL_ROWS
 1 0   PARTITION RANGE SINGLE
 2 1     TABLE ACCESS FULL SCOTT.T

The row is retrieved, but the unusable index is not used.

In some case, DML may be prevented.

alter index i rebuild;
alter table t modify (x primary key using index);
ALTER TABLE T SPLIT PARTITION p7 AT 
  (330) INTO (PARTITION p8, PARTITION p9) ;

insert into t values (450);
ORA-01502: index 'SCOTT.I' or partition of such index is in unusable state

The index can no longer be used for constraint enforcement and the INSERT fails.

If the index is partitioned, the index is not marked as unusable as a whole, only the affected (sub)partitions are marked.

Check all your indexes status in dba_indexes.status, dba_ind_partitions.status and dba_ind_subpartitions.status.

Rebuild them with alter index i rebuild, alter index i rebuild partition p and alter index i rebuild subpartition sp.

This Log Buffer Edition keeps the aim high and brings few of the best blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

3 Modes for Moving Data to the BI Applications DW from a Source Application Database.

JSON for APEX Developers.

Neelakanth Nadgir posted a useful utility that prints out various statistics about the ZFS Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC).

Obtaining Bonus Depreciation Methods for Oracle Fixed Assets.

Existing News – Java Cloud Service just got an update – WebLogic Server 12.1.3

SQL Server:

Tracking Database DDL Changes with SQLVer.

While a diminished level of control is certainly a factor to consider when contemplating migration of on-premises systems to Microsoft Azure, especially when dealing with PaaS resources such as Azure SQL Database, you have a range of techniques at your disposal that allow you to control and monitor both the status of and access to your Azure-resident services.

A Custom Execution Method – Level 19 of the Stairway to Integration Services

When a SQL Server database is operating smoothly and performing well, there is no need to be particularly aware of the transaction log, beyond ensuring that every database has an appropriate backup regime and restore plan in place.

SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Deploying Reports

MySQL:

Mo’ Data, Mo’ Problems

FromDual.en: FromDual Backup Manager for MySQL 1.2.1 has been released

Tracking MySQL query history in long running transactions

MySQL Cluster 7.4.3 RELEASE CANDIDATE now available

Streaming MariaDB backups in the cloud.

Cloud migration tools, hybrid cloud compatibility features and analytics capabilities are just a few of the accommodations database administrators are favoring nowadays. Throughout 2014, Microsoft made a number of revisions to its signature database engine SQL Server, which is a solution of choice among many DBA experts. 

Azure synchronization 
Microsoft Azure, which encompasses Microsoft's varying cloud services, is witnessing slow but persistent adoption rates among enterprises. For professionals using on-premise SQL Server deployments interested in either migrating these implementations to Azure or developing a hybrid cloud environment, Azure Active Directory Sync Services (ADD Sync) is expected to make these endeavors all the more simple. 

Compatible with both Azure Active Directory and Office 365, the tool replaces DirSync and eliminates the need for a Forefront Identity Management program, according to WindowsITPro. The source acknowledged ADD Sync offers the following enhancements:

• DBAs can now synchronize multi-forest AD ecosystems without requiring access to functions within Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2. 
• ADD Sync sets advanced mapping, provisioning and filtering rules for objects and attributes.
• The solution offers configuration options that allow Exchange organizations to connect to one ADD tenant. 

Satisfying DB2 migration needs 
Transitioning information from IBM's DB2 database engine to SQL Server is a decision some DBAs choose to make based on a number of reasons. InfoQ noted SQL Server Migration Assistant's sixth iteration was unrolled in 2014, and promises to automatically conduct migration assessment analyses, schemas and SQL statement conversions, making migration more manageable for DBAs. 

Best of all, because DB2 offers functions that SQL Server does not, SSMA for DB2 v6.0 establishes DB2-esque features in SQL Server to help easy workflow adaptation for DBAs. However, what these specific tools and applications are has not been publicly disclosed. 

Integrated analytics 
While Power BI offers a list of data analytics tools via Excel and Office 365, one of the program's components is a natural language query engine that enables users with little to no technical now-how to enter questions regarding aggregated information. 

To further synchronize back-end database information in SQL Server with this simple query function, SQL Server now comes with a Power BI Analysis Services Connector that enables users to establish a relationship between Power BI and an on-site occurrence of SQL Server Analysis Services. However, before a connection can be set, DBAs must install Active Directory Sync between Azure and their employers' on-site Active Directories. 

Microsoft's development leaders are obviously interested in enhancing SQL Server to accommodate more than just DBAs, and are trying assiduously to boost the solution's simplicity and capabilities. 

The post SQL Server gains several notable features appeared first on Remote DBA Experts.

I will use sample app from my previous blog post as the basis - Oracle Mobile Suite Service Bus REST and ADF BC SOAP. I was describing there the main steps in defining transformation from SOAP WS based on ADF BC to the REST WS interface. I will dive a little bit deeper into the same topic and will explain how to add new operation to the REST WS interface.

Here you can download updated sample application - MobileServiceBusApp_v2.zip. In order to add new operation to the REST interface, you should choose Edit REST option for REST Proxy Service in JDEV Service Bus project:


REST Binding editor will appear. Here you should define new resource - I will add /employees to return the list of all employees. New operation should be defined for resource path - /employees, operation getEmployeesListAll in my case:


You can give any meaningful name for the operation. Make sure to select correct resource path and use GET (if you want to fetch data, not update or delete). I'm getting the list of all employees, this means there will be no parameters in this case:


In the response specification tab for the getEmployeesListAll operation, make sure select JSON as the payload. You could use the option to generate sample payload - this shows what kind of result set will be constructed (based on the response XSD - HRRestProxy.xsd, I have created it in the previous post mentioned above):


Once new operation is defined in the REST wizard, we can add it to the mapping. Simply you could copy existing operation mapping to the newly created operation branch. Select new branch and provide required operation name - getEmployeesListAll in this case:


We need to edit request action first and specify empty payload - we want to fetch the list of all employees. For this we could reuse existing transformation file (REST to SOAP):


Important to remember - transformation file is created as a XQuery Map module, where you need to specify source and target types (this will allow to transform REST to SOAP and vice versa):


Request action contains empty value binding - REST variable will be initialised as empty, this will allow to use getEmployeesListAll operation with /employees path:


For response action I'm reusing the same transformation as in getEmployeeList operation - response will be parsed in the same way, using the same binding:


This is how it works - the list of all employees is fetched with /employees path (testing using Postman extension available in Google Chrome):


Previously implemented operation works as well, user could search by First Name/Last Name:

by Eric Jacobsen, Sr. Product Marketing Director, Java Cloud Service

Is your company asking you to rapidly and securely deploy and manage new business applications in the cloud?  Do you need to build a proven, innovative, collaborative, and integrated Platform as a Service?

If so, today is your lucky day!  Oracle is hosting a Cloud Platform Online Forum on Wednesday, January 28 where you can attend live online sessions and hear what IDC Research, innovative clients, and Oracle’s leading experts have to say about Platform as a Service and cloud.  Whether you are a Java or or mobile developer, an Architect, an IT operations manager, or a Business user,  there is a session for you! 

Follow this link to register for this insightful Cloud Platform Online Forum. REGISTER TODAY!

We will kick off the Forum on January 28 at 10AM PST with Robert P. Mahwold, IDC Research Program Vice President as he leads a “Cloud Platform Market Outlook” discussion with Rex Wang, Oracle Vice President.  

They will provide useful tips and solid strategies you can consider as you drive your cloud platform initiatives.  They will discuss how to decide whether public, private or hybrid cloud is best and how your organization might approach moving to the cloud.  You’ll hear IDC and Oracle best practices to developing a roadmap that will get you on your way to cloud computing.  Join us for this inspiring session.

The Middleware General Session begins at 11:15AM PST and we’ll be taking your questions live through the online chat.  7-Eleven's, Greg Haertling, Chief Enterprise Architect and Sr. Director of Software Development will you how 7 Eleven “Accelerated their Digital Transformation with Oracle’s Platform as a Service.”  He will be joined by Oracle’s Siddhartha Agarwal, Vice President, Product Management and Strategy. 

They will discuss how Platform as a Service is driving efficiencies for development, operations and LOB, including highly scalable and cost efficient development & testing in the cloud, delivery of enterprise class cloud & mobile apps, rapid integration of cloud & on-premise investments, and seamless workload portability between on-premises & cloud.

