Well, once again I am getting home from a road trip - this time it was California, Abu Dhabi and London - after four weeks out I am glad to be back in my messy home office. It has been several months now since Oracle 11g was released with much hoopla and fanfare, and as predicted, acceptance has been rather flat as folks wait for release 2 this summer to really kick the tires.
I have been working with some of the new features and overall I find them meeting my expectations. As expected, SQL Replay and Real Application Testing turned out to be just regression testing tools (good ones, but still just one-trick ponies), automated tuning seems to work well (at least in a small TPC-C test with a couple of dozen users) and automated memory management seems to work so far, after a rocky start (see my blog at http://tinyurl.com/2zpjbg for details). Unfortunately due to issues with the 64 -bit release of Oracle 11g and Red Hat 5.0 (incompatible package requirements between glibc and sysstat ), I haven’t been able to get the 64-bit cluster up and running (anyone have some Oracle Viagra?).
So, I am back to rebuilding the 32-bit cluster and running into some CRS verses RAW issues, but hopefully they will be easily resolved. I really want to throw some memory tests at the machine to see if I can wring out any issues with the new and improved memory management algorithms.
We’ve been doing some Webcasts at Quest (see http://info.quest.com/DBTAOracleAllStarWebcasts) and we included some polls as a part of each one. I thought you all might be interested in some of the results. I have long contended that most of the databases out there would be happy running in Oracle 8i (or even Oracle 7) and some of the poll results confirmed this:
Question:
What version of Oracle do you primarily use in your production environment?
| Choice |
Number of Votes per Option |
% of Total Votes cast |
| Oracle 8i |
8 |
5% |
| Oracle 9i |
56 |
38% |
| Oracle 10g |
77 |
52% |
| Oracle 11g |
2 |
1% |
| Other |
3 |
2% |
Question:
Do you use any of these specialized indexes?
| Choice |
Number of Votes per Option |
% of Total Votes cast |
| Yes, we use function-based indexes |
39 |
26% |
| Yes, we use bitmap join indexes |
11 |
7% |
| Yes, we use index-only tables |
11 |
7% |
| Yes, we use several of these specialized indexes |
40 |
27% |
| No, we don't use any of these specialized indexes |
45 |
30% |
Question:
When do you plan to deploy Oracle 11g in your production environment?
| Choice |
Number of Votes per Option |
% of Total Votes cast |
| Now (we are already using 11g in production) |
1 |
0% |
| 0-12 months |
17 |
11% |
| 12-24 months |
34 |
22% |
| 24-36 months |
13 |
8% |
| Unknown (we are still evaluating 11g) |
68 |
44% |
| No interest in upgrading |
19 |
12% |
So, at least for the folks who attended the online seminar, 45 percent are on versions of Oracle 9i or earlier, 56 percent aren’t using anything (index wise at least) that wasn’t available in 8i and 56 percent may or may not be interested in upgrading anytime in the foreseeable future to 11g.
In the coming weeks I will be talking to users at RMOUG about the new tuning features in Oracle 11g in Denver then doing some breakfast seminars in Toronto, Chicago and Dallas, then off to Germany to give some internal training and help with some German user events and then back for COLLABORATE 08. When an airplane flies overhead, give a wave, it might be me.
About the Author
Mike Ault is an Oracle database specialist at Quest Software and a recognized Oracle expert with over 16 years of experience as an Oracle DBA and consultant in a variety of industries. A prolific author, Ault has published over 20 Oracle-related books, including Oracle Administration and Management, Oracle DBA OCP ExamCram and Oracle 10g Grid and RAC, and he frequently presents at major Oracle conferences. www.quest.com
