DBA_OPERATOR_ACCESS and SYSDATE_AT_DBTIMEZONE in ADB-S

In a blog post in 2020, entitled SYSDATE and Time Zones in the Autonomous Database, I covered the sysdate/systimestamp issue in ADB-S. Basically, you are allowed to change the database and session timezones in ADB, but this doesn’t change the SYSDATE and SYSTIMESTAMP in the timezones. So, the PL/SQL packages, procedure and functions and in particular all SQL using SYSDATE and SYSTIMESTAMP might not return what you expect.

But now, there is a parameter called SYSDATE_AT_DBTIMEZONE available now on system level. Depending on the value of SYSDATE_AT_DBTIMEZONE, you see either the date and time based on the default Autonomous Database time zone, Coordinated Universal Time ‎(UTC)‎, or based on the time zone that you set in your database.

Here is how it works. Let us first check the database timezone:

The value of SYSDATE_AT_DBTIMEZONE is the default, FALSE:

With the default value of FALSE, I see GMT time:

If I change from FALSE to TRUE, then I see database TZ time:

If you decide to change the TZ, then you must restart the Autonomous Database instance for the change to take effect.

So, when SYSDATE_AT_DBTIMEZONE is FALSE in a session, calls to SYSDATE and SYSTIMESTAMP return values based on the default Autonomous Database time zone, Coordinated Universal Time ‎(UTC)‎. When SYSDATE_AT_DBTIMEZONE is TRUE in a session, calls to SYSDATE or SYSTIMESTAMP return the date and time based on the database time zone.

In case you need your application to show the database timezone (or a certain TZ) when calling SYSDATE or SYSTIMESTAMP, then change this new parameter to TRUE, set the correct TZ, if needed, and restart!

There is also a new view in ADB-S called DBA_OPERATOR_ACCESS. This view stores information on the actions that OCI cloud operations performs on your Autonomous Database. This view will not show results if Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud operations hasn’t performed any actions or run any statements in your Autonomous Database instance.

The DBA_OPERATOR_ACCESS view provides information starting on October 4, 2022, the date this feature was introduced. You cannot see anything done before October 4, 2022.

The view is based on the PDB_SYNC$ table:

The view contains the following 4 columns:

1. SQL_TEXT: SQL text of the statement executed by the operator

2. EVENT_TIMESTAMP: Timestamp of the operator action in UTC

3. REQUEST_ID: Request number related to the reason behind the operator action. This could be a bug number, an SR number, or a change ticket request number that provides information on the reason for the action

4. REASON: Reason for the operator action. This provides context for the reason behind the action and may have a value such as: MITIGATION, DIAGNOSTIC COLLECTION, or CUSTOMER REQUEST

So, the DBA_OPERATOR_ACCESS view provides good and useful information on the top level SQL statements that OCI cloud operations performs.

DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION: Automatic Partitioning in the Autonomous Database

Choosing a partitioning strategy is often far from straightforward. Range and interval partitioning are useful when organizing similar data types, most true for date and time data. Hash partitioning is useful for randomly distributing data across partitions based on a hashing algorithm, rather than grouping similar data. I remember how we managed to boost performance in a huge Siebel database by hash partitioning the big indexes. List partitioning is useful to explicitly map rows to partitions based on a set of values – for example the states in the USA.

But this is a tedious process and when doing it, regardless if you are a DBA or a Developer, the functional knowledge of the application and the SQL using the tables and indexes, is of paramount importance.

When using the Oracle autonomous database, we rather prefer things to be automated – goes without saying. So, here comes in ADB a handy package called DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION.

First, we need to configure auto partitioning with the option we need. We use the parameter IMPLEMENT (see the screenshot below) but if you want to enable recommendations and not implement those recommendations automatically, then use the parameter REPORT_ONLY instead (which is the default value).

You can always disable it using the OFF parameter.

Automatic partitioning uses a single-column partition key combined with single-level partitioning. Automatic partitioning does not support more complex partitioning strategies such as multi-column partitioned tables or composite partitioning.