Afterward, you can watch these additional Middleware Sessions in the following tracks:

• Application Developer Track: Build, Test, Extend Cloud Applications
• Java App Performance at the Speed of Cloud: Hot Tips for Successful Cloud Development
• Jazz Up Your SaaS with Oracle PaaS Solutions
• Mobile Development in the Cloud
• Middleware IT Operations Track: Integrate, Secure, Manage your Cloud
  
• Simplify SaaS and On-premises Integration
• Extend Your Identity Management Services to the Cloud
• Top Tips for Managing Your Application PaaS
• Business User Track: Connect, Collaborate & Analyze in the Cloud
• Next-Gen Enterprise Content Management in the Cloud
• Rapid Business Process Automation in the Cloud
• Unlocking the Power of Business Analytics in Oracle Cloud

You can find the agenda for these sessions here.

There will also be a Database General Session and Database Cloud Platform sessions that you can attend as well.

I hope to see you online for this exciting Oracle Cloud Platform Online Forum.  Don’t forget to REGISTER so you can discover the right strategies for your organization's journey to the cloud!

 Last week we installed the new "SOA Bundle Patch 12.1.3.0.1 (Patch)" (19707784).
 Applying the patch went fine, no problem at all.

We have a process that is initiated by an Initiator Task, that can be started, I'm sure you're familiar with, using the link under 'Applications'. In our case, however, clicking it gives an exception in stead of opening the Task Form:

Unfortunately I have a Dutch version of my browser, but translated it states something like: "The task for the start of the process has no payload. The process instance is created and is given approval for startup."

Strange is that the task apparently is auto-submitted, since the process flows on causing, in  our process,  a  ACM Case started with empty data. A stacktrace we found in the server diagnostic log is:

[2015-01-26T09:28:58.517+01:00] [bpm_server1] [ERROR] [] [oracle.soa.services.workflow.task] [tid: [ACTIVE].ExecuteThread: '14' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'] [userId: hans] [ecid: c7fc39f4-cf66-4d25-84e0-f1fd8eb550e5-000087b2,1:31540] [APP: soa-infra] [oracle.soa.tracking.FlowId: 700014] [oracle.soa.tracking.InstanceId: 760219] [oracle.soa.tracking.SCAEntityId: 210006] [FlowId: 0000Kg_MuAf5uX05zzS4yW1KlM_O00000c] <.> exception.code:30036[[
exception.type: ERROR
exception.severity: 2
exception.name: Invalid action on workflow task or user does not have privilege to perform this action.
exception.description: Action SUBMIT on task 1b51326d-a3be-4f9f-b055-b7b365ae2f3c cannot be performed by hans.
exception.fix: Make sure that the action is valid with respect to the current state of the task or ensure that the user has privilege to perform this action on the workflow task.
 ORABPEL-30036

exception.code:30036
exception.type: ERROR
exception.severity: 2
exception.name: Invalid action on workflow task or user does not have privilege to perform this action.
exception.description: Action SUBMIT on task 1b51326d-a3be-4f9f-b055-b7b365ae2f3c cannot be performed by hans.
exception.fix: Make sure that the action is valid with respect to the current state of the task or ensure that the user has privilege to perform this action on the workflow task.

 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.impl.TaskService.performPreActionValidation(TaskService.java:8686)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.impl.TaskService.updateTaskOutcomeAndEvaluateRoutingSlip(TaskService.java:3929)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.impl.TaskService.updateTaskOutcome(TaskService.java:3725)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.impl.TaskService.updateTaskOutcome(TaskService.java:3701)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
 at org.springframework.aop.support.AopUtils.invokeJoinpointUsingReflection(AopUtils.java:318)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.invokeJoinpoint(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:183)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:150)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter.ThrowsAdviceInterceptor.invoke(ThrowsAdviceInterceptor.java:124)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.common.WorkflowFabricInitCheckAdvice.invoke(WorkflowFabricInitCheckAdvice.java:26)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.common.WorkflowServiceCacheEventAdvice.invoke(WorkflowServiceCacheEventAdvice.java:114)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.test.workflow.ExceptionTestCaseBuilder.invoke(ExceptionTestCaseBuilder.java:155)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
 at oracle.bpel.services.common.dms.MethodEventAspect.invoke(MethodEventAspect.java:70)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
 at oracle.bpel.services.common.dms.MethodPhaseEventAspect.invoke(MethodPhaseEventAspect.java:82)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
 at org.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy.invoke(JdkDynamicAopProxy.java:202)
 at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy407.updateTaskOutcome(Unknown Source)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.ejb.TaskServiceBean.updateTaskOutcome(TaskServiceBean.java:616)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.support.AopUtils.invokeJoinpointUsingReflection(AopUtils.java:310)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.invokeJoinpoint(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:182)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:149)
 at com.oracle.pitchfork.intercept.MethodInvocationInvocationContext.proceed(MethodInvocationInvocationContext.java:100)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.ejb.JpsAbsInterceptor$1.run(JpsAbsInterceptor.java:131)
 at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
 at oracle.security.jps.util.JpsSubject.doAs(JpsSubject.java:208)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.util.JpsPlatformUtil.runJaasMode(JpsPlatformUtil.java:454)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.ejb.JpsAbsInterceptor.runJaasMode(JpsAbsInterceptor.java:118)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.ejb.JpsAbsInterceptor.intercept(JpsAbsInterceptor.java:197)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.ejb.JpsInterceptor.intercept(JpsInterceptor.java:112)
 at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor853.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
 at com.oracle.pitchfork.intercept.JeeInterceptorInterceptor.invoke(JeeInterceptorInterceptor.java:109)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:171)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.support.DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor.doProceed(DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor.java:131)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.support.DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor.invoke(DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor.java:119)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:171)
 at com.bea.core.repackaged.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy413.updateTaskOutcome(Unknown Source)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.ejb.TaskServiceBean_399vcw_EOImpl.__WL_invoke(Unknown Source)
 at weblogic.ejb.container.internal.SessionRemoteMethodInvoker.invoke(SessionRemoteMethodInvoker.java:34)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.ejb.TaskServiceBean_399vcw_EOImpl.updateTaskOutcome(Unknown Source)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.ejb.TaskServiceBean_399vcw_EOImpl_WLSkel.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.ServerRequest.sendReceive(ServerRequest.java:226)
 at weblogic.rmi.cluster.ClusterableRemoteRef.invoke(ClusterableRemoteRef.java:474)
 at weblogic.rmi.cluster.ClusterableRemoteRef.invoke(ClusterableRemoteRef.java:285)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.ejb.TaskServiceBean_399vcw_EOImpl_12130_WLStub.updateTaskOutcome(Unknown Source)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.task.client.TaskServiceRemoteClient.updateTaskOutcome(TaskServiceRemoteClient.java:2213)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.client.WFClientRetryInvocationHandler.invokeTarget(WFClientRetryInvocationHandler.java:141)
 at oracle.bpel.services.workflow.client.WFClientRetryInvocationHandler.invoke(WFClientRetryInvocationHandler.java:80)
 at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy579.updateTaskOutcome(Unknown Source)
 at oracle.bpm.workspace.model.common.ExecutionBean.approveTask(ExecutionBean.java:311)
 at oracle.bpm.workspace.model.common.ExecutionBean.handleExternalInstanceExecution(ExecutionBean.java:185)
 at oracle.bpm.workspace.model.application.ApplicationBean.execute(ApplicationBean.java:193)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
 at com.sun.el.parser.AstValue.invoke(AstValue.java:254)
 at com.sun.el.MethodExpressionImpl.invoke(MethodExpressionImpl.java:302)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.MethodExpressionMethodBinding.invoke(MethodExpressionMethodBinding.java:46)
 at com.sun.faces.application.ActionListenerImpl.processAction(ActionListenerImpl.java:102)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCommand.broadcast(UIXCommand.java:190)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCollection.broadcast(UIXCollection.java:189)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCollection.broadcast(UIXCollection.java:170)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCollection.broadcast(UIXCollection.java:189)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCollection.broadcast(UIXCollection.java:170)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCollection.broadcast(UIXCollection.java:189)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXCollection.broadcast(UIXCollection.java:170)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXInclude.broadcast(UIXInclude.java:111)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent$1.run(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:168)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent._processPhase(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:510)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent.broadcast(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:171)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXInclude.broadcast(UIXInclude.java:115)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.event.ProxyEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(ProxyEvent.java:72)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXRegion.broadcast(UIXRegion.java:124)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.event.ProxyEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(ProxyEvent.java:72)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXRegion.broadcast(UIXRegion.java:124)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent$1.run(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:168)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent._processPhase(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:510)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent.broadcast(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:171)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXInclude.broadcast(UIXInclude.java:111)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent$1.run(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:168)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent._processPhase(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:510)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent.broadcast(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:171)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXInclude.broadcast(UIXInclude.java:115)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent$1.run(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:168)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent._processPhase(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:510)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent.broadcast(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:171)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXInclude.broadcast(UIXInclude.java:111)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.UIXComponent.broadcastInContext(UIXComponent.java:364)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.component.WrapperEvent.broadcastWrappedEvent(WrapperEvent.java:82)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent$1.run(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:168)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent._processPhase(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:510)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.ContextSwitchingComponent.broadcast(ContextSwitchingComponent.java:171)
 at oracle.adf.view.rich.component.fragment.UIXInclude.broadcast(UIXInclude.java:115)
 at javax.faces.component.UIViewRoot.broadcastEvents(UIViewRoot.java:794)
 at javax.faces.component.UIViewRoot.processApplication(UIViewRoot.java:1259)
 at oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl._invokeApplication(LifecycleImpl.java:1074)
 at oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl._executePhase(LifecycleImpl.java:402)
 at oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.execute(LifecycleImpl.java:225)
 at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:593)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:280)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:254)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:136)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:346)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.TailFilter.doFilter(TailFilter.java:25)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.help.web.rich.OHWFilter.doFilter(OHWFilter.java:189)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.adf.model.servlet.ADFBindingFilter.doFilter(ADFBindingFilter.java:192)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.webapp.rich.RegistrationFilter.doFilter(RegistrationFilter.java:105)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.webapp.TrinidadFilterImpl$FilterListChain.doFilter(TrinidadFilterImpl.java:502)
 at oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.activedata.AdsFilter.doFilter(AdsFilter.java:60)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.webapp.TrinidadFilterImpl$FilterListChain.doFilter(TrinidadFilterImpl.java:502)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.webapp.TrinidadFilterImpl._doFilterImpl(TrinidadFilterImpl.java:327)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.webapp.TrinidadFilterImpl.doFilter(TrinidadFilterImpl.java:229)
 at org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.webapp.TrinidadFilter.doFilter(TrinidadFilter.java:92)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.adf.library.webapp.LibraryFilter.doFilter(LibraryFilter.java:202)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter$1.run(JpsAbsFilter.java:137)
 at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
 at oracle.security.jps.util.JpsSubject.doAsPrivileged(JpsSubject.java:315)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.util.JpsPlatformUtil.runJaasMode(JpsPlatformUtil.java:460)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter.runJaasMode(JpsAbsFilter.java:120)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter.doFilter(JpsAbsFilter.java:217)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsFilter.doFilter(JpsFilter.java:81)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter$1.run(JpsAbsFilter.java:137)
 at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
 at oracle.security.jps.util.JpsSubject.doAsPrivileged(JpsSubject.java:315)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.util.JpsPlatformUtil.runJaasMode(JpsPlatformUtil.java:460)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter.runJaasMode(JpsAbsFilter.java:120)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter.doFilter(JpsAbsFilter.java:217)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsFilter.doFilter(JpsFilter.java:81)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.dms.servlet.DMSServletFilter.doFilter(DMSServletFilter.java:220)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter$1.run(JpsAbsFilter.java:137)
 at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
 at oracle.security.jps.util.JpsSubject.doAsPrivileged(JpsSubject.java:315)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.util.JpsPlatformUtil.runJaasMode(JpsPlatformUtil.java:460)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter.runJaasMode(JpsAbsFilter.java:120)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsAbsFilter.doFilter(JpsAbsFilter.java:217)
 at oracle.security.jps.ee.http.JpsFilter.doFilter(JpsFilter.java:81)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestEventsFilter.doFilter(RequestEventsFilter.java:27)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:79)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.wrapRun(WebAppServletContext.java:3436)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:3402)
 at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
 at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:120)
 at weblogic.servlet.provider.WlsSubjectHandle.run(WlsSubjectHandle.java:57)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.doSecuredExecute(WebAppServletContext.java:2285)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.securedExecute(WebAppServletContext.java:2201)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:2179)
 at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1572)
 at weblogic.servlet.provider.ContainerSupportProviderImpl$WlsRequestExecutor.run(ContainerSupportProviderImpl.java:255)
 at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:311)
 at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:263)

