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Thanks to Norman Dunbar for pointing out that MobaXterm 6.3 has been released. You can find the download and changelog in the usual place.

I’ll be interested to see how the performance improvements to SFTP work out. I’ve seen some issues with this during transfers of large files before. The built in NFS and VNC servers sound interesting too. I can think of one situation where the NFS server would come in really handy.

Great stuff!

Cheers

Tim…

MobaXterm 6.3… was first posted on May 9, 2013 at 8:17 pm.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

For those of you integrating or planning to integrate with Forms, ADF or APEX, a presentation from our friends at PITSS

Tuesday, 14.05.2013  (14-May-2013)
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm (CEST)

Free Webinar

Integrating Oracle BI Publisher with
Forms 11g, ADF and APEX

Have you already decided about how to integrate in the future your reports within your Oracle Forms, ADF or APEX applications? In view of the technical innovations in Oracle Forms 11g, we will take a closer look at Oracle BI Publisher and see, step by step, how can we reach an optimal integration of BI Publisher reports within existing Forms applications, as well as the co-existence with Oracle ADF and APEX.

Registration:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/608583482

Security
Time for my quarterly (or more often) warning on our old nemesis: 10 Reasons SQL Injection Still Works

EPM
The Business Analytics - Proactive Support blog let's us know that: EPM 11.1.2.3.00 is available on eDelivery.
BI
Over at the Oracle Business Intelligence Blog: Oracle BI Apps 11.1.1.7.1 Available and 11.1.1.6.10 Bundle Patch for OBIEE Now Available.
APEX
(YABAOAE) Yet Another Blog About Oracle Application Express let's us know that Oracle Application Express 4.2.2 now available.
Dimitri Gielis Blogdiscusses: Goodies - APEX 4.2.2 included Libraries.
He also does a little crystal ball gazing: Oracle Database 12c and APEX.
RDBMS
From That Jeff Smith: How to Synch your Oracle SQL Developer Data Model to a Different Database.
This posting from The Oracle Instructor is useful: How to audit sys into an OS file owned by root.
A little peek into the possible future of clustering factors from Richard Foote, the indexing guru: Important !! Clustering Factor Calculation Improvement (Fix You).
A good hands-on technical article over at Oracle DBA--Tips and Techniques: 11g Data Guard Cascading Standby Database.
From Karen Morton: Using Optimizer Hints for Oracle Performance Tuning.
Eddie Awad pointed out this really valuable item over at Ask Tom, Tom Kyte's perennially awesome Q&A on all things Oracle: Walid -- Thanks for the question regarding "advantage of private synonyms over public synonyms", version 11.2.
At Oracle Scratchpad, some great news. It looks like Jonathan Lewis is moving into webinars. I've seen Jonathan present live, and this going to be really great. Here's the posting at Oracle Scratchpad: Webinars.
Big Data
Eddie Awad'sTweeterization is excellent as always. He pointed to this one: Oracle Introduces Big Data Appliance Applications.
Coding
Another great items pointed out by Eddie Awad recently is at Making the Complex Simple blog: What Makes Code Readable: Not What You Think.
Fusion
At the Fusion Applications Developer Relations blog:  FindingCode Artifacts for Customization (Part 2).
Part 1 is here.
Oracle Service Bus
From OTN: Fault Handling and Prevention for Services in Oracle Service Bus.
Linux
Some good slides on Linux Performance Analysis and Tools.
…And Finally
From the Singulairy Hub comes this fun item: A Box With A Hidden Video Camera Documents Journey Through The Mail.
At io9, Old Spock battles New Spock in the greatest car commercial ever. You don’t have to be a Trekkie to get all the gags in this, but it definitely helps. 

A Guest Post by Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President General Manager, Oracle’s JD Edwards

Imagine that you could, in a moment’s notice, access your entire portfolio of projects or products in one view, including cost and profitability. Now imagine that your customer service representatives had real-time access to your customers’ historical order information and profitability while taking orders. That kind of speed and agility changes the game. Imagine new growth opportunities, smarter decisions, reduced costs, and all the benefits that come with being able to outsmart and outmaneuver your competition.

