Hotsos Happenings

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Doug Burns

2012-01-31T12:55:00.004-06:00

Hotsos is very pleased to announce that Doug Burns is returning for Hotsos Symposium 2012! He has graciously accepted the spots formerly held by Randolf Geist, who had to cancel. While we will miss meeting Mr. Geist, we are very happy that Doug agreed to take his slots.

Doug Burns is an independent contractor who has 20 years of experience working with Oracle in a range of industries and applications. As well as presenting at a number of conferences, he has developed, taught, and edited performance-related courses for both Oracle UK and Learning Tree International. He is a member of The Oak Table Network and an Oracle Ace Director.

Doug's Topics: Statistics on Partitioned Objects 2012 and Falling in Love All Over Again ... OEM 12c Performance Page Enhancements

Descriptions of Sessions: Statistics on Partitioned Objects 2012 – Optimal SQL execution plans are rooted in the quality of the statistics describing the underlying objects that are used by the Cost Based Optimizer.

Statistics maintenance is a particular challenge on Data Warehouse systems holding large data volumes that support complex and flexible user reporting requirements. Such systems are likely to use partitioned tables and indexes to complicate the picture further.

Continuing the theme of last years presentation, the 2012 version will look at additional lessons learned during the past year and focuses on 11g features.

Review of Core Issues

The quality/performance trade off
- Global and Approximate Global statistics METHOD_OPT and Column Statistics
Alternative Strategies
- Copying statistics
- Setting statistics
11g improvements
- AUTO_SAMPLE_SIZE
- Incremental Statistics

The presentation will discuss a variety of problems and bugs with the various approaches that should be avoided as well as offering guidelines to help you design the best statistics collection strategy for your requirements.

Falling in Love All Over Again ... OEM 12c Performance Page Enhancements – Oracle 10g introduced significant instrumentation enhancements and the OEM 10g Performance Pages illustrated them to make performance analysis much easier. OEM 12c is the latest evolutionary stage of the Performance Pages and this presentation shows the new features that make them even more compelling and useful in more situations.

There are a few more seats available for Hotsos Symposium 2012, but you'll need to register soon! We don't want you to miss out on all these fabulous speakers. ;)

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Discussion Forum

2012-01-24T14:08:00.000-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce that we have set up a discussion forum for each of the presentations for Hotsos Symposium 2012. Your questions will be answered by the speakers. The forum is moderated, and you will be required to create a login to participate.

To access the Hotsos Symposium 2012 Forum, please visit www.hotsos.com/forum.html. Create an id, and start entering your questions.

Comments or questions about this forum can be sent to support@hotsos.com. We hope that you will find value in this new offering.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Cary Millsap

2012-01-23T11:09:00.004-06:00

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focusing on Cary Millsap this week. Cary is a returning speaker, and a co-founder of Hotsos and the Hotsos Symposium. Read more about him and his topic below. To view a list of the additional speakers, please visit the Hotsos Symposium Speaker page.

About Cary: Cary Millsap is an entrepreneur, software technology advisor, software developer, and Oracle software performance specialist. His technical papers are quoted in many Oracle books, in Wikipedia, in blogs all over the world, and in dozens of conference presentations each month. His blog is read by thousands of people each month. He has presented at hundreds of public and private events around the world. He wrote the book "Optimizing Oracle Performance" (O'Reilly 2003), for which he and co-author Jeff Holt were named Oracle Magazine's 2004 Authors of the Year. He is the founder and president of Method R Corporation (http://method-r.com), a company that creates frustration-free software that shows performance the way you've always wanted to see it. Cary is an Oracle Ace Director.

Cary's Topic: Instrumentation: Why You Should Bother

The Abstract: In our increasingly virtualized environments, it's ever more difficult to diagnose application defects — especially performance defects that affect response time or throughput expectations. Runtime diagnosis of defects can be an unbearably complicated problem to solve once the application is sealed up and put into production use. But having excellent runtime diagnostics is surprisingly easy if you design the diagnostic features into the application from its inception, as it is being grown, like you would with any other desired application feature.

There are still a few seats open so be sure to register soon!

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Christian Antognini

2012-01-18T11:18:00.002-06:00

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focusing on Christian Antognini this week. Christian is a returning speaker, and his sessions are always engaging. We think you'll find his topic and abstract especially interesting. Read more about him and his topic below. To view a list of the additional speakers, please go to the Speaker page.

Topic: Shareable Cursors

Abstract: The result of a parse operation is a parent cursor and a child cursor stored in the library cache. Obviously, the aim of storing them in a shared memory area is to allow their reutilization and thereby avoid hard parses. But when can they be reused?

The aim of this presentation is not only to discuss what parent and child cursors are but also, and foremost, to examine in what situations it is possible to reuse them. In doing so, topics such as bind variable peeking, bind variable graduation, adaptive cursor sharing and cardinality feedback will be covered as well.

About Christian: Since 1995, Christian Antognini has focused on understanding how the Oracle database engine works. His main interests include logical and physical database design, the integration of databases with Java applications, the query optimizer and basically everything else related to application performance management and optimization. He is currently working as a senior principal consultant and trainer at Trivadis in Zürich, Switzerland.

If Christian is not helping one of his customers get the most out of Oracle, he is somewhere lecturing on application performance management or new Oracle Database features for developers. In addition to classes and seminars organized by Trivadis, he regularly presents at conferences and user-group meetings. He is a proud member of the OakTable Network.

Christian is the author of the book Troubleshooting Oracle Performance (Apress, 2008).

