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The Best Questions on Oracle Multitenant

In late June, my team hosted our 20th webinar in our Virtual Classroom series.

Oracle Webinar

You can now get a curated version of the Q&A. It contains many good questions and answers that give you deeper insight into Oracle Multitenant architecture.

The Best Questions

Consider these questions and answers a little appetizer. You find many more in the Q&A document.

Do I need to convert my database to a PDB before I upgrade to Oracle Database 23ai? No. You can do it as part of the upgrade to Oracle Database 23ai. It is easiest to use AutoUpgrade for the process

Does catcon.pl parallelism require Enterprise Edition like many other parallel options? No. You can use parallel threads in catcon.pl on a Standard Edition 2 database

Any good idea on how to avoid service name collision on a server when two CDBs tries to create a PDB with the same name? We’ve seen several customers implement procedures that create unique names for each PDB. The name of the PDB should not include information about the server or CDB because you often move PDBs around, and then it is impractical to update the PDB name. One customer we worked with created a small PL/SQL function backed by a simple table. When called, the function returned a unique PDB name. The customer used ORDS to expose the function as a web service.

Do you recommend Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning (FPP) in a small, but complex, environment? The bigger the environment, the more benefit you get from FPP. Especially if you are using Exadata Database Machine as well. AutoUpgrade is our preferred tool for smaller environments, but the complexity talks towards FPP. FPP comes with a license cost that you must take into consideration as well.

Did You Miss It

In case you missed it, you can find the recording on our YouTube channel and get the slides.

I Love Questions

One of the reasons I like doing webinars is that I get questions from the audience. I love that for several reasons:

  • Many questions about a specific topics is an indication that I didn’t explain a topic very well. I use this as feedback to improve for the next presentation.
  • I can use it to tell where our product has weakness that we can improve.
  • It tells me something about how customers use our product. I always get amazed about the creativity with which our customers use Oracle Database.
  • I find gaps in my own knowledge and I can learn new things.
  • It allows me to help other people.

Please – always ask questions! :)

Help Me Grow My Skills

I received a question the other day:

I want to grow my skills in Oracle Database. Can you help me get started?

Here’s my suggestion.

Conferences and User Groups

  • You should engage in your local user group. Attending meetups and conferences is a good way of learning and boosts your network. If you need to find your local user group, try to contact one of the local Oracle ACEs.

  • Come to Oracle DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld. It takes place in Las Vegas in September. Three days of intense learning, plus a pre-conference training day.

  • If you’re based in Europe, you can attend one of the major user group events.

    • DOAG 2024 Conference + Exhibition hosted by the German user group, DOAG. Many sessions are in English, even if you don’t know German it is definitely worth a visit.
    • UKOUG Conference ’24 hosted by the UK user group, UKOUG.
    • On other continents, I assume there are similar conferences, but I’m mostly familiar with the ones in Europe.

Oracle University and Certification

Oracle LiveLabs

Webinars

  • My team has 20 webinars on YouTube that you can access at any time. It’s all tech, no marketing.

  • Further, the DBA Masterclasses has many very good webinars as well.

Documentation

What Else?

Do you have any other ideas? How do you sharpen your skills? Share your approach by leaving a comment.

Never stop learning!

It’s a Wrap – MakeIT 2024

In the last days of May, I had the absolute pleasure of attending the MakeIT 2024 conference. Once again, the conference was held in the beautiful seaside city of Portorož, Slovenia.

The conference is a joint venture with the JCON conference, so you can catch one or two sessions on Java as well. I really value learning about related technologies as well. This year I listened in on caching options in Java and the use of JDBC driver.

You should come next year. There is also a good selection of English speakers, so even for foreigners, there is a reason to travel.

MakeIT 2024 banner

The Slides

Workshop – Patching Oracle Database

This is a full workshop on patching Oracle Database. It includes a hands-on lab, so you can try it on your own.

You should flip through the slides if you want a deep dive on patching.

You can also try the hands-on lab for free.