]]

I tried it with a "stripped-down-to-the-bone" simple BPM project with only a simple HumanTask based on a simple DataObject with only 2 string attributes. And a auto-generated taskform. And again the fault occurs. When we rollback the patch the initiator functionality work again.

So be carefull applying this patch when using Initiator Tasks.

A recent thread on the OTN database forum supplied some code that seemed to show that In-memory DB made no difference to performance when compared with the traditional row-store mechanism and asked why not.  (It looked as if the answer was that almost all the time for the tests was spent returning the 3M row result set to the SQL*Plus client 15 rows at a time.)

The responses on the thread led to the question:  Why would the in-memory (column-store) database be faster than simply having the (row-store) data fully cached in the buffer cache ?

Maria Colgan has addressed this question in part 3 of her series on In-Memory Database (see catalogue below), but I thought I’d repeat the basic ideas with a few imaginative numbers thrown in to give a better flavour of what’s going on. So imagine you have a table sized at 100GB, with 100 columns of data where every column holds data of a similar size and pattern; and want to execute a query of the form: select {list of columns} from big_table where colX >=  {some constant}.

Traditional Tablescan (approximation) with table fully cached

For each block of the 100GB, Oracle has to acquire the “cache buffers chains” latch, pin the block, drop the latch, and scan the block testing each row, then acquire the latch, unpin the block, and drop the latch.  Scanning the block requires a walk through the row directory and, for each row pointer, jumping to the correct location in the block for the row, stepping along the row one column at a time to get to the correct row, and then checking the column  value. If the column matches the predicate extract, format and return the required columns from that row.

It’s a lot of memory to scan, in a large number of small steps, involving a lot of latching and pinning – which translates into a lot of CPU. On the plus side, although it’s very expensive to identify the required rows, it’s very cheap to construct and return a row once you’ve identified it.

In-memory scan (approximation)

1. Given the way I’ve described the table (100GB, 100 similar columns), Oracle can recreate it in memory as 100 lists of 1GB each; so we can identify the rows we want by scanning one of those lists and applying the predicate – so only 1GB of (fairly contigious) memory to scan, rather than 100GB, and virtually no latching and pinning to find that memory, and no jumping around following pointers and counting along rows.
2. But it’s probably NOT 1GB of memory to scan, because Oracle has some compression/deduplication methods that it can apply to the data that often reduces the memory requirement by a factor of four of five – so perhaps it’s only 250 MB of memory to scan.
3. But Oracle breaks large lists into chunks, so rather than 250MB of contiguous memory, it’s likely to be 250 chunks of 1MB; and as part of the description of each chunk Oracle records the lowest and highest value in the chunk; [ed:  Christian Antognini says that the metadata list every distinct value for the chunk] so it can check the predicate against the boundary values on the chunk and be in a position to discard entire chunks without looking at their content. So, depending on the actual content and pattern of the data, we may examine only a handful of chunks in detail, dropping the scan from 250MB to, perhaps, 10MB.
4. And we still haven’t finished there, because the code that handles the column-store is able to take advantage of the SIMD (Single Instruction,  Multiple Data) operations in the CPU to check the predicate against 4, or possibly even 8, values simultaneously at a speed matching a single column comparison that has to be used for the traditional cached row-store. (Given the way that Oracle  (probably) handles the compression, I suspect that this final advantage is only significant for range-based predicates – but that’s purely conjectural).

So the huge benefit you get from In-Memory column store, compared to “fully cached row-store”  is that you are likely to scan far less memory to identify the rows that match your predicate, and do it with far less “infrastructure” activity like latching and pinning. The potential saving in CPU usage is huge.

There is, of course, a penalty to pay. As you identify the rows of interest you can (in effect) construct a bitmap representing the position of those rows in the table (and if you have predicates on more than 1 column you can use bitmap operations on the individual column bitmaps to identify the rows you want in the final result) but then you have to construct the row that goes into the result set. If your query is interested in just 5 columns that means using the bitmap to locate the correct entry from each of 5 separate column lists; if your query is interested in 99 column that means extracting the correct entry from each of 99 separate column lists. Identifying the rows you want can be very  quick, building the final result may be relatively slow.

Soundbite summary

• Using the In-memory Database, you can identify the rows you want very quickly but it’s relatively slow to reconstruct them.
• Using a fully cached traditional row-store, it’s relatively slow to identify the rows you want, but once you’ve found them you spend no time reconstructing them.

Bear in mind that this is an extremely simplified analysis and ignores all sorts of details about read-consistency, the probability of physical reads, the probability of scanning blocks instead of scanning chunks, and so on; my focus is only on the type of activity that differentiates row-store handling from column-store handling when all the data is in memory so that you can have some appreciation of why the benefits available from In-memory DB can vary with the pattern of the data and the way you use it.