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Carlos Sierra

2012-01-06T16:12:00.002-06:00

Biography: Carlos has collaborated with Oracle Support since 1996. During this time, he has rotated through several groups including: EBS Manufacturing, Field Support, EBS Center of Expertise COE and for the past 5 years Server Technologies COE.

Carlos is the author of SQLTXPLAIN. A tool that is becoming the preferred choice by Oracle Support and Development to analyze and diagnose SQL statements performing poorly. This tool has been his main contribution to Oracle and the community for the past 10 years.

Carlos has been a speaker in regional Oracle user's groups in Florida. He has delivered several WebCasts about SQLTXPLAIN to Oracle's customers. He has developed two advanced Oracle internal workshops in the area of SQL Tuning and delivers them all over the world.

Carlos has made SQL Tuning his daily job and cherished hobby. He is always willing to help others when they need a second pair of eyes to review an issue in the area of SQL Tuning.

Presentation Title and Abstract: How to Creat in 5 Minutes a SQL Tuning Test Case using SQLTXPLAIN

Creating a reproducible Test Case is frequently a necessary step to progress a SQL Tuning issue. Oracle Support requires this all the time.

A Test Case needs the metadata to re-create the schema objects accessed by the SQL statement. It also requires the CBO schema object statistics. The CBO system statistics may be also needed. The entire CBO environment is a must (Parameters and Fix Control). Specific CBO Parameters set at the time the SQL was parsed are needed. The values of the bind variables at the time the SQL was parsed are also needed. Other elements may be required like Constrains and Policies.

Putting together a Test Case is not an easy task. The good news is that every time you use SQLTXPLAIN on any of its main methods (XTRACT, XECUTE, XTRXEC and XPLAIN) a Test Case is assembled and included within the output of SQLT. So, when you send to Oracle Support a SQLT ZIP file it includes such Test Case.

During this presentation, you will learn how to implement a SQLT Test Case as Oracle Support does. You can benefit from this functionality by easily creating a Test Case from your Production environment into your Test system. There you can apply some "what if" tests or reduce your TC in order to simplify it. You can even create a Test Case out of another Test Case. Being able to easily "copy" the tuning environment for a particular SQL from Production into Test is very desirable if you or your team perform in-house SQL Tuning.

Now...don't you want to sign up for Hotsos Symposium 2012? If Carlos' presentation doesn't tempt you, you may want to take a peek at our Speaker page at www.hotsos.com to see if any other's do. You won't find another conference completely dedicated to Oracle performance optimization. To sign up, please visit Registration. We hope to see you in March!

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Bryn Llewellyn

2012-01-04T14:41:00.003-06:00

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focusing on Bryn Llewellyn this week. We think you'll find his topic and abstract interesting. Visit registration to sign up. To view a list of the additional speakers, please go to the Speaker page.

About Bryn: Bryn has worked in the software field for 30 years. He joined Oracle UK in 1990, at the European Development Center, to work in the Oracle Designer team. He transferred to the Oracle Text team and then into Consulting as the Text specialist for Europe. He relocated to Redwood Shores in 1996 to join the Oracle Text Technical Marketing Group. He has been the Product Manager for PL/SQL since 2001.

It's hard for Bryn to remember his life before Oracle. He started off doing image analysis and pattern recognition at Oxford University (programming in FORTRAN!) and then worked in Oslo, first at the Norwegian Computing Center and then and in a startup. In Norway, Bryn programmed in Simula (its inventors were his close colleagues). This language is recognized the first object-oriented programming language and was the inspiration for Smalltalk and C++.

Bryn's Presentation: Implement Extensible In-Database Analytics by Programming Map Reduce in PL/SQL

The Abstract: The MapReduce programming model lets developers without experience with parallel and distributed systems utilize the resources of a large, multi-CPU system. Hadoop clusters can be used to implement this model; but Oracle Database also provides mechanisms to support the same model – and with less programming. SQL's analytic capabilities are more powerful than many experienced programmers suspect; but detecting complex patterns within suitably characterized, independent subsets of the complete data set sometimes needs user-written procedural code. Enter in-database MapReduce: pipelined PL/SQL table functions declaratively specify, with a few keywords, how parallel query should do the "map"; then the procedural body does the "reduce".

Bryn addresses ways to implement an application to solve a specific problem where, because of the typically huge volumes of data that must be distilled down to provide interesting information, performance matters. A person whose job it is to work with an installed system, won't be able to use what he explains in his talk to tune its performance.

Now...are you ready to sign up??? Go to registration for more information and to register. Hope to see you in March!

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Baron Schwartz

2011-12-16T10:10:00.002-06:00

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

2011-12-12T13:36:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-05T13:57:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-30T13:08:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-22T17:12:00.003-06:00

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

2011-11-08T13:57:00.004-06:00

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!

2011-11-04T13:59:00.003-06:00

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

2011-10-21T09:46:00.004-06:00

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

2011-10-07T15:55:00.005-06:00

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

2011-09-23T14:18:00.004-06:00

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

2011-09-07T13:17:00.004-06:00

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

2011-08-30T16:08:00.000-06:00

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

2011-07-18T10:21:00.000-06:00

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

2011-06-23T15:24:00.000-06:00

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

2011-05-10T14:35:00.003-06:00

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

2011-05-10T13:57:00.000-06:00

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

2011-04-20T10:21:00.001-06:00

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...