Best Practices for Upgrade to Oracle Database 23ai

This session and the slides help you prepare for the next long-term support release of Oracle Database.

Patch Me If You Can

This session and the slides give a quick fly-over of the essentials of patching.

Oracle Data Pump – News, Internals, Tips and Tricks

I had the pleasure of talking about Oracle Data Pump and presenting some new features. If you’re curious about a faster way of creating indexes and adding constraints, you can flip through the slides.

Thanks

Thanks to the organizer of MakeIT 2024 for pulling off yet another successful conference, to the sponsors for making it all possible, and to everyone who attended my sessions or the conference in general.

Impressions

Quote of the conference Quote of the conference

My Data Pump talk My Data Pump talk

Going to conference is hard Going to conference is hard

Low hanging clouds at the airport Low hanging clouds at the airport

It’s a Wrap – Workshops and DOAG 2024 Datenbank

I’m on way back from the conference DOAG Datenbank 2024 in Düsseldorf. Before that I had workshops in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Frankfurt. I’d like to share some slides and impressions from the events.

Slides

Out-of-place Patching – The answers to the questions of the universe

You really should be using out-of-place patching. Why? It is much safer, takes work out of the maintenance window and so much more.

Get the slides to read about all the benefits and how you can make patching super easy with Fleet Patching and Provisioning.

Real World Oracle Database Upgrade and Migration 19c & 23ai

A huge compilation of useful information about patching, upgrades, how to avoid changing execution plans and a lot of cool stuff from Oracle Database 23ai.

That and lots more in the slides.

Are You Coming?

The German Oracle user group is called DOAG and they organize several great events throughout the year. I just came from the database-specific one, but in November their big conference is coming. It is really a great conference, so talk to your manager and see if you can come. Many sessions are in English, so you don’t have to speak German to come.

Will I see you there at DOAG 2024 Conference + Exhibition?

Impressions

How do you avoid burning down the house when you upgrade? How do you avoid burning down the house when you upgrade?

Attentive audience Great audience

Beautiful wheater for a take-off

How to Perform Standby-first Patch Apply When You Have Different Primary and Standby Databases in the Same Oracle Home

I am a big fan of Oracle Data Guard Standby-First Patch Apply. You can:

  • Reduce downtime to the time it takes to perform a switchover.
  • Test the patching procedure on the standby database.

I received an interesting question the other day:

I have the following two Data Guard configurations. I want to patch all the databases using standby-first patch apply. How do I do that when I have primary and standby databases running out of the same Oracle home on the same machine?

Overview of Data Guard standby-first environment

Requirements

In this case, the databases are on 19.17.0, and the customer wants to patch them to 19.23.0.

To use standby-first patch apply, you must meet a set of requirements, one being:

Data Guard Standby-First Patch Apply is supported between database patch releases that are a maximum of one year (1 year) apart based on the patch release date.

Here are the release dates of the following Release Updates:

  • 19.17.0: October 2022
  • 19.23.0: April 2024

So, in this case, the customer can’t use standby-first patch apply directly. There is a year and a half in between. They need to patch cycles in this case:

  • Patch to 19.21.0 (release October 2023)
  • Patch to 19.23.0 (release April 2024)

In the future, they should apply patches more often to avoid ending up in this situation again.

Patching Oracle Home

The customer has one Oracle home on each server from where both databases run. On any server, there is a primary and a standby database (from two different Data Guard configs).

The customer uses in-place patching. If they patch the entire Oracle home, it means one of the primary databases is now on a higher Oracle home than its standby database, which is not allowed. The standby database is the only one which may run on a higher patch level.

Using the above configuration with primary and standby databases running out of the same Oracle home, you can’t use in-place patching and standby-first patch apply.

The customer must switch to out-of-place patching to achieve this. Then you can patch standby databases first, then the primaries.

Plus, you get all the other benefits of out-of-place patching.

Datapatch

Once all the databases in a Data Guard configuration run in the new Oracle home, you still haven’t completed the patching process:

A patch or patch bundle is not considered fully installed until all of the following actions have occurred:

  • Patch binary installation has been performed to the database home on all standby systems.
  • Patch binary installation has been performed to the database home on the primary system.
  • Patch SQL installation, if required by the patch, has been performed on the primary database and the redo applied to the standby database(s).

