Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Baron Schwartz

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focusing on Baron Schwartz this week. We think you'll find his topic and abstract interesting. If you have not signed up for Symposium yet, you'll want to do so by December 31, 2011 to take advantage of discounted registration pricing. Visit registration to sign up. To view a list of the additional speakers, please go to the Speaker page.

Baron Schwartz is the Chief Performance Architect at Percona. He is the lead author of High Performance MySQL, and creator of Maatkit and other open-source tools for MySQL database administration. He is an Oracle ACE, and has spoken internationally on performance and scalability analysis and modeling for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and on system performance in general.

Presentation Title: Measuring and Forecasting Scalability and Performance form Network Traffic

Abstract: TCP network traffic is a good lightweight way to analyze and model system performance and scalability. This talk demonstrates a variety of performance and scalability analysis techniques on a single sample of TCP packet headers from a production database. No packet payload is necessary; the analysis relies exclusively on correlating inbound and outbound packets and their arrival times. This makes it practical to gather data from nearly any system with a call-and-response TCP protocol, such as the Oracle database or an HTTP web server. Packet headers are not regarded as privileged data in most organizations, which helps avoid red tape.

The talk demonstrates two techniques: time-series analysis of the data to determine whether there are performance problems or opportunities in the server.s behavior, and using the data as input to Neil Gunther's Universal Scalability Law to forecast both scalability and performance at load levels beyond what is measured. Both techniques are accomplished with readily-available open-source tools, including some authored by the presenter. The emphasis is on achieving practical results, not on deep mathematical explanations. The techniques demonstrated can help practitioners assess a server without great expenditures of time and effort.

We hope to see you at Symposium!

Hotsos Laredo 4.2.0.0 Released

Hotsos is pleased to announce a new release of Laredo this week. For existing customers, Laredo 4.2.0.0 can be obtained from: https://portal.hotsos.com/products/Laredo/releases.

This version adds support for Windows 7 and the ability to select which Oracle home to use on systems where multiple homes exist.

If you are upgrading from a prior version, please uninstall it before installing version 4.2.0.0.

Laredo is a great tool to help analyze the performance impact of Oracle database changes before they’re put into production. Use Laredo to review schema, Oracle parameter, and statistics changes as well as upgrades.

To find out more about Laredo or for a demo, contact Sales at +1.817.488.6200, option 2 or by email at sales@hotsos.com.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Andy Zitelli

Hotsos Symposium 2012 will be held March 4-8, 2012 in Irving, TX. There will be 31 speakers and 36 sessions dedicated to Oracle performance. Where else can you get this kind of in-depth discussion dedicated to Oracle performance? Plus, Jonathan Lewis is hosting the optional Training Day. Register today! You don't want to miss the 10th anniversary of Hotsos Symposium.

Title: Is Oracle 10046 Tracing Still Relevant?

Abstract: Oracle databases include instrumentation which provides a detailed chronological accounting of activities inside individual database sessions. Commonly referred to as 10046 tracing, this instrumentation has been used as a powerful tool for Oracle performance problem diagnosis and software debugging since the late 1990's. In recent years, Oracle has released other diagnostic tools, which collect a broad range of details regarding runtime activities throughout a database. Tools like ASH, AWR, V$ performance views and Oracle Enterprise Manager automatically collect and expose a wide range of runtime measurements. A commonly asked question is whether these more recent tools have replaced 10046 tracing?

This presentation will describe the differences between the details provided by 10046 tracing and those provided by Oracle's other tools. It will show why 10046 trace data is fundamentally different than the data provided by any of Oracle's other diagnostic tools. One of the key differences is between the methods used for data collection. 10046 trace data collects details based on state changes within individual database sessions. Other tools provide summarized data based on periodic sampling. Sampled results are good enough for investigating many problems but can be prone to significant omissions and inaccuracies.

Biography: Andrew Zitelli has over thirty years of experience as a software developer, data architect and performance analyst. He has served as a consultant to the aerospace, semiconductor, steel, and pharmaceutical industries. Andrew is proficient working with a broad range of operating systems and languages and has over 25 years experience working with ten different relational database products, including 20 years working with Oracle. He holds MS and BA degrees in Computer Science.

Andy has previously presented at Hotsos Symposia in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, as well as other recent conferences in California, Texas and Michigan. Andy is a member of the OakTable Network.

Don't miss it!

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Andrey Nikolaev

Hotsos Symposium 2012 will be held March 4-8, 2012 in Irving, TX. There will be 31 speakers and 36 sessions dedicated to Oracle performance. Where else can you get this kind of in-depth discussion dedicated to Oracle performance? Plus, Jonathan Lewis is hosting the optional Training Day. Register today! You don't want to miss the 10th anniversary of Hotsos Symposium.