2011-03-30T14:13:00.001-06:00

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

2011-03-16T11:44:00.002-06:00

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

2011-03-11T17:23:00.002-06:00

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

2011-03-10T15:06:00.003-06:00

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

2011-03-10T13:17:00.012-06:00

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

2011-03-09T11:07:00.019-06:00

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!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Day 1

2011-03-08T09:39:00.007-06:00

Ooooh, if you're not here, you missed out on a great Day 1 of Hotsos Symposium 2011. Cary Millsap helped us "Think Clearly about Performance".

Kerry Osborne took us back to mainframes and brought us forward to Exadata in his keynote address, entitled "Back to the Future".

Toon Koppelaars worked his hocus pocus to assist attendees in "Thinking Clearly with SQL".

The disco king, Stephan Haisley, gave a great presentation on "Oracle GoldenGate Performance".

There were so many other wonderful presentations by the lovely Gwen Shapira, Gerwin Hendriksen, Andy Zitelli, Andrey Nikolaev and Shan Nawaz. By the end of the day, the attendees were ready to cut loose at Netezza's "Awesome 80's Arcade".

If we could write a postcard to you, it'd say, "Wish you were here!"

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Gerwin Hendriksen

2011-03-04T12:37:00.002-06:00

There's still time to sign up for Hotsos Symposium 2011. We'll take your registration right up until Monday morning! Go here to register!

Presentation Title: GAPP Improvements: a Method to Diagnose and Predict Performance in Complex Architectures

Presentation Abstract: This session demonstrates how to use "General Approach Performance Profiling" (GAPP) to profile end-user response times and predict performance in multi-tier architectures, regardless of complexity. This session focuses on recent improvements to the GAPP method that was introduced in 2008.

Business processes are influenced by many components like Web Servers, Portal Servers, Oracle Internet Directory Servers, Database Servers, Application Servers, etc. The power of GAPP is its ability to help you manage environments of arbitrary complexity, regardless of which technologies you've implemented.

The presentation will show results from actual customer experiences in SOA-based systems with more than three nodes. A live demo will show how easy it is to use GAPP to predict performance behaviors on a system using a load generator to create different scenarios.

Bio: Gerwin Hendriksen has been working with Oracle technologies for more than thirteen years. He started work as a DBA at a consulting company in the Netherlands. After this, he worked for five years for Oracle in the role of Advanced Resolution Engineer. In this role, he specialized in performance and high availability for the Oracle database and Oracle E-Business Suite. In his time at Oracle, he gave several training classes in different countries. Later Mr. Hendriksen joined IBM, and worked there for two years. At IBM, he worked as a Technical Consultant for several projects in different countries. He also gave training classes in the IBM JSC in Montpellier, and at several customer sites.

Currently, he is employed by IT-eye in the Netherlands, where he is working as a Technical Architect. He has given several presentations about Oracle database performance and Oracle E-Business Suite performance. He has also given presentations for the Oracle User Group Holland, at the HOTSOS Symposium 2008, at the DBA Symposium in Holland (Planboard), at Oracle Open World 2008, and at the HOTSOS Symposium 2009. During these last mentioned presentations, he presented on his newly developed performance method "GAPP". Gerwin is very busy with performance management, capacity planning, and E-Business Suite Performance.

We hope to see you there!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Gary Propeck

2011-02-25T12:39:00.003-06:00

We have yet another new speaker for you to enjoy at Hotsos Symposium 2011. Gary Propeck is one of our instructors, and he gets rave reviews! You'll definitely want to listen to his presentation. Register today!

Presentation Title: The CBO's Look at Clusters, IOTs, Partitions, and other Objects

Presentation Abstract: When we looked at the rules from the Oracle RBO, one could find individual rules for using various types of indexes and clusters. As Oracle began to phase out the RBO, noticeably absent were improvements or changes to the RBO to accommodate objects such as IOTs and partitions. To use such objects one is required to use the CBO. This presentation details the use of the 10053 CBO trace to compare the use of heap tables versus clusters, IOTs, and partitions. Items of interest will include gathering statistics at various granularities of partitions and examining their use via the 10053 CBO trace.

Biography: Gary has a Ph.D. In Physical Organic Chemistry, University of South Florida, 1984. In 1990, while working at a nuclear weapons facility, he began working with the Oracle Database in a chemistry laboratory environment. In 1995, Gary went to work for Oracle Education (now Oracle University) as an instructor. Gary taught the OU curricula for Database Administration, Tools (Forms, Reports, etc.), Oracle Application Server, and Languages (SQL, PL/SQL, and Java). During that time Gary made numerous presentations at events such as Open World and RMOUG Training Days.

In 2002, Gary went to work for Corporate Express as a DBA, gaining more experience working with the Oracle Database. In July, 2004, Gary decided to go back to teaching as an independent contractor, teaching much of the same curricula as before, while adding new courses such as OEM and Apex to his repertoire. 2009 brought Gary to Hotsos, as he began teaching as a contractor. In August, 2010, Gary started teaching as a Hotsos employee where he teaches the Performance Optimization curriculum.

To find out who else will be speaking at Hotsos Symposium 2011, please visit our speakers page. We hope to see you at Sym!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Friedrich Pfeiffer

2011-02-24T13:49:00.002-06:00

Presentation Title: How (Not) to Do a Hardware Sizing for a Large Oracle Data Warehouse

Presentation Abstract: The implementation of large piece of new software, for example a data warehouse, often requires new, probably quite expensive hardware.

How to choose the right hardware to fulfill performance requirements? How many CPUs, which architecture, which storage ...? Simple questions, not so simple answers! Hardware vendors might happily sell you their biggest boxes. Software vendors might offer you a bunch of expensive "performance" options. However, neither might give you a guarantee for keeping the time window — at least at a stage of expansion below maximum. Do you know at all, how "performance" exactly is defined in the context of the new application?