Automatic partitioning chooses from the following 3 partition methods:

• AUTOMATIC INTERVAL: This choice is best suited for ranges of partition key values
• LIST AUTOMATIC: This partitioning method applies to distinct partition key values
• HASH: Applies partitioning on the partition key’s hash values

Next, you can use the AUTO_PARTITION_SCHEMA and AUTO_PARTITION_TABLE settings to specify schemas and tables considered (or not considered) for automatic partitioning. Note that when automatic partitioning is set then all schemas and tables (in user-managed schemas) are considered for automatic partitioning if both the inclusion and exclusion lists are empty.

Here is an example where I prefer to manually decide on the partitioning strategy in the JULIAN schema – so I want to exclude it from auto partitioning:

If I wanted to do the opposite, that is add only the schema JULIAN to the auto partitioning list, I should have replaced FALSE with TRUE in the screenshot above. As soon as the inclusion list is no longer empty, only schemas in the inclusion list are considered.

The analysis and verification of automatic partitioning using RECOMMEND_PARTITION_METHOD is potentially a resource-intensive and long running operation, so avoid doing it in a production database. I would rather use a cloned database for automatic partitioning. The recommendations can be implemented with the APPLY_RECOMMENDATION procedure.

It is good to know that the Autonomous Database automatically collects workload information over time in an internally managed SQL workload repository maintained in the SQL Tuning Set (SYS_AUTO_STS). Recommendations of automatic partitioning generated by the RECOMMEND_PARTITION_METHOD function have a time limit, specified by the TIME_LIMIT parameter, with a default of 1 day. If you are analyzing a large system with many candidate tables, a single invocation may not generate a recommendation for all tables and you will have to invoke the procedure repeatedly to generate recommendations for additional tables. 

Here are the data dictionary views for automatic partitioning: DBA_AUTO_PARTITION_CONFIG and DBA_AUTO_PARTITION_RECOMMENDATIONS.

It is important to understand that unlike automatic indexing, automatic partitioning does not run periodically as a background task. Automatic partitioning only runs when you invoke it by using the DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION.RECOMMEND_PARTITION_METHOD function.

Not all tables are candidates for auto partitioning. The function VALIDATE_CANDIDATE_TABLE checks if a given table is a valid candidate for auto partitioning in Autonomous Database. There are several conditions for a table to be a valid candidate, here are few:

• Table passes inclusion and exclusion tests specified by AUTO_PARTITION_SCHEMA and AUTO_PARTITION_TABLE configuration parameters
• Table has up-to-date statistics
• Table is at least 64 GB
• Table has 5 or more queries in the SQL tuning set that scanned the table
• Table does not contain a LONG data type column.

As you can see below, my SALES table is not a candidate as the statistics are stale:

Last, here are few underscore/hidden parameters related to auto partitioning (from a 21c database) :

_autoptn_costing: DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION is compiling query for cost estimates
_autoptn_flags: DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION flags
_autoptn_translate_table_name: DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION table name translation
_autoptn_workload_id: DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION workload id

The package is though missing in 21c:

SQL> desc DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION
ERROR:
ORA-04043: object DBMS_AUTO_PARTITION does not exist

If you are interested in auto partitioning also the application, then I would recommend a rather scientific paper called Automatic Partitioning of Database Applications. But is built onto the assumption that stored procedures have several disadvantages and not everyone would agree with that.

Automatic Segment Advisor in the Oracle Database

“From my experience, the best advisors help in three ways: encourage you to look at the problem or opportunity from multiple angles; help you balance the tug of the short-term with important long-term priorities; and ask the tough questions you need to know to reach the best solution.” Margo Georgiadis

The Oracle Segment Advisor identifies segments that have space which can be reclaimed. However, the Automatic Segment Advisor can be at times resource consuming and even slow down your database:

Why is this happening granted the Automatic Segment Advisor does not analyze every database object? Here is how it works internally: the advisor examines the database statistics, it samples segment data, and then selects the following objects to analyze:

• Tablespaces that have exceeded a critical or warning space threshold
• Segments that have the most activity
• Segments that have the highest growth rate

In addition, the Automatic Segment Advisor evaluates tables that are at least 10MB in size and have at least 3 indexes to determine the amount of space saved if the tables are compressed with advanced row compression.