But this isn’t about imagining. We’ve made it a reality with the new Oracle In-Memory Applications for Oracle Engineered Systems.

As announced at COLLABORATE 13 last month, our new in-memory applications make older computing approaches obsolete and can take runtime out of the equation. Now you can have instant access to scads of information and perform complex data analysis in near real time on live data sets. The result is better context and insights to solve your critical business problems.

Here’s the really good news! We have released Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Applications – specifically, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Project Portfolio Management and Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Sales Advisor.

Oracle’s Engineered Systems make it possible for us to provide functionality in these applications that we couldn’t deliver before. For example, in the past, a team of data analysts would use the Extract, Transfer and Load (ETL) methodology, plus spreadsheets, to pull data. The information you would receive was stale, the manual process was error prone, and the conclusions could be questionable. Today, with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne In-Memory Applications, you get immediate access to massive sets of near real-time transactional information that is broad and deep. Your data is fresher, richer, and more accurate. Which would you rather use to base your business decisions on?

We are very excited about what these In-Memory Applications mean for our JD Edwards customers. We’ve seen the increased speed and improved visibility translate directly to increased revenue and profitability.

And just so you know, we are in the process of making In-Memory Apps available for the other Oracle Applications business lines. As we roll these high-performance solutions out and as the technology continues to evolve, you can trust that Oracle will be a leader to meet your performance and agility needs – even those you can’t imagine today. In the meantime, let’s focus on the exciting possibilities that these In-Memory Applications bring to us and the dawn of a new era in enterprise applications.

Enterprises of all sizes and sectors have invested significant time and funding into big data projects, but research has shown that many firms are disappointed with the results. Industry experts suggest that the problem lies in a lack of strategy and expertise. For these initiatives to be successful, firms need support from database experts as well as the most transparent analytics solutions that can integrate with existing business intelligence (BI) tools.

The Financial Times reported on a multitude of conflicting studies that have demonstrated big data successes and failures. Many of these initiatives show great promise, but the source noted that Accenture found only 22 percent of companies are satisfied with analytics programs and just 39 percent say their data is relevant to the business strategy. According to the source, Accenture attributed this to the fact that enterprises often measure too much data that doesn't matter as opposed to focusing on the information that does. In order to improve the outcome of big data projects, experts agree that enterprises need to invest in new capabilities and intensify the application of analytics. The Financial Times explained that, for instance, businesses can analyze information to answer questions such as how many customers have been lost in a given month. But to gain deeper insight into why they have left, and furthermore, predict when they might leave in the future, is something only big data can provide with proper tools and IT management.

A new approach
Big data can be especially useful because it incorporates external information, such as weather patterns or social media trends, with internal business data, like customer transactional histories. EWeek asserted that this capability has been offering enterprises an "odd reality": firms can find a new market, product or price level that was previously out of reach using intuition-based decision-making.

However, to achieve this, companies need to re-approach big data analysis. EWeek contributor Eric Lundquist revealed that asking a simple query over a large, real-time set of data is a more accurate and effective way to gain value from these projects than creating sophisticated algorithms for smaller samples.

This process can be applied to a number of indicators, including customer sentiment, weather forecasting, sports predictions or financial services. As long as firms take a new approach to business analytics, almost anything is possible.

RDX's business intelligence and big data experts assist customers in leveraging data contained in large data stores. For more information, please visit our Business Intelligence and Predictive Analytics pages or contact us.

A guest post by Natalia Rachelson, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle Applications

It was with a mixture of excitement and anxiety that I boarded a plane at Chicago’s O’Hare bound for San Francisco last week — excitement because it had been a while since I’d been to Oracle Headquarters and I was craving to see familiar faces and places, and anxiety because this wasn’t just any business trip. I was traveling to attend and assist with Oracle Analyst World (OAW).