At best, non-appropriate hardware is "only" oversized and eating up your budget. At worst, mandatory business or legal requirements cannot be fulfilled, resulting in project failure and serious trouble for the organization.

In our experience, a benchmark test adequately modeling production is the most cost-, time- and nerve-saving way to size and validate hardware. Anything else is almost a guarantee for trouble, desperate cries for "tuning", escalation meetings, budget overrun, and serious project delay.

The presentation summarizes our - good, bad and ugly - experiences with hardware sizing and benchmark tests done for large commercial banks in Europe and Asia in an Oracle-based data warehouse context. The focus is on how to design and execute the most efficient tests, which can give sufficient certainty in hardware selection for CIOs, project managers, and IT departments. Common sense and Method R are used, of course.

Biography:Since 2007, Dr. Pfeiffer has worked as an Oracle database specialist in software development for Fernbach-Software S.A., a mid-sized but globally operating firm, creating software for banks. Prior to that, Frederich worked in a similar role for Infor Global solutions, the world's third largest ERP software company. He has 20 years experience with relational databases, especially in performance optimization for Oracle 7.3-11.2, MS SQL Server 7-2008, and IBM DB/2 for iSeries (AS400).

So...are you ready to sign up for Hotsos Symposium 2011? No...well, come look at the list of speakers and topics to see what you'll be missing.

There's still time to register! Don't miss out!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Doug Gault

2011-02-21T14:49:00.003-06:00

Presentation Title: Mining Oracle Application Express 4.0 Debug Data for Hidden Performance Trends

Abstract: One of the new features of Oracle Application Express 4.0 is the much improved debug information now stored in the dictionary views. Like before, it can help you diagnose problems during page rendering and processing. But did you know that it can also be used to track, monitor, and identify performance trends across your APEX application? Well, it can.

This session will introduce the idea of monitoring performance trending, the techniques and information necessary for you to mine the Oracle Application Express 4.0 debug data, and the pros and cons of using these methods in a production environment.

Bio: Doug Gault is a Director & Co-Founder at Sumneva, a world-class Oracle Application Express (APEX) consulting, training & solutions firm founded in 2010. He has been working with Oracle since 1988, starting with version 5.1B, SQL*Forms 2.0 and RPT/RPF. Since then he has focused his career on Oracle's development technologies, spending the last decade on web based technologies, and the last 5 years specifically on APEX.

Prior to co-founding Sumneva, Gault was Vice President of Sumner Technologies, which also focused on Oracle APEX consulting, training & solutions. Before that he served as the Product Development Director for Hotsos Enterprises, during which time he was the lead architect/developer and product manager for two commercial products written in exclusively in APEX. His 21 years of Oracle experience has taken him all over the world and involved him in some truly ground-breaking projects.

Gault has presented and participated in round table discussions at a number of conferences including Oracle OpenWorld, UKOUG and ODTUG's APEXposed. He holds an Associates Degree in Computer Science, and an honorary Master's Degree from The School of Hard Knocks, believing there is no replacement for hard earned experience.

Doug is one of our new speakers, and we guarantee you'll find him both informative and entertaining.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Doug Burns

2011-02-15T16:00:00.003-06:00

Presentation Title: Statistics on Partitioned Objects

Presentation Abstract: Optimal SQL execution plans are rooted in the quality of the statistics describing the underlying objects that are used by the Cost Based Optimizer. Statistics maintenance is a particular challenge on Data Warehouse systems holding large data volumes that support complex and flexible user reporting requirements. Such systems are likely to use partitioned tables and indexes to complicate the picture further.

This presentation is based on the problems encountered and solutions used during the implementation of several large DW systems running on Oracle 10.2 with different workload profiles and requirements and will discuss:

Core challenges and statistics fundamentals

The quality/performance trade off

Statistic levels on partitioned objects and how they are used

Key DBMS_STATS parameters and defaults

Global Statistics

Global and Approximate Global statistics

Statistics aggregation scenarios and pitfalls

Alternative Strategies

Setting statistics

Copying statistics

Dynamic Sampling

11g improvements

Biography: Doug Burns is an independent contractor who has 20 years of experience working with Oracle in a range of industries and applications. As well as presenting at a number of conferences, he has developed, taught, and edited performance-related courses for both Oracle UK and Learning Tree International. He is a member of The Oak Table Network. Doug is an Oracle Ace Director.

If you haven't signed up for Hotsos Symposium 2011 yet, visit out speaker list to see who will be here. You won't want to miss Sym this year!

If you have registered yet, spots are going fast! Sign up today!

Special Interest Group Meetings at Hotsos Symposium 2011

2011-02-11T14:28:00.003-06:00

There will be two Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings on Sunday afternoon, March 6, 2011 before Hotsos Symposium 2011 kicks off. Both of these sessions are free and open to the general public as well as attendees. They're held in one of the meeting rooms at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, TX, and signs pointing to the locations of the meetings will be posted.

The first session is the OAUG DB SIG, which will meet from 1:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. The topic is "Tips and Tricks of Upgrading an E-Business Suite 11i Application Database Version from 10g R2 to 11g R2 (11.2.0.2) Version". This session will be presented by Kaberi Nayak and Mark Farnham. It will be a technical presentation for Oracle Apps DBA's or Oracle DBA's, who support the Oracle E-Business Suite Application.

The second session is the Hotsos SIG, which will meet from 3:15 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. This year, our presentation title is "Performance Is for the Birds". We will show you how our customers are able to reduce performance bottlenecks on their Oracle E-business system. Since we would also like to expand this technology to non-EBS systems, we will conduct a requirements discussion where you get to provide input on a future release of this application. Some of our popular Education classes have been updated, and Ric Van Dyke will briefly discuss.