Now, here is the important part: if a database object is selected for analysis by the advisor but the maintenance window expires before the advisor can process the object, the object is included in the next Automatic Segment Advisor run. So, at one point you may come to a situation where lots of objects have to be analyzed. During the maintenance window, the following clients/task are being run, these are the predefined automated maintenance tasks:

Sometimes, it makes sense to disable the auto space advisor as you cannot change the set of tablespaces and segments that the Automatic Segment Advisor selects for analysis. You can, however, enable or disable the Automatic Segment Advisor task, change the times during which the Automatic Segment Advisor is scheduled to run, or adjust automated maintenance task system resource utilization. Especially in a situation like this:

Often, also ADDM may point out to the problem with the Automatic Segment Advisor task:

Here is how to disable (and enable) the tasks individually. The main switch is controlled by DBMS_AUTO_TASK_ADMIN.DISABLE().

Even after disabling the entire autotask job by running DBMS_AUTO_TASK_ADMIN.DISABLE(), the DBA_AUTOTASK_TASK will still show autotask client as enabled. For this you need to disable the jobs individually as shown above. And for a multitenant environment, CDB and PDBs have their own autotasks, disabling CDB’s autotask will not affect the PDBs, so you will have to do for each pluggable database.

Staring with 12.2, there is a parameter called ENABLE_AUTOMATIC_MAINTENANCE_PDB that can be used to enable or disable the running of automated maintenance tasks for all the PDBs in a CDB or for individual PDBs in a CDB. Changing ENABLE_AUTOMATIC_MAINTENANCE_PDB in the CDB root from TRUE to FALSE, the new value FALSE takes effect in the root and in all the PDBs in the CDB.

If you get into a situation where the Automatic Segment Advisor is consuming lots of resource and slowing the database during the maintenance windows do one of the following:

1. Disable the autotask client for the segment advisor and run it manually on per need basis.
2. Increase the maintenance window from the default which starts at 10 p.m. on Monday to Friday and ends at 2 a.m. Often 4 hours in just not enough. The weekend window is 20h long and in most cases long enough.

In the autonomous database, you have access to dba_autotask_client, etc. and you can disable and enable the auto space advisor task however you do not have full visibility on dba_scheduler_window_groups, etc. Some columns just show as NULL. Still the performance task in ADB can give you some idea of what is going on:

And finally, here are some other situations that might require disabling the Auto Space Advisor Job:

• ORA-01555 While Running Auto Space Advisor Job on Object wri$_adv_objspace_trend_data (Doc ID 2576430.1)

• Auto Space Advisor job may sometimes cause deadlock (Doc ID 17234189.8)

• Auto Space Advisor is Taking More Time due to Recursive Query Taking a Long Time (Doc ID 2382419.1)

• In 12.2 Auto Space Advisor Job Fails With ORA-60 (Doc ID 2321020.1)

• SEGMENT ADVISOR not working as expected for LOB or SYS_LOB SEGMENT (Doc ID 988744.1)

The new CS_SESSION package and DB_NOTIFICATIONS view in the Autonomous Database

Two new objects have been recently introduced in the Oracle Autonomous Database on Shared Exadata Infrastructure.

1. The first one is the CS_SESSION package.

When you open a connection to the Autonomous Database, that session is assigned a consumer group. But consumer groups affect the concurrency and the DOP (degree of parallelism). HIGH service is run in parallel while LOW service runs in serial. So for example, if you have a PL/SQL procedure or function that has to execute statements in the same session with changing consumer groups, the way is to use the new CS_SESSION.SERVICE_NAME procedure.

The number of concurrent statements run in the database depends on 2 factors: the type of the service name and the numbers of the Oracle CPUs provisioned for the ADB:

The new package CS_SESSION contains only one procedure: SERVICE_NAME. My current version is 19.14, I am not sure if the package/procedure is included in all lower RUs. Most likely it is.

The valid values accepted as an IN parameter are: HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, TP and TPURGENT.

After running the procedure, Oracle does not reset any session attributes. Anything the user set for their session before calling this procedure will continue as-is. 

The ADMIN user is granted EXECUTE privilege on CS_SESSION with GRANT OPTION. The privilege is also granted to DWROLE without the GRANT OPTION.

Here is how to change the consumer group from LOW to TPURGENT:

You might get the following error:

ORA-02097: parameter cannot be modified because specified value is invalid ORA-01031: insufficient privileges ORA-06512: at “C##CLOUD$SERVICE.CS_SESSION”, line 142

Note there is an open bug for this.