OAW is an annual gathering of leading industry analysts and influencers from firms such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, who arguably help shape the future of our industry. Analysts and influencers can be somewhat fickle and tend to favor the “flavour du jour” rather than a well-established incumbent in any given space. In fact, when it comes to convincing the influencers and creating buzz, I would venture to say that incumbents in the enterprise space have to work twice or even three times as hard compared to new entrants. Think Helen Mirren vs. Jennifer Lawrence.

Hence, my uneasiness about OAW running smoothly and hitting all the right notes with our challenging audience. But, who doesn’t love a good challenge?

Let The Conference (And The Tweeting) Begin

Oracle’s Chief Communications Officer Bob Evans kicked off Day 1 by talking about simplifying IT, the power of innovation, and our strategic initiatives. The 100+ analysts and influencers tweeted conscientiously and consistently throughout the conference. Here are some sample tweets: Darren Bibby from IDC, Alan Lepofsky from Constellation Research, Michael Krisgsman from Asuret, and me.

Next up, Executive Vice President John Fowler discussed Oracle’s Engineered Systems. And Thomas Kurian gave our influencers an update on Oracle’s software strategy. Bob Evans, an IDC analyst, and I tweeted the news.

Then Oracle President Mark Hurd took the stage for an open Q & A session. He talked about how Oracle is focused on customer outcomes and how we do not, as a company, set out to be hard to work with. (Smile) Oracle’s Chief Customer Officer Jeb Dasteel discussed Oracle’s customer satisfaction programs.

Tracks and Takeaways

After lunch, the analysts chose one of six tracks to go deeper in their area of focus: 1) Cloud Computing, 2) Next-Generation Business Processes, 3) Business Analytics, 4) Information Management, 5) Business Applications, and 6) Data Center Modernization. Here are my takeaways from the Cloud and Apps sessions I attended.

• Oracle clearly sees that Cloud Computing will be propelling our industry forward for the foreseeable future. It is a shift in the industry and Cloud Computing is here to stay.
• Oracle, unlike anybody else, is poised to be a winner across all Cloud components, including PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS
• When it comes to business applications, we are taking a customer-centric approach and supporting our customers on whatever Oracle platform they happen to be. At the same time, we are also actively educating our customer base about our complete suite of Applications Cloud Services and having conversations with our customers about why they should start looking at introducing Cloud solutions from Oracle within their organizations.
• Both Steve Miranda and Thomas Kurian explained how Oracle amassed the most comprehensive set of Applications Cloud Services in the industry. We started in the Cloud with our 100+ modules of organically grown Fusion applications and enhanced our organic suite through acquisitions with the following industry leading solutions:
• Eloqua for Oracle Marketing Cloud
• RightNow and Inquira for Oracle Service Cloud
• ATG and Endeca for Oracle Commerce Cloud
• Taleo for Oracle Talent Management Cloud
• Vitrue, Involver, and Collective Intellect for Oracle Social Relationship Management Cloud

Customers Help Tell Our Story

The customer panel on Day 2 was one of the most anticipated parts of the conference. Customers representing our entire technology stack spoke to analysts about their experiences with Oracle. The most memorable quote of the day came from Segar Annamalai, CEO at American Career College, whose company is running our HCM Cloud service powered by Fusion.

Segar said that today he is dealing with a different Oracle than he did in the past. He stated that he used to hear from Oracle once a year when his support contract was up for renewal, and maybe one other time when sales reps came knocking on the door for an obligatory cross-sell/up-sell conversation. Things have changed dramatically since then. Segar now has a relationship with Oracle. He talks to Development on a frequent basis, and overall, feels that he is getting the right level of service. According to Segar, Oracle has become a service-oriented company and not just a seller of widgets — and that is what is required of a cloud service provider.