More information about Hotsos Symposium 2011 and Training Day can be found at our website.

We hope to see you there!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Dan Fink

2011-02-10T15:37:00.002-06:00

Presentation Title: Variance Analysis, Profiling and Trending Using ASH and AWR Data

Presentation Abstract: Active Session History (ASH) and Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) are two powerful tools to help an organization diagnose performance issues. Though each tool comes with custom reports, they provide a limited view and only show single points in time. Using the data automatically gathered, you can write custom reports to examine trending, create alerts for known issues, and track changes to your systems. Dan reviews the ASH and AWR data structures and some of the nuances for reporting before moving into generating reports for activity and event trending, creating custom alerts for unusual activity, and comparing performance in light of system changes.

Biography: Daniel Fink is a Senior Consultant/DBA with Arisant. He started as a DBA on Oracle 7.0.16 running Parallel Server on OpenVMS and has experience on major Unix platforms and releases up to 11G. He is a member of the OakTable network, BAAG, and BAARF. He has presented on a wide variety of Oracle performance and diagnosis topics, including Developing A Disciplined Approach to Diagnosis, Oracle Performance for Developers, and Tracing Logical I/O.

If you haven't signed up for Hotsos Symposium 2011 yet, visit our speaker list to see who will be here. You won't want to miss Sym this year!

To sign up, please visit our registration page.

We hope to see you in March!

Hotsos Symposium 2010 Scrapbook Now Available

2011-02-07T16:24:00.000-06:00

We've finished the scrapbook for Hotsos Symposium 2010. Check it out here:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Cary Millsap

2011-02-02T15:58:00.002-06:00

Presentation Title: Thinking Clearly about Performance

Abstract:Creating high-performance as an attribute of complex software is an extremely difficult business for developers, technology administrators, architects, system analysts, and project managers. However, by understanding some fundamental principles, performance problem solving and prevention can be made far simpler and more reliable. This paper describes those principles, linking them together in a coherent journey covering the goals, the terms, the tools, and the decisions that you need to maximize your application's chance of having a long, productive, high-performance life. Examples in this paper touch upon Oracle experiences, but the scope of the paper is not restricted to Oracle products.

Biography: Cary Millsap is the founder and president of Method R Corporation. He is widely known in the Oracle community as a speaker, educator, consultant and writer. He is the author (with Jeff Holt) of Optimizing Oracle Performance (O'Reilly 2003). Cary is also co-author of Oracle Insights: Tales of the Oak Table.

Cary is one of the former founding partners of Hotsos and worked at Oracle for ten years. In the early 1990s, Cary created Oracle's OFA Standard, which became the default configuration standard for Oracle software installations worldwide. Cary is also a woodworker who builds and repairs furniture in his own shop. Follow Cary's blog at carymillsap.blogspot.com. Cary is also an Oracle Ace Director.

If you haven't signed up for Hotsos Symposium 2011 yet, visit our speaker list to see who will be here. You won't want to miss Sym this year!

To sign up, please visit our registration page.

We hope to see you in March!

Training Day 2011 with Karen Morton

2011-01-27T09:27:00.001-06:00

Are you curious about Karen Morton's Training Day topic? If so, check out her blog post for more information. She's going to turn you into a SQL magician.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Andy Zitelli

2011-01-26T14:08:00.002-06:00

Presentation Title: Five Things Every Programmer (and DBA) Should Know about Oracle

Abstract: One idea being widely propounded among many software developers is that software should be allowed to freely access data without any regard for how or where the data is stored. Although this idea sounds appealing, it frequently fails in practice. Software applications which treat data storage as a "black box" often suffer from widespread problems with performance, contention, and high resource consumption. These problems can be particularly acute when frameworks like Hibernate or Enterprise Java Beans are in use. Improper use of databases can increase the complexity of application code while degrading performance, limiting scalability and rendering multi-threading ineffective. Proper use of databases should simplify application design and support a high degree of concurrency across many users and applications.

This presentation will demonstrate several fallacies of the "black box" approach, using examples based on Oracle and other databases. The presentation will examine several key concepts regarding Oracle, which every software architect, developer and DBA using Oracle should understand. Topics will span several areas where developers and architects are prone to make mistakes. These will include problems related to Commits and Rollbacks, generation of unique identifiers, use of inefficient data types, locking mechanisms, data filtering and several other critical areas. The intent of the presentation is to help developers and DBA's avoid many common pitfalls arising from the "black box" approach to data storage.

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 18 years working with Oracle. He holds MS and BA degrees in Computer Science.

Andy is a previous presenter on Oracle performance topics at Hotsos Symposia in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2010, he also presented at the Michigan OakTable Symposium (MOTS) and the Northern California Oracle User's Group (NoCOUG). Andrew is a member of the OakTable Network.

Symposium 2011 Speaker Spotlight - Andrey Nikolaev

2011-01-21T15:27:00.002-06:00

Presentation Title: Contemporary Latch Internals

Presentation Abstract:

Latches in Oracle Database were radically changed during the last 10 years to achieve higher levels of concurrency and performance. Using oradebug and DTrace, this presentation explores how the latch works. Contemporary latch does not use exponential backoff, most of them spin 10 times more then expected, and they may wait for an infinite time in a queue.

This presentation will show how Oracle instruments the latch operations, discuss parameters and statistics related to latch performance diagnostics, and fine grain tuning. It will also explore the long-standing question: when and how to tune the "_spin_count" and "_latch_classes". DTrace provides additional capabilities to measure effectiveness and statistical properties of latch in production.

