Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Book Review: Oracle Database XE 11gR2 Jump Start Guide by Asif Momen

The renowned Oracle ACE, Asif Momen deserves full credit in producing a quality work on Oracle database overview and awareness of related terms. The style of the Packt's book "Oracle Database XE 11gR2 Jump Start Guide" is a perfect KISS (Keep It Short and Simple). Best aspect being that the book successfully drives its objectives and maintains a consistent tone throughout. The scope of the book has been well measured and maintained. The content is aimed to give the readers an overview of concepts instead of digging the depts or internals. Quite often, I have seen readers misinterpret quick ref (jump start) guide against complete reference books. As Rome was not built in a day, one shouldn't expect to be an expert in the area by the end of a jump start guide.

Here is an outline of the chapters in the book -

Chapter 1 starts with a touch to Oracle corporation. Briefly, it covers the database editions offering from Oracle. One might expect a column on feature comparison across the editions - but Asif has provided the corresponding Oracle link under References section. The chapter ends up with the focus on Oracle database XE edition.

Chapter 2 talks about the installation of Oracle database XE edition. The chapter includes only what is required for one to start up with the things which justifies the purpose of the book.

Chapter 3 shows how to connect to the database and configure the listener. It also includes a section on SGA, PGA and AMM. However, memory management is separately discussed in chapter 8 too.

Chapter 4, 5 and 6 takes a refreshing tour of programming and development part of Oracle. Readers can refresh concepts like querying and manipulating data, database objects (tables, indexes, views,
sequences), Oracle subprograms (functions and procedures), packages, triggers, and exception handling.

Chapter 7 demonstrates the elementary usage of Oracle Application express. Since APEX comes with Oracle db XE installed, it might be useful for RAD using APEX.

Chapter 8 provides information on Oracle instance and the physical/logical database structure. Basic operations with tablespaces are well illustrated through scripts.

Chapter 9 discusses movement of data between the servers using export/import and data pump method. Export/import of full db, schema and a table are illustrated. I was expecting a comparative study
between data pump and conventional export/import with the list of available options available during export/import and data pump techniques.

Chapter 10 shows the step by step upgrade process from Oracle XE to other database editions.

Chapter 11 provides conceptual overview of backup and recovery concepts in oracle.

Chapter 12 gives you insights on best, may be better practices to tune the Oracle 11g XE database. It touches the concepts like explain plan, indexing techniques, statspack, and statistics.

The book would serve as a light Starter for those who chose the area and aim to tweak in more on the subject. Buy this book from the publishers link: http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-database-xe-11gr2-jump-start-guide/book

Book Review: Oracle Database XE 11gR2 Jump Start Guide by Asif Momen (sbhoracle.wordpress.com)

Oracle 11g R2 Grid Infrastructure installation on 2 node cluster using Virtualbox (sbhoracle.wordpress.com)

How Oracle's pluggable databases will work (infoworld.com)

Monday, 12 November 2012

Its time to Light up!!

Wish you all great Diwali.

Here comes the lights. Have a safe, prosperous and lightening Diwali. Though we pledge for silent celebrations this Diwali in interest of air, but I still long for the excitement of noisy and smoky crackers.

May this Diwali enlightens your life with prosperity, happiness, care, affection, health, growth and all success.

[caption id="attachment_559" align="aligncenter" width="263"]

Happy Diwali 2012[/caption]

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Oracle NoSQL Kvstore (1.2.123) deployment demo

With the next turn fold of web2.0, database paradigms have molded their behaviors too to map the requirements and expectations. NoSQL is a database of modern times where the database platform is need based rather than rule based. Rather being generic, traditional or conventional, its more suited for limited - perhaps specific requirements. Leading software giants like Facebook, Amazon, Oracle have already came up with their own idea of NoSQL databases. Its difficult to digest the fact that current more than 130 flavors of NoSQL databases available.

I have tried to deploy a 3 node datacenter on Virtualbox using Oracle's NoSQL product offering. I would like to share the demonstration along with fair understanding. Here is the abstract and the demo doc for download.

Oracle NoSQL Overview

Oracle NoSQL offers a non relational, distributed and horizontally scalable datastore to achieve high availability with a simplified data model.

The article describes how to setup a 3-node Oracle NoSQL Kvstore datacenter on Oracle Virtualbox. The objective of the demonstration is to allow users to setup the datacenter on their local environment and carry out hands-on activities in regards to NoSQL administration.

The article starts with a brief introduction to NoSQL and the Oracle offering. It lists the prerequisite products used for the demonstration and summarizes the setup information. Later the datacenter deployment has been demonstrated in detail supported with required screenshots.

NoSQL: The Introduction

NoSQL is one of the emerging database solution in the world today. Very often, it is misunderstood as anti SQL, but it is not true. It carries the name "Not Only SQL" for the fact that it doesn't uses SQL, contrary to the conventional database systems.