After the panel concluded, analysts got a chance to speak with our customers and executives in a one-on-one setting for deeper insight. Then Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven talked to the audience about Oracle infrastructure, and Oracle’s Corporate Development and Strategic Planning SVP Doug Kehring talked about our merger and acquisition strategy. Here are a couple of the tweets flying out of the Conference Center from Kehring’s session.

Note: To see a compilation of the tweets from OAW, blogger Holger Mueller published a play-by-play Twitter feed for #Oracle_AR.

Up Close and Personal: The Influencer Roundtable

We ended the three-day conference with a handful of leading influencers meeting with Steve Miranda in a more intimate, friendly setting. The select few included (below from left to right): Vinnie Mirchandani from Deal Architect. Brent Leary from CRM Essentials, Denis Pombriant from Beagle Research Group, and Brian Vellmure from Initium LLC / Innovantage

Miranda confidently spoke to them about Oracle’s most comprehensive Cloud offering for applications, including Oracle Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Social Cloud, ERP Cloud, HCM Cloud, and Talent Management Cloud. He talked about our progress with Fusion stating that we added 150 more customers since the last publicly disclosed figure of 400 from Oracle OpenWorld 2012.

More facts from Steve that he discussed with the group: About 85 percent of our Fusion customers are going with a SaaS deployment option. We’re switching to a three-times-a-year release schedule for Fusion as a best practice. Customers have about 60 days to take an upgrade, including some weekends for convenience.

When the influencers asked about a “mobile first” design philosophy, Steve explained that we take a triad approach to mobile: ADF for Mobile, task-specific apps, and Oracle Tap for the Cloud, which is now available for Fusion, RightNow, and Taleo apps. Oracle will only invest in those task-specific apps that take advantage of the mobile form factor and features. He used Fusion Expenses as an example. It takes advantage of phone calendar, voice, camera, and contact information. Another example is a time entry app, which takes advantage of a phone’s alarm clock.

Future investments in the Cloud? Steve articulated that Oracle is focused on:

• Integrations
• Vertical capabilities in CRM
• More manufacturing capabilities and SaaS in SCM
• More localizations, third party integrations, and public sector capabilities in ERP

Did We Meet the Challenge?

Only time will tell if we met the challenge of hitting all the right notes with the analysts and influencers. However, we are confident that we impressed this tough audience with substance, vision, and candor. Every one of the attendees had an opportunity to gain an appreciation of the breadth and depth of our business and better understand why customers put their trust in Oracle to help them with their most critical business challenges. They also couldn’t miss the fact that Oracle is playing to win.

And speaking of winning, Brian Sommer of ZDNet wrote in his blog post following the conference, ”Oracle is definitely innovating.” He enthusiastically declared, ”Cloud applications are going to be the future. Oracle’s got a lot going for it here.” We do have a lot going for us – and even more for our customers as they move to the cloud.

UltraEdit 4.0 has been released for Mac and Linux. The downloads are in the usual place. You can see the latest changelogs here (Mac, Linux).

Fun, fun, fun…

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit 4.0 for Mac/Linux… was first posted on May 9, 2013 at 2:25 pm.
©2012 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement.

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Today as part of our WebCenter Partners Week, we'll be hearing from across the pond in the UK, where our partner, Extended Content Solutions creates WebCenter Solutions to enhance our customer's experiences.

If you are just joining us today for the first time this week, you'll want to check out the past few days of posts from our partners, TekStream, FishBowl and Lingotek for some interesting reading and video views.

And for any of you WebCenter partners out there that are feeling left out - fear not - there is always room for you at the Oracle WebCenter Blog. We'd love to hear from you and feature your solutions to our readers in upcoming weeks. Contact me directly @ michael.snow@oracle.com  and we'll take care of you.

Extended Content Solutions

Founded in 2000 Extended Content Solutions (ECS) are an Oracle Gold Partner and WebCenter Specialist based in the UK. We pride ourselves on understanding customer requirements and delivering the finest solutions. All our staff are actively encouraged to undertake Oracle specialization training and we have experience in all aspects of Oracle WebCenter including Sites, Portal, Content and bespoke ADF development.

