CERN/IT/DB

Oracle DBA
Nilo Segura
IT/DB/DBR

CERN/IT/DB

Agenda

Setting up a database server

User accounts
Security
DB Tuning
Backup and Recovery (C.Delamare)
Useful features

CERN/IT/DB

Setting up a Database server

DB Server setup is the responsibility of the DBA
team
Crucial to have a good platform (cheap does not
pay!!!)
Hardware selection (cluster vs. single host), HA
configuration ?
Raw partitions & RAID 0+1 (stripping and mirroring) +
Logical Volume manager (SAN?)
GbEthernet or higher, how many interfaces?

A properly tuned database is ONLY CPU bound

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Setting up a Database server

You have to plan for the database and for the
instance
Database
Sizing the tablespaces (TS) is VERY important
General versus Dedicated
Data growing rate (TS can be created/dropped online)
Locally managed vs. Dictionary managed

Size and rate/duration of the transactions

redo logs and rollback segments

Size of the sorting operations

size of the temporary tablespaces

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Setting up a Database Server

SQL> CREATE DATABASE DEVDB

CHARACTER SET "WE8ISO8859P9
DATAFILE
Instance
'/ORADB/dbs1/devdb/system01.dbf'
250M
Dedicated vs. Multi Threaded Serversize
connections
LOGFILE
Number of processes
group
1 ( procedures (java, pin pl/sql code in memory)
Store
Sort
area size
'/ORADB/dbs1/devdb/log1.dbf'
)Many
more
size 100M,
group
Backup
2 ( policy (see Catherine slides)
Has
to be agreed with the users
'/ORADB/dbs2/devdb/log2.dbf'
Several options (exp/imp, hot/cold backups)
) size 100M ;
But surprise surprise some critical LEP Oracle services had no
@$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/catalog
backup at all
@$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/catproc
@$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/catrep

CERN/IT/DB

User accounts
Any user can request an account in the central
development and production DB handled by IT
Butcreate
for physics
use, there will be dedicated
servers
SQL>
user cms_anode_board
identified
by yupyup
tablespace
data01quota on one or more
temporary
default
Accounts
have space
tablespaces
temp01 the user will create
quota
on data01
tablespace
In this account,
new100M
database
quota
unlimited
applications (tables, indexes,
types
) on indx01;

SQL>
Usersgrant
can also
see/play
with data that is on remote
designer
to cms_anode_board;
databases from the local account
Performance issues must be taken into account due to
network access

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Security(1/2)
The database catalog (in tablespace SYSTEM) can
not be modified directly
For everything that you can do in the database
there is an associated database privilege
A DBA can group system privileges into roles and
assign them to user accounts
A user can also create roles to assign access privileges
(on his/her objects) to another users

By default, you can not see/modify other users

data

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Security(2/2)
Security can be enhanced in several ways
Data itself can be stored encrypted
Password can expire (like in the normal OS)
Secure the communication with the db using DES,
Triple-DES, RSA RC4...
User authentication with Kerberos, SSL, Cybersafe,
Biometrix

Although the default is everything in clear

We can switch to security mode immediately

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DB Tuning client(1/2)
The ability to make your queries faster
90% of the times all the tuning is done at the
user code level

Most common tuning cases are due to

Missing index or wrong Query Plan chosen by
the Optimizer
Poor application design (the fatal flaw of doing
FILE = TABLE!!!)

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DB Tuning client(2/2)
You can always see the Query Plan before you run the
query
If the optimizer chooses the wrong options you can force a
different choice via Hints

Reducing
query
timesabout
fromexecution
hours toof
minutes
(or even
Detailed
statistics
your queries
for
moreisadvanced
tuning
seconds)
not unusual
Can easily identify hotspots

Remedies
Knowing your data & query patterns is essential
Review/test your application carefully before declaring it
production

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DB Tuning - server
The database itself has many parameters that can
be tweaked to improve the performance
The role of the DBA is to understand the impact of
those parameters in the general performance of the
db.
In the past, you could not modified them without
stopping the database
Now many can be modified online

VERY IMPORTANT: A vast library of tuning

scripts (and 3rd party tools) is available

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Useful features (1/4)

Partitioning (see Montse slides)
Data is separated physically according to a key although
logically, we see it as single unit
Increased performance, improved data management

Bitmap index (see Kurt/Eric slides)

Very useful for low cardinality data
Even for high cardinality if we apply a function that reduces
it

Function based index (see Eric slides)

Index is not created on the data but on the result of applying
a function (native or external)

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Useful features (2/4)

Server side processing (pl/sql, java)
Closer to data, code reusability
Database can do many more things for you than just
storing/retrieving data

Resumable statements
Transaction freezes while the error condition is fixed
User code does not need to be modified to profit
Limited set of errors are trapped in 9i (initial version)

Java VM inside the database kernel

Java compiler to speed up the performance
JSP,Servlets,EJB,Java stored procedures

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Useful features (3/4)

External procedures
Extend Oracle function libraries with your own
Using C for the moment

External table api allows any external source (ex a

socket) to look like a normal table
XML
XSQL, XSL, XML Parsers for C/C++/Java/PLSQL
XML native data type

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Useful features (4/4)

Parallel Query (see Montse slides)
Query/analyze large amounts of data
Inter parallelism (SMP machines tested)
Intra parallelism (for clusters - not tested)

Transportable tablespaces (see

Marcin/Catherine slides)
Allows you to move data from one database to
another very easily and fast (almost plug&play)