Sheila Jenkins Oracle News Headlines

Don Burleson speaks on 11g gotchas

eWeek magazine has just published this article where we see some of the best and worst 11g new features. 

Here is Mr. Burleson's favorite 11g new features:

1 - The new Oracle data compression utility promises to save on disk storage up to three times over storing data in an uncompressed format, with relatively small overhead. This has a whole lot more benefit than just saving on disk space. It will allow companies to go solid state for far less money.

2 - ADR [Automatic Diagnostic Repository] is a re­­pository for critical errors. It's basically automating something that database administrators have been doing manually for decades.

3 - SPA [SQL Performance Analyzer] is one of the most exciting features. It's a holistic tuning tool that allows you to define and replay a representative workload on your database. You can then adjust the global parameters for optimal performance very quickly. It's the kind of task that database administrators have been doing manually for years.

4 - [Another feature is] the ability to do "hot updates," which Oracle has been working on for years. It's phenomenally difficult from a software engineering perspective to write software that can update itself while it's running.

5 - Automatic Memory Management [AMM] tuning dates back to Oracle Database 9i, when Oracle provided the first tools to dynamically tune memory pools.

The downside of Oracle11g

We also see some "gotchas" in 11g, mostly related to abuse by the under-trained DBA.  Mr. Burleson notes that Oracle's easy to use interfaces can allow Dangerous Dilettantes to Destroy Databases:

1 - Oracle has become so automated that you can end up with a DBA that doesn't really know what is happening, and that is getting a lot of companies in trouble.

2 - Oracle offers many kinds of data replication, including Oracle Streams, Multi-master and snapshot replication, and Oracle RAC, which is, in a sense, a type of replication.

3 - Oracle has created artificial intelligence to advise on self-healing operations, and these are often misunderstood and misapplied by people without the requisite background.

4 - Oracle has offered features in 11g that are geared to senior practicing DBAs that have a huge potential for abuse by dilettantes. Many times I see that people are using these automated tools beyond their level of understanding.

We all know that Don loves 11g, and these criticisms read like "praising with feint damn", but they are valid points.  Also see Don's other notes on Oracle 11g: