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WITH ORACLE DATABASE 11g
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CONTENTS VOLU M E XXI , I SSUE 5
F E AT UR E S
MANAGE CHANGE
WITH ORACLE DATABASE 11g
Oracle Database 11g
includes a broad array
of new features and
OPEN and
capabilities, from grid SECURE
computing and data Data security, access,
security to high availability and compliance:
and manageability, all of controlling who gets to
which will help companies see what information
manage change better and or manage which data is today’s
faster. Learn how it can business imperative. See how
transform your enterprise. Oracle helps manage these
—David Baum mission-critical tasks.
/36 —David A. Kelly
/54
Cover by Richard Merchán
16
From Our Readers/ 12
From the Editor / 14
AT OR AC LE
Innovation Matters
—Tom Haunert Events / 16 OTN Bulletin / 19
Find out about current and Learn what’s happening with Oracle’s most
upcoming industry events. dynamic online community.
26 C OM MU NI TY
Commitment / 26
Oracle supports CARE’s education initiatives in
impoverished Uttar Pradesh.
73 TEC HNOLOGY
PAR TITIONING
Partner News / 28 More Partitioning Choices / 73
Cisco Systems, Zend Technologies, Ingram Learn when and how to use new partitioning schemes in
Micro, Tech Data, Fujitsu, Dell Inc., PANTA Oracle Database 11g. —Arup Nanda
Systems, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems,
Applimation, Sierra Atlantic S TOR AGE
Faster, Safer, and Smaller LOBs / 77
Book Beat / 28
Oracle SecureFiles provides increased performance, better
Peer-to-Peer / 30 security, and reduced disk usage.
Lutz Hartman, Eric — Jonathan Gennick
Marcoux, Daniel
Uehara S QL DEV ELOP ER
Moving to an Oracle Database / 81
Use Oracle Migration Workbench to migrate third-party
schema objects to an Oracle database. —Sue Harper
AS K TOM
On Oracle Database 11g / 85
Our technologist takes a look at the server results and
63
PL/SQL function caches. —Tom Kyte
D EVEL O PER
F RA MEWO RKS
Defining a Cascading List of Values / 63
90 R ES OUR C ES
Oracle Certified Partner Index / 90
Setting up LOVs is easier than ever with Oracle
JDeveloper 11g. —Steve Muench Advertisers’ Index / 94
92
B RO WSER-B A SED
Express Web 2.0 / 67
C OMMENT
Create dynamic interfaces that minimize page refresh
with Oracle Application Express. —David Peake IN THE FIELD
What’s New in Oracle Database 11g / 92
PL / SQ L PRA CTI CES The latest version of the database has great new
On the PL/SQL Function Result Cache / 71 features for everyone. —Ari Kaplan
Best practices—and preparation—for PL/SQL in Oracle
Database 11g. —Steven Feuerstein ALL S EC UR E
Automating Security / 93
Papa’s got a brand-new bag (of tools).
—Mary Ann Davidson
ANALY S T’ S C OR NER
Secure Data for Every Business Need / 96
Burton Group’s Trent Henry discusses why new
needs for compliance mean tighter access
control. —David Baum
6 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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Systems, Pillar Axiom, AxiomONE and the Pillar logo are all
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E DITORIAL BOARD
WHERE’S THE CHOICE? community/ofm_directors)—recognized learners like me, you include more
I found the headline of the cover story Oracle community members and leaders. Oracle code and scripts in the pages of
of Oracle Magazine’s May/June issue, All who are interested in appearing in the magazine.
“Develop with Choice,” to be rather Peer-to-Peer can send their contact infor-
ironic. The article did indeed describe mation as well as links and references to Femi Famejo
some choices and options that develop- their Oracle community contributions to [email protected]
ers have, but it did not cover Oracle [email protected].
Developer! This is still an excellent IN NEED OF PRIVACY
development tool for creating data entry NEWBIES SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT I am a regular reader of Oracle Magazine,
applications for Oracle. I’m a regular reader of Oracle Magazine, and I would be grateful if you could
and I suggest you include introductory please provide more information on
Mark Geerlings articles for Oracle beginners like me on Oracle Virtual Private Database and
[email protected] topics such as installation and creating its features.
a database.
LOOKING FOR MY PEER COUSINS Raj Boddu
Oracle Magazine has been of immense Oguntuase Busayo Afolabi [email protected]
help to me because it keeps me abreast [email protected]
of what is happening in the world of NO CHEMISTRY
Oracle Database features, skills, and I suggest including more articles for “Producing Parameterized Pages,” the
so on. I love reading the Peer-to-Peer newbies. I believe that they would Frameworks column in the July/August
column in your magazine, because there be both more enlightened and more issue (otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/
I get to read about my cousins in the encouraged if just a page or two could 07-jul/o47frame.html), deals with an
world of Oracle. But there are good be dedicated to beginners. excellent topic. However, it was hard
Oracle programmers and developers to follow because there was not even a
in Africa, and you are not really doing Kehinde Adedipe single diagram or snapshot illustrating
them justice if you are not coming down [email protected] the steps. It is a magazine article—not
to Africa to have a chat with them and a formula for a chemical process.
publishing them in that column. SEARCHING FOR SAMPLES
I am a regular reader of your maga- Ammar Sajdi
Anyasor Chigozie D. zine, and I have been working with the [email protected]
[email protected] sample code you publish. I really appre-
ciate that content. I request that you also
Peer-to-Peer candidates are active Oracle publish Oracle Database installation and
community members from all over the configuration content for new users.
world who distinguish themselves by con-
tributing to Oracle Technology Network, Adeghe I. John
send mail to the EDITOR
Send your opinions about what you read in Oracle
Oracle Magazine, Oracle discussion [email protected]
Magazine, and suggestions for possible technical
forums, and/or organizations, sites, and articles, to [email protected].
publications that focus on Oracle technology. I am a regular reader of Oracle Magazine Or click on the Write the Editors link on our Web
Recent Peer-to-Peer columns have featured and a SQL programmer, and I must site, oracle.com/oraclemagazine.
Oracle ACEs (otn.oracle.com/community/ commend your effort especially on the Letters may be edited for length and clarity and
may be published in any medium. We consider
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Regional Directors (otn.oracle.com/ I want to make a plea that for Oracle
12 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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f r o m t h e EDITOR
Innovation Matters
Oracle Database 11g reduces risk and speeds change in the enterprise.
aunched in July 2007, Oracle Database 11g continues Oracle Database 11g can help manage that growth. The new
the tradition of Oracle innovation. In addition to deliver- advanced compression option supports compression during
ing the secure data management that customers expect INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations—which can also
from Oracle, Oracle Database 11g answers customer speed the performance of subsequent queries, as well as the
demands for both fast, reliable software that minimizes risk compression and deduplication of unstructured data.
and a platform to speed innovation. With features designed Beyond reducing disk space used via compression, today’s
to speed the testing, deployment, patching, and upgrading of information lifecycle management (ILM) initiatives seek to
enterprise infrastructure; provide more-efficient disk usage and store data in the most cost-effective locations, and database
information lifecycle management; and support more types of partitioning is an important part of ILM. New partitioning
data and larger data volumes with faster data access, Oracle options in Oracle Database 11g include partitioning by parent/
Database 11g is committed to making your enterprise innova- child references, interval partitioning, partitioning by virtual
tion move faster. columns, and more composite partition options. See Arup
This issue of Oracle Magazine takes a first look at key fea- Nanda’s “More Partitioning Choices” (page 73) for detailed
tures of Oracle Database 11g and how they support customer how-to information on partitioning in Oracle Database 11g.
innovation in the enterprise. Oracle Database 11g provides storage and access for both
relational and object data, including image, large text object,
REAL TESTING, REAL LIFECYCLE XML, DICOM, and geospatial files. New applications require
Moving to new database releases, moving to new hardware, and fast access to a variety of different object data, and Oracle
migrating to different operating systems all require extensive SecureFiles in Oracle Database 11g provides a new and faster
planning and testing. But building and executing truly repre- high-performance architecture for large object (LOB) storage.
sentative tests for these moves and migrations has traditionally Oracle SecureFiles also provides compression, transparent
been a complex, risk-intensive, and time-consuming process. encryption, and transparent deduplication, which reduce the
In Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real Application Testing disk space required and improve the security of LOBs. See
reduces risk and makes it faster and easier to test systems, Jonathan Gennick’s “Faster, Safer, and Smaller LOBs” (page 77)
identify problems, and create solutions before and after data- for information on how to use Oracle SecureFiles.
base upgrades and hardware and operating system changes.
Oracle Real Application Testing includes the database replay CUSTOMER INNOVATION
feature, which lets you capture and replay a true production In “Manage Change with Oracle Database 11g” by David
workload, and SQL performance analyzer, which identifies SQL Baum (page 36), several Oracle customers talk about the
execution plan changes and performances regressions. improvements they expect to achieve by using key Oracle
Industry estimates indicate that enterprise databases will Database 11g features, including Oracle Real Application
triple in size every two years, but new compression features in Testing, automatic SQL tuning, automatic memory tuning,
hot patching, and Oracle SecureFiles, as well as enhancements
in Oracle Real Application Clusters and the automatic database
diagnostic monitor.
Oracle Magazine columnists Steven Feuerstein, Ari Kaplan,
DISCUSS Oracle Database 11g
forums.oracle.com/forums/category.jspa?categoryID=18
and Tom Kyte also discuss Oracle Database 11g features in this
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 11g issue, and in the new Interview column, Rich Schwerin talks
otn.oracle.com/database about Oracle Database 11g with Oracle Senior Vice President
LISTEN to the Oracle Database 11g podcast of Server Technologies Andy Mendelsohn. (You can listen to the
otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts complete interview at otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts.)
READ more about And there’s a lot more Oracle Database 11g coverage coming
Oracle Database 11g up fast in future issues of Oracle Magazine, so stay tuned.
oracle.com/database
14 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
PeopleSoft Enterprise users, special interest an enriching learning environment, access to oracle.com/events
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.ohug.org/index.php/general-information. at www.simnet.org.
16 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Michael Dell
Chairman of the Board
Dell Inc.
