Tag: Oracle Exadata

As a follow up from my previous post on Exadata Design, where I question the use of dimensions for certain attributes in data warehouses, I figured I should test whether HCC works with tables that have more than 255 columns, It does. Here’s my test case.

As of this afternoon, version 11.2.1.3.1 of Oracle’s Exadata storage server software, is out in the wild. This is the first publicly available version of the 11.2.1.3 branch, a major release including a full OS image with an update to Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5. A number of bugs causing cell server crashes and hangs have been fixed, including 9472035, 9870117, and 9722560.

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Oracle Exadata V2 is a very well balanced database machine combined with smart and innovative software. One of these innovative features is the Storage Index – a game changing feature in my opinion.As with any feature, there are intended use cases, limitations and caveats. Use it right, and amazing performance gains can be achieved. Use it wrong, and nothing will happen. This is what is great about storage indexes in particular. They are there, without any overhead. It’s only a question of how to leverage them, in addition or combination withevery other feature that Oracle Exadata has to offer.

I’m not aware of any TPC results for Exadata V2. However a TPC-C test was run in late 2009 using a Sun F5100 flash array on Sun T5540 servers, setting a record for the benchmark that still stands. The Oracle wiki has a great overview of the various benchmarks and what they actually measure.

We’re in the process of applying Exadata Bundle Patch 5, and ran into an issue I wanted to share.The system didn’t have a XDB user, and likely because of this, the two “alter package” commands invalidated the dbms_metadata objects. The subsequent recompilations all failed. On advice from Oracle support, we ended up backing out the patch and re-applying without running these “alter package” commands, and confirmed that DBMS_METADATA works fine. So if you don’t have XDB installed, skip the “alter package” commands. I hope the README is updated soon.

My article Making the Most of Oracle Exadata in the August 2010 issue of the NoCOUG Journal has come out. It covers Exadata’s feature set, and then dives deeper, discussing how to make the best use of its capabilities. For those of you not subscribers of the print edition, it’s also available electronically.

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If you’re attending Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco, Sept. 19-23, 2010, be sure to stop by one of Pythian’s many sessions. We’ll be all over the show, with experts Alex, and Marc speaking as listed below. Or, you might find Paul, Alex and others attending the bloggers meetup, participating in Oracle ACE/ACE Director activities, or at some of the User Group or OPN sessions on Sunday. Drop us a line on twitter @pythian while you’re at the show to connect with Pythian.

I’ll be giving a webinar about Exadata implementation, where I’ll be talking about Exadata features and how best to use them. I’ll also be sharing some lessons learned from my own implementation experience. The webinar will be on Wednesday August 11 at high noon eastern time. Note that this is a change from the previous date.