Catalogue of blog posts by Maria Colgan and Andy Rivenes:

• Getting started with Oracle Database In-Memory Part I – Installing & Enabling
• Getting started with Oracle Database In-Memory Part II – In-Memory Population
• Getting started with Oracle Database In-Memory Part III – Querying The IM Column Store
• Getting started with Oracle Database In-Memory Part IV – Joins In The IM Column Store
• Oracle Database In-Memory on RAC – Part I
• Oracle Database In-Memory on RAC – Part 2
• Oracle Database In-Memory on RAC – Part 3

Other articles on In-memory DB:

• Oracle white-paper on In-Memory database (Oct 2014)
• Christian Antognini’s blog item on the Duplicate clause in RAC.
• Christian Antognini’s presentation (slideshare) on In-memory DB and the optimizer
• James Morle’s blog item on technical viewpoint of In-memory DB and CPU reporting/licensing
• Tim Hall’s introduction to In-memory database
• Tanel Poder’s article on In-Memory internals part 1
• Tanel Poder’s presentation (slideshare) on In-memory DB
• Bertrand Drouvot’s blog post on In-memory distribution on RAC
• Bertrand Drouvot’s blog post on In-memory, RAC, and multi-tenant
• Bertrand Drouvot’s blog post on In-memory, multi-tenant and preferred services on RAC

 

We are pleased to announce that Gitora, the free version control tool for PL/SQL, is available for download.

Oracle E-Business Suite environments may be vulnerable due to excessive privileges granted on the SYS.DUAL table to PUBLIC.  This security issue has been resolved in the January 2015 Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU).

On January 24, Oracle published additional information regarding this security issue in My Oracle Support Note 1964164.1.  Revoking of these privileges may cause “subtle timestamp corruptions” in the database unless database patch 19393542 is applied.

Integrigy has updated the information we provided on how to validate if this security flaw exists in your environment and how to remediate the issue based on the additional information provided by Oracle.  The remediation can be done without applying the January 2015 CPU, but requires the database patch to be applied first.

For more information, see Integrigy’s in-depth security analysis "Oracle EBS SYS.DUAL PUBLIC Privileges Security Issue Analysis (CVE-2015-0393)" for more information.

Tags: VulnerabilityOracle E-Business SuiteSecurity AnalysisOracle Critical Patch Updates

I’m writing this in my hotel room in downtown San Francisco, with my colleague Francesco Tisiot flying in tonight and US colleagues Jordan Meyer, Daniel Adams and Andy Rocha travelling down tomorrow and Monday for next week’s BIWA Summit 2015. The Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics SIG is a part of IOUG and this year also hosts the 11th Annual Oracle Spatial Summit, giving us three days of database-centric content touching most areas of the Oracle BI+DW stack. 

Apart from our own sessions (more in a moment), BIWA Summit 2015 has a great-line up of speakers from the Oracle Database and also Hadoop worlds, featuring Cloudera’s Doug Cutting and Oracle’s Paul Sondereggar and with most of the key names from the Oracle BI+DW community including Christian Screen, Tim & Dan Vlamis, Tony Heljula, Kevin McGinley and Stewart Bryson, Brendan Tierney, Eric Helmer, Kyle Hailey and Rene Kuipers. From a Rittman Mead perspective we’ve delivering a number of sessions over the days, details below:

• Jordan Meyer, “Intro to Data Science for Oracle Professionals” – Tuesday Jan 27th, 9.00am – 9.50am
• Mark Rittman, “Bringing Oracle Big Data SQL to OBIEE and ODI” – Wednesday Jan 28th 11.00am – 11.50am
• Daniel Adams & Andy Rocha, “OBIEE Data Visualization: The How and the Why” – Wednesday Jan 28th, 1.00pm – 1.50pm (pt.1) and 2.00 – 2.50pm (pt.2)
• Francesco Tisiot, “Oracle BI Cloud Service : What is It, and Where Will it Be Useful?” – Wednesday Jan 28th, 4.00pm – 4.50pm
• Mark Rittman, “End-to-End Hadoop Development using OBIEE, ODI and Oracle Big Data” – Thursday Jan 29th, 9.30am – 10.20am

Rittman Mead are also proud to be one of the media sponsors for the BIWS Summit 2015, so look out for blogs and other activity from us, and if you’re coming to the event we’ll look forward to seeing you there.

It’s winter. I can tell. First, it’s still dark. Secondly it’s bitterly cold.
Standing on the platform at Milton Keynes Central, it would appear that we now have further evidence that being late is a train driver’s prerogative.
Hiking up the season ticket price is obviously the prerogative of train operators.
The last time I spent this much money to feel this cold, I found myself standing on the top of a mountain in the South Island of New Zealand.

Unlike the “Great” British Railway, installation and configuration of an Oracle Developer Day Appliance is somewhat simpler, not to mention more reliable.

What I’m going to cover here is the installation of a Developer Day Appliance in Virtual Box as well as some settings you might want to tweak to gain access to the Appliance Database from the Host OS.

Environment, Pre-Requisites and terminology

As always, when we’re talking about virtualization, there are going to be mentions of :

• The Host – the machine and Operating System on which the virtualization software (in this case VirtualBox) is running
• The Guest – the system that’s running inside the Virtual Machine

These instructions should work, irrespective of the Host OS we’re using.
In my case, I’m using Mint 17 as my Host with VirtualBox 4.3.20 installed.

If you need installation instructions for VirtualBox, you can find them here for Debian based systems or here for Windows.

Alternatively, you can check the fairly comprehensive documentation on the VirtualBox website.

As for the Developer Day Image itself, I’m going to be using the Database Application Development VM.
The system requirements for this are :

• 2GB RAM for the Guest OS
• 22GB of disk space (15 GB for the Image plus 5.6 GB for the download file)

One other point to note – the latest incarnation of the Database Application Development VM has port-forwarding for port 1521 enabled by default.
This is the port for the TNS listener on the database in the Image. If you already have an Oracle instance running on your host, you’ll probably want to ensure that either, it’s not using 1521 for TNS connections, or that you disable the port forwarding on the Developer Day Image once you’ve installed it.
We’ll come back to this port-forwarding malarkey in a bit.

Getting the software

Open your browser and head over to Oracle’s Pre-Build Developer VMs page.

This is part of Oracle’s Technet site and you will need a Technet account to download the software, if you don’t already have one. However, registration is free and relatively painless.

Have a look through the available images and select the one that contains the stuff your interested in.
In my case, I want to have a play around with the 12c Database, hence the choice of the Database Application Development VM.

NOTE : this page itself may be a bit out-of-date in terms of what each VM contains, so click the Downloads and Instructions link next to the VM you may be interested in. This will give you a more accurate inventory of what software the VM contains.

Anyway, once you’ve selected your VM, simply hit the Download icon, enter your Technet credentials and – depending on your connection speed – find something else to do for a bit.
Eventually, you will have a file in your Downloads directory called :

Oracle_DB_Developer_VM_new.ova

In case you were wondering, .ova files are Open VirtualBox Format. Creating a VM with this type of file is slightly different to setting one up for a .iso …

Setting up the VM

Start the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager on your machine and from the menu, select File/Import Appliance

Appliance to Import is the file you’ve just downloaded :

Appliance Settings are all already completed so just click Import :

…and agree to the License

You’ll then see a progress bar….

And finally, you’ll see the new VM listed in VirtualBox Manager.

Now, let’s power it up and see what happens….

Once you see the desktop, click the big armoured penguin icon…

…and wait…

your patience will be rewarded with the introduction page to the hands-on sessions included in the image :

We can check that the database is up using the copy of SQLDeveloper available in the VM ( a connection for SYSTEM is already there).

Alternatively, we could just open a Terminal and login via SQL*Plus as SYSTEM ( all of the passwords are initially set to oracle).

Actually, that’s probably a point worth reiterating :

All of the accounts that you are likely to want to access on this VM have their password set to “oracle”

Either way connecting as SYSTEM will establish that the database is up. A couple of further queries will confirm the version of the Database and of APEX…

select banner
from v$version
where banner LIKE 'Oracle Database%'
union
select comp_name||' Version '||version as banner
from dba_registry
where comp_id = 'APEX'
/

BANNER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle Application Express Version 4.2.5.00.08
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

… as well as the identity and current status of the database itself :

select db.name, ins.host_name,
    ins.status, ins.logins,
    db.log_mode 
FROM v$database db, v$instance ins
/

NAME	  HOST_NAME							   STATUS	LOGINS	   LOG_MODE
--------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ ---------- ------------
CDB1	  localhost.localdomain 					   OPEN 	ALLOWED    NOARCHIVELOG

Some Housekeeping Time and Date

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the time and date is defaulted to US Pacific Standard time (I think).
If you want to change this :

Go to the Applicationsmenu and select Utilities/Settings/Time and Date,
Click the Unlock button and then set the time and date that’s appropriate for your location.
Finally, click the Lock button.