PREMIER GRANDE ELITE PLATINUM
Oracle executives Fred Studer, Charles provides infrastructure for that goal. U.S. and Canada .....................................1.800.367.8674
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John Wookey, Oracle senior vice presi- Finland ......................................................0800.113.573
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new features for managing storage, Application Development organization, Norway...........................................................800.14411
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ensuring high availability, improving scal- talks about Oracle Application Integration Portugal.......................................................800.853.021
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security, and managing data warehouses. pathway to Oracle Fusion Applications. South Korea...............................................080.2194.114
Spain............................................................900.952900
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Overview Seminar Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP) Switzerland................................................0800.55.2574
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better manage the database and application Steve Harris, vice president of Oracle
18 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
20 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
says Steven G. Harris, vice president, innovation and introduction process, Demantra
oracle.com/applications/scm/demantra
Java Platform Group, Oracle. “As more share product specifications and configu-
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a t O r a c l e INTERVIEW BY R IC H SCHWERI N
Change Assurance
Oracle Database 11g helps customers manage change.
ndy Mendelsohn, senior vice point in time can be years in the past, for managing very large databases,
president of Database Server which can be very useful for things often in a time-based fashion. It turns
Technologies at Oracle, sat like auditing. out that partitioning works perfectly
down with Oracle Magazine to Oracle Magazine: By some estimates, the for implementing an ILM strategy. You
talk about new technologies and inno- volume of corporate data is growing can basically have a set of tablespaces
vations in Oracle Database 11g. The fol- three times larger every two years, that are defined on different classes of
lowing is an excerpt from that interview. which dramatically increases storage storage, and then as the data ages out,
To download a podcast of the full you create a set of time-based
interview, visit otn.oracle.com/ partitions for your table. So,
syndication/magcasts. let’s say it’s the order table. As
Oracle Magazine: Most organiza- the orders start aging out, you
tions today are faced with a variety just implement partitioning
of regulatory compliance issues as by time stamp on the order,
well as security challenges. How and when the orders get more
does Oracle Database 11g address than a few months old, you
these issues? start moving them onto parti-
Mendelsohn: One of our new tions with lower-cost storage,
enhancements is that we’re and over time even lower-cost
encrypting large objects [LOBs] storage, until ultimately you
transparently in Oracle Database either drop them or archive
11g. We’re also doing encryption them completely.
at the whole tablespace level. Oracle Magazine: People are
So if you want to just go in and storing all kinds of things
encrypt everything, we make it in databases today that they
easy to do that. didn’t used to—documents,
We also have Oracle Audit images, multimedia. How does
Vault, which targets security and Oracle Database 11g address
compliance. Oracle Audit Vault this issue?
consolidates audit trails from dif- Mendelsohn: In Oracle Database
For Andy Mendelsohn, Senior Vice President of Database Server
ferent source databases into a Technologies at Oracle, the Real Application Testing feature in Oracle 11g, Oracle SecureFiles is a
central data warehouse, which Database 11g is the most exciting new technology. whole new implementation
makes it easier for auditors to of our LOB infrastructure,
understand the security-relevant costs. How does Oracle Database 11g and we rearchitected it for really high
operations in a company. address this issue? performance. The performance of the
Oracle Magazine: Tell us about the flash- Mendelsohn: Storage vendors have an Oracle Database 11g LOB implementa-
back data archive feature for compliance initiative called information lifecycle tion for just reading and writing LOBs
in Oracle Database 11g. management [ILM]. When you have in the database is up to five times faster.
Mendelsohn: Flashback data archive lets information that’s really active, you Oracle SecureFiles actually reads and
you go back in time indefinitely. With need the highest-performance storage writes documents and files in the data-
flashback data archive, you can set up out there. But, as the data becomes base faster than outside the database,
an archive on any table, and whenever more historical in nature, the high- which is a real eye-opener for custom-
any updates are made to a table, we performance storage isn’t needed. All ers. And the Oracle SecureFiles infra-
record those updates and we keep the the storage vendors now have differ- structure underlies all of our support for
old versions of every row that’s been ent levels of storage, at different price rich datatypes like spatial, multimedia,
BOB ADLER
updated. You can run queries as of a points. Oracle has a technology called and XML. We are very sensitive to the
point in time in the past, but now the partitioning that has been used mostly amount of storage these documents
“The big new area in Oracle Database 11g is our change assurance capabilities, where
we really have spent a lot of time to lower the risk of change.”
—Andy Mendelsohn, Senior Vice President of Database Server Technologies at Oracle
consume, and so we have full compres- that production system and move it into and security—at lower costs.
sion for Oracle SecureFiles, and we also my test environment and then run it as As far as lowering costs, a big focus
support deduplication. a regression test.” Today, doing some- for us has been ease of management.
Oracle Magazine: Could you tell us more thing like this is basically a development In Oracle Database 11g, we continue
about the new compression technology project. With Oracle Real Application strongly pushing in that direction. The
in Oracle Database 11g ? Testing, you can just point to a real big new area in Oracle Database 11g
Mendelsohn: In Oracle Database 11g, system, capture the workload, bring it is our change assurance capabilities,
we’ve improved our algorithms for com- over to a test environment, and replay it, where we really have spent a lot of
pression so they are enabled on every purely within the database tier. time to lower the risk of change. This is
update to even a single row of a table. The other [Oracle Real Application really the lifeblood of every enterprise:
Now you can do compression for any Testing] thing we’re doing is that you everybody knows they need to change
kind of application workload, not just can go to a production environment and to be more competitive, to grow their
the data warehouse. This will make just pull off the SQL statements. If you business, but there’s this opposite force
compression very interesting for people want to make sure that the performance that says, “Any change I make is going
who want to implement ILM, because as of individual SQL statements hasn’t to destabilize my IT environment.” It’s
the data ages out, you want to compress regressed, you can go to your production a real problem for customers, and we
that data to lower your storage costs environment, pull off the SQL statements, think we’ve done a great job in tackling
even further. bring them over to a test environment, that problem.
Oracle Magazine: How will Oracle help and then run them against both the old Oracle Magazine: What is the single
customers migrate to Oracle Database and the new version of the query opti- most exciting new technology in Oracle
11g and manage this change process? mizer. So between both of these features, Database 11g, from your perspective?
Mendelsohn: When we talk to customers, you can now have a lot more confidence Mendelsohn: What’s always most exciting
one of their big pain points is migra- that when you go live you’re going to get is when we move into a new area. The
tion, whether they’re migrating to a the quality, robustness, and performance Oracle Real Application Testing feature
new version of the database, a new you need out of the new release. is that one for me in Oracle Database
version of an operating system, or even Another new feature is SQL Plan 11g. It’s a whole new area. Customers
a new version of their own database- Change Control. One of the key things have no good solutions out there today
based internal applications. In Oracle people really would like to do when for dealing with creating test suites
Database 11g , we looked at the whole they move to a production environ- or doing online hot patching of their
lifecycle of what customers do when ment is keep the SQL plans unchanged. systems. It’s an area that’s dying for help
they do a migration, an upgrade, or So in Oracle Database 11g, SQL Plan from Oracle, and we have unique tech-
a change of any sort, and we have a Change Control lets you move to a nologies that are going to be exciting for
number of technologies to lower the new production environment. You can our customers to really lower their risk
cost and the risk of change. freeze the query execution plans there of change and help them really innovate
First, we’ve enhanced our Oracle and then periodically look at what the much more freely. O
Data Guard technology to make it really optimizer is recommending as better
easy to automate the creation of a test plans and move to these new plans in a Rich Schwerin is a product marketing manager
environment. As you run tests, the data controlled fashion. with Oracle technology marketing and a regular
in the test environment is no longer in Finally, with Oracle Database 11g, contributor to Oracle Magazine.
sync with the production environment, we’re rolling out a new capability called
but you can use Oracle Data Guard to hot patching, where you can actually
resync the test environment with the apply a bug fix to a production system
latest version of the production environ- online without any downtime.
ment in a very clever fashion. Oracle Magazine: How would you sum- LISTEN to the podcast
otn.oracle.com/syndication/magcasts
The next things we’ve added are two marize the benefits that all these new
major Oracle Real Application Testing technologies deliver? LEARN more about Oracle Database 11g
oracle.com/database
features. The first one lets you point at Mendelsohn: Well, the key goal for all cus-
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 11g
a production system and say, “I want to tomers is better quality of service, higher otn.oracle.com/database
take a real production workload off of performance, better scalability, reliability,
24 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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c o m m u n i t y COMMITMENT BY A A RO N L A Z E N BY
women and girls, the skills, knowledge, an immediate impact on students’ school
and confidence they need to lift them- performance. CARE works with teach- CARE
www.care.org
selves out of poverty.” ers to ensure that each student receives
26 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
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c o m m u n i t y PARTNER NEWS
b o o k BEAT
Oracle Database
11g New Features
By Robert G. Freeman,
with Arup Nanda CISCO SOLUTIONS OPTIMIZE ORACLE support for a variety of operating systems
Oracle Press DEPLOYMENTS and Web servers, including Oracle
www.oraclepress.com
racle Certified Advantage Partner Enterprise Linux; Solaris; AIX; Windows;
ISBN: 0071496610
28 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
for Oracle, the first dynamic infra- PRIMERGY blade servers also provide an Archive uses a single engine for online
structure solution based on Oracle grid attractive software-licensing model. and long-term data retention of struc-
technology for application and database tured and unstructured data. O
services. Fujitsu FlexFrame for Oracle APPLIMATION AND SIERRA ATLANTIC PROVIDE
eliminates the permanent assignment of ENTERPRISE DATA MANAGEMENT
Oracle services to specific servers, and ierra Atlantic, a provider of busi-
instead uses all resources dynamically to
handle workloads.
S ness process–based integration and
enterprise application optimization,
Cisco Systems
www.cisco.com/go/oracle
server in the infrastructure—even non archiving solution for Oracle Process Tech Data
www.techdata.com
local servers—via NetBoot. In addition Manufacturing based on Applimation’s
to providing flexibility, this approach Informia Archive product. Applimation Fujitsu
us.fujitsu.com/computers
simplifies patches, updates, and other will extend Informia Archive’s data
Oracle Information Appliance
software lifecycle management tasks. archiving functionality to Oracle cus-
Initiative
The FlexFrame architecture is based tomers with Sierra Atlantic acting as its oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/
on an IP network with a cluster of implementation partner. oiai.html
oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/
Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers and flexible, The offering is aimed at custom- emc.html
integrated storage. This architecture ers that have experienced exponential oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/
panta.html
ensures that every Oracle-based service growth in transaction data. Informia
Applimation
can be run on any server at any time, Archive provides packaged templates www.applimation.com
so enterprises can consolidate IT land- for Oracle Process Manufacturing’s key
Sierra Atlantic
scapes and provide on-demand availabil- high-transaction modules and offers www.SierraAtlantic.com
ity of applications and services. Scalable archiving for customizations. Informia
multilingual data for library ment and delivering Web applica- Length of time using Oracle
products: Six years
catalogs. When I started study- tions quickly.
Oracle ACE
ing, there were two machines Do you have a favorite vacation spot? otn.oracle.com/community/
available in our entire department. When I left the university, we Every summer weekend I go to oracle_ace
had installed a network, linked three scientific libraries to the my favorite campsite with my
international library network, and installed computing pools. family. I have no internet access, no phone, and plenty of time
How did you help bring the university up to speed in terms of its to spend with my wife and three children.
systems and connectivity? I orga-
nized a get-together with the peerSPECS Daniel Uehara
Company: sysdba database
department director, the library consulting GmbH, a network of What big changes in technology
staff, and technical staff from the Oracle experts have you witnessed in the course
Job title/description: Founder
university’s data center. We dis- and owner, offering Oracle
of your career? It’s amazing how
cussed possible options for linking training and premium consulting the Java IDEs have evolved over
and support services for Oracle
the department with the Web, and databases
time. I remember when I started
while there was money available for Location: Near Zurich, Switzerland programming Java and we had
the hardware, there were no funds Oracle credentials: Oracle a few IDEs, most of them just
for the necessary work. I suggested Certified Professional (Oracle9i nice look-and-feel text editors.
Database, Oracle Database 10g ),
we coordinate the installation with with eight years of experience using Now we have tools like Oracle
volunteers, and it was all done in Oracle products JDeveloper, which basically does everything we need, and for
two weeks during summer break. Oracle ACE the things we can’t do we just need to create an extension.
otn.oracle.com/community/
If you were going to the Space Station oracle_ace At EDS, we’ve been able to integrate Oracle JDeveloper with
for six months and could only take some of our standard tools from the project lifecycle to get a
one Oracle reference book, what would it be? K. Gopalakrishnan’s full software engineering environment.
Oracle Database 10g Real Application Clusters Handbook [Oracle What would you like to see Oracle, as a company, do more of?
