Disable or Pay Marketing

You have to love software marketing.

Imagine buying a new car. In the new car comes leather seats, A/C, and a killer sound system. After driving it around for a few days, you get a reminder from the dealership:

The leather seats, A/C, and sound system are separately licensed products. Please pay the license fees or remove these add-ons from your vehicle.

Ouch! Thank goodness this doesn’t happen in the auto industry. There are, however, two industries where this type of marketing occurs every day: drug dealing and software sales. We’ll focus on software.

This time’s on me

You’ve downloaded your Oracle version of choice and run the installer. You ran DBCA, set up a listener, and you’re good to go. But what’s this? This automatic workload repository is amazing! So much historical data, right at your fingertips! Historic views via detailed reports that resemble Statspack on steroids, stunning visuals in the Performance tab of OEM!

Not so fast, buddy. After your initial taste, you might be hooked. But if you want to keep using these features, it comes with a cost. And that cost is going up, up, up.

This one’s going to cost you extra

As this article notes, the cost of these built-in packs are going up. The diagnostic, tuning, and database configuration packs are going up in price from $3,500 to $5,000.

Interesting…is it coincidence this change comes around the same time as announcements regarding the killer whale modeled Oculus or inifinity loop modeled Infinitas?

Just kidding Larry, you know I love you.

Going through withdrawal

If you can’t get the managerial approval to purchase these packs, the Performance tab will have to be grayed out in OEM and you won’t be able to use any AWR-powered features (AWR, ADDM, ASH). This article has a better breakdown.

However, you’re not left without options. You’ve still got Statspack, which DBAs have been loving since Oracle 8i. Statspack is not as intensive as AWR, but it is still getting better by version and is free to use without purchasing extra packs. You also have the trusty V$ and DBA_ views to aid in your tuning efforts. While not as comprehensive for real-time tuning as ASH, you can glean a great deal of information from them.

Rehab

If you still find you can’t survive without the pretty graphs and in-depth information provided by the tuning packs, there are other possibilities. Third-party tools exist which allow you to delve into your system’s performance woes. Unfortunately many of these tools require AWR, meaning you still have to pay for the Oracle packs to use them. One tool which allows both AWR and Statspack use is Ion for Oracle; I’m a bit partial to it, as I helped write the software.

With Ion, both AWR and Statspack (when possible) can be used to visualize important data:

If you’re interested in looking into Ion, visit the website (not via the contact form on this site).

Conclusion

Don’t take this post to mean I disapprove of Oracle’s methods. It’s an absolutely brilliant marketing method, and most of the shops I’ve worked with were hooked on AWR after the first try. One DBA I met went hardcore on his manager and said (and I quote), “you can have my diagnostics pack when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

However, for those of you stuck without AWR, you’re not alone. And with the increase in price for these packs, you might have a few new friends soon.

Recently I posted that I was teaching a class in Switzerland. I’m home now in good ol’ Virginia, over the jet lag and ready to blog.

Class went very well. I taught the Burleson Consulting 3 day Oracle RAC course, one of our most popular courses which I am called upon to teach frequently. This class has it all: theory, installation, internals, tuning, network setup, disk setup, and tips from the field.

But enough about that for the moment…I just got back from Switzerland!

Geneva

Unfortunately bad weather postponed my flight by a day, and so I missed a good amount of time in Geneva. However, the next day air traffic was a little better, and I was able to get the flight from Norfolk to Newark, then Newark to Geneva. From what I understand, Newark Int’l is one of the few US airports with direct flights to Geneva, so at the least it was very convenient.

The visit to Switzerland was outstanding. Upon landing in Geneva I was picked up by a cousin who works for the WTO. He took me to his flat in Versoix where I got to visit some family I had never met before.

I didn’t sleep on the overnight flight, but I was determined to fight the jet lag and see some of the city. One of my relatives took me into Geneva from the Pont-Céard train station so I could tour the city a bit. She attends college in Geneva so she had to go off to class, but gave me an important piece of advice: keep an eye on the river and you can find your way anywhere.