Region and Language (as well as Keyboard)

If, like me, you have trouble remembering where the US keyboard layout puts the “@” symbol (not to mention the “|”) then you’ll probably want to re-configure the Keyboard settings to your locality, along with the Region settings :

Go to Applications/System Tools/Settings/Regions & Language.

To change the region settings, Hit the “+” button under Input Sources and select the appropriate region.
To change the Keyboard itself, first highlight the current Input Source – i.e. English (US) – then click add to add the source you require.
Once this is done, Highlight the English (US) entry again and hit the “-” button to remove it.

For Region Changes to take effect, the system will need to be restarted. The keyboard change, however, should take effect immediately.

Setting the APEX user not to Expire

Given that these images were initially created for Developer Day events, it is perhaps not surprising that the expiration of the APEX_PUBLIC_USER password after 6 months was not a primary consideration.
If you want to avoid this little inconvenience, then the simplest way is to change the DEFAULT profile, to which all database accounts in the image are assigned :

alter profile default limit password_life_time unlimited;

NOTE: In a production environment you’d probably want to take a bit more care here. However, the Developer Day Images are purely for research.

Accessing the Database running on the VM from the Host Accessing the Database via TNS

As mentioned previously, port-forwarding of 1521 (The default SQL*Net port) is already pre-configured.
Therefore, assuming that you have an Oracle Client installed, you can connect to the database on the Guest (whilst it’s running) from the Host as follows :

sqlplus system/oracle@0.0.0.0:1521/cdb1

Once you have a SQL prompt, you can check to see that you now have access to Oracle in all it’s 12c splendour…

select banner from v$version;

BANNER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
PL/SQL Release 12.1.0.2.0 - Production
CORE	12.1.0.2.0	Production
TNS for Linux: Version 12.1.0.2.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 12.1.0.2.0 - Production

For convenience, you can always add the following entries to $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora on your host :

CDB1 =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 0.0.0.0)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = cdb1)
    )
  )
  
ORCL =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 0.0.0.0)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = orcl)
    )
  )
 

Accessing APEX

We can repeat the simple port-forwarding trick to make the APEX home page available on the Host as well.

In Virtual Box Manager, with the Developer Day VM highlighted, click Settings
Select Network
Click the Advanced arrow

Click the Port Forwarding button
Now Click the Add icon on the right-hand side of the window and enter the following values for each of the fields :

• Name : http
• Protocol : TCP
• Host Port : 8080
• Guest Port : 8080

Note : once again, you’ll probably want to change these values if you have a local instance of Oracle running on the Host.

Anyway, your rules should now look like this :

You can now hit the APEX main page from a browser in the host by entering :

http://localhost:8080/apex

Note – the credentials for the ADMIN user for APEX are :

Workspace : INTERNAL
Username : ADMIN
Password : oracle

And there you have it, a quick and simple (not to mention, cheap) way to get Oracle 12c installed on your local machine. Now, if only they’d do the equivalent for getting from Milton Keynes to London.

Filed under: Oracle, VirtualBox Tagged: acessing apex, connecting to a guest database from the host, default passwords, Developer Day image, keyboard configuration, port forwarding, region settings, VirtualBox, VM

Seamless cloning of an application stack is an outstanding goal. Seamless cloning of an application stack including the full production database, application server, and webserver in a few minutes with next to zero disk space used or configuration required is the best goal since Alexander Graham Bell decided he wanted a better way tell Mr. Watson to “come here.”

So in the spirit of discovery, I’ve installed Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) 2.0 and Oracle Application Express (APEX) 4.2 to a source Oracle database environment in my home Delphix setup. I’m going to:

1. Sync the ORDS binaries with Delphix as a file source
2. Sync the APEX binaries with Delphix as a file source
3. Sync the ORCL database with Delphix as a database source
4. Provision a clone of the ORCL database to a target linux system as DBDEV
5. Provision a clone of the ORDS and APEX binaries to the target system

Some of you may be scratching your head right now thinking “What is Delphix?” I’ve written a few words on it in the past, and Kyle Hailey has quite a bit of information about it along with other links such as Jonathan Lewis explaining Delphix at OOW14.

If you’re into the whole brevity thing, here’s a short summation: Delphix is a technology you can sync nearly any kind of source data into and provision on demand from any point in time to any target, near instantly and at the click of a button, all without incurring additional disk space. What that means for your business is incredibly efficient development, faster time to market, and improved application quality. And if you want to see this in action, you can try it for yourself with Delphix Developer Edition.

Let’s use Delphix to deploy APEX to a target system.

Step 1. A look at the source

On the source environment (linuxsource, 172.16.180.11) I have an 11.2.0.1 database called “orcl”.

In the /u01/app/oracle/product directory are ./apex and ./ords, holding the APEX and ORDS installations respectively.

When ORDS is started, I am able to see the APEX magic by browsing to http://172.16.180.11:8080/apex and logging in to my InvestPLUS workspace. Here’s the pre-packaged apps I have installed:

Sweet. Let’s check out what I have set up in Delphix.

Step 2. Check out the Delphix Sources

You can see that I have the ORCL database (named InvestPLUS DB Prod), Oracle REST Data Services, and APEX homes all loaded into Delphix here:

When I say they’re loaded into Delphix, I mean they’ve been synced. The ORCL database is synced over time with RMAN and archive logs and compressed about 3x on the base snapshot and 60x on the incremental changes. The /u01/app/oracle/product/apex and /u01/app/oracle/product/ords directories have also been synced with Delphix and are kept up to date over time. From these synced copies we can provision one or more Virtual Databases (VDBs) or Virtual Files (vFiles) to any target we choose.

Step 3. Deploy

Provisioning both VDBs and vFiles is very quick with Delphix and takes only a few button clicks. Just check out my awesomely dramatized video of the provisioning process. For this demo, first I provisioned a clone of the ORCL database to linuxtarget (172.16.180.12) with the name DBDEV.

Next I provisioned a copy of the ORDS home to the target at the same location as the source (/u01/app/oracle/product/ords) with the name ORDS Dev:

And lastly I provisioned a copy of the APEX home to the target at the same location as the source (/u01/app/oracle/product/apex) with the name APEX Dev:

In hindsight I probably could have just synced /u01/app/oracle/product and excluded the ./11.2.0 directory to get both ORDS and APEX, but hey, I like modularity. By having them separately synced, I can rewind or refresh either one on my target system.

Here’s the final provisioned set of clones on the target (you can see them under the “InvestPLUS Dev/QA” group on the left nav):

Step 4. Check out the target system

Let’s see what all this looks like on the target system. Looking at the /u01/app/oracle/product directory on the target shows us the same directories as the source:

I’ve also got the DBDEV database up on the target:

To give you a glimpse of how Delphix provisioned the clone, check this out. Here’s a “df -h” on the linuxtarget environment:

What this is showing us is that the APEX Home, ORDS Home, and DBDEV clone are all being served over NFS from Delphix (172.16.180.3). This is how Delphix performs a clone operation, and why we call it virtual: data is synced and compressed from sources into Delphix, and when you provision a clone Delphix creates virtual sets of files that are presented over the wire to the target system. You can think of Delphix as a backup destination for source databases/filesystems, and as network attached storage for targets. The clever bit is that Delphix uses the same storage for both purposes, with no block copies at all unless data is changed on the target VDBs or vFiles. Cool, right? On a side note and for the curious, Delphix can use dNFS as well for your Oracle VDBs.

Step 5. Reconfigure ORDS

On the source environment, ORDS is configured to connect to the ORCL database. On the target we’re going to the DBDEV database. So the one quick change we’ll need to make is to change the SID in the /u01/app/oracle/product/ords/config/apex/defaults.xml file.