Press, 2006]—it gives comprehensive insight. Oracle’s portfolio of products is getting bigger. It would be
helpful if we had a clearer mapping between the products
Eric Marcoux and types of services we can peerSPECS
What’s your favorite tool or tech- develop with them, and a path Company: Electronic Data Systems
(EDS), a provider of business
nique on the job? Since last year, of training, tutorials, and docu- and technology solutions to help
my favorite tools have been ments that would help us get clients worldwide improve business
performance
Oracle JDeveloper and its ready to apply a product to a
Job title/description: Manager
Oracle Application Development certain service domain. of the EDS Java Center of Expertise,
Framework [Oracle ADF], espe- What’s your favorite thing to do that overseeing a team of 140 Java
developers
cially Oracle ADF Faces. I can doesn’t involve work? Running is
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
now build and deliver simple my hobby. It’s when I have the
Length of time using Oracle
Web applications more quickly. opportunity to unplug from the products: Seven years
What advice do you have about how to get into Web and database network and relax from the stress Oracle ACE
development? My first advice would be to think differently, of globalization and being avail- otn.oracle.com/community/
oracle_ace
because Web development is not the same as client/server able on demand. O
30 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
An Ounce
of Prevention A well-planned, strategic approach to disaster recovery has helped
Dell strengthen its infrastructure—and provided some valuable lessons
about keeping enterprise systems up and running.
t has become a truism in business that IT is long as 12 weeks to get things back up and
S1
DellDisasterRecov_v7ForPrep 6/28/07 2:10 PM Page 2
clear that Dell could benefit from an hard data, the IT group gathered input Strengthening the infrastructure
enterprise approach to disaster recov- from a range of sources, including mete- Armed with that understanding, Dell
ery. But not many companies had imple- orologists and the company’s insurance laid the cornerstone of its disaster
mented such an approach—disaster carrier—an especially valuable source recovery effort—a new 40,000-square-
recovery was typically addressed in of risk information. foot data center with some 5,000 servers
a fragmented, tactical manner. “There Next, the group conducted a careful to provide redundant backup to the
just wasn’t a good handbook to go by— analysis to identify the applications company’s main data center in Austin,
we had to write our own,” says Higdon. that would have the greatest impact on Texas. In both centers, Dell IT profes-
The group did just that, and worked the business in the event of a disaster, sionals looked at business continuity
out a comprehensive plan for using creating three classifications. Class 1 across several levels, including the site
standards-based technology in a rig- applications are those that need to be as a whole, computing platforms, appli-
orous, robust approach to protecting up and running in the event of a disaster cations, and data.
its strategic IT assets. within four hours—generally, things that For example, the centers make use
affect manufacturing, sales, and service. of Oracle® Real Application Clusters
Plans and priorities Class 2 applications need to be up within (Oracle RAC) technology, running on
After assessing the financial impact, 48 hours. And Class 3 applications are Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers that have a
the next step was to develop an under- to be back up based on “best effort.” number of high-availability features.
standing of where to focus disaster That classification helped the group With Oracle’s clustering technology, if
recovery initiatives. “We created a risk prioritize efforts and allocate invest- one system in a cluster fails or is taken
profile based on hard data, rather than ments appropriately in order to be able down for maintenance, the others can
guesswork,” says Higdon. To get that to recover the most crucial systems first. pick up its workload instantly. “About
1. Articulate the need in financial terms. Doing so provides 6. Assume that everything is going to fail. Create business
a clear business case, helps ensure organizational buy-in, continuity plans based on the idea that every key piece
and provides a guidepost for investing in disaster recovery. of internal and external infrastructure may fail or become
unavailable for extended periods.
2. Use hard data to create a risk profile. Rather than simply
taking a best guess, work with insurers and other data 7. Consider an active-active data center strategy. A dis-
sources to determine the true nature of the risk—such as tributed environment that runs across data centers enables
fire, storms, etc.—for a particular operation. high availability and the use of load balancing as a constant
test of recoverability.
3. Identify critical resources. Conduct a rigorous analysis to
identify key applications that warrant redundancy, backup, 8. Recognize potential vendor weaknesses. Evaluate
and recovery attention, and categorize applications to help vendors’ disaster recovery capabilities, and include vendors
prioritize efforts. in disaster recovery testing to understand how their policies
and technologies might affect the enterprise.
4. Think beyond the data center. Factor in essential and rel-
evant business processes and infrastructure components 9. Keep disaster recovery capabilities up to date. Monitor
across the organization. documentation and establish strong procedures and pro-
cesses to make disaster recovery part of everyday activity.
5. Eliminate or mitigate single points of failure. Perform a
detailed single-point-of-failure analysis across the entire 10. Perform tests on a regular basis. Validate failover and
infrastructure—including seemingly minor components—to recovery capabilities to make sure things work as planned—
find areas where redundancy is lacking. perhaps on a quarterly basis.
S2
DellDisasterRecov_v7ForPrep 6/28/07 2:10 PM Page 3
S3
DellDisasterRecov_v7ForPrep 6/28/07 2:10 PM Page 4
July 2007. Printed in the U.S.A. Dell, the DELL logo, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Oracle is a registered
trademark of Oracle Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Microsoft and Windows Server are regis-
tered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either
the entities claiming the marks or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.
© 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc. is
strictly forbidden. For more information, please contact Dell Inc.
S4
ew
NDatabase Vault
The only database
that prevents your IT staff
from seeing your data.
oracle.com/security
or call 1.800.ORACLE.1
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
BY DAV I D B AUM
tant to many are the new features that manage change faster,
NEW FEATURES thus helping to lower the risk and cost of implementing new
11g. Their stories are as diverse as the companies they work for, yet
36 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
managing data and to enable their organizations to do bilities, such as database replay, which lets customers
more with less. simulate production environments, can help.
“Today’s DBAs face challenges on a scale never
before seen in the industry,” says Olofson. “On the one RISING COMFORT LEVEL
hand, they’re dealing with exploding databases, both These capabilities appealed to Qualcomm, a telecommu-
in numbers and in sizes. And at the same time, they’re nications equipment manufacturer based in San Diego.
increasingly expected to manage new complex datatypes Qualcomm pioneered a digital wireless technology that
that we’ve never seen in the database before.” works by converting analog information, such as speech,
One of the problems of coping with all these changes into digital information, which is then transmitted as a
is the time and effort it has taken in the past to prepare radio signal over a wireless network. The company now
for and execute them. But new Oracle Database 11g capa- has 400 mission-critical databases that depend on Oracle
Thomas Knauber, an architect for Postbank Systems AG, says that Oracle Database 11g offers real-world testing, which will be especially valuable when the
company needs to evaluate changes to databases that underlie critical applications.
38 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
driven by incidents. “We don’t want to be in a constant workloads at the database level and replay them on your test
state of reacting to issues,” he says. “Clearly, Oracle system—so you can test the impact of system changes, includ-
sees the value in this outlook.” ing critical concurrency characteristics
For example, Knauber looks forward to a new feature O SQL performance analyzer, which identifies SQL execution
called snapshot standby, which will allow the DBAs to plan changes and performance regressions
temporarily convert physical standby databases to snap- Enhanced partitioning. These capabilities include partition-
shot standby databases for testing and maintenance. In ing by parent/child references; partitioning by virtual columns;
addition, the database replay facility will allow Postbank more composite partitioning choices; and interval partitioning,
Systems to capture production workloads at the database which automatically generates new partitions based on inter-
level and then play them back on a test system to fully vals, such as every day or every month.
gauge the impact of changes—including critical concur- Advanced compression. Oracle Database 11g supports
rency characteristics. Knauber says this type of real- data compression for update, insert, and delete operations
world testing will be especially valuable when they need commonly used in online transaction processing (OLTP) appli-
to evaluate changes to databases that underlie the bank’s cations. Oracle Database 11g table compression improves data-
critical applications. base performance with better use of memory for caching data
“We have a dedicated test network, but it has always and reduced I/O for table scans. With table compression, you
been difficult to simulate the cash dispenser workload,” can achieve two- to three-fold compression ratios with minimal
he says. “With these new capabilities of Oracle Database processing overhead.
11g, we can record everything that happens to the data- Flashback data archive. Part of the Oracle Total Recall
base during a particular period in the real world and option, this feature lets you query data in selected tables
then replay it on a test system to see how it reacts.” “as of” earlier times, which adds a time dimension to your
data for change tracking, information lifecycle management,
WORKING SMARTER auditing, and compliance. Flashback data archive stores
One of the features that appeals to the Qualcomm DBAs change data automatically to enable fast query access to old
is automatic memory tuning, which enables automatic, versions of the data.
unified tuning of both system global area (SGA) and Oracle SecureFiles. This feature lets you store large objects
program global area (PGA) memory buffers. “Before, such as images, large text objects, or advanced datatypes—
we used to look at each instance manually,” says Justin including XML, medical imaging, and geospatial raster
Ambrose, another staff DBA at Qualcomm. “Now, we can objects—inside the database. Performance is comparable to
set one or two global parameters, and everything will be file systems, and Oracle SecureFiles provides advanced func-
adjusted. Oracle automatically balances the memory allo- tionality including intelligent compression, transparent encryp-
BOB ADLER
cated to each group of nodes, depending on the load.” tion, and transparent deduplication.
Other features that Qualcomm DBAs expect will
Ambrose. “Additionally, automatic SQL tuning and automatic Qualcomm DBAs are interested in, since it will allow many
memory tuning will reduce the amount of time we spend on database patches to be applied with no downtime in both
tuning tasks by about 70 percent. The SQL tuning set will Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and non–
look at the overall picture of all our SQL statements and give Oracle RAC environments. “Right now we need downtime to
us recommendations.” do a patch,” Ambrose says. “That can be eliminated totally
Online hot database patching is another feature that with Oracle Database 11g and the online patching facility.”
Ensure Security
and Compliance Manage All Your Information
Keep data secure and ensure Consolidate and integrate all your
regulatory compliance with enterprise information including
transparent data encryption, binary XML, RFID datatypes, DICOM
flashback data archive, Oracle medical images, 3-D spatial data, and
Database Vault, and Oracle other multimedia data into your
Audit Vault. business processes.
40 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Qualcomm’s Hidayatullah
likes Oracle Database 11g’s
adaptive threshold capabili-
ties. Performance monitoring
is established with baselines,
which capture metric value
statistics and are automatically
computed over the system’s
moving window. The baseline
metric statistics are used to
determine alert thresholds,
and companies can use Oracle
Enterprise Manager to configure
adaptive thresholds for alerts.
Hidayatullah adds that these
settings will enable Qualcomm
to vary the expected perfor-
mance levels at certain times
of the day and week. “We can
set the parameters so that the
database automatically senses
the threshold,” he says. “It will
know what the expected load
should be and then adjust the
parameters accordingly.”
Vishu Krishnamurthy, Oracle’s
senior director of XML Database,
search, and information manage-
ment, believes that these auto-
mated management capabilities
are becoming increasingly impor-
tant, particularly as customers
use Oracle Database to store both
structured and unstructured data Justin Ambrose (left) and Shaik Hidayatulla, staff DBAs at Qualcomm, anticipate that Oracle Database 11g ’s management
ranging from office documents capabilities will save time, give DBAs a better picture of test results, and ultimately, make it easier to tune database
applications to improve performance.
and spreadsheets to medical
images and geographical data. “It makes good economic sense create a large-scale storage system for its Printrak Biometrics
to store, manipulate, and protect all types of information in Identification Solution.
a common repository,” he says. “Oracle Database 11g can According to Aris Prassinos, a database architect for the
manage all information in the enterprise, with robust security biometrics division of Motorola, the company selected Oracle
and information lifecycle management (ILM) capabilities.” for its ability to store large, complex biometric images such
as fingerprints, palm prints, facial and iris images, and sig-
DATATYPE CONVERGENCE natures in a secure, highly flexible way. Motorola uses Oracle
Motorola was most enthusiastic about Oracle Database 11g’s large objects (LOBs) to store these images within the data-
enhanced XML capabilities and more-robust support for base, along with Oracle XML Database (Oracle XML DB) to
BOB ADLER
unstructured data. The global wireless and broadband com- store diverse textual data.
munications provider implemented Oracle Database 10g to Prassinos believes that Oracle Database 11g will improve
performance significantly.
“90 percent of our data is
either images or XML data
stored in LOB format,” he
says. “Since the LOBs have
been rearchitected for Oracle
Database 11g with Oracle
SecureFiles, we have seen
huge performance improve-
ments. For smaller images
such as fingerprints, reading
and writing from the LOBs is
three times faster. For larger
images such as palm prints,
we’ve clocked it at seven
times faster using Oracle
Database 11g beta software.”
Oracle SecureFiles is
Oracle’s next-generation offer-
ing for storing LOBs such
as images—as well as large
text objects and advanced
datatypes such as XML,
medical images, and geospa-
tial raster objects—inside the General manageability enhancements such as Oracle RAC–aware automatic database diagnostic monitor will
database, with performance improve reliability and uptime. “With Oracle Database 11g we can apply its performance diagnostic and tuning
capabilities across all nodes of our Oracle RAC clusters,” says Aris Prassinos, Database Architect for Motorola.
comparable to file systems. This
speed and flexibility are essential for Motorola’s demand- tomers transform data centers from silos of isolated
ing justice and public-safety customers, as well as for resources to versatile, shared pools of servers and storage
disaster recovery efforts. Prassinos says general manage- capacity. Oracle Database 11g helps these organizations
ability enhancements such as Oracle RAC–aware auto- take full advantage of infrastructure grids by managing
matic database diagnostic monitor (ADDM) will improve changes to the database and the surrounding IT infra-
reliability and uptime for these customers. “We’re heavy structure, such as when they move their data from one
users of ADDM. With Oracle Database 11g we can apply hardware platform to another.
its performance diagnostic and tuning capabilities across “We enhanced all the key areas in grid computing,”
all the nodes of our Oracle RAC clusters,” he says. says Oracle’s Mendelsohn. “We improved automatic
Another advancement for Motorola in Oracle storage management to make software mirroring faster.
Database 11g is the way Oracle treats XML data as part of We enhanced Oracle RAC’s cache fusion protocol. One of
Motorola’s XML Index product. “Everything that Oracle the cool things we did was an enhancement with ADDM.
supports for SQL we can now do in XML and vice versa,” In Oracle Database 11g, ADDM can look for interconnect
Prassinos says. “Binary XML storage and enhanced issues or global I/O problems when it performs diagnos-
XML indexing will give us more options for storing and tics and tuning. That’s a very exciting improvement for
retrieving important data.” our administrators.”
RAFFI ALEXANDER
42 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
says. “Oracle Database 11g provides significant new enhance- DISCOVER Oracle Database documentation
otn.oracle.com/documentation
ments to transparent data encryption with Oracle SecureFiles
(LOB encryption) and tablespace encryption, making it easier EXPLORE Oracle Database tutorials
otn.oracle.com/obe
to encrypt an entire application’s data or sensitive objects,”
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44 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Partner
Guide
Partners Are Lining Up to Help Customers Meet
Change with Confidence
PARTNER INDEX
HP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Fujitsu Siemens Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Pillar Data Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
The Pythian Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Quest Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
TUSC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
NetApp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Autodesk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
AMD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
HP
HP and Oracle: Improving Business Outcomes
AMD
AUTODESK Combining the Highest
Adding a New Dimension to Performance with Energy
Business Intelligence Efficiency for Unbeatable TCO
for absolute data integrity and for Access Management, Oracle Identity user might use a standard logon ID/
ensuring that data not be disclosed Management password combination, and an exter-
to those who shouldn’t have access. nal partner might use a SAFE certifi-
54 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
cate. Alternatively, a mobile user accessing the system biometric or fingerprint-type authentication options.
from a kiosk might use a secure ID one-time password- “Authentication is probably one of the hottest areas
type device such as RSA’s SecurID or the standardized, in technology today, so we’re not prescriptive on exactly
open source Open Authentication (OATH) secure token. what forms we will leverage,” says Pfizer’s Barnes. “But as
“The hope is that by allowing users to select new ones emerge, we see this as the single place where
what they want to use, it gives them the great- we can make them available.”
est control over the experience they intend Of course, another important aspect of access
to have,” explains Barnes. “One of the management for Pfizer is being able to manage
major business benefits of this approach is risk better by ensuring that the proper level
allowing people to use a credential they of authentication is required for specific
may already have.” applications. For example, some applications
According to Burton Group’s Henry, might have a low risk associated with access
having a centralized facility to enforce to their data, while others might require
and support access management policies very high data integrity.
throughout multiple applications is a fairly “Our authentication portal has multiple
popular approach. “The idea is that no levels of trust associated with different levels
matter what application a user is accessing, of authentication,” Barnes says. “We think that
the organization can rely on the same types this is really important. Going forward, it will
of authentication framework,” says Henry. “That allow application developers either to lower or
reduces the management burdens and helps to elimi- raise the bar required to get access to information and
nate potential mistakes that might occur.” protect the integrity of the data.”
Eventually, using this framework, Pfizer expects that
CENTRALIZING AUTHENTICATION it could leverage the use of national IDs, which might
With its centralized authentication service, Pfizer has be issued through the European Union or by individual
taken the authentication process out of each applica- countries. “As national and international identity providers
tion and put it in the hands of the end user. And in the emerge, we see this framework as giving us the ability to
future, Pfizer can immediately take advantage of any new link directly to them,” adds Barnes. “And we will continue
authentication methods that it wants to deploy, such as to work with Oracle to enhance the native capabilities of
Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Virtual Directory to provide “A lot of new requirements have come in since most orga-
the functionality of the logon.pfizer.com authentication portal.” nizations originally adopted access management,” Leach adds.
“From compliance and auditing requirements to federation
THE EVOLUTION OF ACCESS MANAGEMENT needs to stronger authentication requirements, now is the time
Access management has come a long way in the past few for organizations to reconsider their access management solu-
years. But as organizations struggle to meet new compliance tions and opportunities in a broader context.” O
and security requirements and to reach out to partners and
customers in a secure and manageable way, access manage- David A. Kelly ([email protected]) is a business, technology, and travel
ment seems poised to play an even greater role in the corpo- writer who lives in West Newton, Massachusetts.
rate IT infrastructure.
“Over the past few years, the adoption of federation tech-
nologies has become much more prevalent,” says Eric Leach,
senior group product manager, access management, Oracle.
“That means that organizations can use their baseline Web READ more about
access management deployments and layer on standards-based Oracle Identity Management
oracle.com/identity
federation products that can greatly simplify the integration of
business partners.” Oracle Audit Vault
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For many companies, the need to interact efficiently with
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ners, customers, or someone else—will only increase. At the
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Mid-Atlantic/Southeast
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Internal Oracle research has found Oracle Magazine exists to drive Oracle +1.949.923.1660
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who don’t read the magazine. These how your company will benefit from our Associate Publisher
readers spend a combined total of more print and interactive go-to-market programs, Kyle Walkenhorst
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56 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Oracle
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THE POW Embedded Oracle databases drive
58 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
W ER WITHIN
technology at the edge of the enterprise.
or Riverbed Technology, choosing the right database Oracle’s strategy is to offer developers the broadest selection
for its network-acceleration appliances isn’t something of embeddable databases for the diverse range of applications
it takes lightly. The company’s Steelhead appliances out there.” In fact, Oracle offers four embedded database
help boost WAN speeds an average of 30 times for custom- choices. (See the “Choosing an Embedded Database” sidebar
ers running anywhere from hundreds to several thousands for more information.)
of nodes, and what Riverbed needs is a database that’s robust “Oracle offers a suite of embedded databases for network
and that can go the distance. To achieve the performance appliances, mobile devices, packaged applications, and other
gains it needs with the smallest technology footprint possible, uses,” says Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst with Forrester
Riverbed relies on Oracle Berkeley DB, a member of Oracle’s Research. “Customers can choose among any of those prod-
family of embeddable databases. ucts, with the additional advantage of having compatibility
Unlike traditional databases, embedded versions reside across the various databases.”
within software applications or hardware appliances like
Riverbed’s and don’t require day-to-day management by DBAs. PERFORMANCE DEMANDS
Instead, they work behind the scenes, often without end users Cisco Systems released the Cisco License Manager (CLM) at
even knowing they’re using the data management technology. the beginning of 2007. The CLM enables Cisco customers to
“Customers like our turnkey solution. They buy our appli- inventory and manage sometimes thousands of licenses for
ances because they don’t want to mess around with operating network devices running in their enterprises.
systems and figure how to get this piece of hardware to work “If a customer wants to upgrade any of the licenses, they
with that piece of software,” explains David Wu, Riverbed’s place an order online and enter an authorization key into the
vice president of software development. “Our customers aren’t CLM, and it automatically obtains the licenses and deploys
database experts, so it makes sense for us to bundle in an them to the network devices,” says Niraj Gopal, CLM product
embedded database that just tunes itself.” manager at Cisco. When customers download the CLM, the
product includes Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition for manag-
NEW CHOICES ing licensing and authentication information for each device.
Embedded databases aren’t new—developers have relied on Before Cisco settled on Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition,
them for decades. Many developers have built their own, the company considered several other databases, including
because their application requirements were so unique, and several commercial offerings and a homegrown solution. Cisco
commercial choices were inadequate. chose Berkeley DB Java Edition after pilot tests convinced
“Although custom development is very time-consuming developers that it could meet their top design goals—the
and expensive, it enables developers to build very specific database had to be scalable and portable and work within a
JUPITER IMAGES
capabilities,” says Rex Wang, vice president of embedded small resource footprint.
product marketing at Oracle. “We understand that devel- “[The database] had to run on powerful servers as well as
opers need technical flexibility and choice, so that’s why a single blade,” explains Shaw Li, Cisco software development
REAL-TIME SERVICE Cisco’s Niraj Gopal, Product Manager for Cisco License Manager (left), and Shaw Li, Software
Development Manager, find that Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition gives them great portability across
Aspect Software uses both Oracle Database and Oracle different operating systems.
TimesTen In-Memory Database within its contact
center solutions for organizations to manage incoming data for years. It must be possible to retrieve detailed records
questions and service requests from customers. to service an individual call, as well as look at aggregated
“Traditionally, contact centers were measured by ‘handle information about the contact center’s overall performance.
time’—basically how long it takes to address each customer’s To help meet this challenge, Aspect relies on Oracle Database
call. The quicker being the better,” says Mike Sheridan, for its enterprise data mart and Oracle TimesTen for real-time
Aspect’s senior vice president of strategy and marketing. “But analytics about performance across multiple call centers.
now companies recognize that’s not the best performance mea- Oracle TimesTen also feeds a program that provides graphic
surement because it doesn’t speak to whether they satisfied visualizations of contact center performance to help managers
the customer or what the propensity is for that person to buy and supervisors monitor the environment.
more things from you in the future as a result of that call.” Aspect Software chose Oracle TimesTen because it performs
Contact centers are massive data generators that collect fast enough to serve real-time demands. “Traditional databases
within medical equipment and telecommuni- times and high transaction throughput. As a with the main enterprise database server.
60 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
B: 11.125 in
T: 10.875 in
S: 9.875 in
COMPANIES TRUST ORACLE
WITH THEIR MOST VITAL INFORMATION.
WHICH IS WHY ORACLE TRUSTS DELL.
Oracle depends on its Austin Data Center to be ready and available 24/7/365.
So Oracle turned to Dell to cluster and maintain 12,000 servers, hosting the
Dell cannot be responsible for errors in typography or photography. Dell and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other
trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of
others. © 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
P86119_Oracle_V1_300Dmax.psd Dell_cmyk_3.ai
J. Siebert, M. Westman, M. Piro, M. Kohler, C. Joyce, C. Guzy Keyline Size Routing Signatures Notes Links
the Studio
Kuhn, B. Bannor B 8.25 in x 11.125 in Oracle P86119_Oracle_V1_
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DPCCB P86119
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Ad # P86119ORr1 Yellow, Black
Dell – Brand Folder Date Print Producer:
P86119_DPCCB_OracleQ2 7/18/07 11:45 AM Slug Font: Myriad Pro
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Publications: Oracle Magazine: issue 9/1/07; mat. due 7/13/07 OS X.4: InDesign CS2 Lead Client: OpenType), Meta Normal LF
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d e v e l o p e r FRAMEWORKS BY STEVE MUENCH
64 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
The next step is to drop a data values for the Mgr attribute to depend READ more about Oracle JDeveloper
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otn.oracle.com/products/jdev
a look at the Application Navigator attribute, you need to perform two otn.oracle.com/products/adf/learnadf.html
and note that the frame is grouped additional declarative steps to force DOWNLOAD Oracle JDeveloper
into several sections, each contain- the Mgr list to immediately update to otn.oracle.com/products/jdev/11
otn.oracle.com/products/jdev
ing a titled heading bar and an arrow reflect a changed list of managers. The
Where
You Innovate
November 11–15, 2007 I Moscone Center, San Francisco
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 0702894
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d e v e l o p e r PL/SQL PRACTICES BY STEVEN FEUERSTEI N
table—and read from it very often. Yet profile, plus the automatic purge of
cached results whenever changes are not very scalable. statement and either put the RESULT_
committed, makes this feature of Oracle O The packaged collection approach CACHE hint inside that query (that’s
Database 11g very practical for optimiz- consumed additional PGA memory, but right, this feature is available natively
ing performance in PL/SQL applications. the Oracle Database 11g function result within SQL as well as for functions) or
cache did not. construct the function, put the query
ANALYZE PERFORMANCE AND PGA And then, of course, there are the inside it, find each of the applicable
MEMORY IMPACT other key advantages of the function queries, and replace the query with the
To test the improvement in perfor- result cache: automatic invalidation of function call.
mance and the impact on PGA memory cache contents when a dependent table Certainly both of these approaches
over repeated queries of the data, I put is changed, the fact that the cache is are eminently doable, but they are also
together a set of scripts, available at shared across sessions, and the applica- very unlikely to happen. IT managers
otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/ tion of the least recently used algorithm are loathe to go into existing, working
o57plsql.zip, that compares three to the memory in the cache. production code and upset the applecart
different ways to retrieve a row of by making lots of changes.
employee data: SO WHY SHOULD YOU CARE NOW? If, conversely, you start right now, in
1. Execute the query repeatedly “All right,” you may be saying to your- Oracle9i Database or Oracle Database
2. Cache all the rows of the employees self, “It’s cool. Super cool. But I still can’t 10g, to place your queries inside func-
table in a packaged collection and then use it for two years or more, so what tions, you will almost instantly be able
retrieve the data from that cache good does that do me now?” to upgrade your code to use this fan-
3. Use the PL/SQL function result cache You may not be able to use the tastic new feature when you upgrade to
to avoid repetitive querying PL/SQL function result cache yet, Oracle Database 11g.
To try this out yourself, unzip the but you can write your code now so And, best of all, the application code
o57plsql.zip file and run the 11g_ that when you eventually upgrade to that calls the function will not have to
emplu.tst script. It should take about Oracle Database 11g, you will be able be changed at all! Your manager will be
five or six seconds to complete, and to quickly and easily use this cache in very impressed.
then you should see results like this: your application code. And that is why you should learn
In other words, you can and should about the new features of Oracle
PGA before tests are run: prepare now for this future feature. Database 11g. Today. O
session PGA: 910860 bytes How do you do that? By placing
all your queries (at least those against Steven Feuerstein ([email protected]) is
Execute query each time tables that change infrequently but Quest Software’s PL/SQL evangelist. He has published
Elapsed: 4.5 seconds. are queried often) inside functions, so 10 books on Oracle’s programming language, including
session PGA: 910860 bytes that you can easily add the RESULT_ Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best
CACHE clause. Practices (O’Reilly Media). Feuerstein’s self-appointed
Cache table in PGA memory Think about it: today you prob- mission in life these days is to improve the quality and
Elapsed: .11 seconds. ably don’t do that. Instead, whenever quantity of PL/SQL code testing.
session PGA: 1041932 bytes you need data from the database, you
write the required query, right there in
Oracle Database 11g result cache the application logic you are writing
Elapsed: .27 seconds. (whether that logic resides in the back
session PGA: 1041932 bytes end—other PL/SQL programs—or the READ more about
front end—languages such as Java). PL/SQL function result cache
Here are my conclusions from this And that same query (or some minor otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/
o57asktom.html
admittedly incomplete analysis: variation on it) will likely appear in otn.oracle.com/documentation
O The Oracle Database 11g PL/SQL func- multiple places in your application READ more
tion result cache is, indeed, much faster code. Why not? It is so easy to write Best Practice PL/SQL
than repetitive querying. In this test, it those SQL statements; that’s one of the otn.oracle.com/pub/columns/plsql
was over an order of magnitude faster. beauties of PL/SQL. But that ease of use PL/SQL Practices
O A packaged collection cache is even
otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/plsql
in executing SQL inside PL/SQL makes
faster, most likely because the PL/SQL us all take SQL for granted, and when DOWNLOAD
runtime engine can access the data you upgrade to Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Database 11g
otn.oracle.com/database
from PGA memory rather than SGA you will pay the price.
test scripts for comparing row
memory. Unfortunately, this also means If after upgrading, you want to take retrieval speed
that the consumption of memory advantage of RESULT_CACHE, you otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/o57plsql.zip
occurs on a per-session basis, which is will have to find every affected SQL
72 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
per quarter, as shown in Listing 1. Oracle Database 11g provides a very are all null. This indicates that the
Next, you want to create a table to useful new feature: referential partition- boundaries are the same as those of the
partitions of the RES parent table and codeLISTING 1: Creation of RES table
are not independently defined.
create table res (
With referential partitioning, you can res_id number primary key not null,
partition any child table in the same way res_date date,
hotel_id number(3),
as its parent to improve performance
guest_id number
and meet archival requirements, even )
though the partition key column is not partition by range (res_date) (
partition p1 values less than (to_date(‘01/01/2007’,’mm/dd/yyyy’)),
present in any of the child tables.
partition p2 values less than (to_date(‘04/01/2007’,’mm/dd/yyyy’)),
Suppose you purge the RES table by partition p3 values less than (to_date(‘07/01/2007’,’mm/dd/yyyy’)),
dropping partitions. All the child tables partition p4 values less than (to_date(‘10/01/2007’,’mm/dd/yyyy’)),
partition pm values less than (maxvalue)
are consequently purged as well, auto-
);
matically. When you add a partition to
the parent, a corresponding partition is
added to the child table, automatically. codeLISTING 2: Creating TRANS table, using reference partitioning
Similarly, when you split the PM parti- create table trans (
tion of the RES table to carve out a new trans_id number not null,
partition, the PM partition of the TRANS res_id number not null,
trans_date date not null,
table is also split into two partitions, at amt number,
exactly the same point. Here is how you constraint fk_trans_01
can split the PM partition of the RES foreign key (res_id)
references res
table at the value 401: )
partition by reference
alter table res (fk_trans_01);
split partition pm
at (401) codeLISTING 3: Checking for foreign key in reference partitioning
into (partition p4, partition pm);
SQL> select table_name, partitioning_type, ref_ptn_constraint_name
2 from user_part_tables
Now if you query the partitions of 3 where table_name in (‘RES’, ’TRANS’);
the TRANS table, the child, you see
TABLE_NAME PARTITIONING_TYPE REF_PTN_CONSTRAINT_NAME
–––––––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
select partition_name RES RANGE
from user_tab_partitions TRANS REFERENCE FK_TRANS_01
where table_name = ‘TRANS’;
74 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
tions for all new partitions, include the codeLISTING 6: Range-range composite subpartitioning
STORE IN clause after the INTERVAL
create table res (
clause, as follows: res_id number not null,
res_date date,
interval (100) store in (resdata1,resdata2) hotel_id number(3),
guest_id number
)
Now the new partitions will be partition by range (res_date)
spread over these two tablespaces in a interval (numtoyminterval(1,’MONTH’)) store in (example)
subpartition by range (hotel_id)
round-robin manner. subpartition template
You can also use a time stamp as the (
partitioning interval. This comes in handy subpartition s1 values less than (101),
subpartition s2 values less than (201),
for creating a table containing date ranges subpartition s3 values less than (301),
and a partition for each month of records. subpartition s4 values less than (401),
To accomplish that, write the INTERVAL subpartition sm values less than (maxvalue)
)
clause as follows: (
partition p1 values less than (to_date(‘01-FEB-2007’,’DD-MON-YYYY’))
interval (numtoyminterval(1, ’MONTH’)) );
EXPANDED COMPOSITE PARTITIONING tions on res_date and then create a range on partitioning with new virtual columns
In my earlier partitioning article, I showed subpartition on the hotel_id column, available in Oracle Database 11g.
another important feature: composite par- as shown in Listing 6. Note that I have
titioning. A composite partition is a parti- deliberately chosen an interval scheme CONCLUSION
tion further broken up into subpartitions. for the partitioning. I could have chosen Partitioning is a powerful feature in
Up through Oracle Database 10g Release explicit partition names and high values modern database design that enables
2, you could divide only range partitions as well, but I wanted to show how you easier database administration with no
into hash or list subpartitions. Although can use interval partitioning to ease change in logical design. In most cases, it
this was adequate for most partition- maintenance. I could instead have chosen helps accomplish the seemingly contra-
ing, some situations could really benefit to reverse the order of partitioning—I dictory objectives of fine-grained storage,
from a range subpartition. For instance, could have partitioned on hotel_id and backup, archival, and retrieval—all
consider the example of the hotel res- then subpartitioned on res_date. To find with no application changes. In Oracle
ervations table (RES) you saw earlier. the subpartitions created, you can select Database 11g, the partitioning option is
Suppose the hotel ID shows the type of from the USER_TAB_SUBPARTITIONS further enhanced with the introduction
hotel: values 1–100 are for 5-star hotels, data dictionary view, as follows: of referential and interval partitioning,
values 101–200 indicate 4-star hotels, extended composite partitioning, and
and so on. Because a comparative revenue SQL> select partition_name, partitioning on virtual columns to offer a
analysis is usually done within the same 2 subpartition_name compelling reason to include partitioning
star rating, users tend to select the data 3 from user_tab_subpartitions in your physical database design. O
for a specific range of hotel IDs, such as 4 where table_name = ‘RES’;
1–100 only. Therefore, it makes a lot of Arup Nanda ([email protected]) has been an
sense to range-partition the RES table on PARTITION_NAME SUBPARTITION_NAME Oracle DBA for more than 12 years, handling all
the hotel_id column. However, users also ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– aspects of database administration, from performance
tend to select the most recent data and P1 P1_SM tuning to security and disaster recovery. He was Oracle
you may want to store the older data on P1 P1_S4 Magazine’s DBA of the Year in 2003.
cheaper disks to save storage costs. So a P1 P1_S3
perfectly valid competing argument may P1 P1_S2
be to range-partition the table on the P1 P1_S1
res_date column. Both are attractive alter- SYS_P106 SYS_SUBP105 READ online-only article content
otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/
natives—which one should you choose? SYS_P106 SYS_SUBP104 o57partition.html
Why not both? In Oracle Database SYS_P106 SYS_SUBP103
READ more about partitioning
11g, you can create—in addition to SYS_P106 SYS_SUBP102 otn.oracle.com/documentation
already available range-hash and range- SYS_P106 SYS_SUBP101 “Partition Decisions”
list composite partitioning—the follow- otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/06-sep/
o56partition.html
ing: range-range, list-range, list-hash, The online version of this article, at
and list-list composite partitioning. In otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/ DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 11g
otn.oracle.com/database
this example, you can create range parti- o57partition.html, includes information
76 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
and the workflow involved in writing, force to ensure that all LOBs are created hold the encryption key. First, create
editing, revising, and publishing that as SecureFiles even when the creating a directory to contain the wallet. You
can place that directory underneath codeLISTING 1: Creating an Oracle SecureFiles LOB
$ORACLE_HOME. For example
CREATE TABLE article_draft_redef (
article_id NUMBER,
mkdir H:\app\Jonathan\product\11.1.0\ article_stage VARCHAR(10),
db_1\wallet article_content BLOB,
CONSTRAINT article_stage_check_b
Next, add an ENCRYPTION_ CHECK (article_stage IN (
WALLET_LOCATION setting to your ‘1st Draft’, ‘Edit Pass’, ‘2nd Draft’,
‘Copyedit’, ‘Review’, ‘Final’)),
sqlnet.ora file. You’ll find sqlnet.ora
in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin. CONSTRAINT article_draft_pk_b
Following is the setting corresponding PRIMARY KEY (article_id)
)
to the directory just created: LOB (article_content) STORE AS SECUREFILE
article_content (
ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION= TABLESPACE article_lobs
RETENTION MIN 3600
(SOURCE=(METHOD=FILE)(METHOD_DATA= KEEP_DUPLICATES NOCOMPRESS DECRYPT
(DIRECTORY= H:\app\Jonathan\product\ CACHE READS);
11.1.0\db_1\wallet)))
that at least one hour (60 minutes x 60 table named article_draft that I will be
Be certain to include the seconds/minute = 3,600) of undo data migrating. The logical column structure
ENCRYPTION_WALLET_LOCATION is retained for the LOB column. This of article_draft is exactly the same as
setting in sqlnet.ora as one long line. ability to specify a minimum retention that of article_draft_redef.
And again, if you are following along time is helpful for running your data- The article_draft table contains exist-
with this article’s example, you’ll need to base in flashback mode. The default is ing LOB data stored with BasicFiles.
adjust the wallet directory to something RETENTION AUTO, which retains only I’ll assume that that data is in use by
appropriate for your own system. enough undo to satisfy consistent read running applications and that I want
Finally, set an encryption key: requests while a transaction is in prog- to migrate that data from BasicFiles
ress. You can also specify a maximum to SecureFiles. The article_draft_redef
ALTER SYSTEM SET ENCRYPTION KEY retention in bytes or no retention at all. table, with its SecureFiles LOB column,
AUTHENTICATED BY “My secret key”; See the Oracle SQL Reference for details represents the destination of the
on the syntax for retention. article_draft table data. (Bonus! There is
With this setting, your Oracle KEEP_DUPLICATES, even a real article for you to read in the
Database instance will generate an NOCOMPRESS, and DECRYPT explic- example data.)
encryption key and place it in the itly disable deduplication, compression,
wallet. The wallet is then protected by and encryption. I’ll come back to these PLANNING A MIGRATION
the password “My secret key.” options later in the article. In real life, Because Oracle SecureFiles represents a
you would likely enable one or more of completely new way of writing LOB data
CREATING SECUREFILE LOBS them from the beginning. to the database, the only way to migrate
Creating an Oracle SecureFiles LOB CACHE READS causes LOB data to LOB data from BasicFiles to SecureFiles
can be as simple as specifying STORE be placed into the buffer cache during is essentially to rewrite the data by re-
AS SECUREFILE in the LOB storage read operations but not during write creating or redefining the tables contain-
clause of a CREATE TABLE or ALTER operations. You gain improved read per- ing BasicFiles columns. If you can afford
TABLE statement. (Be sure to assign formance here at the price of potentially to take your data offline, you can simply
your SecureFiles LOBs to appropriate, crowding other data out of the buffer select data from your old table and
ASSM-enabled tablespaces.) Listing 1 cache. NOCACHE specifies the default insert it into the new one. Begin with a
creates the article_draft_redef table, behavior, which is never to bring a statement such as
with a single, SecureFiles LOB column LOB’s data into the buffer cache.
named article_content. Data for that I’ve created the article_draft_redef INSERT INTO article_draft_redef
LOB is assigned to the ARTICLE_LOBS table in Listing 1 to migrate a table that SELECT article_id,
tablespace (created earlier in this uses the older BasicFiles to the newer article_stage,
article). Each row in the table contains a SecureFiles storage method. To follow article_content
magazine article at a specific stage in the along with the migration, download the FROM article_draft;
writing/editing/revising cycle. o57securefiles.zip file referenced under
Listing 1 shows some of the options “nextSTEPS” at the end of this article, Follow this INSERT with a DROP
available when creating a new LOB. unzip that file, and follow the instruc- and a RENAME to make the new table
RETENTION MIN 3600 ensures tions in readme.txt to create the original take the place of the old one:
78 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
ALTER TABLE article_draft and remaining incoming data for the of immediately without making any
MODIFY LOB(article_content) new LOB is written to disk. changes to your LOB-using applications:
(DEDUPLICATE LOB); ODeduplication
Existing LOBs in the article_content Compression encodes the data in a LOB to OEncryption
column will be scanned, and any current reduce the number of bytes required to Preliminary testing also shows signifi-
duplicates will be detected and elimi- store that LOB. Compression is transpar- cant increases in performance through
nated. Any new LOB values written to ent and reduces the amount of storage use of Oracle SecureFiles. Oracle’s in-
the column will be checked against exist- needed for your LOB data, giving you house testing shows a 200 to 900 percent
ing values to prevent future duplication. more benefit from each dollar your orga- increase in write performance, depend-
Now, run the code in Listing 3 again, nization spends on disk storage systems. ing on LOB size and whether existing
and you can see the effects of the dedu- Compression requires additional CPU segment space is being reused. Early-
plication. The number of bytes used by cycles, so be sure that compression is adopter clients have reported 300 to 700
the segment should be reduced. On my worthwhile before enabling it on a LOB percent increases in performance of key
system, I see the following, lower usage: column. For example, image data, such application functions.
as PNG files and JPEG files, is often com- Because Oracle SecureFiles is com-
Bytes used = 376832 pressed as part of the encoding scheme pletely backward-compatible with
used. Further compression of image BasicFiles, even to the point of using
The number of bytes used in the LOB files may be a waste of CPU cycles. But the same datatype names, you can begin
segment has dropped because document text-based data such as XML and word- to take advantage of everything Oracle
#6 is a duplicate of an article stored in a processing documents tends to compress SecureFiles has to offer, almost from the
different row. Because of deduplication, a great deal, making the trade-off of CPU moment you upgrade to Oracle Database
that article is not stored twice. Instead, a time for more disk space very worthwhile. 11g. You do need to rewrite your LOB
pointer is stored to the LOB in that other To enable compression on the sample data in the database, but you can do that
row. When you read the contents of the SecureFiles LOB column, issue the fol- while keeping the data online, and the
LOB for document #6, that pointer is lowing ALTER TABLE statement: change is completely transparent to both
dereferenced for you in a completely users and applications.
transparent manner. ALTER TABLE article_draft Oracle SecureFiles is a gift. Drop it in.
Duplicate detection is based on MODIFY LOB(article_content) Take immediate advantage of improved
checksums computed with the SHA1 (COMPRESS HIGH); performance, save money on disk
cryptographic hash algorithm. When you storage, and secure your data from those
write a new LOB into a LOB segment, a This statement activates a high level who would do you harm. O
checksum is computed over the first n of compression on the column data.
bytes of that new LOB. If that checksum You can specify MEDIUM to trade away Jonathan Gennick (www.gennick.com) is an
doesn’t match that for any existing LOB some of that compression for reduced experienced Oracle professional and member of
in the segment, the new LOB is written CPU cycles. There is currently no LOW the Oak Table Network. He wrote the best-selling
to the database. Checksums are saved for compression option, but that keyword is SQL Pocket Guide and the Oracle SQL*Plus Pocket
each LOB, for future deduplication. reserved for future implementation. Reference, both from O’Reilly Media.
When the checksum for a newly If you rerun the code in Listing 3,
incoming LOB matches an existing you should see that even less space is
checksum, there is the strong possibil- now used by the LOB segment. I get the
ity that the two LOBs are identical. The following result: READ online-only article content
otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/
database instance will begin doing a o57securefiles.html
byte-by-byte comparison of the incoming Bytes used = 90112 READ more about
LOB data with the possible duplicate that partition exchange
“Partition Decisions”
is already stored. That possible duplicate The online version of this article, at otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/06-sep/
is referred to as the primary LOB. The otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/ o56partition.html
comparison process reads the primary o57securefiles.html, includes infor- Oracle SecureFiles
LOB, but no new data is written, so long mation on compression benefits and Oracle Database 11g Large Object’s Developer’s Guide
otn.oracle.com/documentation
as the LOB data continues to match. instructions for enabling encryption
If the LOBs compare as equal, only a with Oracle SecureFiles. DOWNLOAD
sample code for this article
pointer to the primary LOB is written. otn.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/07-sep/
If the comparison fails, data from the REAP THE BENEFITS! o57securefiles.zip
primary LOB up to that point is used to Oracle SecureFiles offers three compel- Oracle Database 11g
otn.oracle.com/products/database
construct the first part of the new LOB, ling features you can take advantage
80 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
oes your business have a col- third-party databases: Connection. For a SQL Server connec-
lection of different databases OThe MySQL JDBC driver, version 5.04, tion, click the SQLServer tab and com-
in house? Do you want an easy is available at http://dev.mysql.com/ plete the following:
way to review all the data in downloads/connector/j/5.0.html. OConnection name, such as
these various databases by using one tool OMicrosoft SQL Server requires the jTDS SQLServer2005_mwb
and then, in some cases, to consolidate driver, available at http://jtds.sourceforge OUsername and password
the databases by migrating objects and .net. The download for version 1.2 is OHostname of the machine where the
data to an Oracle database? This column available at http://sourceforge.net/project/ SQL Server database resides
introduces the new Oracle Migration showfiles.php?group_id=33291. O Port
Workbench, a powerful extension to OMicrosoft Access does not require Now click Retrieve database to
Oracle SQL Developer that enables you an additional driver, because it uses a populate the list of available SQL Server
to access data in Oracle and third-party JDBC/ODBC bridge. databases. For this column, I am using
databases and migrate third-party Northwind, a sample database provided
databases—including the schema objects, SETTING UP JDBC DRIVERS with SQL Server.
triggers, and stored procedures—to an Once you have downloaded the JDBC Finally, click Test, to ensure that
Oracle9i Database or Oracle Database drivers you need, expand the driver you can connect successfully, and then
10g. Third-party databases currently sup- binary JAR file, typically a separate JAR click Connect to save the connection,
ported include Microsoft SQL Server, file inside the downloaded archive file: close the dialog box, and connect to the
Microsoft Access, and MySQL. O For MySQL, the mysql-connector- selected SQL Server database.
This column shows you how to set java-5.0.4.tar.gz (or .zip) download
up your environment and then, using includes a binary driver JAR file called BROWSING YOUR DATA
a Microsoft SQL Server database as an mysql-connector-java-5.0.4-bin.jar. When you open a database connection
example, how to browse and migrate OFor SQL Server, the jtds-1.2-dist.zip in Oracle SQL Developer, a SQL work-
database objects and data from SQL file includes a file called jtds-1.2.jar. sheet opens to enable you to write basic
Server to an Oracle database. Ensure that your third-party database queries and commands. Expand the SQL
is up and running, and start up Oracle Server connection you have created, and
CONFIGURING THE ENVIRONMENT SQL Developer. From the main menu, navigate to the Tables node under dbo.
Before you migrate your third-party select Tools -> Preferences…, expand You can select and drag any table onto
database objects, you need to configure the Database node, select Third Party the SQL worksheet, and the action will
your Oracle SQL Developer and Oracle JDBC Drivers, and click Add Entry.… create a SELECT statement. Press F9 to
Migration Workbench environment to Then browse to and select the JAR file execute the query.
work with your third-party database(s). mentioned above, and click OK. If you have multiple queries you
Oracle Migration Workbench is available want to execute, press F5. As with any
in Oracle SQL Developer as of Release CREATING DATABASE CONNECTIONS other Oracle database connection, you
1.2.0.29.98. You can download Oracle Before you can work with a database can sort the returned data by clicking
SQL Developer at otn.oracle.com/ in Oracle SQL Developer, you need to the column headings.
products/database/sql_developer. create a database connection. Create To view the definition of a table
Oracle SQL Developer uses Java a connection for any third-party data- such as Customers in the Connections
DataBase Connectivity (JDBC) to base you plan to browse or migrate Navigator, click the table. Note that the
connect to databases, so in addition to from and a connection for any Oracle tabs displayed are slightly different from
installing Oracle SQL Developer, you database you plan to browse or migrate those available when the connection is to
need to install and set up the JDBC database objects to. an Oracle database. Also note that when
drivers for the third-party database to To create a database connec- Oracle SQL Developer is connected to
which you want to connect. The fol- tion in Oracle SQL Developer, click an Oracle database, the context menus
lowing includes download requirements the Connections tab, right-click the offer many Data Definition Language
and location information for supported Connections node, and select New (DDL) commands or utilities; the context
SETTING UP A REPOSITORY
Oracle Migration Workbench uses an
Oracle database schema as a migration
repository to store the metadata it col-
lects and transforms for the migration
process. You need to set up a migration
repository only once, regardless of how
many migrations you perform. The
repository consists of 37 tables, with Figure 1: Creating a repository
associated primary keys and indexes,
eight views, triggers, and PL/SQL code.
Although this is not required, Oracle
recommends that you configure a dedi-
cated database schema for the repository.
The user who creates and owns the
repository must be granted various
system privileges and roles. Listing 1
creates a user named migration and
grants the necessary privileges.
Once you have created this user,
you’ll need to create a new database
connection, such as Migration_Repos,
for this user in the same way you did
before. However, for this user you are
creating the connection for an Oracle
database. After you have entered the
necessary information, click Connect
to save the connection and close the
dialog box. From the main menu, select
Migration -> Repository Management
-> Create Repository (as shown in Figure 2: Captured and converted models
Figure 1). Select the connection for
your new repository, and click Create. 5. Copy any data from the source data- connection to the Oracle database for
An Installing Repository dialog box will base to the new database, if required the new data. The wizard determines
appear, showing the progress. When the Quick Migration. Oracle SQL Developer whether you have an available repository,
process completes, close the dialog box. also provides a Quick Migration feature. and if there is none, it creates one during
Two additional windows open below This wizard-driven approach migrates the migration process. (You can also elect
the Connections Navigator, displaying schemas and data to an Oracle database to save or delete the repository once the
captured and converted models. and supports least privilege migration, migration is complete.) Click Verify to
which means that users can migrate connect to the third-party and Oracle
MIGRATION source database objects for which they databases and verify that the schema in
The migration process comprises a few have access to the target database without the Oracle database has been granted the
separate activities. Once you have con- the DBA privilege. The Quick Migration necessary privileges. With verification
nected to the database you want to wizard completes the migration process complete, click Migrate to complete the
migrate and have built the migration without user intervention. quick migration.
repository, the process is as follows: To invoke the Quick Migration option, Manual Migration. Using manual migra-
1. Capture the source database select Migration -> Quick Migrate from tion, you have much more control over
2. Convert the captured database the main menu. The wizard provides a the process and can select individual
3. Generate DDL for the new Oracle single dialog box that requires you to tables or schema objects to migrate. You
schema objects select the source connection, which is the can also make updates at various stages of
4. Run the generated DDL script to connection to the third-party database, the migration process, such as renaming
create the new user and objects and the target connection, which is the the schema and dropping or renaming
82 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
• 84% say reading Profit helps them make better strategic decisions
• 81% go online to read more about products and services they see in Profit
• 79% consider Profit a must-read
• 75% say reading Profit shows them Oracle understands the challenges
they face
• 66% say Profit provides information they can’t find in other magazines
• 54% say they make buying decisions based on third-party ads in the
magazine
4 begin —I observe the following behavior: two functions, identical except in name
5 for x in and compiler parameter options. They
6 (select /*+ result_cache */ SQL> set timing on will both access the previously created
7 owner, table T:
8 object_type, SQL> exec my_function
9 count(*) cnt PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> create or replace
10 from t Elapsed: 00:00:00.10 2 function not_cached
11 group by owner, object_type 3 ( p_owner in varchar2 )
12 order by owner, object_type ) SQL> exec my_function 4 return number
13 loop PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. 5 as
14 -- do_something Elapsed: 00:00:00.00 6 l_cnt number;
15 null; 7 begin
16 end loop; SQL> exec my_function 8 select count(*)
17 end; PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. 9 into l_cnt
18 / Elapsed: 00:00:00.01 10 from t
Procedure created. 11 where owner = p_owner;
SQL> set timing off 12 dbms_lock.sleep(1);
SQL> set timing on 13 return l_cnt;
Note that the first execution after 14 end;
SQL> exec my_function the UPDATE went back up to about 0.1 15 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. second of execution time because it had Function created.
Elapsed: 00:00:00.10 to build the new answer. The subse-
quent executions benefit from this work SQL> create or replace
SQL> exec my_function and appear instantaneous. 2 function cached
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. I’m sure that if you sit back and 3 ( p_owner in varchar2 )
Elapsed: 00:00:00.00 ponder your own applications, you 4 return number
will be able to think of more than one 5 result_cache
SQL> exec my_function place where the server results cache 6 relies_on(T)
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. feature will come in handy. It provides 7 as
Elapsed: 00:00:00.01 many of the benefits of some material- 8 l_cnt number;
ized views, but without the setup and 9 begin
SQL> set timing off administrative overhead associated 10 select count(*)
with them. 11 into l_cnt
Note how the first execution took 12 from t
about 0.1 second, because the answer BUT WAIT—THERE’S MORE. . . . 13 where owner = p_owner;
was assembled for the first execution, As they say on late night television, 14 dbms_lock.sleep(1);
but that the subsequent executions were “If you thought that was really good, 15 return l_cnt;
blindingly fast—sometimes so fast that wait till you see this!” Oracle Database 16 end;
they appear instantaneous. 11g has a new PL/SQL function results 17 /
The nice thing about this is that the cache as well. Whereas the aforemen- Function created.
cache is invalidated and refreshed by tioned server results cache is about
the database—and the process is com- caching SQL result sets, this extension The only difference in the functions
pletely transparent to the application. of the server results cache feature caches besides the names are the compiler
The application need not worry about the results of PL/SQL function and pro- parameters RESULT_CACHE and
“stale” or invalid results. For example, cedure calls. RELIES_ON. The RESULT_CACHE
if I update a single row, thus changing In the past, if you called a PL/SQL directive tells Oracle Database that you
the results— function 1,000 times and each func- would like the answers from this func-
tion call consumed 1 second, the 1,000 tion to be saved, so that if someone
SQL> update t calls would take 1,000 seconds. With invokes this function again with the
2 set owner = lower(owner) this new function results cache feature, same inputs, the code should not
3 where rownum = 1; depending on the inputs to the func- actually be executed but, rather, that
1 row updated. tion and whether the data underlying person should just receive the already
the function changes, 1,000 function known answer. The RELIES_ON clause
SQL> commit; calls could take about 1 second, total. A tells the database when to invalidate
Commit complete. small example will be useful: I’ll create this function result cache value—in
86 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
88 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
www.ukoug.org
Hyperion JD Edwards Oracle PeopleSoft Stellent Siebel
Oracle PartnerNetwork Certified Advantage Partner Index
The partners featured in this index have recently reached or renewed their status of Certified Advantage Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork.
