Yes, I love AWR and ASH reports when performing database detective work. They are an essential tool in my performance tuning arsenal, along with the logs, trace files/profiling, Oracle Enterprise Manager and a suite of personally collect queries from over the years. As complex as databases are these days, the more data that I have at hand to backup what I am tuning or reporting on, the more comfortable I am, (OK, so I’m not one for “theories”… :)) Just as I would not use a screw driver to hammer in a nail, all DBA’s should understand and not confuse…
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As many companies judge a DBA’s worth on the uptime of a database, nothing tests a DBA’s mettle like database service outages where the cause is indeterminate at the time of the outage. The secondary challenge is that once the database is brought back up, the DBA must then take the necessary steps to analyze the data and figure out what caused the outage, hopefully resolving or reporting to ensure outages to not re-occur. The DBA’s goal should not just be to resolve the issue, but to provide a high level, clearly documented report of what occurred and what steps…
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RMOUG 2011 has come and gone- and it was a fantastic time for me. I loved the opportunity to talk for two days on database technology, (which my husband thanks all participants for, keeps him from wanting to jab his ears with large, sharp sticks to get away from the techno-garble that leaves his wife’s lips in droves! :)) and catch up on everyone’s lives. My presentation skills still need some work, as good as I think I am in smaller groups and especially one on one, I still have some challenges up at the podium. Every time I get…
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I have a new post out on Pythian’s site: http://www.pythian.com/news/20301/the-dba-and-the-trigger/
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I’ve been employed at Pythian for just over 2 months now. Not a very long time and yes, I’m still a “newbie”, but I’ve been there long enough to know why I do love my new job. 1. Working remotely. No, not everyone does and it’s not for everyone, but so far it’s been a win-win for both me and Pythian. I have never needed a manager or anyone to lean over my shoulder to tell me when to work and what to do, so working remotely in a home office has significant benefits for me. I appreciate the limited…
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My slides and white paper are all submitted for RMOUG 2011 and I’m starting to get a bit anxious about the event. Being the “hometown girl” to represent Pythian comes with some new pressures that I didn’t feel last year when total failure just meant I was making a fool out of myself… 🙂 The schedule is looking pretty good so far, but as it goes every year, there are a number of presentations that I would like to attend that are all scheduled the same time as my own, (OK, so I would have only been able to attend ONE of them, but I…
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I received an email from an obviously annoyed DBA this weekend. I’m sure many of you are not surprised, I can be rather annoying. The annoyance stemmed from a request I was working on to rebuild a number of bitmap indexes. The problem is, when I take on a problem, I have a tendency to demand to do things the right way, so a simple request to check bitmap indexes for fragmentation, always turns into a bit larger project with me at the helm. When it comes to indexes, it’s not just a simple rebuild. I want the index JUSTIFIED. …
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Just about any DBA you speak with will admit to having at least one other DBA they follow on the web, seek out when the present at conferences or search out when purchasing technical books. I jokingly refer to these as DBA crushes, (which really annoys my male coworkers when I tell them they are “DBA crushing” when the arena is also predominently male… :)) Now that I am part of the Exadata team at #Pythian, I’ve been intensely focused on every scrap of online information regarding the technology and from all this research, I have come up with a new DBA…
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Avoiding the Perfect Storm My First Post as a Pythian DBA, hopefully many more to come! (And if you are in the mind of finding a positive career change, the link there at the top is a good read, too! :))
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This is an Apex query and it no longer exists in the environment it once resided in- When I first came across it, the first red flag was the optimizer cost of 109 billion, (yeah, I had to count the numbers a couple times in disbelief…) I was reminded of it when Chet from OracleNerd tweeted about a poorly written Apex query and I had to share. All names and identities have been changed to protect the innocent, (and more likely, the guilty…) Enjoy! UgliestQuery!