You can create an AFTER SET CONTAINER trigger if you would like to limit the values a user can set for the consumer group session. You might not want that all users can set to TPURGENT but allow them go with TP only.

2. The second new object is the DB_NOTIFICATIONS view which stores information about maintenance status notifications and timezone version upgrade notifications for the ADB instance. Let us describe the view

and check what is in it:

As we can see there was a patch run on the data dictionary and there is another maintenance scheduled for the 19th of January.

3. Good to know that we can now use GitHub Raw URLs with DBMS_CLOUD APIs to access source files that reside on a GitHub Repository.

4. Also, the DBMS_PIPE package is now available in the Autonomous Database.

Moving Autonomous Databases across regions

With the new OCI regions, we might want to move our databases to a closer location – in my case moving my databases from Frankfurt to Stockholm.

First what comes to mind is to enable Autonomous Data Guard and then switch over. However, you need a paired region – we cannot create a standby database just anywhere:

The list of Autonomous Data Guard Paired Regions shows that for each Source Region, we have 1-4 Paired Regions.

You need to be subscribed to a region before it can appear on the list and use it. And note: once you subscribe, there is no unsubscribe! You will need to apply for a limit increase.

I am told that soon, once a good standing payment history has been established, you will be eligible for unlimited regions. 

Another option is simply to create a clone:

Note that if you are using a clone from a backup, you cannot have the clone in another region, no idea why not! As you can see from the screenshot below, I am not getting a drop down list of regions:

So, let us create the database clone in Stockholm from the current AEG database running in Frankfurt:

Once the database is cloned, you can optionally terminate the copy in Frankfurt. But do not do it before you have verified the new clone as you might get an (unknown) error, something like this:

In case you do not want to deal with support, just create a new database and move the data with Data Pump.

My home region is Germany Central (Frankfurt). So am I able to change now my home region to Sweden Central (Stockholm) instead of Germany Central (Frankfurt)? Alas, this is not possible. Not yet at least.

According to the Metalink document Change Home Region in OCI console (Doc ID 2389905.1), the home region of the tenancy is fixed at creation time and cannot be moved. If you still wish to have the region changed, the only way to get it done would be to re-create the tenancy. That would mean removal of the current tenancy with all its resources and creating a new one.

Having the primary database in one region and a standby database in another is good practice in terms of DR. Even more complex scenarios are available. How about having a sharded Oracle Database spread among OCI, AWS and Azure? Possible but I would avoid such a complexity.

Operating System access from within the Autonomous Database

Oracle Autonomous Database does not let us access the operating system. Not even DBA access is allowed.

So, how can we view the content of ADB log or trace files from the OS? How about the alert.log file? “Not needed as all is autonomous” is the common answer. But that is not good enough for most DBAs.

Since September 2021, SQL Trace is supported in the Autonomous Database. If DBAs enable SQL Trace, the same tracing information saved to the trace file on Cloud Object Store is available in the SESSION_CLOUD_TRACE view in the session where the tracing was enabled.

When you enable SQL Tracing, the same trace information that is saved to the trace file on Cloud Object Store is available in the SESSION_CLOUD_TRACE view in the session where the tracing was enabled.

But how about other trace files? It is still possible via Oracle’s internal views. In fact, we don’t have access directly to the V_$ views but rather to their V$ synonyms.

Full access is available to V$DIAG_OPT_TRACE_RECORDS, V$DIAG_SQL_TRACE_RECORDS, V$DIAG_SESS_SQL_TRACE_RECORDS and V$DIAG_SESS_OPT_TRACE_RECORDS.