Biography: Andrey Nikolaev was first met with Oracle 5 in 1988. Since that time his professional interests have evolved from high performance particle physics computing, through application development, to database performance consulting, but always stay centered on performance. Working in RDTEX, Russian First Line Support company, he devotes his time to tuning and diagnosing the largest Oracle databases in Russia. As an Oracle University trainer, Andrey taught the full spectrum of Oracle database administration courses.

Topic: Mutex Internals

Abstract: KGX mutexes is new type of spinlocks used in the latest Oracle versions. Despite being known since 2005, mutex is still Terra incognita. The mutex contention is frequently observed in high concurrency OLTP environments.

Using oradebug and DTrace, this presentation explores how mutex operates, spins, and sleeps. It will show how Oracle instruments the mutex operations; discuss parameters and statistics related to mutex performance diagnostics and tuning.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Alex Gorbachev

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focused on Alex Gorbachev.

Biography: Few DBAs are as well equipped as Alex to handle any kind of database scenario. Alex has architected and designed numerous successful database solutions addressing challenging business requirements. Alex is a respected figure in the Oracle world and a sought-after leader and speaker at Oracle conferences around the globe. He regularly publishes articles on the Pythian blog and runs online webinars. Alex is a member of OakTable Network and an Oracle ACE Director.

Today, Alex is working at The Pythian Group. He started at Pythian in Ottawa, leading a team of database experts before moving to Australia to embrace the challenges of setting up company business in the East Asia/Pacific region. Now he's back in Ottawa as Pythian's Chief Technology Officer, continuing to bridge the gap between business and technology. The search for the perfect fit between technology, engineering talents and business processes is what keeps him up at night.

Before joining Pythian, Alex developed and administered Oracle databases and applications for Lukoil, the Russian petrochemicals giant. Later, he led design and implementation of high-availability mission-critical databases for Amadeus in Germany, the leading Global Distribution System and biggest processor of travel bookings in the world.

Alex is an Oracle Ace Director.

Topic: Benchmarking Oracle Performance with ORION

Abstract: Every time Alex demonstrates charts he produces during IO benchmarks with ORION tool (Oracle I/O Numbers), he hears "Wow! How do you create these?"

In this presentation, Alex will provide practical tips and tricks on how to benchmark your storage subsystem and capacity, how to stress test it, and determine the limits. You will learn how easy it is to setup ORION benchmark and collect I/O performance characteristics of your platform and assess scalability of small random IOs, impact of writes on I/Operformance, impact of different RAID levels, how backups can affect your OTLP traffic, performance of outer areas of disks vs inner areas, compare SSD with HDD performance, and etc. Because ORION test scenarios are very repeatable, it's a great measuring tool in your Measure, Analyze, Change, Measure cycle.

Now...do you really want to miss this presentation, or any of the others listed on our website? Register today! Hotsos Symposium 2012...be there.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speakers Selected

Hotsos is pleased to announce that the speakers and topics have been chosen for Hotsos Symposium 2012.

This is our tenth anniversary, and we are very happy that many of our favorite speakers are returning for 2012. We also look forward to meeting our new presenters, too. Symposium topics are all about Oracle performance and range from Exadata to APEX to virtualization to Mutex internals and everything in-between.

Please visit our Speaker page for a complete list of presenters and topics. For more detailed information about each presenter or topic, merely click the name of the speaker or the title of the topic.

Early bird registration is available until December 31st so sign up today!

For more information, please send an email to symposium@hotsos.com or call 817.488.6200x520.

We hope to see you at Sym!

Please Be Patient - Hotsos Symposium Speakers To Be Announced Soon!

We're sure you were all looking forward to our Hotsos Symposium 2012 speaker announcement today, but we had the largest crop of abstracts EVER! We are still tinkering with the final selection to make sure we offer you the best topics and presenters. In the meantime, we've decided on a theme for the Symposium party, and it's "Steampunk". Visit Events to find out more!

Datapump API

Christoph Ruepprich recently gave a presentation to the Dallas Oracle Users Group on the Datapump API. If you'd like to see the slides or look at his demo scripts, check out his blog.

And...if you like his presentation, you ought to check out his dance moves at Hotsos Symposium next year:



Christoph has signed up to present this topic again at the Hotsos SIG on Sunday.

Love those pants, Christoph!

Oracle OpenWorld 2011

We just finished our last trade show of the year with Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Below, Gary Goodman and Kerry Bush were photographed in the Hotsos booth.



If you didn't make it to OOW this year, here are a couple of photos of our slick new booth graphics:




For all of you who stopped by, thank you! Several of our Hotsos Symposium speakers (Jonathan Lewis, Kerry Osborne, Tanel Põder, Tim Gorman and Karl Arao) stopped by. We saw several Symposium attendees and Hotsos customers, too! And it was nice to make some new friends.

