August 20, 2016 ❖ Tags: oracle, rac, bugs
Had a panic after a recent upgrade when we noticed that gc cr block lost had a 600x increase. Fortunately, Ram Cheruvattath had run across this previously and directed me to
read more 🢩July 27, 2016 ❖ Tags: oracle, performance, baselines, bugs
I’ve been working a bit more with 12c lately and ran across something that was a bummer. We’ve been troubleshooting some changes with partition maintenance running longer than it had in 11.2.0.3 and found that 32K seconds were being spent on 2c3tb462qkzr8.
read more 🢩June 19, 2016 ❖ Tags: oracle, wallet, tde, encyption
There was a good discussion with some co-workers on database security, which really came down to locking down the OS accounts. Meaning, you can use technologies like Oracle TDE or Oracle Vault or Database Vault or Whatever Vault (™), but if the operating system isn’t secure then nothing is really. Frits Hoogland had mentioned that with tools like Linux’s shmcat you could attach to the OS memory and scrape whatever data happens to be available. If an encrypted database block is decrypted in the SGA then it is readable. Now, in cases where security is taken seriously then the OS is typically locked down, however, this got me thinking about what else is available in memory.
read more 🢩June 08, 2016 ❖ Tags: oracle, performance, ashtop, tanel
I live inside SQLPLUS. I do this because it’s everywhere that Oracle exists. That means that I don’t have to worry about installing some other tool. And if for some reason SQLPLUS isn’t available, I can easily install it through the instant client. Another reason why I prefer SQLPLUS over anything else is that I can copy and paste my output to share my results with anyone over email, reports, pretty much anywhere that accepts text. Show what you know.
read more 🢩May 21, 2016 ❖ Tags: oracle, wallets
Back in 2000, (dot com!) I’d attended a team meeting where they were trying to address the practice of using hidden files to store passwords used for batch scripts. I was still exclusively a Windows user at the time so that concept escaped me, however, the dangers of storing passwords in clear text did not.
read more 🢩May 15, 2016 ❖ Tags: logs, instrumentation
When I left the world of Geology I moved to application development and Oracle database administration. Both of which are wrought with features, bugs, rewards, and grief. Often when the hours got long and my curses were directed at a screen, my wife would ask me what was the matter. Frustrated I would utter something unintelligible and she would just ask me, “have you checked your logs?”
read more 🢩May 07, 2016 ❖ Tags: oracle, bugs
Periodically there would be cursor: pin S wait on X spikes on one of our reporting databases which resulted in 20+ Average Active Sessions on some SQLs that didn’t seem to originate from any of our code. Looking a little deeper at them:
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