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This Statspack bug is an older one, but I ran into it this week again. The work around is very simple to correct the problem, but its surprising how disconcerting it can be for anyone seeing “unique constraint violated”. Seen in the alert log: Tue Dec 14 09:00:43 2010 Errors in file <dir>/xxxx_j000_xxxx.trc: ORA-12012: error on auto execute of job xxx ORA-00001: unique constraint (PERFSTAT.STATS$MUTEX_SLEEP_PK) violated ORA-06512: at “PERFSTAT.STATSPACK”, line 5264 ORA-06512: at “PERFSTAT.STATSPACK”, line 104 ORA-06512: at line 1 ***************************************************** Pulled from the trace file listed above from the alert log: <dir>/xxxx_j000_xxxx.trc Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0…
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Any DBA worth the time of day knows how important having solid statistics is to a database. This is how the cost based optimizer is able to make solid decisions about the best path to take when performing a table scan, choosing an index, the amount of resources required to perform a task and so on and so forth. In any database that is built, post 10g, release 2 and on, there are maintenance jobs that are created by default, one of them, to collect statistics automatically, with it’s goal to ensure that the database has the newest, most updated…
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After a very tearful goodbye at my previous company, (even received a big ol’ hug from the “lone wolf”- after working with the guy for four years, never thought I’d see that! :)) After they had a great time at my expense- two or three days of throwing paper airplanes over the cubicle walls at me, (to which I would response with screeches of “my eye!” or “my tibia!” and a demand for workman’s comp.. :)) The unix admin sending me bogus system messages to see if I was actually still working, “exporting partition P_33497 Oracle has experienced poopy pants the…
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My Mother used to write poems and rhymes. She had so much fun at it that we kids used to have the most elaborate rhyming clues to finding Easter treats and small toys each year, Easter started to get a little out of hand just so my Mom could practice her poetic skills, (not that we kids minded! :)) I thought I would have some fun with rhyming, but I think I’m closer to Cat in the Hat than Keats or Byron… 🙂 If there were no developers, I would be so bored, Just ask them, they say DBA’s appreciate…
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*****After much adieu, I’ve finally returned to this post to rewrite what concerned me and befuddled others… :)***** I’ve worked with some great developers. Developers who can write code in their sleep to perform the most complex functions and aggregations, (makes me quite envious, as I need to actually think how to write code… :)) Most of these developers are still tripped up by the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer, (CBO) and honestly, I think they should be. Just how I have to think about how to code, it should be expected that they need to think about how the CBO works. …
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A follow up to this previous post. I thought I had this one down- had followed the standard protocol when you receive a 600 error. I looked it up on MOS and had my bug number, documentation and proof of what the bug was, right? Gotta love being a DBA- the day you think you’ve figured out, something comes up to surprise you and you learn something new. ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kcvhvdf_1], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] Odd version of bug 9314439: RECOVERY FAILS ON CLONED DATABASE ORA-600 [KCVHVDF_1] which is an 11.1.0.7 bug, but I…
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I used to collect comic books when I was a kid, so superheroes are close and dear to my heart, but just not as crazy about the expectation that technical support experts be held to the expecation of infallible like Superman. I’ve both experienced and have discussed with other technical folks regarding this situation that, as of late and in all common sense, just doesn’t make any sense in the technical world. I’ve nicknamed this technical environment situation the “Superman Conundrum”. In my history I’ve *survived* three companies who’ve treated their technical environment in this manner. This is the kind of company where hardware, software, applications and processes fail on…
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Part of this is going to be the SQL Server DBA in me ranting, so be patient and know as it says in the lovely site disclaimer, this is MY OPIONION and yes, I stick by this opinion 100%. I have very strong feelings on who and how a SQL Server, especially one with SSRS is installed. Microsoft’s continued mis-marketing, (albeit successful for sales) and ease of installation has created database environments that are misconfigured, poor-performing and poorly designed- BY DEFAULT. Few experts in .Net or SSRS, when asked, know what transaction logs, filegroups, lock escalation or sp/dbcc procedures are. …