Presenter Bio: 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.

To find out about other speakers presenting at Hotsos Symposium 2011, please visit: www.hotsos.com.

To register for Sym and Training Day, please visit: Registration. Hope to see you there!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Schedule Is Ready!

2011-01-21T15:17:00.002-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce that the schedule of presentations is ready for your review. You can start thinking about which sessions you want to attend during the appropriate time slots.

The schedule is as follows:

Monday, March 7, 2011

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Don't forget about the optional Training Day with Karen Morton on Thursday, March 10, 2011. You won't want to miss a minute!

If you haven't signed up yet, please keep in mind that we restrict the size of the audience. Register today!

Profiler 5.2.5.1 Released

2011-01-18T14:00:00.001-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce that Profiler 5.2.5.1 was released today.

It includes the following fixes:

Corrected an issue with drag and drop of files from the lower pane to the upper pane.

Corrected highlighting of literal values in long SQL text.

Corrected bind value placeholder listing from long SQL text.

Fixed a bug appearing in 5.2.1 that causes the Profiler kernel to improperly attribute unaccounted-for time for database calls with 'SQL*Net message to client' syscalls associated with them.

Existing customers on maintenance may download the new release from portal.hotsos.com.

All other inquiries should be sent to sales@hotsos.com or call +1.817.488.6200.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speaker Showcase - Alex Gorbachev

2011-01-10T14:20:00.003-06:00

Presentation Title: Database I/O Performance: Measuring and Planning

Presentation Abstract:

As data volumes are growing exponentially these days, databases need to process more and more data in shorter amounts of time. Many disruptive technologies have also emerged such as flash-based storage, large server memory footprint, InfiniBand, etc. In such a rapidly changing environment, storage I/O performance tuning and planning easily becomes the task of applying best practices and "black magic" rules. In order to adopt a more sound, scientific approach to I/O performance diagnostics and planning, one needs to master the foundation - measuring I/O performance. This is exactly the focus of this presentation - practical I/O performance measurement and planning.

Presenter Bio: 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.

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.

To find out about other speakers coming to Hotsos Symposium 2011, please visit: www.hotsos.com.

To register for Sym/Training Day, please visit: Symposium Registration. Hope to see you there!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Early Registration Ends Today

2010-12-31T09:31:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow, the price goes up for Hotsos Symposium 2011 registration. Why don't you register today? You don't want to miss seeing Kerry Osborne, Karen Morton, Cary Millsap, Tom Kyte and many others...do you? Here's the link to register: http://www.hotsos.com/sym11/sym_reg.html.

Happy Holidays from Hotsos

2010-12-23T13:18:00.002-06:00

There's one more shopping day until Christmas and eight more days until discounted registration ends for Hotsos Symposium 2011. Come to think of it, what a great present registration for Sym '11 would make for the one(s) you love? Sign up today!

In the meantime, happy holidays from the Hotsos crew!

Oracle Application Express Training through Sumneva

2010-12-13T14:15:00.000-06:00

Are you interested in Oracle Application Express training? Hotsos has partnered with Sumneva to offer classes in Introduction to Oracle APEX I and II, APEX Installation and Administration, APEX v4.0 New Features, and Troubleshooting and Debugging APEX. Visit our calendar at http://www.hotsos.com/calendar.html to find out when these classes are being offered.

HAWCS v4.0 Released

2010-11-15T15:46:00.002-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce a new release of HAWCS. Version 4.0 includes an alerting and notification module, which alerts you when thresholds you've defined are broken. You can set thresholds for work products, specific modules, as well as LIOs for any session, concurrent jobs and system-wide job executions/durations.

It also has a process control manager, which executes all HAWCS application processes. This helps to eliminate resource contention and ensure that processes are executed in order of priority.

HAWCS also has a new mid-tier session LIO report that tracks the cost of mid-tier (web-based) and other sessions that you specify by user name, module, program, or any combination of the three.

Existing customers on maintenance can download the new version from portal.hotsos.com.

Let us show you what HAWCS can do! Contact sales@hotsos.com today!

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speakers and Topics

2010-11-05T12:21:00.001-06:00

We are pleased to announce that the speakers for Hotsos Symposium 2011 have been selected. Topics include Oracle performance, database I/O, latch internals, AWR, ASH, Apex, CBO, Exadata, Data Warehousing, RAC, Streams, Triggers and many more. Visit Hotsos Symposium 2011 Speakers and Topics for a complete listing and to find out more about each topic.

We are so glad to have so many outstanding speakers who are returning for 2011. They include (in alphabetical order by first name): Alex Gorbachev, Andrew Zitelli, Cary Millsap, Doug Burns, Gerwin Hendriksen, Gwen Shapira, Henry Poras, Kerry Osborne, Margaret Norman, Neil Gunther, Riyaj Shamsudeen, Stephan Haisley, Tanel Põder, Tim Gorman, Tom Kyte, Toon Koppelaars, and Wolfgang Breitling.

We are also excited about these speakers who are presenting at Hotsos Symposium for the first time. They are: Andrey Nikolaev, Dan Fink, Doug Gault, Friedrich Pfeiffer, Gary Propeck, Karl Arao, Mahesh Vallampati, Maria Colgan, Mark Farnham, Miladin Modrakovic, and Shan Nawaz.

Please don't forget that Kerry Osborne is scheduled to present a technical keynote on "Back to the Future: Mainframes, Open Systems, and the New Role of Exadata", and more about his presentation can be found at Hotsos Symposium 2011 Keynote.