The whole day I pretty much wandered around Geneva, finding various shops and disgracing the name of international travel by having a coffee at Starbucks (I know, I know). Later my cousin caught up with me and took me several places I hadn’t been, including up what felt like a thousand stairs to the top of the north tower of Cathédrale St-Pierre (St. Peter’s Cathedral). Turns out it was only 157 extremely narrow and tall stairs. Once at the top, the view is breathtaking. The room offers a complete panoramic view of Geneva and the mountains as you can see from these pictures:

After the flight, walking all over the city, and the climb up the tower (going down wasn’t so bad), I was pretty much beat. After dinner my cousin drove me to Lausanne and dropped me off at the Hotel Victoria Lausanne, a beautiful hotel on Avenue de la Gare (Gare being the train station).

There are two things I learned about Lausanne that made it startlingly different from Geneva:

1. Less people knew English. I had to pick up a few more French phrases
2. Everywhere was either up a hill or down a hill

Lausanne is a city built on a mountain (actually three hills that are part of a mountain). It was my first trip to a multi-level city, where every destination required a climb up steep roads or long stairs. While it made for beautiful scenery, it also made for aching quads and a burning desire to quit smoking immediately.

While not teaching, I wandered Lausanne (up down, up down). Every time I thought I’d seen the city I’d climb a new hill or set of stairs and find a whole new area to explore. I found several great shops and hangout spots. One of the nights I had dinner with my client at the fabulous Café-Restaurant du Vieux Lausanne, an excellent restaurant featuring an assortment of fresh game.

On the final day of class I caught the train after work towards Geneva. The plan was to take a regional train to Coppet and catch another train from there to Pont-Céard, but it didn’t quite work out that way. When I arrived in Coppet there were two other trains and no sign explaining their destinations. They left before I could ask anyone and I was stranded at the Coppet train station. I called my cousin in Versoix who came to rescue me after a bit.

After dinner with my family he took me to the Mövenpick hotel near the airport so I wouldn’t have to take a long train ride early in the morning.

My flight left the next morning, a long drawn out flight behind a man who obviously forgot to wear deodorant for a few days running. But hey, no flight is perfect, right?

Training Overseas

When I told my family where I was going, one of the first things they asked was “Why fly you all the way from the USA?” Why indeed?

Sure, Oracle has offices in Europe, and of course there are some great Oracle minds in Europe as well. However, I think that an American DBA Consultant has two major things going for them:

1. Client volume. I don’t have any numbers on American vs. European Oracle clients, but I’m pretty sure that Oracle enjoys heavier use in the USA. What’s more, the niches of these Oracle shops are many and varied: military, banking, internet, media, software, hardware, etc. I’ve taught classes for clients who design video games, clients who design and write microcode for enterprise storage arrays, clients with some of the largest and most active databases out there, and many more. While Oracle is used all over the world, it has its roots here in the USA, and it has the client list to prove it.
2. Dollar value. Right now the value of the dollar makes a US consultant very appealing. What used to be pricey is now affordable due to exchange rate inequities.

The combination of broad expertise and low cost make it a win-win for everyone.

Dine In or Delivery?

Burleson Consulting specializes in onsite training; this means I fly to you and teach in your shop. In some situations I’ve had clients who book a hotel conference room for a classroom. But why go with that as opposed to in-class training from Oracle or another provider?

First off, I will say this: I have worked as a Sr. Instructor for Oracle University. It was a fun job and I got to work with some great people who taught Oracle daily to dozens of students. Oracle U. is a great place and good for foundation training.

One reason to go with on-site training is cost. I’ve had classes ranging from four students to twenty. Some may think it’s better to cram as many people as possible into a classroom, but it really depends on what you hope to get out of the class. More students means less time for real one-on-one time and an in-depth experience. Too few students can mean you fly through too quickly as there are not enough questions to keep the class moving. Even with only four students, you can’t beat the price.

Our 3 day RAC course is $9,000 for up to 20 students plus travel expenses for the instructor. The 5 day Oracle University course is $3,750 per student plus travel expenses for each student. Send four students to class and you’re talking $15,000 plus expenses for four. Send 10 students and you’re topping $40k with expenses, which could have bought roughly 4 in-house Burleson Consulting courses. For that price, you could even reward your DBAs with a cruise on which they can learn Oracle!