Hopefully, we'll see all of you again at Hotsos Symposium 2012!

Only 7 More Days to Submit your Abstract for Hotsos Symposium 2012

There are only seven more days to submit your abstract to Hotsos Symposium 2012! Download the form from www.hotsos.com and get crackin'.

What do you get if you're chosen as a speaker??? You get free admission to Hotsos Symposium 2012 and the optional Training Day with Jonathan Lewis. That's right, free admission. You also get a cool speaker gift, accolades from your peers and the ability to add "Speaker at Hotsos Symposium 2012" to your resume. You even get your name and photo on our website. Say "cheese"!

Send your abstract to symposium@hotsos.com today. Don't delay!

Jonathan Lewis - Training Day 2012

For our 10th anniversary Hotsos Symposium extravaganza, we're bringing back one of your favorite presenters, Jonathan Lewis, for Training Day 2012! Come hear Jonathan speak about "Designing Optimal SQL" on March 8, 2012. Read all about his background and presentation at www.hotsos.com.

Don't forget to sign up before September 30th, 2011 to take advantage of super early bird registration pricing. For more information, contact us at +1.817.488.6200 x520 or send an email to symposium@hotsos.com.

Wanted: An Oracle Instructor

Hotsos is looking for an instructor who can teach 5 days of intensive SQL optimization techniques to classes of up to 15 students anywhere in the world. Expect travel to be near 100% and to teach up to 3-4 weeks a month. Extensive Oracle SQL experience is a must as is a good understanding of basic Oracle instance and database architecture.

Do you think you have what it takes? Send a resume to jobs@hotsos.com

Profiler 5.2.6.6 Released

Hotsos is pleased to announce a new release of Profiler this week. Profiler 5.2.6.6 can be obtained from: https://portal.hotsos.com/products/P5/releases.

This version features:

• Menu item was renamed from Output to Profile Report for clarity.


• The preference "Nanoseconds per 'Microsecond'" has been reworked for clarity. The option has been renamed to "Oracle time unit (s)", with a selection of values .01, .000001, and .000001024.


• Rename entries in Output column from HTML to Profile Report for clarity.


• The Skew Analyzer (p5skew) is now accessible from the GUI in addition to the existing command line access.


• Increased resolution on icons for Windows 7.


• Improved documentation for --ns_per_ms=string command line option.


• A new option has been added to the context menu (right click) of the lower panel: Open Containing Folder. When activated, this will open your operating system's file manager to the location of the trace file and the Profiler output files.

This release also contains several bug fixes, which can be found on the change log on the portal.

For more information about Profiler or a free demo, please contact sales@hotsos.com or call +1.817.488.6200.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Call for Presentations Is Open

You are invited to submit an abstract for consideration as a speaker to the tenth annual Hotsos Symposium in 2012. You get free admission to Symposium and the optional Training Day. What a deal for spending 45 minutes discussing your favorite Oracle performance-related topic with your peers?!!

The deadline for submission is Friday, September 30, 2011.

Speakers will be notified on Friday, November 4, 2011.

Find the submission form on our Call for Presentations page.

If you have any questions or difficulties, please send an email to symposium@hotsos.com.

We can't wait to see you in 2012!

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Registration Is Open

Registration is now open for Hotsos Symposium 2012! The symposium will be
held March 4-8, 2012 at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, TX.

Visit our registration page today to sign up!

We've kept the registration prices the same for 2012, and Hotsos Symposium is still the best value for your dollar. Invest in your career today

Registration Fees* and Target Dates for Discounts are as
follows:

• $1095, if registering by September 30,
  2011
  
• $1195, if registering on or before December 31,
  2011
  
• $1350, if registering on or before February 10,
  2012
  
• $1495, if registering on or after February 10,
  2012
  
• $500 for the optional Training Day

We also offer a bundled price for Symposium and/or Training Day plus hotel. The bundled rates are as follows:

• Symposium only plus three nights of hotel lodging:
  
  
  • $1595, if registering on or before September 30, 2011
  
  
  • $1695, if registering on or before December 31, 2011
  
  
  • $1850, if registering on or before February 10, 2012
  
  
  • $1995, if registering after February 10, 2012


• Symposium and Training Day plus four nights of hotel lodging:
  
  
  • $2262, if registering on or before September 30, 2011
  
  
  • $2362, if registering on or before December 30, 2011
  
  
  • $2517, if registering on or before February 10, 2012
  
  
  • $2662, if registering after February 10, 2012

If you haven't been to Symposium before, check out this short video. You won't want to miss out on the fun for our tenth anniversary!