You must do the above steps in the specified order, and the last step is to execute Datapatch:

$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/datapatch

Step-by-step

You can use AutoUpgrade to patch Oracle Data Guard.

Happy Patching!

Oracle Database 23ai Is Here – Time to Sharpen Multitenant Skills

Last week Oracle announced the release of Oracle Database 23ai with many significant enhancements. It is available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure but according to Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1) other platforms are following soon.

One important thing about Oracle Database 23ai is that it only supports the multitenant architecture. Once you upgrade beyond Oracle Database 19c, you must also convert your database to a pluggable database.

To give you the best possible starting point for the multitenant migration, our team has prepared two webinars about the multitenant architecture. Actually, we planned on just one. Still, we have so many things to share that we decided to make two webinars. When product managers get a chance to talk, they talk a lot!

Move to Oracle Database 23ai – Everything you need to know about Oracle Multitenant

Part 1

May 16, 14:00 CEST, 2024

  • Multitenant architecure
    • Introduction
    • Consolidation strategies
    • Benefits
  • Creation of container database
    • Recommendations
    • Parameters
  • Migration methods
    • Best practices
    • Data Guard
    • RAC
    • Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
    • What to remember after migration
    • Rollback and fallback
    • Customer case

Part 2

June 27, 14:00 CEST, 2024

  • Operations
    • Cloning
    • Connecting
    • Running scripts
    • Resource Manager
    • Tips and tricks
    • Recommendations
    • Customer case
  • Patching
    • Entire CDB
    • Individual PDB
    • Recommendations
    • Datapatch
  • Upgrading
    • CDB upgrades
    • PDB upgrades (unplug-plug)
    • Replay upgrade
    • Best practices
    • Downgrade
    • Customer case

Sign Up

You can sign up here. My team (Mike, Rodrigo, Roy and Alex) will be there and answer all your questions. I promise we won’t end the webinar until there are no more questions.

If you miss the webinar, you can watch a recording later on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out.

Even if you already use Oracle Database on multitenant architecture, I guarantee there are still new things to learn.

As always: All tech, no marketing!

It’s a Wrap – OUGN 2024

I just finished my presentation at OUGN 2024 conference in Oslo, Norway. Once again, it was held at the Rebel, which is an awesome location. Two intense days full of learning experiences.

It’s my second time at the conference, it I must give it my strongest recommedation. If you’re in Northen Europe, it’s an easy flight to Oslo and you really get great value for it.

The Slides

Introduction to Multitenant Architecture

What is multitenant? How does it differ from the non-CDB architecture. How can I move from non-CDB to a pluggable database? I answered all those questions and much more.

You should flip through the slides if you want an overview of the multitenant architecture.

Move to Oracle Database 23ai

This session and the slides help you prepare for the next long-term support release of Oracle Database.

More Multitenant

If you need to know more about multitenant, be sure to join our two webinars coming up in May and June.

Thanks

Thanks to the board of OUGN and the organizers for pulling yet another successful conference. Thanks to the sponsors making it all possible and to everyone who attended my sessions or the conference in general.

Impressions

The Dolerean

Beautiful sunset during the approach to Copenhagen Airport.

I Need Patch 35836860. Is It in 19.21.0?

The other day, someone asked:

I need the fix for bug 35836860 in my Oracle Database. I am planning to install the Release Update 19.21.0. How do I know if this Release Update includes the patch?

What is the easiest way to tell whether a Release Update contains a specific patch for Oracle Database?

How To

The easiest way to check for patch inclusion is ORAdiff.

I navigate to Included Fixes and Seach Fixes and input the bug number.

Finding patch inclusion information for a bug / patch in Oracle Database

Next, the report tells me that Release Update 19.22.0 includes this patch. All newer Release Update include this patch as well because Release Updates are always cumulative.