You also won't want to miss the optional Training Day. Karen Morton is presenting, "Managing SQL Performance - Practical Information and Tools for Writing and Maintaining Optimally Performing SQL". Visit Training Day 2011 to read more. Both presentations, Kerry's and Karen's, will be well-worth the admission price.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 will be held March 6th through 10th in Irving, Texas. Go ahead! Sign up today and get the early bird registration price. Visit our Registration page today.

Questions about Hotsos Symposium 2011? Send them to symposium@hotsos.com.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Party Theme

2010-10-22T15:44:00.002-06:00

Comment ca va? It's official. The theme for the 2011 Hotsos Symposium party is a "Swamp Stomp". It will have a definite Cajun flair to it with crawfish, Hotsos hot sauce and Zydeco music. Attendees, find your favorite pair of blue jeans and an old flannel shirt to wear. Visit our website to find out more. Laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll)!

Kerry Osborne - Keynote Speaker for Hotsos Symposium 2011

2010-10-12T14:50:00.000-06:00

We are pleased to announce that Kerry Osborne of Enkitec has agreed to be the keynote speaker at Hotsos Symposium 2011.

Kerry has been a frequent speaker at prior Hotsos Symposia, and his presentations are always interesting, informative and well-attended. He's become a favorite of attendees.

The title of the keynote presentation is "Back to the Future: Mainframes, Open Systems, and the New Role of Exadata". More information about Kerry's topic is available at www.hotsos.com.

To sign up for Hotsos Symposium, please visit our Registration page.

Hotsos Symposium Abstracts

2010-10-06T15:01:00.002-06:00

Thanks to everyone who submitted an abstract for Hotsos Symposium 2011. We received a record number of abstracts this year, and it is going to be extremely difficult to choose the 30 plus session topics from all of these great abstracts.

We'd like to especially thank Cary Millsap in advance for his help in the selection process.

Speakers and topics will be announced on November 5, 2010, but go ahead and register now. You won't want to miss Sym '11.

Early bird registration pricing is in effect now. Sign up today!

Hotsos Profiler 5.2.3 Is Available for Download

2010-09-17T08:50:00.001-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce that Profiler 5.2.3 is ready for download.

This release fixes the following issues:

--runstat command line option on Mac OS x

changed file mode of p5prof_wrapper to a+x

correctly identifies task end times for more pre-10.2 trace files

no longer renders "CPU service, unreported call(s)" duration offset by large "unaccounted-for between dbcalls" duration"

Current customers may download the latest release at portal.hotsos.com. Please use your portal id to log in as it works more consistently than using your email address.

Prospective customers may contact sales@hotsos.com or call +1.817.488.6200 for a demo.

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Call for Presentations Is Open!

2010-08-10T13:30:00.003-06:00

Interested in Oracle application and database performance? Have a great story to tell? Then we want you to submit a presentation abstract for Hotsos Symposium 2011. Visit sym4speakers to get the application. Send it to symposium@hotsos.com by September 30, 2010.

What do you get out of presenting? Free registration for Symposium AND Training Day with Karen Morton. That's four full days of learning, networking and FUN!!! And...it only takes one hour of your time.

Come join an elite crew of Oracle performance presenters! Send in your abstract today!

Karen Morton - Hotsos Symposium Training Day 2011

2010-06-25T12:52:00.003-06:00

Yep, we got her! The Grand Poobah of SQL, Karen Morton, has agreed to host Hotsos Symposium Training Day 2011.

Training Day will take place on March 10, 2011, and Karen's topic is entitled:

"Managing SQL Performance - Practical Information and Tools for Writing and Maintaining Optimally Performing SQL".

Karen is a consultant and educator who specializes in application optimization, and the aim of her presentation is to make managing SQL performance an engrained and automatic part of your application lifecycle. She will give you tools and techniques to help you write better SQL faster while also helping you to quickly diagnose poorly performing SQL. Karen is an entertaining and engaging speaker. To find out more about what Karen will teach you, please visit the Training Day page to read her abstract.

This is one Training Day you will not want to miss! Register now!

For more information about Hotsos Symposium or Training Day, please call +1.817.488.6200 x520 or send an email to symposium@hotsos.com.

Karen, we can't wait to see you (with or without the hat):

Hotsos Symposium 2011 Registration is Open!

2010-04-15T15:23:00.002-06:00

Registration is now open for Hotsos Symposium 2011! The symposium will be
held March 6-10, 2011 at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, TX.

Visit our registration page today to sign up!

We are offering very special pricing to those who sign up by September 30,
2010. More information about pricing can be found at www.hotsos.com.

Hotsos Symposium is the best value for your dollar, and the best investment
you can make in your career!

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

$1095, if registering by September 30, 2010

$1195, if registering on or before December 31, 2010

$1350, if registering on or before February 11, 2011

$1495, if registering on or after February 11, 2011

$500 for the optional Training Day

*Group discounts are available. Contact Sales today for more information! Or call Rhonda Boswell at +1.817.488.6200 x520 for more information.

Hotsos Symposium 2010

2010-03-22T15:17:00.006-06:00

Hotsos Symposium 2010 has finished, presentations have been uploaded, and photos have been posted.

Many of the attendees have told us that this was the best Sym ever! Tom Kyte gave outstanding keynote and technical presentations. Tanel Põder's Training Day was very well-received. Richard Foote gave some brilliant general sessions, and all of the speakers were outstanding.

What more could we ask for? Well...we'd just like you to start thinking about 2011. You won't want to miss it! You never know who you might see (and in what get-up).