Another reason for on-site training is comfort. Just like a dining experience you have two choices: dine in or delivery? The pros and cons are much the same as well:

Dine In – You travel to an Oracle University near you and get the authentic Oracle experience. The white wire-bound notebook, the Oracle Corporation slide deck, the Oracle Instructor who delivers the course and administers the labs. The course you take will be written by dedicated courseware developers and will cover all of the topics necessary to gain a foundation in your chosen topic. Labs will be pre-created and ready to go to let you try what you’ve learned. However, as with dining there are some negatives as well:

• You don’t know who your waiter will be. Let’s face it, going to class is luck of the draw. You will get an instructor that has been chosen to teach the class, not chosen specifically for your needs.
• You don’t know the crowd. The rest of the class may not care about the things you do. In a packed class of 20 or more it is very easy for the class to get side-tracked on something that doesn’t help you, or for your question to get lost in a flurry of other questions.
• Custom requests may not be feasible. Sometimes it’s difficult getting questions answered in a mixed classroom environment. Your instructor, while knowledgeable, may not have seen the situations you have. As such, they may not be able to answer your questions. Additionally it is not possible to go into long drawn-out scenarios or problems in a class.

Delivery – With a class delivered to your company door, you get a class made for you. The instructor (that’s me) is there for the needs of your company and no others. The course can shift and vary, going in the direction that is most important to you. No matter how large the question, no matter how drawn out the explanation, no matter what the scenario, you’re the one and only client and therefore you’ll get results.

One huge benefit of going with a company well known for both consulting and training is that you get an instructor who has been in the field. Many times when I’m asked a question in class, I can say “You know, I saw that same thing just last week.” We show up to class with fresh war stories, a plethora of advice, and a broad perspective. I’d much rather hear an instructor say “Oh, I had that problem and did this to fix it” than “A student of mine had that problem. I wonder how he’s doing?”

I honestly love the combination. As a consultant I get the best of both worlds: consulting in a wide variety of databases, and training with dedicated clients. Sometimes the two meet: mentoring is a huge part of my consulting practice (it is horrible when a consultant leaves a client wondering how something works), and Q&A and problem solving are part and parcel of the classroom experience. And in the end, it is the client who reaps the benefits.

Yet another benefit is that you get to choose your instructor. Instead of choosing a course and date, you choose the options that work best for you. Instead of luck of the draw, you get an instructor and a course that works exactly how you need it to work. When you have a mission critical project coming up or employees that must be trained to work on your environment, having these choices can be the difference between a great project and a failure. If you really like your instructor, you can hire them for consulting too (hint hint)!

Conclusion

• The trip to Switzerland was a blast. I got to see Geneva and Lausanne and have a great time in both.
• When it comes to training you have options, even with an ocean between you and your instructor. It’s a good idea to weigh your options carefully.
• Remember YMMV – Your Mileage May Vary. Some people work better in a dedicated classroom environment, some work better in a familiar environment like their workplace. Both individuals and companies play a part in the decision making.
• I need to learn more French for next time I head to southwestern Switzerland.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re enjoying the holidays!

Au revoir!

A colleague sent me an interesting note today. Specifically, Metalink Note 578455.1, which announces that Oracle 12g will not support raw volumes for Datafiles, controlfiles, redo logs, OR voting disks and OCR.

Those of us acquainted with RAC might be shouting “WHAT?!?!” at about this time. This is because without raw volumes, our only choices for OCR and voting disk placement seems to be a CFS (such as OCFS).

However, wording in the Metalink note indicates that ASM will be able to support the OCR and voting disk (“and other database files”) in 12g. The note hints at broader support for NFS in 12g as well.

Sometimes you just need to take a moment and appreciate the things you have in life. And while I always appreciate my lovely wife and my darling kids, this time my appreciation is for something a little more material.

Hellraiser

Okay, so Hellraiser is just a computer, but what a fine computer it is.

The CyberpowerPC Gamer Infinity 9310

• Quad Core 2.4GHz 64-bit processor
• 8GB DDR2 800 RAM
• 6 SATA drive bays, RAID configurable
• Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB 16X PCI Express Video Cards
• and all the usual fixins

If you’re ever in the market for a machine that will act something like a server when you run Oracle, this one does the trick. Not only that, but it comes with a price tag of only $1,719.99 from NewEgg.com (note that price includes only 4GB RAM and one 500GB 7200RPM SATA drive).

It is extremely quiet, lightning fast, very powerful, and highly recommended. The graphics are overkill for Oracle, but great for whatever graphic intensive software you might also be running. However, I will say that it is HUGE. The system in box weighs 72 pounds, and stands a little higher than my knee. But with that comes the thrill of knowing that your home computer can probably run Oracle better than many of your clients’ servers!