How do you manage your Digital Assets?

ECS produce a number of full product solutions based on the WebCenter platform. One of these is MediaStore which provides Rich Media asset management for enterprises.

MediaStore utilizes the underlying functionality of the WebCenter platform and enhances it with enterprise features such as bulk uploads and approvals, collaboration areas, copyright control, embargoes and integration with Oracle ATG commerce and WebCenter Sites.

MediaStore is being used by a number of organizations in the UK where it has been extremely successful in;

• Reducing transport costs and project time by allowing third parties to share media and collaborate on new designs 
• Enforcing corporate logos and branding
• Reducing storage costs by providing a single repository for all digital assets
• Enhancing digital asset management capabilities of Oracle ATG commerce

MediaStore is available as an online trial just get in touch for details of how to access it. For more information about MediaStore features and customer success stories please see the MediaStore pages on our websites at http://www.extended-content.com/mediastore/.

Other products include Case Management, Scanning and Know Your Client (KYC) solutions all encompassing our unique and accessible user interfaces. For more information please see our website at http://www.extended-content.com

WebCenter for Financial Services

At ECS we recently completed a WebCenter Portal and Content implementation for the UK Fund Manager, CCLA. The results of this project have significantly reduced the time to process transactions, virtually eliminated paper from the processing team and saved costs by providing clear tracking of item status and ownership.

The CCLA implementation uses Oracle Document Capture (ODC) to scan mail items. These are then stored in WebCenter Content where they are indexed and validated including signature checking. Integration with Customer information allows transactions to be posted and reports are generated in Content for sending to Customers. WebCenter Portal is used to provide collaboration areas and dashboard overviews of item processing.

Videos describing the WebCenter implementation at CCLA are available below. 

CCLA Reduce Costs with Oracle Universal Content Management

CCLA Increase Efficiency with Oracle UCM

For more information about the use of WebCenter in CCLA and other case studies take a look at our website at http://www.extended-content.com/about-us/ecs-resources/ or contact us at info@extended-content.com or on +44 (0)1483 688 030.

ATTENTION WEBCENTER INNOVATORS!!!  YOU COULD WIN a FREE Pass to Oracle Open World 2013 in San Francisco!

Oracle WebCenter is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family. So ... if you are you using Oracle Fusion Middleware (Oracle WebCenter) to deliver unique business value? If so, you can win a FREE pass to Oracle OpenWorld 2013 in San Francisco, California by submitting your nomination for the 2013 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation. Go to here for more details. Deadline for submission is June 18th, 2013.

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I have used APEX 4.2.2. I was unable to logon my APEX with INTERNAL workspace as admin. It showed "The account is locked".
What was I able to do? ... run "apxchpwd.sql" script. I didn't think so. After checking in "apxchpwd.sql" script.
So, I checked in "wwv_flow_fnd_user_api" package, I found wwv_flow_fnd_user_api.UNLOCK_ACCOUNT procedure.
PROCEDURE UNLOCK_ACCOUNT
 Argument Name                  Type                    In/Out Default?
 ------------------------------ ----------------------- ------ --------
 P_USER_NAME                    VARCHAR2                INI thought I should test it. First of all, I must to make sure "security_group_id"(It should be number 10).
SQL> SELECT workspace_id FROM apex_workspaces WHERE workspace = 'INTERNAL';

WORKSPACE_ID
------------
          10Tested to unlock "admin" user on "INTERNAL" workspace.
SQL> alter session set current_schema = APEX_040200;

Session altered.

SQL> begin

    wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id := 10;
    wwv_flow_fnd_user_api.UNLOCK_ACCOUNT('ADMIN');
    commit;end;
/

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
then I tested login again... It works for me. ^______________^


Written By: Surachart Opun http://surachartopun.com

Most people worry that taking money advances can have an effect on their credit scores and should conceive to avoid them even once they ar in would like however this is often not the case. Once your credit score is being calculated, any advances that you simply have applied for will not be thought-about. Lenders ne'er use your credit history to work out if you qualify for an advance or not.