COMPANY NAME URL COMPANY NAME URL
Global Canada
Accenture www.accenture.com Allstream Inc. www.allstream.com
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. www.amd.com Castek www.castek.com
Apple www.apple.com CGI Group, Inc. www.cgi.com
BearingPoint www.bearingpoint.com TietoEnator Canada Inc. www.tietoenator.com
Capgemini www.capgemini.com Europe
Cisco www.cisco.com Actebis Peacock GmbH www.actebispeacock.de
Computer Sciences Corporation www.csc.com ACURE A/S www.acure.dk
Dell Inc. www.dell.com Afina Sistemas Informaticos www.afina.es
Deloitte www.deloitte.com Alcatel www.alcatel.com
EDS www.eds.com Alcatel CIT www.alcatel.fr
EMC www.emc.com Anelia SAS www.anelia.fr
Fujitsu Group www.fujitsu.com Application Lynx www.applicationlynx.co.uk
HP www.hp.com Ares www.ares.fr
IBM / IBM Global Business Services www.ibm.com Asseco Poland S.A. www.asseco.pl
Infosys www.infosys.com Atos Origin IT Services UK www.atosorigin.com
Ingram Micro www.ingrammicro.com Atos Origin Nederland BV www.atosorigin.com
Insight www.insight.com B3iT Management AB www.b3it.se
Intel www.intel.com Basilica Computing Limited www.basilica.co.uk
Microsoft www.microsoft.com Bell Microproducts Limited www.bellmicro.eu
Network Appliance, Inc. www.netapp.com Borlas IBC www.borlas.ru
Satyam www.satyam.com Capgemini Telecom Media und Networks GmbH www.de.cgey.com
Sun Microsystems www.sun.com CBOSS www.cboss.ru
Tata Consultancy Services www.tcs.com Cedar Consulting Ltd. www.cedarconsulting.co.uk
TechData www.techdata.com CGI Group INC www.cgi.com
Wipro www.wipro.com Ciber UK www.ciber.com
Africa Cnsys www.cnsys.bg
2Cana Solutions (Pty) Ltd. www.2cana.co.za ComArch S.A. www.comarch.pl
Computer Warehouse Nigeria www.cwlgroup.com CompelSolve Ltd. www.compel.co.uk
Corporate Software www.corporate.ma CompIT Technologies www.compit-t.com.by
De Chazal Du Mee Consulting (DCDM) www.dcdm.biz Computacenter AG & Co. OHG www.computacenter.de
EOH Consulting Services (Pty) Ltd. www.eoh.co.za ComputerLand S.A. www.computerland.pl
Implementation Factory (Pty) Ltd. www.ifactory.co.za Comverse www.comverse.com
Integrated Tertiary Software (Pty) Ltd. www.its.co.za Consit A/S www.consit.dk
New Dawn Technologies www.ndt.co.za Convergys EMEA Ltd. www.convergys.com
Omnidata www.omnidata.co.ma Cozum Bilgisayar www.cozumbil.com.tr
or@dist www.oradist.com.tn CSC France www.csc.com
RPC DATA LIMITED www.rpcdata.com CROC Incorporated www.croc.ru
State Informatics Ltd. (SIL) sil.intnet.mu Cronos NV www.cronos.be
VESL www.vesltech.com Cronos Ibérica, S.A. www.cronosiberica.es
Waymark Infotech (Pty) Ltd. www.waymark.co.za CSC www.csc.com
Asia Pacific CSG Systems (Silicon Iberia) www.csgsystems.com
Acumen Alliance Investments www.acumen.com.au Deutsche Post ITSolutions GmbH www.dp-itsolutions.de
Alcatel Australia Limited www.alcatel.com.au Developing World Systems Ltd. www.dwsonline.co.uk
ASG (Asia Pacific) Pty Ltd. www.asggroup.com.au DIGORA www.digora.com
Application Hosting Services Co., Ltd. www.a-host.co.th DISTRILOGIE (France) www.distrilogie.com
Attain IT Pty Ltd. www.attainit.com.au DBConcepts Daten - und Informationsverarbeitungsges.m.b.H. www.dbconcepts.at
Automated Systems (HK) Ltd. www.asl.com.hk Diligenta Limited www.Diligenta.co.uk
Beijing Futong Dong Fang Technology Co. Ltd. www.futong.com.cn DNS Hungary Ltd. www.dns-hungary.hu
China National Software & Service Company Limited www.css.com.cn Ecletic Group Ltd. www.eclectic.co.uk
DataHeaven Co., Ltd. www.dataheaven.co.kr Edenbrook Limited www.edenbrook.co.uk
Dataone Asia (Thailand) Co. Ltd. www.diasia.co.th Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. www.eng.it
Daesang Information Technology Co., Ltd. www.daesangit.com Everis Spain S.L. www.everis.com
Digital China (China) Limited www.digitalchina.com.cn Explorer (UK) Limited www.explorer.uk.com
DMS Software Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd. www.dmsswt.com Experteam Consulting www.experteam.com.tr
ECS International Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. www.ecschina.com Fadata www.fadata.bg
Electronic Data Systems (India) Pvt Ltd. www.eds.com FORS Development Center www.fdc.ru
FPT Information System www.fis.com.vn Fujitsu Services Limited www.uk.fujitsu.com
FPT Software Solutions www.fss.com.vn Fujitsu Siemens Computers Ltd. www.fujitsu-siemens.com
Fujian Fujitsu Communication Software Co., Ltd. www.ffcs.cn Getronics PinkRoccade www.getronicspinkroccade.nl
Fusion5 Limited www.fusion5.co.nz Global Services Aarhus & Copenhagen A/S www.maerskdata.dk
GTL Limited www.gtllimited.com Groupe LGS France www.lgsrecrut.com
FPT Corporation www.fpt.com.vn GWI Unternehmensgruppe www.gwi-ag.com
HAND Enterprise Solutions Co., Ltd. www.hand-china.com Horizon Clarity Technology Ltd. www.claritytechnology.co.uk
HPT Vietnam Corporation www.hptvietnam.com Hunkler GmbH & Co. KG www.hunkler.biz
Huadi Computer Group Co., Ltd. www.huadi.com.cn I-Teco www.i-teco.ru
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. www.huawei.com/cn i-flex solutions bv www.iflexsolutions.com
iCE Consulting Co Ltd. www.iceconsulting.co.th Inatech Solutions Ltd. www.inatech.com
i-flex Solutions Limited www.iflexsolutions.com INDRA Sistemas S.A. www.indra.es
Jigsaw Services Pty Ltd. www.jigsawservices.com.au Industrial and Financial Systems, IFS AB www.ifsworld.com
LG CNS Co., Ltd. www.lgcns.com Ineum Consulting www.ineum.fr
L&S Information Technology Co. Ltd. www.lnsit.co.kr Infor Global Solutions GmbH www.infor.de
IT&C Co., Ltd. www.itnc.co.kr Informacines Technologijos www.it.lt
KPMG Consulting Co Ltd. www.kpmg.com.tw Informatica El Cortes Ingles www.ieci.es
KOLON I’Networks Corp. www.kdc.kolon.co.kr Information Technologies Company www.it.ru
NCS Pte. Ltd. www.ncs.com.sg Intec Billing Ireland www.intecbilling.com
Nucleus Software Exports Ltd. www.nucleussoftware.com Intec Telecom Systems www.intec-telecom-systems.com
Ora-Tech System Pvt. Ltd. www.ora-tech.com Intel Solution Services UK www.intel.com
OED Technology Sdn Bhd www.patimas.com Inter Access B.V. www.interaccess.nl
Propia Co., Ltd. www.propia.co.kr IT Alise www.it-alise.com
Pythis www.pythis.com IT-eye www.it-eye.nl
Red Hat Asia Pacific www.redhat.com KNAPP Systemintegration GmbH www.knapp.com
Red Rock Consulting www.redrock.net.au KPMG Consulting www.kpmg.be
Sam Yung Holdings IT Business Division www.syhds.com Kurt Salmon Associates www.kurtsalmon.com
Samsung SDS www.sds.samsung.co.kr Leaves www.leaves.ru
Shanghai New Century High Tecnology Services Ltd. www.shsnc.com LGS France www.lgs.com
Shen Yang Neusoft Co., Ltd. www.neusoft.com LogicaCMG www.logicacmg.nl
Sierra Atlantic Pte Ltd. www. sierraatlantic.com LogicaCMG www.Logicacmg.com
Sonata Information Technology www.sonata-infotech.com LOGIX www.logix.fr
Sysage Technology Co., Ltd. www.sysage.com.tw Mdtvision www.mdtvision.com
System Access Pte Limited www.systemaccess.com Memorex Telex/EDS www.memorex.ie
Systex Corporation Taiwan www.systex.com.tw Micros-Fidelio GmbH www.micros-fidelio.org
Systex Information (H.K.) Ltd. www.systex.com.hk Montora www.montora.com
Taiji Computer Corporation www.taiji.com.cn Morse Group Ltd. www.morse.com
Tata Infotech Ltd. www.tatainfotech.com Mphasis Ltd. www.mphasis.com
TechAccess Pakistan (Pvt.) Ltd. www.techaccesspak.com Msg Systems ag www.msg-systems.com
Tietoenator Software Technologies Pvt Ltd. www.tietoenator.in Network Centric Solutions Limited www.ncsltd.com
Wezoomtek Corporation www.wezoomtek.com Noetix www.noetix.com
90 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Partners able to demonstrate superior product knowledge, competence, and a commitment to doing business with Oracle qualify for the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Certified Advantage Partner level. These partners receive the
highest level of service, training, benefits, and resources from Oracle to support them in delivering quality to customers. For more information on partners, please visit the OPN Solutions Catalog at solutions.oracle.com.
92 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 20 07 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
Automating Security
Papa’s got a brand-new bag (of tools).
racle is celebrating its 30th automate its security assessments, and ought to document best security prac-
anniversary this year. Some the quality assurance teams use them to tice, make it easy to install its products
of us old-timers have been keep ahead of the ethical hackers. that way by default, and provide a tool
busy wallowing in nostalgia We’ve also licensed tools from third- to automate the security checks.
by cataloging remembrances of how party vendors. You can’t test security
Oracle has changed over these 30 years. into a product, but even a really good SECURING GOOD TIMES
There’s sometimes a tendency to think developer can benefit from tools that One thing that hasn’t changed in 30
that old times were better, but even automate finding security-related years is that people who work in IT are
those with Luddite inclinations can defects. Some of these tools do static always doing at least four things at once,
agree with my mother when she says, analysis: tracing through source code to and being able to automate three of them
“Without change, there is no growth.” find how an input at X (that is not cor- will not only make us all more secure
(I used to joke that working at Oracle rectly handled, for example) could lead but will also make better use of a scarce
was like the weather in San Francisco: to an actual exploit at point Y later in resource (time!). So I look forward to
if you aren’t 100 percent thrilled at the code. We also use automated tools to the “good new days” when there are lots
any given moment, wait half an hour, test Web interfaces—in both our devel- of automated security tools in the mar-
because it will change.) opment and production environments— ketplace that meet the needs of vendors
There are a great many things that for common security vulnerabilities. No large and small as well as those of Jane
are actually better now than in the one tool does it all. Just as for building or Joe Developer building a custom
“good old days.” One of these has been a house, you need hammers, saws, and application for Mom-and-Pop.com.
the growth in tools that help people screwdrivers as well as a good design Another thing hasn’t changed in 30
do security-related things more easily. and excellent workers. years: we can all use more time. O
Security automation can help everyone It took us a long time to find good
from developers trying to get their prod- tools, train people to use them, and roll Mary Ann Davidson is the chief security officer at
ucts out the door securely (by finding them out. We have helped our vendors Oracle, responsible for secure development practice,
defects in software that could lead to make their tools more robust (nobody security evaluations, and assessments. She represents
security vulnerabilities) to custom- could scan 50 million lines of code daily Oracle on the board of directors of the Information
ers trying to ensure that their security when we started looking at tools), which Technology Information Security Analysis Center (IT-
posture remains strong from day to day helps not only Oracle but also others in ISAC) and the Defense Science Board and is on the
despite frequent configuration changes. the industry. We all need the equivalent editorial review board of SC Magazine.
Figure that most systems are larger and of spell-checkers for code to find where
more complex than they used to be, and we have misspelled security, so to speak.
you realize why security automation I am pleased that Oracle is helping push
is the wave of the future even if it was the envelope for security automation LEARN more about
needed yesterday. higher and broader for everyone. Oracle security solutions
oracle.com/security/security-solutions.html
Security automation is also important
AUTOMATING SECURITY NOW in secure configuration. Most people Oracle Software Security Assurance
oracle.com/security/software-security-assurance.html
Oracle has some homegrown tools we don’t have the time or expertise to set,
Critical Patch Updates and
use to help find and root out common say, 82 configuration parameters by Security Alerts
secure-coding errors. Some of these hand (on 37 instances), much less do otn.oracle.com/deploy/security/alerts.htm
have been developed by Oracle’s ethical it every day to ensure that they didn’t READ more Davidson
hacking team, whose technical acumen leave a cyberdoor wide open. Being able blogs.oracle.com/maryanndavidson
is exceeded only by its sense of humor to automate those “Am I secure?” checks DISCUSS
in naming the tools. (SQL*Splat is a is like having a night watchman (who Oracle Identity Management
forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=47
tool for finding SQL injections, and never needs to sleep) checking every
Bit*Rotter is a protocol fuzzer.) The door and window every quarter hour in Security
forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=51
ethical hacking team uses these tools to perpetuity. Ideally, every software vendor
Contact vendors below for additional information about products or services advertised in this issue.
ADVERTISER WEB SITE PAGE
Allround Automations www.allroundautomations.com 69
Autodesk www.autodesk.com 52
BEZ www.bez.com 44
Citrix www.citrix.com 10
EMC www.emc.com 4
HP www.hp.com 25, 46
ImageNow www.imagenow.com 22
McGraw-Hill/Osborne www.oraclepressbooks.com 70
Tusc www.tusc.com 50
Quest www.quest.com 7, 50
Syncsort www.syncsort.com 13
USi www.USi.com 15
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