*Group discounts are available. Contact Sales today for more information! If you need more information, please call Rhonda Boswell at +1.817.488.6200 x520.

We look forward to seeing you at #10!

HAWCS v4.1 Is Ready

Hotsos is pleased to announce a new release of HAWCS, which uses the latest and greatest version of Oracle's Application Express (4.0). It also includes new chart functionality that is included with Apex 4.

Existing customers may download the new release from the Hotsos Portal.

Contact Sales at sales@hotsos.com for a demo or more information.

Hotsos SQL Test Harness v4 Released

Hotsos is pleased to announce that SQL Test Harness v4 has been updated for Oracle v11. The SQL Test Harness may be downloaded for free from our website.

Questions about the SQL Test Harness may be submitted to support@hotsos.com, or you may call +1.817.488.6200 for more information.

It's Coming...

So you better save the date. The tenth Hotsos Symposium is scheduled for March 4-8, 2012 in Irving, Texas. More to follow soon...

Training Day 2011 - Karen Morton's Slides and Scripts

Attendees may download Karen Morton's slides and scripts from https://portal.hotsos.com/events/SYM11/trainingday/. Please use your portal id, not your email address to log in. Questions may be sent to symposium@hotsos.com.

Hotsos Symposium and Training Day 2011

To all of our attendees, thank you for coming to Hotsos Symposium and Training Day 2011. Photos are online at Shutterfly. Enjoy!

Hotsos Sym 2011 Training Day with Karen Morton

As if our brains weren't full enough, we're listening to Karen Morton today at Hotsos Symposium Training Day 2011. Her topic is "Managing SQL Performance - Practical Information and dTools for Writing and Maintaining Optimally Performing SQL". OK...that's a mouthful (or an eyeful), but Karen is breaking it down for us beautifully.









Thanks to everyone who came to Sym and Training Day this year! We hope you had fun and learned a lot. We send a special "thank you" to Karen Morton for everything she's done to continue the successful tradition of Training Day. You rock, Karen!

Be sure to start thinking about coming back for Hotsos Sym 2012! It'll be our tenth, and Gary promises to make it a blow-out.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 - Day 3

Day 3 of Hotsos Symposium 2011 started off with Margaret Norman and "how to Set Up Stable Parallel Execution".



Karl Arao talked about "Mining the AWR Repository for Capacity Planning, Visualization and Other Real World Stuff".



Toon Koppelaars took us through "Triggers Considered Harmful, Considered Harmful".



Gary Propeck walked us through "The CBO's Look at Clusters, IOT's, Partitions, and Other Objects".



Maria Colgan taught us how to "Implement Best Practices for Extremem Performance with Oracle Data Warehousing".



Mark Farnham went through his "Physical Ordering of Data: Is It Ever Useful?"



Tanel Põder shot his way through "Troubleshooting the Most Complex Oracle Performance Problem I've Ever Seen".



Tom Kyte summed up this year's Sym with "Just in Time".



To the attendees, "thank you" for making this another great Sym! To the speakers, "thank you" for the informative presentations and networking opportunities you provide to the attendees. Special "thank you's" to our keynote speaker, Kerry Osborne, and Training Day instructor, Karen Morton.



Tomorrow...Karen Morton, all day, at Training Day. Can't wait!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 - Day 2

Today, Margaret Norman taught us about "Moving to 11g Statistics".



Doug Gault taught and entertained us with "Mining Oracle Application Express 4.0, Debug Data for Hidden Performance Trends".



Doug Burns had more on "Statistics for Partitioned Objects".



Friedrich Pfeiffer taught us "How (Not) to Do a Hardware Sizing for a Large Oracle Data Warehouse".



Wolfgang Breitling led us through his "Time Series Analysis for Statspack and AWR".



Riyaj Shamsudeen gave us "Advanced RAC Troubleshooting, Parts I and II".



Maria Colgan gave us the "Top Tips to Get Optimal SQL Execution All the Time".



Miladin Modravic gave us "Oracle Diagnostic Events in 11g".



Our buddy behind the camera, Dan Fink's topic was "Variance Analysis, Profiling, and Trending Using ASH and AWR".





Dr. Neil Gunther led us through "Brooks, Cooks, and Response Time Scalability".



Mahesh Vallampati made sure there was "Enough Blame to Go Around".



Alex Gorbachev taught us "Database I/O Performance: Measuring and Planning".



Tim Gorman gave us "Forensic Analysis Using AWR and ASH".



After all these great presentations, our attendees' brains were full, and they needed to let off a little steam at the Hotsos "Swamp Stomp". See below for how they cut loose.





























So, make plans now to attend next year. We promise you'll have a stompin' good time!