The names of the trace files and their content is visible through V$DIAG_TRACE_FILE_CONTENTS:

We can see the contents of a a given trace file, say eqp12pod2_p009_193404.trc. The file has 253 lines, so here is a screenshot from the top of the file content:

We can view the latest trace files generated by the database from V$DIAG_TRACE_FILE:

Here are a couple of blog post and articles related to the topic:

Tracing Datapump Export on Autonomous

How do I get my trace files on a db-as-a-service

How about the alert.log file? The content is in X$DBGALERTEXT:

select to_char(ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP,'YYYYMMDD-HH24:MI:SS'), MESSAGE_TEXT
from X$DBGALERTEXT
order by RECORD_ID;

However, in ADB, we do not have access to X$DBGALERTEXT. Good news is that we have access to V$DIAG_ALERT_EXT which shows the contents of the XML-based alert log in the Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR) for the current container (PDB). V$DIAG_ALERT_EXT which came in 12.2 is sort of a subset of X$DBGALERTEXT. Here is how you can search for ORA- errors. Use:

SELECT ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP, MESSAGE_LEVEL, MESSAGE_TEXT, PROBLEM_KEY
FROM V$DIAG_ALERT_EXT
WHERE MESSAGE_TEXT LIKE '%ORA-%' AND ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP > sysdate-7
ORDER BY ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP DESC;

to find the ORA- errors during the past week.

Possible level message values are:

1: CRITICAL: critical errors
2: SEVERE: severe errors
8: IMPORTANT: important message
16: NORMAL: normal message

And here is how to see the top of the alert.log file content from the last 24 hours:

SELECT to_char(ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP,'DD.MM.YYYY-HH24:MI:SS')||': '||MESSAGE_TEXT as "alert.log"
FROM V$DIAG_ALERT_EXT
WHERE ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP > sysdate-1
ORDER BY ORIGINATING_TIMESTAMP DESC;

Regardless of the fact that we do not have server OS access, we can still create directories from within the Autonomous Database.

CREATE DIRECTORY creates the database directory object and also creates the file system directory if it does not already exist. If the file system directory exists then CREATE DIRECTORY only creates the database directory object.

It is possible also to create subdirectories. For example, the following command creates the database directory object version_patches and the file system directory version/patches:

CREATE DIRECTORY version_patches AS 'version/patches;

You can list the contents of a directory in the Autonomous Database by using the function DBMS_CLOUD.LIST_FILES.

The following query lists the contents of the VERSION directory:

SELECT * FROM DBMS_CLOUD.LIST_FILES('VERSION');

You can copy Files Between Object Store and a Directory in Autonomous Database.

Starting with Oracle Database 21c, Data Pump can perform exports from Oracle Autonomous Database into dump files in a cloud object store.

Thus, now we can easily migrate data out from an Oracle Autonomous Database and import it into another location.

Here is an example assuming that we have already created the credential_name JMD_OBJ_STORE_CRED:

Details on how to create the credentials can be found in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure User Guide which has “only” 5952 pages!

Beware Bug 33323028 – DATA PUMP EXPORT TO OCI OBJECT STORAGE FAILS – present even in 21.4 – Object store ODM Library is not enabled by default – How To Setup And Use DBMS_CLOUD Package (Doc ID 2748362.1)

Conclusion: as you can see the OS access is close to zero. There are very few views that let us see what is residing on the the operating system. What I like most is (1) the possibility to run SQL Trace, (2) being able to view the contents of the XML-based alert log and (3) the ability to run an export directly from object store (21c and above). I would like to see access to X$DBGALERTEXT.

Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) in the Autonomous JSON Database

“I ordered a soda – caffeine-free, low sodium, no artificial flavors. They brought me a glass of water.” – Robert E. Murray

SODA is a set of NoSQL-style APIs that let you create and store collections of documents in Oracle Database, retrieve them, and query them, without needing to know Structured Query Language (SQL) or how the data in the documents is stored in the database.

Oracle database stores, manages, and indexes JSON documents, and developers can access these via document-oriented APIs in a NoSQL style.

A recent white paper written by Vlad Kamys, Francesc Mas and Sai Penumuru explained how to modernize your applications and increase business resilience and security with JSON on Oracle Database, and new cloud-based Oracle Autonomous JSON Database.

Here are few examples on how to use JSON and SODA in the Oracle Autonomous Database.

From the Tools tab, start “Database Actions”, and then select “SQL”:

The following below are typical SODA commands:

(1) list the collections

(2) create the EMP collection

(5), (6) and (7) insert three JSON documents into the collection

(10) gets all documents where the name is “Francesc”

(11) gets all documents where the salary is greater than 300

(12) gets all documents where the jobs starts with “D”

(13) gets all documents where the jobs contains the string “play”

Here is the output from command extracting all documents where the jobs starts with “D”:

If we do not have a text index on “job”, then we get an ORA-40467:

We can also run standard SQL on the EMP table which gets created as a result of creating the collection:

Here is how to get the output from EMP by using JSON_VALUE:

You can think of SODA as a programming bridge between the NoSQL model and the relational model.