To anyone who has tried to post comments to my blog entries, I greatly appreciate it and I am sorry that the comments did not go through! I recently updated the mod_security parameters on my server, and it appears that the new rules break some WordPress functionality. I have approved all comments that did not previously go through.

The task was simple…

Oh yes, hello by the way. It has been a while since I’ve posted!

Anyways, like I said, the task was simple. Migrate an Oracle 10.1.0.3 32-bit database on one server to 10.2.0.3 64-bit on another server, and do it with only 1 hour of downtime. Migrations like this are daunting sometimes to company-employed DBAs since the number of migrations per database release are usually kept to a minimum. However, in the consulting world, these sort of tasks are old hat, and we’ve got lots of tricks up our sleeves to get a database from one box to another without resorting to the old, tired, and painfully slow exp/imp.

So in this case, I set myself up a task list that would accomplish the necessary goal:

1. Back up the production database (10.1.0.3 32-bit) via RMAN to a NAS array (we’ll just call it /nas)
2. Create an instance on the new server (64-bit 10.2.0.3) and restore the controlfile from /nas
3. Restore the database to the new server
4. Start the database on the new server in mount mode
5. Copy archive logs from the old server periodically, catalog them on the new server and recover database over and over until you’re ready to migrate
6. Shut down production, start it in restricted mode, archive log current, and shut it down again
7. Apply the final archive log to the new server and “alter database open resetlogs upgrade”
8. Run @?/rdbms/admin/catupgrd.sql (remember, it’s not catpatch.sql anymore)
9. Shutdown, start up, and run utlirp.sql and utlrp.sql to change packages from 32-bit to 64-bit
10. All finished!

10 points to anyone who can figure out the missing step there without reading any further. One missing step caused #8 (running catupgrd.sql) to fail miserably.

Everything went very smoothly until step #8. When running that step, I received the following error after about 5 minutes:

ORA-20000: Insufficient privileges to analyze an object in Dictionary Schema
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 13323
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 13649
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 15985
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 16027
ORA-06512: at line 2

That was an odd error, considering I was logged in as SYS. Just to be overly safe and perform a step I never should have had to do, I explicitly granted ANALYZE ANY and ANALYZE ANY DICTIONARY to SYS, just in case. I ran it once more, and received the same error.

Further investigation showed that the error occurred while running cmpdbmig.sql, during this command:

execute dbms_registry.gather_stats(null); 

To diagnose the error, I decided to see if dbms_stats had the same issue.

BEGIN dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('SYS', 'SOURCE$'); END;

*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-20000: Unable to analyze TABLE "SYS"."SOURCE$", insufficient privileges or
does not exist
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 13046
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 13076
ORA-06512: at line 1

Sure enough, I couldn’t gather statistics on the SOURCE$ table even though I was logged in as SYS. This error was a little different, saying that I had insufficient privileges OR the object did not exist.

SQL> show user
USER is "SYS"

SQL> desc source$
 Name                                      Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
 OBJ#                                      NOT NULL NUMBER
 LINE                                      NOT NULL NUMBER
 SOURCE                                             VARCHAR2(4000)

As expected, the object exists and I’m SYS. I tried everything I could think of, but under no circumstances could I make the DBMS_STATS package work against SYS objects. I thought that perhaps I had gotten a little too clever with my upgrade strategy.

Finally, it dawned on me that there was one step I had missed before running the catupgrd.sql script: I did not add a tempfile to the TEMP tablespace! Remember always, if you restore from backup, there WILL NOT BE a temporary tablespace anymore. It is not included in your backups!

SQL> alter tablespace temp add tempfile '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/temp01.dbf' size 1000M;

Tablespace altered.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('SYS', 'SOURCE$');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

As if by magic, it suddenly works! All the “insufficient privilege” errors put to rest with the creation of a temporary tablespace file. I reran catupgrd.sql, did the final steps, and the migration went off without a hitch!

As such, I hereby submit that the error should be rewritten to:

ORA-20000: Insufficient privileges to analyze an object in Dictionary Schema or something like that, or perhaps not like that whatsoever. Please contact the internet.

Don Burleson recently posted a great article on using Oracle Text indexes to make up for the horrible performance issues caused by ‘%LIKE%’ queries on large blocks of text.

I have personally been enjoying keyword searching CONTEXT indexes for quite some time through its various incarnations as the Context Option, Intermedia Option, and now Oracle Text.

