Re: Do you ask the question: How do I work with Oracle Support....?

From: Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2011 12:24:13 +0100
Message-ID: <BANLkTimN-m6BVAQOfPCCn-L9Xqeb7TXWbw_at_mail.gmail.com>

I'm torn. It definitely makes sense to understand how support works, what support's processes are and the various bits and bobs in the "How to work effectively with Support" material that Robert refers to. It isn't new by the way, but it is worthwhile.

However I repeatedly come across examples like this. (from today)

I raised an SR for a client experiencing slow connection times from an 11g 64 bit client to a 10.2.0.4 32 bit database (both on windows). I had gone through the usual suspects (authentication_services, dns etc) and verified network connectivity in general was fast. I logged the SR with this short description

Connectivity between a sqlplus client and an Oracle 10.2 server is slow. We
> have traced connections and found 5 second pauses in the trace file

I then uploaded the trace files. These were read by the analyst who also asked for RDA, bequeath tests and so on. All very sensible and worth doing. This morning I received the following update

Hello,

enable client and server trace on your server:

sqlnet.ora in client home:

TRACE_DIRECTORY_CLIENT=some directory

TRACE_FILE_CLIENT=cli.trc

TRACE_LEVEL_CLIENT=16 TRACE_TIMESTAMP_CLIENT=on

TRACE_UNIQUE_CLIENT=on

DIAG_ADR_ENABLED=off

sqlnet.ora in database home:

TRACE_DIRECTORY_SERVER=some directory

TRACE_FILE_SERVER=serv.trc

TRACE_LEVEL_SERVER=16 TRACE_TIMESTAMP_SERVER=on

reproduce the issue 3 times (connect, exit sqlplus,...).

Upload the 3 client traces and the server trace created.

I really struggled not to include the following in my reply

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein.html>

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Wolfgang Breitling <breitliw_at_centrexcc.com>wrote:

> I would second that opinion - although my recent Support experiences don't
> seem to have reached 10 so I am still waiting for the 1.
> I've largely given up on Oracle support, especially after a support analyst
> ( supposedly one of their "top guns" ) wrote this in an SR after reviewing a
> 10046 trace I sent ( emphasis mine ):
>
> <quote>
> In the TKPROF output which looks at Query Parse, Fetch, and Execute times:
> *CPU is the "Expected Oracle clocked time to perform this step of the
> query*"
> Elapsed on the other hand is the "actual time it took to perform the
> Execution" of the query
> Under most circumstances we would expect the CPU and Elapsed time to
> maintain close to a 1:1 ratio
> This means Oracle expects the Clock time to be XXX seconds and the Elapsed
> time ends up being ~ XXX seconds
> </quote>
>
> At least after challenged on this statement about cpu time in the 10046
> trace he corrected his stand.
>
> I tend to let others deal with Oracle support. Life is too short for that
> kind of aggravation.
>
>
> At 15:59 4/6/2011, Michael Dinh wrote:
>
> I get a great experience less than 10% of the time.
>
> I have SR opened from 3+ months ago where analyst is clueless.
>
> Provided test case and example as well.
>
> Attempted to escalate and still have gone nowhere.
>
>
> Regards
>
> Wolfgang Breitling
> Centrex Consulting Corporation
> http://www.centrexcc.com
>

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

Received on Thu Apr 07 2011 - 06:24:13 CDT