11g Easy Oracle Text Management Oracle 11g New Features Tips by Donald BurlesonJune 28, 2015

Oracle 11g New Features Tips

Among many other advances, Oracle offers several improvements to Oracle Text in 11g.  These new Oracle Text enhancements are broken down into four categories:

• Performance

• Minimization of application downtime

• Internationalization

• Ease of Maintenance

From the improvement listed above, 11g OEM provides an Ease of Maintenance with a powerful, integrated Oracle Text interface.  Oracle Enterprise Manager supplies an interface, as shown in Figure 4.8 below, for configuration, maintenance, and administration of Oracle Text which include:

• Viewing details of Oracle Text indexes

• Synchronizing Oracle Text indexes

• Optimizing Oracle Text indexes

• Rebuilding indexes

• Editing Oracle Text indexes

• Querying log analysis

Figure 4.8 Oracle Enterprise Manager interface

In the past, DBAs would query the ctx_user_index_errors table for errors that were generated for an Oracle Text index.  Now OEM Text Manager interface can be used as shown in Figure 4.9

Figure 4.9 Using OEM Text Manager interface for errors generated for Oracle Text

Better OEM Grid Tools

In previous releases, Database Configuration Assistant was used to configure a database with either Database Control or Grid Control.  This was done either while creating the database, or later by reconfiguring the database.  As noted by Oracle, this reconfiguring required considerable manual effort.

Luckily, making the transition from Database Control to Grid Control is now much easier with 11g.  After making sure there is a central agent installed, migrating to Grid Control consists of the following steps:

1. Create a database with Database Control

2. Invoke DBCA in configure mode and select the database

3. In Management options page, select "Switch to grid control to manage the database"

NOTE: The agent needs to be installed for this to be an option in DBCA!

Clone Database Enhancements

Database cloning is a process to update TEST or DEV databases from PROD.  It is especially useful to offer a full-scale TEST or DEV database by cloning the production instance.  In the past the DBA would run the command, ?alter database backup controlfile to trace?, shutdown production, copy files to the new server, copy and edit the controlfile, etc.  Over the years, Oracle has been adding tools to help with these cloning operations.  11g offers improvements which allow database cloning within Oracle Enterprise Manager. 

These new features provide the following enhancements to the OEM cloning pages:

• Removes the requirement for source and destination stage area

• Supports cloning from a generic RMAN backup set

• Enhanced job summary

To access the Clone Database interface, click the Data Movement tab, then Clone Database.  Figure 4.10 illustrates this improved interface for database cloning.  Here, it is possible to create a clone from an existing RMAN backup. 

Figure 4.10 interface used for Database Cloning