For the last three days, I have been in Nuremberg, attending the DOAG Konferenz 2010 (annual conference of the german Oracle user group). This year, my list of “Look at’s” is way shorter than last years list was. It’s not the fault of the event, I just did not write down that many facts.
My general impression was, that the number of talks intersting for DBAs was limited, but all talks I attended have been of high technical quality. Speakers may be more or less gifted, but I am enough of a technican to read behind the presentation to appreciate it.
Here’s my list. Not comprehensive, but this is my basic “lessons to take”:
Day 1:
- Carefully decide how far to rely on RAT (Real Application Testing) feature, it’s not the Golden Bullet.
- Once again, Oracle changed an established name: FRA is now “Fast Recovery Area”
- Use RMAN’s “configure for” command in a dataguard environment
- Use auto-delete for archived redo logs
- Calculate your next migration with Oracle GoldenGate licensing
- Son Of A Preacher Man: stay an IOPS evangelist, if you happen to be a DBA
Day 2:
- Dive deep into SQL*Net / TNS / tcp optimization. Thanks to Dr. Mensah for the enlightenment!
- Oracle now SUPPORTS the RAC on VMware. No certification, but at least something to take home.
- Dear Larry, please make Oracle-at-VMware licensing accept VMware-side CPU assignment, FINALLY!
- Most constraints can have an optimizer upside! Thanks, Mr. Senegacnik!
- 11.2.0.2 has lots of new unexpected features. Unusually. Both in RAC and single instance. Nice!
Day 3:
- Immediately look at the 11.2.0.2 “hang manager”. Thanks, Markus Michalewicz!
- Try a $ORACLE_HOME in ACFS on your next RAC test, looks cute.
- Oracle Clusterware process architecture is confusing, but changes worse in 11.2.0.2, for the first glance. Docs are still a mess, but Dr. Grebe unwired lots of them. Maybe the highlight of my conference 2010!
to be continued…
Best regards
Martin