So let’s expand a little bit on Don’s article and talk about some more features; namely, the XML searching capabilities of Oracle Text.

Making It Happen

First, let’s create a table to hold some car data, and insert three rows.

SQL> create table car (id number, make varchar2(20), model varchar2(30), color varchar2(10), description varchar2(255));

Table created.

SQL> insert into car values (1, 'Honda', 'Civic', 'Blue', 'A fun car to drive');

1 row created.

SQL> insert into car values (2, 'Jeep', 'Wrangler', 'Green', 'Better than a Honda');

1 row created.

SQL> insert into car values (3, 'Chevrolet', 'Camaro', 'Black', 'Good when you''re feeling blue');

1 row created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

Note that Car 1 has the color “blue,” but Car 3 has “blue” in the description. Also note that Car 1 has a MAKE of “Honda” but Car 2 has “Honda” in the description.

Now let’s create a table from this data to hold XML for each row:

SQL> create table car_xml as select id, dbms_xmlgen.getxml('select * from car where id = ' || id) xml from car;

Table created.

SQL> desc car_xml
 Name                                      Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
 ID                                                 NUMBER
 XML                                                CLOB

SQL> select * from car_xml where rownum < 2;

        ID
----------
XML
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         1
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ROWSET>
 <ROW>
  <ID>1</ID>
  <MAKE>Honda</MAKE>
  <MODEL>Civic</MODEL>
  <COLOR>Blue</COLOR>
  <DESCRIPTION>A fun car to drive</DESCRIPTION>
 </ROW>
</ROWSET>

As you can see, Oracle has assigned column tags for each column of the row.

Lastly, we create the Oracle Text index:

SQL> create index car_xml_text_idx on car_xml(xml) indextype is ctxsys.context parameters ('section group ctxsys.auto_section_group');

Index created.

Note that we have added a parameter to our context index. This parameter is SECTION GROUP, and we have assigned the AUTO_SECTION_GROUP. This section group will take our data from the column and actually parse it internally based on standard HTML style tags.

Querying XML

SQL> select id from car_xml where contains(xml, 'blue') > 0;

        ID
----------
         1
         3

Notice that when we searched for the word "blue," Oracle returned rows 1 and 3. Row 1 has the color blue, while row 3 mentions blue in the description. How can we keep searching all columns when we want to, but narrow our search as needed? Search WITHIN.

SQL> select id from car_xml where contains(xml, 'blue within color') > 0;

        ID
----------
         1

Notice that now when we use the CONTAINS clause, we specify that "blue" must appear "within color." This instructs Oracle to ONLY return rows where the word "blue" can be found between begin and end COLOR tags.

To illustrate this example once more, we'll try "honda."

SQL> select id from car_xml where contains(xml, 'honda') > 0;

        ID
----------
         1
         2

SQL> select id from car_xml where contains(xml, 'honda within make') > 0;

        ID
----------
         1

Once again, we have narrowed our search with a WITHIN cause. Sometimes, it is very handy to be able to search an entire table's contents for a keyword, while other times drilling down is much more appropriate.

You may have also noticed that the Oracle Text index is case insenstive. Though I searched for 'honda' in lowercase, it picked up 'Honda' in uppercase in both columns.

Better still, there are many more features included with Oracle Text such as synonym searching, preferred terms, fuzzy searches, highlighting, and more, but we will save those for another post.

It has been a long time since I have posted on here (work and all, sorry about that), and so when I was asked to do another Log Buffer, it sounded like a great way to get back into the swing of things.

Not to say work is light; on the contrary, I couldn’t be busier! The sometimes wild world of database technology has literally been exploding. This brings us, of course, to the news.

The top news on the minds of most Oracle DBAs is the release of Oracle 11g for Linux. This action packed SQL to Oracle 10g (get it?) includes some amazing tools, such as the Query Result Cache. The Query Result Cache is a new area of the shared pool that speeds up often-run queries tremendously by caching their results. However, all good things come at a price, as Alex Fatkulin points out. It will be interesting to see how this feature pans out once more people get their hands on it.

Continuing on with the Oracle 11g theme, Laurent Schneider blogs about an outstanding feature in Oracle 11g that logs the errors produced by scripts that you have run. Be sure to check it out, even if you think your code is perfect. I couldn’t begin to cound the times this would have come in handy.

