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Oracle Database 11g: Rich Niemiec’s Favorite New Features (Part II)
In 1987 Rich Niemiec came to Oracle to help build client-server systems on Oracle Database Version 6. He went on to become one of the world’s leading advocates of Oracle technology. He has written several Oracle-related best-sellers and recently released an update to his definitive guide to Oracle performance tuning, Oracle Database 10g Performance Tuning Tips & Techniques. He is the former president of the International Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and current CEO of TUSC, an Oracle expert-level consulting firm that has been on Inc. magazine’s list of the 500 fastest-growing privately owned companies. As Oracle Database 11g is about to launch, Database Insider asked Niemiec to talk about its best features. Part II of a two-part series. (Read Part I.)
| Insider: |
Tell us about features in Oracle Database 11g that Oracle expects will help make customers more productive. |
| Niemiec: |
SQL Repair Advisor is one of Oracle Database 11g’s many self-managing features. If you come across an error in your code, SQL Repair Advisor will try to find a route around it. It automatically reparses the statement and tries a different path, similar to the workaround you’d get if you called Oracle Support. This is great for small and medium businesses that don’t have a lot of time to spend on managing their system.
Another time-saver is an enhancement called “virtual columns,” which you would use if you were always doing calculations in a column (such as salary x 100, or time x 24 hours). You can now have a column with the calculation built in. So if you’re running a large batch process, for example, and you’re doing the same calculation over and over, you can store the calculation instead of continually recalculating it. It’s another way Oracle Database 11g helps customers get faster results. |
| Insider: |
Do some of these manageability enhancements affect grid computing? |
| Niemiec: |
There is a planned enhancement to the Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) that’s going to help with managing grids. ADDM, which is pronounced “Adam,” automatically analyzes the performance of the database at regular intervals to detect and diagnose common performance problems such as CPU bottlenecks or connection management issues.
In Oracle Database 11g, ADDM will be able to do this for an entire grid, instead of just monitoring the individual nodes. That will be very helpful as computing grids continue to grow in size and complexity. Oracle also plans to add an emergency ADDM. If the system hangs, it will quickly do an analysis of the problem and provide a quick screen that will allow for quick resolution.
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| Insider: |
How does Oracle Database 11g boost performance? |
| Niemiec: |
Niemiec: I’ll illustrate with one core component of Oracle Database called the optimizer—one of the elements of Oracle Database that makes it great. Every time you search for data, the optimizer asks, “How should I access that data to make it fast?” With every search, it learns and fine-tunes the fastest way to retrieve that data. It’s the most complex part of Oracle Database, and it’s probably 10 to 15 years ahead of any other database product.
In Oracle Database 11g, the optimizer continues to get better. For example, instead of taking statistics for just one column, the optimizer now takes statistics for multiple columns that relate to each other. So, for example, if I’m in retail, a season change also signals an inventory change from, say, snowshoes to swimsuits. Now, instead of looking at the season column and the inventory columns separately, the optimizer can join those two columns into multicolumn statistics to make facilitate much smarter and faster decisions.
I’ve studied the rest of the market, and I give talks about where Oracle is, compared to its competition. When I looked at Oracle Database 10g, it was already more than a decade ahead of its closest competitor. With Oracle Database 11g, I think it adds another five years.
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This article is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into a contract or agreement. It does not represent a commitment to deliver any code or functionality and should not be relied on in making a purchase decision. The development, release, and timing of Oracle's products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.
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