There is also the DBMS_SODA package in the database. You can drop the EMP collection simply with “soda drop emp” but you can also run select DBMS_SODA.DROP_COLLECTION(’emp’) from dual; The function will return 1 when it succeeds and 0 when it fails.

Work with JSON Documents in Autonomous Database provides examples of how Java code opens a SODA collection of cart documents, how to use SQL with a SODA collection, etc.

Finally, there is JSON DB/SODA DB Health-Check Script that is a tool developed by Oracle Support Services. The tool, also known as jsonsodadb_hc, is used to check the environment in which a single SQL statement runs, checking for the current status of JSON DB and SODA DB components, makes recommendations based on current settings and checks if the components are being used.

SQL Trace and X-ADG in the Oracle Autonomous Database

Two very different in nature but equality useful features are now available in the Oracle Autonomous Database:

1. SQL Tracing in Autonomous Database
2. Cross-Region Autonomous Data Guard in ADB-S

Here is how to enable and use them:

SQL Trace in ADB:

You need first a standard bucket as SQL tracing files are only supported with buckets created in the standard storage tier. Also, create a token (you can have at most 2 tokens) and do not use your OCI password when creating the credentials.

Next, you have to create a credential for your Cloud Object Storage account. Note the full username below – do not simply use the one with what you login to the console.

BEGIN
  DBMS_CLOUD.CREATE_CREDENTIAL(
    credential_name => 'JULIANDON_CREDENTIAL',
    username => 'oracleidentitycloudservice/juliandon@yahoo.com', 
    password => 'generated_token'
);
END;
/

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Afterwards, set the init.ora parameters DEFAULT_LOGGING_BUCKET to specify the Cloud Object Storage URL for a bucket for SQL trace files:

SET DEFINE OFF;
ALTER DATABASE PROPERTY SET 
   DEFAULT_LOGGING_BUCKET = 'https://objectstorage.eu-frankfurt-1.oraclecloud.com/n/juliandon/b/adbkofa/o/';

Database altered.

Next, specify the credentials to access the Cloud Object Storage. Note that although I am doing this as the ADMIN user, I still have to prefix the credential with ADMIN. Otherwise, you get an error message.

ALTER DATABASE PROPERTY SET DEFAULT_CREDENTIAL = 'ADMIN.JULIANDON_CREDENTIAL';

Database altered.

Before we can enable SQL trace, we configure the database to save SQL Trace files:

exec DBMS_SESSION.SET_IDENTIFIER('sqltrace_jd');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

exec DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_MODULE('module_jmd', null);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

ALTER SESSION SET SQL_TRACE = TRUE;

After running the SQLs, disable SQL tracing so that the collected data for the session is written to a table in your session and to a trace file in the bucket you configured when you set up SQL trace.

ALTER SESSION SET SQL_TRACE = FALSE;
ALTER DATABASE PROPERTY SET DEFAULT_LOGGING_BUCKET = '';

The SQL Trace facility writes the trace data collected in the session to Cloud Object Store in the following format:

default_logging_bucket/sqltrace/clientID/moduleName/sqltrace_numID1_numID2.trc

When you enable SQL Tracing, the same trace information that is saved to the trace file on Cloud Object Store is available in the SESSION_CLOUD_TRACE view in the session where the tracing was enabled.

SELECT trace FROM SESSION_CLOUD_TRACE ORDER BY row_number;

After you close the session, the data is no longer available in SESSION_CLOUD_TRACE.

DESC SESSION_CLOUD_TRACE

Name       Null? Type
---------- ----- ------------------------------
ROW_NUMBER       NUMBER
TRACE            VARCHAR2(32767)

Check Connor McDonald’s blog entitled SQL trace on your cloud database.

Cross-Region Autonomous Data Guard in ADB-S

Autonomous Data Guard provides a standby database instance in a different availability domain in the same region or in a standby database instance in different region.

If you create the standby database in the current/local region and if the primary instance becomes unavailable – the Autonomous Database automatically switches the role of the standby database to primary and begins recreating a new standby database.