The key objective behind the evolution of NoSQL solution was to cope up the high growth of semi structured data and real time processing. The Web 2.0 platforms expressed their concerns over the availability, scalability, and flexibility of RDBMS products. On the other hand, NoSQL database facilitates, perhaps meant for high availability, flexibility and its scaling out capabilities. Several top tier websites like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter employ NoSQL solution to yield maximum availability and quick performance by virtue of its high throughput and low latency features.

Overall, NoSQL doesn't provides a soul database management system but just a data repository. Contrary to the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Integrity and Durability) compliance, NoSQL database solution complies with BASE (Basically Available, Soft state, Eventually consistent) model. Most of NoSQL databases are key value stores, while several database products have also been registered as columnar, document based and graph based under NoSQL category.

Oracle brings its own NoSQL database product which is built on Berkley DB java platform. Berkley DB has been a proven XML based storage model over the last decade. Oracle NoSQL database is a distributed key value store which is built on set of storage nodes. In recent times, Oracle NoSQL product has caught the attention in the community by to its inclusion in the Oracle Big Data solution for real time data processing.

Currently, the NoSQL database is available in two flavors namely, Community edition and Enterprise edition.

The Oracle NoSQL database product can be downloaded from the below link

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/downloads/default-495311.html

Download the complete demo document from the below link

OracleNoSQL 3 node KVstore Deployment on Virtualbox

Do share you feedback/suggestions and observations.

Blueprints for Oracle NoSQL Database (blogs.oracle.com)

Read how a customer uses Oracle NoSQL Database (blogs.oracle.com)

Can NoSQL (e.g. MongoDB) replace Data Grid solutions e.g. Oracle Coherence (stackoverflow.com)

NoSQL is a Stupid Name (java.dzone.com)

What is NoSQL, and why do you need it? (zdnet.com)

SQL, NoSQL, BigData in Data Architecture (slideshare.net)

NoSQL or Traditional Database (java.sys-con.com)

NoSQL: Algorithms and Data Modeling Links (architects.dzone.com)

NoSQL and transactions (markclittle.blogspot.com)

Big Data Performance Delivered: Oracle NoSQL Database on Cisco UCS (blogs.cisco.com)

Monday, 5 November 2012

Oracle 11g R2 Grid Infrastructure installation on 2 node cluster using Virtualbox

Hi Guyzz,

Though there is a lot of buzz on Oracle engineered systems, RAC deployments, 12c technical enablements but still certain basics and walkthrough demos appear to be quite handy and helpful for upcoming professionals in the area. In last few times, I was trying to refresh the demonstration of two node RAC database installation on a virtualbox. Here is an abstract followed by a detailed demo document.

I hope the post justifies the purpose and the efforts.

Introduction

Since its inception in Oracle 9i, the Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters) technology has been an active topic of discussion in the community. Oracle 11gR2 RAC offers high availability, scalability (scaling out capability), manageability, reduced ownership cost, and cloud architecture platform. The RAC technology allows the establishment of multiple instances to a single database server which hosts an enterprise application.

Oracle 11g R2 RAC system necessarily works on grid architecture. The master RAC node must have grid infrastructure installed with the remaining nodes replicated accordingly. The Oracle 11gR2 grid infrastructure installation integrates oracle clusterware and oracle ASM. Oracle Clusterware is responsible for High Availability framework, process monitoring, event management and group membership. On the other hand, oracle ASM suffices the need of a conventional file system while offering multiple add-on features like online disk manipulation, auto I/O load balancing, stripping and mirroring of data and finally ease the data storage management.

The RAC customers/users often report their difficulties and issues in the installation phase. Before planning the grid infrastructure installation, it has to be prepared appropriately so that it suffices all the requirements of a clusterware and memory management. There are multiple areas to be looked upon before the grid installation like network, system kernel parameters, NTPD settings, node connectivity, and ASM disk setup. The document describes the prerequisites of a system to be planned for gird installation. Please note that the document is not a guide for RAC installation but a reference to provide hands-on with RAC installation on oracle virtualbox.

Approach

The document illustrates the installation of Oracle 11gR2 grid infrastructure and 2 node RAC database on virtualbox. The two virtualbox machine images installed with OEL, would serve as the cluster nodes. Initially, we will create only one virtual machine image and do all sorts of configurations required for the grid installation. The master node would be then cloned to create the second node participating in the cluster.

Memory requirements

The host system running the two virtual machine images must have sufficient memory to run both images simultaneously. RAM above 4GB would be best suited for the demo.

Software Requirement

Following software can be procured from Oracle Technology Network in order to follow this demonstration

a) Oracle Virtualbox 4.2

b) Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.6

c) Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure (64 bit)

d) Oracle 11gR2 Database (64 bit)

Here is the complete demo document for download

Oracle Grid and Database software installation on Virtualbox