Oracle 10g New Features

The main thrust of the new features and enhancements for Oracle 10g are geared towards grid computing which is an extension of the clustering features (Real Application Clusters) introduced with Oracle 9i. For articles on Oracle performance tuning, Oracle 9i, sql and pl/sql, just go to http://www.smart- soft.co.uk/Oracle/oracle-tips-and-tricks.htm Suggestions for further reading, book reviews and links to other resources for information about Oracle databases are available from the resources section. For more details on grid computing as it applies to Oracle 10g see here. The idea of Oracle 10g is that the database will be able to dynamically "requisition" resources from the grid to meet levels of peak demand. Other enhancements for Oracle 10g are aimed at reducing costs and improving the quality of service by making the database easier to deploy and manage including enhancements to backup and recovery and data warehousing .

1.  Ease of Management

As with Oracle 9i, one of the major focuses of Oracle 10g is on reducing costs and increasing up- time by making the database easier to manage. One way of doing this is to automate tasks that previously had to be done manually by the dba. and the new Automated Storage Management (ASM) sub-system is a good example of this. The ASM removes the need to have a file system or a volume manager for managing the database files and eliminates the complexity of balancing data across disks and controllers manually. Instead, the ASM stripes data across the disks automatically, thereby maximizing throughput and minimizing the risk of data loss. The ASM also maintains the data striping as disks are added or removed and re- balances the i/o load dynamically. Oracle 10g has also been given a self-management infrastructure which captures information about the running of the database and stores it in the Automatic Workload Repository. This information is used by tools such as the new Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) which analyses data such as the top SQL statements and passes this onto the SQL Tuning Advisor which provides recommendation for improving performance. These recommendations can be implemented transparently to the application making it a useful feature for 3rd-party applications. Other major enhancements in this area include:- enhancing Enterprise Manager to be able to manage the whole grid and the complete stack of resources and simplifying installation and configuration by reducing the number of initialisation parameters - for example there are now just two memory size parameters, one each for the SGA and the PGA.

2.  Availability

Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters have been enhanced to provide Automatic Service Provisioning - servers are automatically allocated to work loads and clients are automatically assigned to the server with the least load. Also on failure of a server, the surviving servers are automatically reallocated to work loads. Other enhancements in this area include: • flashback available at the row, transaction, table and database level; • recovery area on disk that is maintained automatically by the database and contains only those blocks changed since the last backup - thereby enabling faster recovery from media failure; • data guard (standby database) has been enhanced to enable compression and encryption of log traffic from the master database to the standby system; • tables can now be redefined without invalidating stored procedures; • support for rolling upgrades of the hardware, operating system and the database to reduce planned down time.

3.  Data Warehousing

Oracle 10g Data Warehousing enhancements include: • an increase in the size limits of the database to support ultra-large databases of millions of terabytes in size and ultra-large files of terabytes in size. The 4GB restriction on LOBs has been raised to 128 terabytes. • Improvements to Real Application Clusters (RAC) enable resources to be allocated automatically and means that operational data can be used immediately without the need to copy it to another database. • Enhancements to OLAP analytic, a data-mining GUI and a new SQL model allow query results to be treated as sets of multi-dimensional arrays on which complex inter-dependent operations - such as forecasting - can be run without the need to extract data to spreadsheets or perform complex joins and unions on the data. • A new changed data capture facility based on Oracle Streams provides low or zero latency trickle feeds that combined with integrated extraction, transformation and loading (etl) enables real-time warehousing. ----------------------------------------------------------- Looking to sky-rocket productivity, slash costs and accelerate innovation? Training is a highly cost-effective, proven method of boosting productivity leaving time, money and staff available for more innovation. Smartsoft offers instructor-led training in Oracle and related technologies on or off site in cities across the UK as well as self-study online training.  See our training course schedule, or let us know your requirements. Oracle tips and tricks Subscribe to our newsletter, jam-packed full of tips and tricks to help you slash costs, sky-rocket productivity and make your systems better, faster and smarter. Smartsoft Computing Ltd, Bristol, England Tel: 0845 003 1320 Contact Us View our privacy policy This site uses woopra.com to gather statistical information about our visitors. This data is aggregated to show industry trends (such as browser share). However, this data shall be the average of many thousands of visits and is in no way linked to individuals. View woopra privacy policy.  Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. © Copyright Smartsoft Computing Ltd. All rights reserved.