[delphix@linuxtarget ords]$ vi config/apex/defaults.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">
<properties>
<comment>Saved on Wed Jan 14 08:38:04 EST 2015</comment>
<entry key="cache.caching">false</entry>
<entry key="cache.directory">/tmp/apex/cache</entry>
<entry key="cache.duration">days</entry>
<entry key="cache.expiration">7</entry>
<entry key="cache.maxEntries">500</entry>
<entry key="cache.monitorInterval">60</entry>
<entry key="cache.procedureNameList"/>
<entry key="cache.type">lru</entry>
<entry key="db.hostname">localhost</entry>
<entry key="db.password">@050784E0F3307C86A62BF4C58EE984BC49</entry>
<entry key="db.port">1521</entry>
<entry key="db.sid">DBDEV</entry>
<entry key="debug.debugger">false</entry>
<entry key="debug.printDebugToScreen">false</entry>
<entry key="error.keepErrorMessages">true</entry>
<entry key="error.maxEntries">50</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.DriverType">thin</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.InactivityTimeout">1800</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.InitialLimit">3</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.MaxConnectionReuseCount">1000</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.MaxLimit">10</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.MaxStatementsLimit">10</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.MinLimit">1</entry>
<entry key="jdbc.statementTimeout">900</entry>
<entry key="log.logging">false</entry>
<entry key="log.maxEntries">50</entry>
<entry key="misc.compress"/>
<entry key="misc.defaultPage">apex</entry>
<entry key="security.disableDefaultExclusionList">false</entry>
<entry key="security.maxEntries">2000</entry>
</properties>

Note the only line I had to change was this one: <entry key=”db.sid”>DBDEV</entry>

After the config change, I just had to start ORDS on the target:

[delphix@linuxtarget ords]$ java -jar apex.war
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:22 PM oracle.dbtools.standalone.Standalone execute
INFO: NOTE:

Standalone mode is designed for use in development and test environments. It is not supported for use in production environments.

Jan 21, 2015 1:18:22 PM oracle.dbtools.standalone.Standalone execute
INFO: Starting standalone Web Container in: /u01/app/oracle/product/ords/config/apex
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:22 PM oracle.dbtools.standalone.Deployer deploy
INFO: Will deploy application path = /u01/app/oracle/product/ords/config/apex/apex/WEB-INF/web.xml
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:22 PM oracle.dbtools.standalone.Deployer deploy
INFO: Deployed application path = /u01/app/oracle/product/ords/config/apex/apex/WEB-INF/web.xml
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:22 PM oracle.dbtools.common.config.file.ConfigurationFolder logConfigFolder
INFO: Using configuration folder: /u01/app/oracle/product/ords/config/apex
Configuration properties for: apex
cache.caching=false
cache.directory=/tmp/apex/cache
cache.duration=days
cache.expiration=7
cache.maxEntries=500
cache.monitorInterval=60
cache.procedureNameList=
cache.type=lru
db.hostname=localhost
db.password=******
db.port=1521
db.sid=DBDEV
debug.debugger=false
debug.printDebugToScreen=false
error.keepErrorMessages=true
error.maxEntries=50
jdbc.DriverType=thin
jdbc.InactivityTimeout=1800
jdbc.InitialLimit=3
jdbc.MaxConnectionReuseCount=1000
jdbc.MaxLimit=10
jdbc.MaxStatementsLimit=10
jdbc.MinLimit=1
jdbc.statementTimeout=900
log.logging=false
log.maxEntries=50
misc.compress=
misc.defaultPage=apex
security.disableDefaultExclusionList=false
security.maxEntries=2000
db.username=APEX_PUBLIC_USER
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:58 PM oracle.dbtools.common.config.db.ConfigurationValues intValue
WARNING: *** jdbc.MaxLimit in configuration apex is using a value of 10, this setting may not be sized adequately for a production environment ***
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:58 PM oracle.dbtools.common.config.db.ConfigurationValues intValue
WARNING: *** jdbc.InitialLimit in configuration apex is using a value of 3, this setting may not be sized adequately for a production environment ***
Using JDBC driver: Oracle JDBC driver version: 11.2.0.3.0
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:59 PM oracle.dbtools.rt.web.SCListener contextInitialized
INFO: Oracle REST Data Services initialized
Oracle REST Data Services version : 2.0.10.289.08.09
Oracle REST Data Services server info: Grizzly/1.9.49

Jan 21, 2015 1:18:59 PM com.sun.grizzly.Controller logVersion
INFO: GRIZZLY0001: Starting Grizzly Framework 1.9.49 - 1/21/15 1:18 PM
Jan 21, 2015 1:18:59 PM oracle.dbtools.standalone.Standalone execute
INFO: http://localhost:8080/apex/ started.

Step 6. Victory

With ORDS started, I’m now able to access APEX on my target and log in to see my applications.

Conclusion (or Step 7. Celebrate)

The cloned ORDS and APEX homes on the target and the DBDEV database are 100% full clones of their respective sources; block for block copies if you will. No matter how big the source data, these clones are done with a few clicks and takes only a few minutes, barely any disk space (in the megabytes, not gigabytes), and the clones can be refreshed from the source or rewound in minutes.

Delphix is capable of deploying not just database clones, but the whole app stack. Because Delphix stores incremental data changes (based on a retention period you decide), applications can be provisioned from any point in time or multiple points in time. And you can provision as many clones as you want to as many targets as you want, CPU and RAM on the targets permitting. All in all a fairly powerful capability and one I’ll be experimenting on quite a bit to see how the process and benefits can be improved. I’m thinking multi-VDB development deployments and a rewindable QA suite next!

The post Deploying Application Express with Delphix appeared first on Oracle Alchemist.

In my last post, I wrote about the tension between learning, with the emphasis on the needs and progress of individual human learners, and education, which is the system by which we try to guarantee learning to all but which we often subvert in our well-meaning but misguided attempts to measure whether we are delivering that learning. I spent a lot of time in that post exploring research by Gallup regarding the workplace performance of adults, various dimensions of personal wellbeing, and the links of both to each other and to college experiences. One of Gallup’s findings were that workers who are disengaged with their work are less healthy. They are more likely to get clinically depressed, more likely to get heart conditions, and more likely to die young. I then made a connection between disengaged adults and disengaged students. What I left implicit was that if being disengaged as an adult is bad for one’s health, it stands to reason that being disengaged as a child is also bad for one’s health. We could be literally making our children sick with schooling.

I am in the midst of reading Anya Kamenetz’s new book The Test. It has convinced me that I need to take some time making the connection explicit.

In that previous post, I wrote,

Also, people who love their jobs are more likely to both stay working longer and live longer. In a study George Gallup conducted in the 1950s,

…men who lived to see 95 did not retire until they were 80 years old on average. Even more remarkable, 93% of these men reported getting a great deal of satisfaction out of the work they did, and 86% reported having fun doing their job.

Conversely, a 2008 study the company found a link between employee disengagement and depression:

We measured their engagement levels and asked them if they had ever been diagnosed with depression. We excluded those who reported that they had been diagnosed with depression from our analysis. When we contacted the remaining panel members in 2009, we again asked them if they had been diagnosed with depression in the last year. It turned out that 5% of our panel members (who had no diagnosis of depression in 2008) had been newly diagnosed with depression. Further, those who were actively disengaged in their careers in 2008 were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression over the next year. While there are many factors that contribute to depression, being disengaged at work appears to be a leading indicator of a subsequent clinical diagnosis of depression.

Which is obviously bad for employer and employee alike.

In some cases, Gallup went all in with physiological studies. For example, they “recruited 168 employees and studied their engagement, heart rate, stress levels, and various emotions throughout the day,” using heart rate monitors, saliva samples, and handheld devices that surveyed employees on their activities and feelings of the moment at various points in the day.

After reviewing all of these data, it was clear that when people who are engaged in their jobs show up for work, they are having an entirely different experience than those who are disengage. [Emphasis in original.] For those who were engaged, happiness and interest throughout the day were significantly higher. Conversely, stress levels were substantially higher for those who were disengaged. Perhaps most strikingly, disengaged workers’ stress levels decreased and their happiness increased toward the end of the workday….[P]eople with low engagement…are simply waiting for the workday to end.

From here, the authors go on to talk about depression and heart attacks and all that bad stuff that happens to you when you hate that job. But there was one other striking passage at the beginning of this section:

Think back to when you were in school sitting through a class in which you had very little interest. Perhaps you eyes were fixed on the clock or you were staring blankly into space. You probably remember the anticipation of waiting for the bell to ring so you could get up from your desk and move on to whatever was next. More than two-thirds of workers around the world experience a similar feeling by the end of a typical workday.

I then went on to a point about preparing students to be engaged workers, but it’s worth pausing here and thinking for a moment. Schooling is the model, the archetype, for the workplace experience that literally causes people to lead shorter, sadder, sicker lives. Is that hyperbole? Is it a caricature of modern schooling? Actually, thanks to the current American obsession with standardized testing, the stereotype may actually understate the case.

In The Test, Kamenetz quotes the blog of a Chicago parent who had assisted her daughter’s class with computer-based testing. On the way home from the second day (?!) of testing, her daughter broke down in the car:

“I just can’t do this,” she sobbed. The ill-fitting headsets, the hard-to-hear instructions, the uncooperative mouse, the screen going to command modes, not being able to get clarification when she asked for it….It took just two days of standardized testing to doubt herself. “I’m just not smart, Mom. Not like everyone else. I’m just no good at kindergarten, just no good at all.”