Finding patch inclusion information for a bug / patch in Oracle Database

I can even see that MRP 4 to 6 for 19.20.0 also includes this fix. For whatever strange reason, the MRPs for 19.21.0 do not include this fix. Here’s a video if you want to learn more about MRPs.

ORAdiff

Remember that ORAdiff is a free tool for anyone with an Oracle account.

If you need further tips on using ORAdiff, we have a playlist on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on anything.

Want More?

Since we are talking about patching Oracle Database, it might be good to refresh your knowledge with our webinar Oracle Database Release and Patching Strategy for 19c and 23ai.

Open the video on YouTube, and you can dive right into each individual chapter.

My Query Performs Horrible, Fix It!

Many years ago, I used to work as an operational DBA, and I remember colleagues asking the following:

My query runs very slow. The other day it all ran fine, but now it’s hanging. What’s going on? Fix it!

They might even start the occasional rant about relational doesn’t scale and all the other blah blah blah.

Sounds familiar? What if you could solve the problem by just running:

EXEC DBMS_SPM.ADD_VERIFIED_SQL_PLAN_BASELINE('<sql_id');

The query runs at warp speed again, and the users are happy.

In Oracle Database 19.22.0, that’s possible.

What’s Going On

The procedure uses SQL Plan Management: the best solution to ensure plan stability.

It will:

  • Search all your SQL tuning sets, including automatic SQL tuning sets, AWR, and cursor cache to find other plans for that SQL.
  • Test each of the plans to find the best one.
  • Create a SQL plan baseline with the best plan.

During the next execution, the database will use the best plan.

Problem solved!

SQL Plan Management

I’m a huge fan of SQL Plan Management. It is one of the most underrated features in Oracle Database.

What is your biggest fear when you upgrade? Often, the answer is changing plans. SQL Plan Management effectively solves that problem, and we recommend it as part of our performance stability prescription.

Afterwords

In fact, I’ve never been a performance expert. When I was tasked with a performance issue, I knew it would take a lot of time.

Over time, I found a better way of solving these issues. I would turn my chair and look directly into the wrinkled eyes of Frank, my trusted grey-haired colleague.

Using my cutest little puppy face and soft voice, young me would ask for advice and smoothly hand over the task to him.

But not everyone has a Frank in your office, so DBMS_SPM.ADD_VERIFIED_SQL_PLAN_BASELINE is very useful.

Experience and grey hair rock!

Further Reading

Real-World Database Upgrade and Migration 19c and 23c

Mike Dietrich and I are hosting two in-person workshops in Sweden and Denmark in early May. Yes, that’s right: It’s in-person.

Mike Dietrich and Daniel Overby Hansen will guide you through several different examples of upgrade, migration and consolidation techniques and strategies – shown with real world customer cases.

  • How to take full advantage of the new features and options in Oracle Database 19c and 23c
  • The smoothest and fully unattended migration to the CDB architecture
  • Real World Best Practices and Customer Cases
  • Performance Stability Prescription
  • What’s new, what’s coming (especially for DBAs) in Oracle Database 23c

Oracle Real-World Database Upgrade and Migration 19c and 23c with Mike Dietrich and Daniel Overby Hansen

Sweden

  • Oracle office, Solna
  • Tuesday 7 May 2024, 09:00 – 16:30
  • Sign up

Denmark

  • Oracle office, Hellerup
  • Wednesday 8 May 2024, 08:00 – 15:00
  • Sign up

Secure your seat as quickly as possible. Seats are limited!

Agenda

To whet your appetite, here is the agenda:

Agenda
Release Strategy with Oracle Database 23c
Oracle Database Patching – Welcome to the Jungle
Upgrade to Oracle Database 23c
Migration to the CDB architecture – smoothly and unattended
Data Pump: The universal tool, for ADB migrations and more
Cloud Migration Advisor
Performance Stability Prescription
Secret underscores
Insights into the Oracle Database Development process
Oracle Database 23c – What’s new, what’s coming

Remember our mantra: All tech, no marketing!

I hope to see you at our workshops.