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Database

Everything our consultants learn while running databases for customers: Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB and Delphix. Expect hands-on posts about installation, day-to-day administration, backup and recovery, performance tuning, replication and upgrades.

SQL Server: DBCC CHECKDB does not detect corruption

During my audits at customer places, it still happens very often to find SQL Server databases with page verification option configured to “none”. I always alert my customers on this configuration point because it can have an impact on the overall integrity of their databases. One of my customer told me that the integrity task of its maintenance will detect… 

PostgreSQL for Oracle DBAs – an introduction

Having worked for several years as an Oracle DBA, I decided to have a look at the PostgreSQL database and see how it functions in comparison to the Oracle Database. The “Enterprise DB” graphical installation of PostgreSQL 9.3 is quite easy and rather fast. Under Linux you run the graphical installer, dialog boxes lead you through the installation process. You… 

PDB media failure may cause the whole CDB to crash

By Franck Pachot . Do you remember last year, when 12c arrived with multitenant, David Hueber warned us about the fact that a single PDB can, under certain conditions, generate a complete system downtime? We are beta testers and opened a SR for that. Now one year later the first patchset is out and obviously I checked if the issue… 

SQL monitoring 12.1.0.2 shows adaptive plans

By Franck Pachot . In a previous post, I have described Adaptive Plans. Even if I prefer to show plans with the SQL Monitor active html format, I had to stick with the dbms_xplan for that because SQL Monitoring did not show all information about adaptive plans. This has been fixed in the Patchset 1 and I have run the… 

Beyond In-Memory, what’s new in 12.1.0.2 ?

By Franck Pachot . It’s just a patchset. The delivery that is there to stabilize a release with all the bug fixes. But it comes with a lot of new features as well. And not only the one that has been advertised as the future of the database. It’s a huge release. Let’s have a look at what’s new. First,… 

Drilling down V$RECOVERY_AREA_USAGE

By Franck Pachot . In a previous post I used X$KCCAGF to get more information about reclaimable archived logs in FRA, because there is a bug in standby (not opened) databases where archivelog deletion policy is ignored. I explained that the view V$RECOVERY_AREA_USAGE has only aggregated information about space reclaimable without the details about which files are reclaimable or not.… 

Oracle EM agent 12c thread leak on RAC

By Franck Pachot . In a previous post about nproc limit, I wrote that I had to investigate the nproc limit with the number of threads because my Oracle 12c EM agent was having thousands of threads. This post is a short feedback about this issue and the way I have found the root cause. It concerns the enterprise manager… 

Master Data Services installation for SQL Server 2012

This posting is a tutorial for installing Master Data Services on your Windows Server 2012. Microsoft SQL Server Master Data Services (MDS) is a Master Management product from Microsoft, code-named Bulldog. It is the rebranding of the Stratature MDM product, titled +EDM and acquired in June 2007 by Microsoft. Initially, it was integrated for the first time in Microsoft SQL… 

Partial Join Evaluation in Oracle 12c

By Franck Pachot . Do you think that it’s better to write semi-join SQL statements with IN(), EXISTS(), or to do a JOIN? Usually, the optimizer will evaluate the cost and do the transformation for you. And in this area, one more transformation has been introduced in 12c which is the Partial Join Evaluation (PJE). First, let’s have a look… 

SQL Server 2014: Are DENY ‘SELECT ALL USERS SECURABLES’ permissions sufficient for DBAs?

SQL Server 2014 improves the segregation of duties by implementing new server permissions. The most important is the SELECT ALL USERS SECURABLES permission that will help to restrict database administrators from viewing data in all databases. My article is a complement to David Barbarin’s article ‘SQL Server 2014: SELECT ALL USERS SECURABLES & DB admins’. I have tested some cases… 

Oracle Parallel Query: Did you use MapReduce for years without knowing it?

By Franck Pachot . I’ve read this morning that MapReduce is dead. The first time I heard about MapReduce was when a software architect proposed to stop writing SQL on Oracle Database and replace it with MapReduce processing. Because the project had to deal with a huge amount of data in a small time and they had enough budget to… 

Linux: how to monitor the nofile limit

By Franck Pachot . In a previous post I explained how to measure the number of processes that are generated when a fork() or clone() call checks the nproc limit. There is another limit in /etc/limits.conf – or in /etc/limits.d – that is displayed by ‘ulimit -n’. It’s the number of open files – ‘nofile’ – and here again we…