I have read this paragraph a half dozen times now, and I still can’t get through it without tearing up.

Kamenetz then goes on to say that teacher and parents throughout the United States—especially the ones with elementary school-aged children—“report students throwing up, staying home with stomach aches, locking themselves in the bathroom, crying, having nightmares, and otherwise acting out on test days.”

A bit later in the book, she writes about a couple of Great Depression-era researchers named Harold Skeels and Harold Dye. They took a couple of one-year-old babies in an orphanage who had tested as “moderately to severely retarded” and moved them to a ward for mentally disabled young women, because the children were viewed as hopeless cases. Fourteen and sixteen months old, these girls were already discarded. But what happened next was anything but what the researchers expected. The girls became adopted by the residents and attendants of the ward. Kamenetz notes, “After just six months their IQ scores had improved to 77 and 87, and a few months after that their scores had climbed into the mid-90s, near average levels.”

The researchers were so taken aback that they repeated the experiment, bringing 13 “retarded” one- and two-year-old girls from orphanages to the adult women’s institution, where they were given foster mothers there.

According to an article discussing the case, the toddlers at the adult women’s home had toys bought for them by the attendants and clothes made for them by the residents. Their “mothers” cheerfully competed over which ones could be made to walk and talk first.

Meanwhile, a control group of supposedly low-IQ girls stayed at the orphanage, presumably living under the conditions one imagines in the kind of orphanage that would let some of its children be condemned to live out their lives in a mental institution when they were just 14 months old. What were the results?

The children [who were transferred to the mental institution] remained on the ward for a mean of nineteen months. All but two of the eleven gained more than 15 IQ points during that time. Once they tested at average intelligence they were moved to regular foster homes. A year after the experiment ended, of the thirteen original children, none was still classified as “feeble-minded.” At the first follow-up two and a half years later, in 1943, the mean IQ of the experimental group was exactly average, 101.4. Meanwhile the control group left at the orphanage had shown “marked deterioration” and now had an average IQ of 66.1, down from 86 at the beginning of the study.

Staying in the orphanage was actually more harmful to the young girls that putting them in an adult mental institution. This was not a short-term difference, either. In the 1960s, the researchers followed up with the girls from the original study.

Of the thirteen girls who had been adopted, first informally by developmentally disabled women[1] in the institution and then by families in the outside world, all of them were self-supporting. Eleven of them were married. They had a mean of 11.68 years of education. They earned an average wage of $4,224, which was in the range of average annual earnings for men in Iowa, their home state—not bad for a group of women from an institutional background in the 1960s.

Of the twelve girls in the control group, only four of them had jobs, all of them working in the institutions where they lived. Only three had been married. On average they had less than four years of schooling. The cost savings to the state for rescuing the girls who went on to live healthy, productive lives was approximately $200 million in today’s dollars.

Anya’s primary point for telling this story is to review the history of evidence that standardized tests are poor predictors of human potential. But the story is also a compelling illustration of the long-term harm to health and wellbeing that we do to humans when we subject them to inhumane conditions (and, on a more hopeful note, how just a little bit of human love and understanding can be so transformative in a person’s life). Note that the Gallup research shows long-term health effects for work situations that are likely a lot less stressful than those of living in a Depression-era orphanage and almost certainly not worse than the kind of stress that Chicago kindergartener endured.

As I was pondering this story, I was reminded of FDA Commissioner David Kessler. (Bear with me on this.) Kessler successfully argued that nicotine addiction is a pediatric disease based on the long-term harm that it does to children. On that basis, he was able to establish that regulating tobacco falls under the purview of the FDA and was therefore able to put a collar on the powerful tobacco industry and regulate it for the first time. Given the severe and long-term stress that American children endure today due to a testing regime that takes up to 25% of students’ total schooling time, I wonder whether similarly compelling evidence could be gathered showing that forcing students to endure endless rounds of high-stakes standardized testing has effects analogous to long-term exposure to hazardous waste.

1. Michael’s note: Given the rest of the story that Anya is telling here, it makes one wonder how many of those women were really developmentally disabled.

The post Is Standardized Testing a Pediatric Disease? appeared first on e-Literate.

As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, the need for organizations to control access and protect company data on mobile devices has become more critical than ever. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)...

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For development and testing purposes, Rittman Mead run a VMWare VSphere cluster made up of a number of bare-metal servers hosting Linux, Windows and other VMs. Our setup has grown over the years from a bunch of VMs running on Mac Mini servers to where we are now, and was added-to considerably over the past twelve months as we started Hadoop development – a typical Cloudera CDH deployment we work with requires six or more nodes along with the associated LDAP server, Oracle OBIEE + ODI VMs and NAS storage for the data files. Last week we added our Exalytics server as a repurposed 1TB ESXi VM server giving us the topology shown in the diagram below.

One of the purposes of setting up a development cluster like this was to mirror the types of datacenter environments our customers run, and we use VMWare VSphere and VCenter Server to manage the cluster as a whole, using technologies such as VMWare VMotion to test out alternatives to WebLogic, OBIEE and Oracle Database HA. The screenshot below shows the cluster setup in VMWare VCenter.

We’re also big advocates of Oracle Enterprise Manager as a way of managing and monitoring a customer’s entire Oracle BI & data warehousing estate, using the BI Management Pack to manage OBIEE installations as whole, building alerts off of OBIEE Usage Tracking data, and creating composite systems and services to monitor a DW, ETL and BI system from end-to-end. We register the VMs on the VMWare cluster as hosts and services in a separate EM12cR4 install and use it to monitor our own development work, and show the various EM Management Packs to customers and prospective clients.

Something we’ve wanted to do for a while though is bring the actual VM management into Enterprise Manager as well, and to do this we’ve also now setup the Blue Mendora VMWare Plugin for Enterprise Manager, which connects to your VMWare VCenter, ESXi, Virtual Machines and other infrastructure components and brings them into EM as monitorable and manageable components. The plugin connects to VCenter and the various ESXi hosts and gives you the ability to list out the VMs, Hosts, Clusters and so on, monitor them for resource usage and set up EM alerts as you’d do with other EM targets, and perform VCenter actions such as stopping, starting and cloning VMs.

What’s particularly useful with such a virtualised environment though is being able to include the VM hypervisors, VM hosts and other VMWare infrastructure in the composite systems we define; for example, with a CDH Hadoop cluster that authenticates via LDAP and Kerberos, is used by OBIEE and ODI and is hosted on two VMWare ESXi hosts part of a VSphere cluster, we can get an overall picture of the system health that doesn’t stop at the host level.

If your organization is using VMWare to host your Oracle development, test or production environments and you’re interested in how Enterprise Manager can help you monitor and manage the whole estate, including the use of Blue Mendora’s VMWare EM Plugin, drop me a line and I’d be happy to take you through what’s involved.

Example alert recieved:
Host=xyz.domain.net
Target type=Database Instance
Target name=mydatabaseinstance1
Categories=Diagnostics, Fault
Message=Internal error (ORA 600 [kwqitnmphe:ltbagi]) detected in /opt/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/hogcprd/hogcprd1/alert/log.xml at time/line number: Sat Jan 17 22:53:57 2015/40570.
Severity=Critical
Event reported time=Jan 17, 2015 11:08:38 PM EST
Target Lifecycle Status=Production
Department=OEM12c
Line of Business=IT
Location=Atlanta
Operating System=Linux
Platform=x86_64
Associated Incident Id=541447
Associated Incident Status=New
Associated Incident Owner=
Associated Incident Acknowledged By Owner=No
Associated Incident Priority=None
Associated Incident Escalation Level=0
Event Type=Metric Alert
Event name=adrAlertLogIncidentError:genericInternalErrStack
Metric Group=Incident
Metric=Generic Internal Error
Metric value=Errors in file /opt/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/xyxyx/xyxyxprd1/trace/hogcprd1_q002_31608.trc (incident=365969):~ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kwqitnmphe:ltbagi], [1], [0], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []
Key Value=Sat Jan 17 22:53:57 2015/40570
Key Column 1=Time/Line Number
Rule Name=OEM12c_ManagementAgentRuleset,OEM12c_Performance_metric_rule
Rule Owner=EM_ADMIN
Update Details:
Internal error (ORA 600 [kwqitnmphe:ltbagi]) detected in /opt/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/xyxyxy/xyxyxprd1/alert/log.xml at time/line number: Sat Jan 17 22:53:57 2015/40570.




Original:.*ORA-0*(54|1142|1146)\D.*
New One:.*ORA-0*(54|1142|1146|600:.*\[kwqitnmphe[^\]]*\])\D.*

 Reference: EM 12c : How To Filter Specific ORA-00600 Error In Order To Avoid ORA-600 Alerts to be Raised In Console ? [ID 1592764.1]

Customization highlighted below:
========================BODY=================================
-- Enterprise Manager Default Event Template

-- Subject of an e-mail is rendered in one line.
-- The resulting text from the following logic will be concatenated together into one line.