Lastly on 11g (for now), Jeremy Schneider has a great post that gives an overview on many of the new features included in the latest release. Even if you have been working with 11g for a while now, this is a great recap from the past week of the new functionality at your fingertips.

Eddie Awad reminds us of an important rule that applies no matter which database we use or what language we program: self documenting code is not enough!

Interested in keeping your MySQL database safe in the case of a disaster (I sure hope so)? Have a look at this post from a MySQL DBA that was once an Oracle DBA.

When does revoking a permission grant a permission? When it’s MySQL! This post, also by the MySQL DBA that was once an Oracle DBA, talks about how permissions work in MySQL, and what to watch out for when you plan your security structure.

Are you considering being a MySQL DBA that was once an Oracle DBA yourself? It can’t hurt to understand a wide variety of database architectures. An article by Paul Vallee explains why Oracle and SQL Server DBAs probably want to learn MySQL.

If you are interested in using BLOB objects in multiple engines in MySQL, have a look at this article by MooCow Productions, which shows some testing on performance depending on the engine you choose.

Having problems with variables in your scripted SQL Server tasks? The SSIS Junkie clues us in to a possible bug received after installing several patches.

I think that last time I did a log buffer, I posted something about dates and times in SQL Server. Once again another great article on the same topic has crossed my desk (browser), and this time it is an excellent article on using the DATETIME datatype for more robust functionality from Jeff Smith.

If you are on PostgreSQL waiting on your posts, you’ll be happy to see some tips and tricks by depesz that will help you bring back your queries in the order you are hoping for, which is not always the order that you get!

For those of you that think there should be more PostgreSQL posts in this Log Buffer, I invite you to remember that PostgreSQL is not a democracy, as noted in this article by Robert Treat.

And in the interest of multi-database posting, let’s not forget DB2! In fact, if you are interested in DB2 you can read this article and join up with other DB2 users on Facebook, as suggested by Chris Eaton.

But I can’t resist going back to Oracle. Tanel Poder has posted an outstanding article on advanced Oracle troubleshooting when the wait interface is not enough. Consequently, this is his first post on the new blog, and I hope to see more great articles like this in the future.

Sitting in your cube staring at top, wondering what to do next? Take a break and listen to three geeks talk about Oracle 11g.

Some people think that tuning is all about adding indexes on your WHERE clause columns. Think again! The MySQL Performance Blog posts about cases where an index might not be such a hot idea. This applies to Oracle as well of course, where sometimes a b-tree index just won’t cut it.

Kevin Closson has written an article that delves into 11g Automatic Memory Management (AMM) and Linux Hugepages support. This is a good read and sheds a great deal of light on both features, and how to determine the best course of action for your 11g implementation.

And to wrap all this up with some highly political debate, Howard Rodgers posts about a topic that may be of interest to some in the Oracle Community: is the Oracle ACE program devalued? Does being an Oracle ACE really prove anything about you as a DBA? Reading through this controversial entry and its comments, it would seem that some people feel it is nothing more than a title. As a note, I am proud to call myself an Oracle ACE and would hope that the ACE community continues to be held in high regard.

That wraps up this edition of Log Buffer! May your queries be tuned and your memory be plentiful!

I ran across this article today on Oracle’s new strategy for Standard Edition and Standard Edition One licensing.

As a consultant, there are times when I have to tackle licensing questions, though I usually try to stay away from it and let Oracle’s salespeople do that job.

However, I found this news quite interesting. In order to compete with Microsoft and other database vendors in the small and midsize business market, Oracle has changed their licensing model on Standard Edition and Standard Edition One. Instead of a per-core licensing scheme, licensing for these products is now on a per-socket basis. Not only does this make pricing cheaper on multi-core systems, it also makes things much easier for the accounting department!

Of course, it’s still the same for Enterprise Edition (the article calls it tortuous), but perhaps that will change soon as well. Hey, at least we’re no longer using Power Units!

Hello everyone…I know I haven’t posted in quite a while, and I’m not about to start now. Things have been extremely busy lately, starting with my 10g RAC course aboard the Carnival Glory on a 7-day Caribbean cruise (more on that later).

So I will be posting again soon, and hope to have some feedback on RMOUG (where I will be presenting three topics this week) and other things.

Until then, read the Tao of Oracle by Roby Sherman. It’s probably the single most hilarious piece of Oracle literature I’ve ever read!