Credit coverage agencies do not have any means of knowing whether or not you've got applied for an advance. A majority of individuals ar involved concerning this since the standard loans ar invariably recorded however this doesn't happen with the money advances. The applying method for an advance will not have an effect on your credit score as a result of it's not recorded.

This is one amongst the explanations that build a cash advance applicable after you have to be compelled to pay off your mastercard bills and you are doing not have any money. Whereas advances have higher Annual proportion Rates compared to the credit cards, credit cards do have an impact on your score simply by merely applying for one.

One of the ways in which an advance will have an impact on your history is after you pay the loan in time and this is often recorded in your history as a positive entry. Whereas obtaining an advance might not have an effect on your credit, if you let the debts to accumulate, this may have a negative impact on your credit. This is often as a result of it interferes along with your debt to financial gain magnitude relation. This could be avoided by ensuring that you simply do not use the advances as a method of finance yourself.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13903562138108552449noreply@blogger.com0

Cost Based Oracle – Fundamentals (November 2005)

But the most interesting function for our purposes is sys_op_countchg(). Judging from its name, this function is probably counting changes, and the first input parameter is the block ID portion (object_id, relative file number, and block number) of the table’s rowid, so the function is clearly matching our notional description of how the clustering_factor is calculated. But what is that 1 we see as the second parameter?

When I first understood how the clustering_factor was defined, I soon realized that its biggest flaw was that Oracle wasn’t remembering recent history as it walked the index; it only remembered the previous table block so that it could check whether the latest row was in the same table block as last time or in a new table block. So when I saw this function, my first guess (or hope) was that the second parameter was a method of telling Oracle to remember a list of previous block visits as it walked the index.

And finally, Oracle Corp. had implemented an official interface to the second parameter of sys_op_countchg() – provided you install the right patch – through a new table (or schema, or database) preference type available to the dbms_stats.set_table_prefs() procedure.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for two or three months, ever since Sean Molloy sent me an email about short blog note from Martin Decker describing Bug 13262857  Enh: provide some control over DBMS_STATS index clustering factor computation. Unfortunately I’ve not yet had time to investigate the patch, but I don’t think I need to any more because Richard Foote has written it up in his latest blog post.

Read Richard’s post – it’s important.

Update 10th May

Richard’s post has, unsurprisingly, produced a buzz of excitement in his reader – and started up the discussion of how best to use this capability; so here’s another quote from the book (p.111 – available in the download of chapter 5):

So using Oracle’s own function for calculating the clustering_factor, but substituting the freelists value for the table, may be a valid method for correcting some errors in the clustering_factor for indexes on strongly sequenced data. (The same strategy applies if you use multiple freelist groups—but multiply freelists by freelist groups to set the second parameter.)

Can a similar strategy be used to find a modified clustering_factor in other circumstances? I think the answer is a cautious “yes” for tables that are in ASSM tablespaces. Remember that Oracle currently allocates and formats 16 new blocks at a time when using automatic segment space management (even when the extent sizes are very large, apparently). This means that new data will be roughly scattered across groups of 16 blocks, rather than being tightly packed.

Calling Oracle’s sys_op_countchg() function with a parameter of 16 could be enough to produce a reasonable clustering_factor where Oracle currently produces a meaningless one. The value 16 should, however, be used as an upper bound. If your real degree of concurrency is typically less than 16, then your actual degree of concurrency would probably be more appropriate.

Whatever you do when experimenting with this function—don’t simply apply it across the board to all indexes, or even all indexes on a particular table. There will probably be just a handful of critical indexes where it is a good way of telling Oracle a little more of the truth about your system—in other cases you will simply be confusing the issue.