-- if this is a repeat email
-- show the repeat count
[IF NOTIF_TYPE EQ "NOTIF_REPEAT"]
    \[[REPEAT_LABEL] #[REPEAT_COUNT]\]
[ENDIF]
[EM_EVENT_PREFIX]:

-- if it is an email for success or failure of corrective action
-- show the name and execution status of the corrective action
[IF NOTIF_TYPE EQ "NOTIF_CA"]
    CA:[CA_JOB_NAME]:[CA_JOB_STATUS]
[ELSE] -- Regular email for metric alert
    [TARGET_LIFECYCLE_STATUS]:[TARGET_NAME]:=>[SEVERITY]
[ENDIF]
-- Show message if available
- [TARGET_NAME]:[ORCL_GTP_DEPARTMENT]:[MESSAGE]


===========================SUBJECT==============================

-- Enterprise Manager default template

[IF ORCL_GTP_DEPARTMENT NOT NULL]
 ===========================================================
 *****ITSM Please contact  [ORCL_GTP_DEPARTMENT]  Department for this Incident Alert******
 ===========================================================
[ENDIF]


-- if the email is for the status of corrective action
-- show the details of the execution of the corrective action
[IF NOTIF_TYPE EQ "NOTIF_CA"]
    [CA_JOB_NAME_LABEL]=[CA_JOB_NAME]
    [CA_JOB_OWNER_LABEL]=[CA_JOB_OWNER]
    [CA_JOB_STATUS_LABEL]=[CA_JOB_STATUS]
    [CA_JOB_STEP_OUTPUT_LABEL]=[CA_JOB_STEP_OUTPUT]
[ENDIF]

-- Source object name is the entity raising the issue.
[IF SOURCE_OBJ_NAME NOT NULL]
    [SOURCE_OBJ_TYPE] [NAME_LABEL]=[SOURCE_OBJ_NAME]
    [SOURCE_OBJ_TYPE] [OWNER_LABEL]=[SOURCE_OBJ_OWNER]
[ENDIF]
[IF SOURCE_OBJ_SUB_TYPE NOT NULL]
    [SOURCE_OBJ_TYPE] [TYPE_LABEL]=[SOURCE_OBJ_SUB_TYPE]
[ENDIF]
[IF HOST_NAME NOT NULL]
    [HOST_NAME_LABEL]=[HOST_NAME]
[ENDIF]
-- Target name links to the respective target home page
-- in Enterprise Manager console
[IF TARGET_NAME NOT NULL]
    [TARGET_TYPE_LABEL]=[TARGET_TYPE]
    [TARGET_NAME_LABEL]=[TARGET_NAME]
[ENDIF]


[IF CATEGORIES NOT NULL]
    [CATEGORIES_LABEL]=[CATEGORIES]
[ENDIF]
[MESSAGE_LABEL]=[MESSAGE]
[IF ACTION_MSG NOT NULL]
    [ACTION_MSG_LABEL]=[ACTION_MSG]
[ENDIF]
[SEVERITY_LABEL]=[SEVERITY]
[EVENT_REPORTED_TIME_LABEL]=[EVENT_REPORTED_TIME]

[IF TARGET_LIFECYCLE_STATUS NOT NULL]
    [TARGET_LIFECYCLE_STATUS_LABEL]=[TARGET_LIFECYCLE_STATUS]
[ENDIF]
[USER_DEFINED_TARGET_PROP]

[IF ASSOC_INCIDENT_ID NOT NULL]
    [ASSOC_INCIDENT_ID_LABEL]=[ASSOC_INCIDENT_ID]
    [ASSOC_INCIDENT_STATUS_LABEL]=[ASSOC_INCIDENT_STATUS]
    [ASSOC_INCIDENT_OWNER_LABEL]=[ASSOC_INCIDENT_OWNER]
    [ASSOC_INCIDENT_ACKNOWLEDGED_BY_OWNER_LABEL]=[ASSOC_INCIDENT_ACKNOWLEDGED_BY_OWNER]
    [ASSOC_INCIDENT_PRIORITY_LABEL]=[ASSOC_INCIDENT_PRIORITY]
    [ASSOC_INCIDENT_ESCALATION_LEVEL_LABEL]=[ASSOC_INCIDENT_ESCALATION_LEVEL]
[ENDIF]
[EVENT_TYPE_LABEL]=[EVENT_TYPE]
[EVENT_NAME_LABEL]=[EVENT_NAME]
-- if it is a repeat email, show the repeat count
[IF NOTIF_TYPE EQ "NOTIF_REPEAT"]
    [REPEAT_COUNT_LABEL]=[REPEAT_COUNT]
[ENDIF]
-- Event Dedup related Attributes
[IF TOTAL_OCCURRENCE_COUNT NOT NULL]
    [TOTAL_OCCURRENCE_COUNT_LABEL]=[TOTAL_OCCURRENCE_COUNT]
[ENDIF]
[IF CURRENT_OCCURRENCE_COUNT NOT NULL]
    [CURRENT_OCCURRENCE_COUNT_LABEL]=[CURRENT_OCCURRENCE_COUNT]
[ENDIF]
[IF CURRENT_FIRST_OCCUR_DATE NOT NULL]
    [CURRENT_FIRST_OCCUR_DATE_LABEL]=[CURRENT_FIRST_OCCUR_DATE]
[ENDIF]
[IF CURRENT_LAST_OCCUR_DATE NOT NULL]
    [CURRENT_LAST_OCCUR_DATE_LABEL]=[CURRENT_LAST_OCCUR_DATE]
[ENDIF]
[EVENT_TYPE_ATTRS]

[IF RCA_STATUS NOT NULL]
    [RCA_STATUS_LABEL]=[RCA_STATUS]
[ENDIF]

-- Root Cause Analysis details shows up when available. This is
-- normally applies to availability alerts for service targets
[RCA_DETAILS]

[RULE_NAME_LABEL]=[RULE_NAME]
[RULE_OWNER_LABEL]=[RULE_OWNER]
-- Check if any updates
[IF UPDATES NOT NULL]
[UPDATES_LABEL]:[UPDATES]
[ENDIF]

Maybe you remember Busytown, Richard Scarry’s famous town, from your childhood or from reading it to your kids.

Tony Ruth has created the Silicon Valley equivalent, BusinessTown, (h/t The Verge) populated by the archetypes we all know and sometimes love. What do the inhabitants of BusinessTown do? “What Value-Creating Winners Do All Day,” natch.

Who’s up for a Silicon Valley marathon?Possibly Related Posts:

• Web Mission is Coming
• Will the iPad Stunt the Growth of Future Geeks?
• To VC or Not to VC
• AppsLab at the Maker Faire
• Congratulations to the OpenWorld Session Winners

since  we released our first preview of SDSQL, we've made  a lot of changes to it and enhanced a lot of things too in there so it would be more useable.  One specific one was the use of LDAP which some customers on SQLDeveloper are using in their organisations as a standard and our first release precluded them from working with this.

Well, to add this, we wanted a way that we could specify the LDAP strings and then use them in a connect statement.  We introduced a command called SET LDAPCON for setting the LDAP connection.  You can set it like this at the SQL> prompt

 set LDAPCON jdbc:oracle:thin:@ldap://scl58261.us.oracle.com:389/#ENTRY#,cn=OracleContext,dc=ldapcdc,dc=lcom  

or set it as an environment variable

 (~/sql) $export LDAPCON=jdbc:oracle:thin:@ldap://scl58261.us.oracle.com:389/#ENTRY#,cn=OracleContext,dc=ldapcdc,dc=lcom  

Then you can come along and as long as you know your service name, we're going to swap out the ENTRY delimiter in the LDAP connection with your service.  We're working on a more permanent way to allow these to be registered and used so they are more seamless.

In the meantime, you can then connect to your LDAP service like this

 BARRY@ORCL>set LDAPCON jdbc:oracle:thin:@ldap://scl58261.us.oracle.com:389/#ENTRY#,cn=OracleContext,dc=ldapcdc,dc=lcom  
 BARRY@ORCL>connect barry/oracle@orclservice_test(Emily's Desktop)  
 Connected  
 BARRY@PDBOH12>tables  
 Command=tables  
 TABLES   
 TEST    

Here's a qk little video of it in action!  You can then use  the 'SHOW JDBC' command to show what you are connected to.


This is the latest release which should be online soon, and you  can download it from here.

There has been a lot of activity on https://github.com/oracle lately. Apparently a place to keep…