ADB currently supports up to 2 standby databases – a local one in the same-region and an additional one which is remote – called cross-region.

So, with the new cross-region standby database, you can perform a manual failover to the standby database if the current region goes down.

A detailed blog by Nilay Panchal entitled Cross-Region Autonomous Data Guard – Your complete Autonomous Database disaster recovery solution! covers in detail how to create the remote standby database and how to manually switch over.

Note that each region has one or a few nearby paired regions in which a remote standby may be created. As you can see from the screenshot above my tenancy in Frankfurt is subscribed to 3 remote regions in which I can create a remote standby.

It is important to know that ADB-S does not allow us access to the standby databases but after a switchover or failover, the database wallet downloaded in the primary database region can be used in the remote region.

It is extremely simple to manually switchover to the other region – in my case from Frankfurt to Zurich, just with a click of a button:

Simple and elegant!

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Mobile App

Being on summer vacation without my laptop, I still have access to my OCI tenancy via the mobile app by simply using my phone.

The OCI mobile app is available for both Apple iOS and Android. With the app, we can check the resources and view alarms, billing, days elapsed and limits.

First, you have to download the app – search for “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure”:

After you login in to the mobile app, you get the following screen from where you can either modify the settings of your profile or/and view your resources, billing status, alarms and limits:

Indeed, we cannot do much besides viewing some of your resources and billing charges (you cannot drill down). And for now, I can see only my ADW and ATP databases, not AJD or APEX.

But, at least I can check if my databases were stopped before I left for vacation:

For faster sign-in to the mobile app, you can enable automatic sign-in. Automatic sign-in uses an API key to authenticate you when you access the app, keeping you signed in until you sign out. Each user has a limit of 3 API keys. If your account has reached this limit, you can’t use this feature in the mobile app until you delete one of the existing API keys. You can use the Console to delete API signing keys. My virtual private vault count is zero – so I could not enable automatic sign-in:

It is also possible to switch the regions (my default is Frankfurt as you can see from above) and you can set the mobile app to use UTC time or local time.

Autonomous Robots need Autonomous Databases or Top 100 Automatic Features of the Oracle Database

One of the very few words in the English language originating from Slavic languages is the word robot. It comes from an Old Church Slavonic word rabota which means (servitude of forced) labor/work.

100 years ago, in 1921, Karel Čapek’s play RUR introduced the word “robot” to science fiction. And for the Oracle DBAs: he itroduced just the robots not the “Release Update Revisions” 🙂

In a recent paper called “A Realtime Autonomous Robot Navigation Framework for Human like High-level Interaction and Task Planning in Global Dynamic Environment“, the authors proposed the self-driving technology framework to perform high-level interactions and human-like tasks:

You can see the overview of the proposed framework: a robot-centric on-demand database and a working memory are used for autonomous navigation, behavior planner, and learning. The robot can download database from network or cloud if necessary.

Yet in another research paper called “Autonomous robot system architecture for automation of structural health monitoring“, the proposed system uses an autonomous robot, database and the proposed architecture is used to integrate all sub-systems for the automation of the Structural Health Monitoring.

For such Autonomous Robots, we need also Autonomous Databases.

Here is a new Guide to the Oracle’s self-driving database and you can see below Gartner’s rankings where Oracle Autonomous Database is on top of every list but the aim of this post is not to compare Oracle Autonomous Database with other databases but to list all 100 automation/autonomous features of the Oracle database. First have a look at what is new with the latest release Oracle 21c:

– Native Blockchain Tables
– Automatic Index Optimization
– Automatic Zone Maps
– Automatic SQL Tuning Sets
– Automatic Indexing Enhancements
– Autonomous Health Framework and Object Activity Tracking System
– Automatic Materialized Views
– Auto-Result Cache

And here are the Top 100 features (in no order whatsoever) that make Oracle database “The Autonomous Database”:

1. Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
2. Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
3. Automatic Data Optimization (ADO)
4. Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM)
5. Automatic Space Segment Management (ASSM)
6. Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR)
7. Automatic In-Memory
8. Automatic Big Table Caching
9. Automatic Degree of Parallelism
10. Automatic Index Optimization
11. Automatic Indexing
12. Automatic Materialized Views
13. Automatic SQL Plan Management
14. Automatic SQL Tuning Set
15. Automatic Zone Maps
16. Autonomous Health Framework
17. Automatic Memory Management
18. Automatic Undo Management
19. Automatic Undo Retention Tuning
20. Automatic Shared Memory Management
21. Automatic PGA Memory Management
22. Automatic Plan Capture with SPM
23. Automatic Refresh of Materialized Views
24. Automatic VIP failback
25. Automatic AWR PDB Autoflush
26. Automatic Segment Advisor
27. Automatic Tablespace Point In Time Recovery
28. Automatic Outage Resolution with Oracle Data Guard
29. Automatic Statistics Gathering
30. Automatically Created Storage Indexes in Exadata
31. Automates Database Upgrades with AutoUpgrade
32. Auto-List Partitioning
33. Automating Diagnostic Collection for Trace File Analyzer
34. Oracle GoldenGate Automatic CDR
35. Automatically Enabled Resource Manager for Database In-Memory
36. Automatic Data Corruption Repair
37. Automatic Oracle restart
38. Automated tracking: Object Activity Tracking System (OATS)
39. Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System
40. SQL*Net Auto-Detection of Support for Out-of-Band Breaks
41. Automatic Service Registration
42. Automatic Purging of Workspaces
43. Automatic DBCA creation of database management policy for RAC
44. Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) Snapshots
45. Oracle Data Guard Broker Support for Multiple Automatic Failover Targets
46. ACFS Auto-Resize
47. Automatic Background Index Maintenance for Oracle Text
48. Automatically Maintained Standby Databases
49. Automatically Enabling Oracle Database Quality of Service (QoS) Management
50. Automatic Collection of Dynamic Statistics
51. Automatically Synchronize Password Files in Oracle Data Guard Configurations
52. Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) for Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC)
53. Automatic Locking of Inactive User Accounts
54. Automatic Management of Near Real-Time Indexes
55. Heat Map and Automatic Data Optimization Support for CDBs
56. High-Frequency Automatic Optimizer Statistics Collection
57. Automatic Storage Management (ASM) File Access Control
58. Automatic Support for Both SASL and Non-SASL Active Directory Connections
59. Automatic KDC Discovery When Configuring OCI Clients
60. Automatic Column Group Detection
61. Automatic CDR
62. AutoShrink for ACFS
63. Auto-Tuning Oracle C Client Interface (OCI) Applications
64. Automated Transaction Draining for Oracle Grid Infrastructure Upgrades
65. Automatic CDR Support of Tables with Unique Indexes/Constraints
66. Automatic Real-Time statistics
67. Automatic Correction of Non-logged Blocks at a Data Guard Standby Database
68. Automatic Disaster Recovery Fails with RMAN
69. Automatic Channel Failover
70. Automatic Synchronization of Oracle Text Index
71. Automatic Registration of the Database with the Default Listener
72. Automatic Offlining of the Datafile in Noarchivelog
73. Automatic Datatype Conversion
74. Automatic Tape Drive Cleaning and a Cleaning Tape in a Tape Library
75. Automatic Controlfile Backup
76. Automatic Eject Of Tape After Backup Using Oracle Secure Backup
77. Automatic BackupSet Failover On Missing or Corrupt BackupPieces
78. Automatic BMR (Block Media Recovery)
79. Automatic System Tasks
80. Automatic Database Performance Monitoring
81. Automatic Archiving
82. Automatic Propagation in Replication
83. Automatic Job Scheduling
84. Automatic Resume of DataPump
85. Automatic (Real-Time) ADDM Trigger Control
86. Automatic Identify and Allocate Compute & Storage Resources for ADB
87. Automatic Install and Configure Database Software for ADB
88. Automatic Configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure for ADB
89. Automatic Configure Oracle Real Application Clusters for ADB
90. Automatic System & Storage Optimization for ADB
91. Automatically Derived Settings for ADB
92. Automatic Scripted Scaling for ADB
93. Automatic Health Check for ADB
94. Automatic Updates for ADB
95. Automatic Schema Level Optimization for ADB
96. Fault Detection & Resolution for ADB
97. Automatic Security Updates for ADB
98. Automatic Secondary Indexing for ADB
99. Automatic Database Encryption ADB
100. Automatic Database Backups for ADB

Note please: these are the Top 100 on my list – there are much more!