Note particularly the comments about how the best value depends on the data in the indexed columns, the table configuration, and the degree of concurrency - you don’t necessarily want to use the same value for every index on a given table. That’s a shame, since Oracle has defined the interface as a TABLE preference, so if you set it then you get the same for every index. Despite this, if you’re prepared to put in a little control work, it does mean that you can use an official Oracle mechanism to play the game I was suggesting in the book – for each “special” index, set the preference, collect the stats, then clear the preference.

There are certain dictionary views available to monitor the Exadata cells from the database.One of the view is gv$cell_thread_history. This view is very interesting as it delves down to the session level with its serial number, SQL, specific cell, instance and also which Exadata object was waited and every entry is logged with the time. Looks very cool:

SQL> desc gv$cell_thread_history
 Name                                                  Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------------------- -------- ------------------------------------
 INST_ID                                                        NUMBER
 CELL_NAME                                                      VARCHAR2(1024)
 SNAPSHOT_ID                                                    NUMBER
 SNAPSHOT_TIME                                                  DATE
 THREAD_ID                                                      NUMBER
 JOB_TYPE                                                       VARCHAR2(32)
 WAIT_STATE                                                     VARCHAR2(32)
 WAIT_OBJECT_NAME                                               VARCHAR2(32)
 SQL_ID                                                         VARCHAR2(13)
 DATABASE_ID                                                    NUMBER
 INSTANCE_ID                                                    NUMBER
 SESSION_ID                                                     NUMBER
 SESSION_SERIAL_NUM                                             NUMBER

Here is a sample code snippet:

SQL> select wait_object_name,count(*) cnt from gv$cell_thread_history group by wait_object_name order by cnt;

WAIT_OBJECT_NAME                        CNT
-------------------------------- ----------
UserThread Cond                           4
PredicateDisk-113                         4
bwresv Q_1/2k                             4
bufWaitObjQ_8k                            4
PredicateDiskRead IO Completion           4
bwresv Q_8k                               4
FSA: cache replacementQ_1MHugePa          4
CachePut Fence                            4
NetworkDirectory ReqHandle                4
PredicateCacheGetJob                      4
Flash Cache LRU                           4
FSA: Cache Get Job                        4
DiskDirectory HT                          4
GenTimeStats Operation                    4
in use Q_8k                               4
Completed Map Element List                4
gdisk ext                                 4
FSA: fcCtxt                               8
FSA: cache replacementQ_8k                8
FlashCache HT buckets                     8
PredicateDisk-110                         8
FC outstanding IOs                        8
IOContext                                 8
Cache Completed Jobs                      8
PredicateDisk-32                         12
PredicateDisk-56                         12
PredicateDisk-50                         12
PredicateDisk-22                        12

News and views are an integral part of our modern daily life. When it comes to the information-hungry roles such as database professionals, such need becomes more pressing. Log Buffer is one way to keep abreast of news and views from the world of Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL.

Oracle:

There is a significant update SLOB 2, Kevin Closson informs.
Charles Hooper is grouping Data Sets by Week Number of the Month.
Chris Antognini has shared a script that is used to demo ITL deadlocks.
As Exadata Storage Indexes (SI) are purely memory only structures located on the Exadata storage servers, care needs to be taken in how much memory they can potentially consume.
Connon McDonald says that its not about the outage, but….

SQL Server:

Richard Douglas is giving information about SQL Server events in UK.
Thomas LaRock has been involved in a virtualization projects for almost ten years now.
Kendra Little has five things about Fillfactor.
Kevin Kline suggests to use TPC database benchmarks to save money.
Here’s a quick mystery. You have a SQL Server with several jobs that appear to be running properly and on schedule, but many of them show no history.

MySQL:

How does InnoDB behave without a Primary Key? Jeremy Cole asks.
The MariaDB project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the MariaDB Java Client 1.1.2.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Everybody loves free. It is the best marketing term one could use.
MySQL Cluster Manager 1.2.3 is now available to download from My Oracle Support.
When is a Subquery Executed?  Øystein Grøvlen writes.

This post appeared at Pythian Blog initially.

Back in mid-March, I wrote:

A week ago, I played a game of Scabble with Veva and scored 32 points by placing the word "SEEN" on the board. Now, every letter in "SEEN" is worth 1 point, making it very difficult to get to 32 points. But I attached "SEEN" to a word on the board (of course!) and I got my 32 points by using a total of 8 letters, two of which were worth 3 points and the other 6 were worth 1 point each.

[Note: I must note a correction. I actually wrote earlier that I had scored 36 points, but I now realize that was an exaggeration, an honest mistake. Honest! It was only 32 points. I would be mortally embarrassed, but please know that when my wife and I play Scrabble, we don't keep score.]

I thought I'd see if anyone could figure out how to do it. It clearly wasn't a very compelling challenge, since no one answered. OK, so now I will reveal the secret!


On my previous turn, I had put down a seven letter word as follows:

That was a whole lot of points, right there, of course. But you expect that with a seven letter word.

On my next turn, however, I put down "SEEN" and now I expect you can figure out how I did it....

Haven't shaved for two weeks. Decided to give my skin a break, and I also wondered: what do I really look like? Shaving my head is, I have come to accept, the "main vain" thing I do in my life (well, that and painting flamboyan flowers on my toenails).

How much gray and white is there? Answer: Lots.

How much is left on top? Answer: Not very much.

When I upgraded from Xubuntu 12.10 to 13.04 today, all my existing Python virtualenvs broke! Fortunately, they're just virtualenvs and easy to replace (that's kind of the point). But don't panic if you start seeing these.

$ ipython
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/catherine/ve/e2/bin/ipython", line 5, in 
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/pkg_resources.py", line 16, in 
  File "/home/catherine/ve/e2/lib/python2.7/re.py", line 105, in 
    import sre_compile
  File "/home/catherine/ve/e2/lib/python2.7/sre_compile.py", line 14, in 
    import sre_parse
  File "/home/catherine/ve/e2/lib/python2.7/sre_parse.py", line 17, in 
    from sre_constants import *
  File "/home/catherine/ve/e2/lib/python2.7/sre_constants.py", line 18, in 
    from _sre import MAXREPEAT
ImportError: cannot import name MAXREPEAT

Apparently Python 2.7.4 introduces _sre.MAXREPEAT. Here it is in my (new) system Python, 2.7.4:

Python 2.7.4 (default, Apr 19 2013, 18:28:01) 
[GCC 4.7.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import _sre
>>> _sre.MAXREPEAT
4294967295L 

... but the virtualenvs I created before the upgrade still use Python 2.7.3

Python 2.7.3 (default, Sep 26 2012, 21:51:14) 
[GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import _sre
>>> _sre.MAXREPEAT
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'MAXREPEAT'

If I were a deeper hacker I'd try to figure out why code running within my old virtualenvs is trying to access a 2.7.4-only attribute, or what's the most efficient way to recover my old virtualenvs. But I'll settle for recognizing the problem and spinning up new virtualenvs instead. That fixes the problem.

I know... I could have avoided this problem by using Python 3! I've got code that depends on fabric, though, which still isn't available for 3.

This is a good web site with Oracle internals information:

http://www.ixora.com.au/notes/

I’ve benefited from this one for years.

- Bobby

 

Mothers day is coming up fast. May 12th 2013 is just around the corner and If you have not already done so, make sure you go out and get mom a special gift as soon as possible. If you need a hand picking something great, take a look at this mothers day gift guide by the HuffingtonPost

Many this year like they have in previous years shopped online and bought mom that special gift from an online retailer, a simple, easy and fun process. But is it always? Unfortunately for many, the experience did not live up to expectation due to site performance and both customers and merchants end up losing.

Is this a big deal? We put together this infograph on mothers day shopping. Take a look.

 

A quick request...

If you are using RAW devices for your database (no ASM, no filesystem - just 'raw') - please drop me a line and let me know.  Include the size of  your database as well please.

thanks!