Hotsos Symposium 2009 Scrapbook Now Online

2010-01-29T14:04:00.002-06:00

We decided to try something new this year with the Symposium scrapbook. We made our digital scrapbook pages then uploaded them to Shutterfly to create the book. Since last year was so much fun, we thought you'd enjoy seeing the preview below. We will have a hard copy available for viewing at the Symposium in March.

We can't wait to get started on the book for 2010! If you haven't signed up yet, go to Hotsos Symposium 2010 Registration today. We hope to see you there!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Hotsos Symposium 2010 Presentation Schedule Now Online

2010-01-14T16:49:00.003-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce the speaker schedule for each day. Please visit http://www.hotsos.com/sym10/sym_speakers.html to see when your favorite presenter is speaking. Tom Kyte, Tanel Põder, Alex Gorbachev, Cary Millsap, Christian Antognini, Doug Burns, Stephan Haisley and many more are on the agenda.

If you haven't signed up for Symposium 2010, what are you waiting for? Please register now at www.hotsos.com.

Many thanks to Cary Millsap for assisting us with speaker selection and scheduling.

Hotsos Symposium 2010. March 7-11. Irving, TX. Be there.

Complete 2010 Hotsos Education Calendar Posted

2010-01-07T11:42:00.000-06:00

The complete calendar for Hotsos Education for 2010 has been posted at http://www.hotsos.com/calendar.html. We are pleased to announce a brand new class entitled Advanced Optimizer Concepts and Performance, which will be offered starting in April.

A thorough understanding of the Oracle Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) is essential to consistently optimize SQL in a timely manner. Our Optimizing Oracle SQL, Intensive class teaches students a repeatable and reliable systematic method for optimizing SQL, and the underlying knowledge of that methodology is an understanding of the CBO. However, it's impossible to pack a lifetime of information and learning into 5 days. Therefore we've developed Advanced Optimizer Concepts and Performance as the next step in learning more about the CBO.

This new class will help you answer the following questions:

"What does that cost number mean?"

"How did the CBO calculate that cost?"

"Does a lower cost plan ensure better run time performance?"

"I see a great access path. Why doesn't the CBO use it?"

To find out more about Advanced Optimizer Concepts and Performance, please visit www.hotsos.com.

To register for our classes, please click the link on the calendar. If you need more information, please call Rhonda Boswell at +1.817.488.6200 x520.

Hotsos Symposium 2010 Speakers Announced

2009-11-06T15:11:00.002-06:00

We are pleased to announce that the speakers for Hotsos Symposium 2010 have been chosen. Visit www.hotsos.com to find out more!

Registration is open. Sign up now to take advantage of early registration pricing.

Profiler 5.2.1 Released for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux!

2009-09-29T13:20:00.001-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce that Profiler 5.2.1.0 is ready for download. Profiler now supports Windows XP/Vista, Mac and Linux platforms. This version also has a new user interface, which greatly improves workflow and overall end-user experience. It's easier to install and is now compliant with US Federal Rehabilitation Act Section 508 Technical Standards.

The technical enhancements include interpreting trace lines with r=-1 values, improved performance of formatting for very long SQL texts from O(n!) to O(n), corrected rounding of syscall elapsed durations, processing of all syscalls for SQL statements whose text is "commit" or "rollback" and improved rendering of SQL text containing tab characters.

Contact sales@hotsos.com today to find out more.

Hotsos Presents Tanel Poder Advanced Troubleshooting Seminar

2009-09-15T09:44:00.008-06:00

This week Hotsos hosted Tanel Poder preseneting his Advanced Troubleshooting Seminar. If you hadn't heard Tanel had a serious jet skiing accident a few weeks ago in Thailand. He had a serious break between the heal and ankle of his right leg. But it sure didn't slow him down.

We have 27 students this week and everyone is very impressed with Tanel's knowledge of Oracle internals and operating system troublehsooting techniques. All feedback has been very positive. I'm glad to be attending this seminar and excited that Tanel will be presenting the training day at Hotsos SYM 2010.

Hotsos Partners with Tanel Põder to Present "Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting" Seminars

2009-05-28T07:33:00.002-06:00

Hotsos is pleased to announce that we are partnering with Tanel Põder to bring you two sessions in two cities of "Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting". The first seminar will be held in Dallas, TX on September 9, 2009, and the second will be in Washington, DC on September 14, 2009.

To register for either event, please go to https://portal.hotsos.com/education/SEM. On this page, you may read more about the seminars then scroll down to the bottom of the page to pick a location and register.

For more detailed information about what will be covered in these intensive 3-day programs, you may also visit http://blog.tanelpoder.com/seminar/.

And...if you still can't get enough of Tanel, sign up for Hotsos Symposium 2010. Tanel will be presenting sessions and hosting the Training Day.

Hotsos Symposium 2010 Call for Papers Is Open

2009-05-22T11:59:00.002-06:00

Did you attend Hotsos Symposium 2009? No? Want to see what you missed? Watch this video.

The Sym is a great way to network with your peers, discuss Oracle performance issues and meet others who share the same interests. In addition, being selected as a presenter is a great way to get into the Symposium and Training Day for free! However, the only way to be chosen as a speaker is to fill out and submit the form.

We've opened the call for papers for Hotsos Symposium 2010 this week. You can download the form from www.hotsos.com. It's in Microsoft Word format so it will be easy for you to fill out. All you need is an idea. Send your completed form and/or questions to symposium@hotsos.com.

Just be sure to return it by September 30, 2009 for consideration.

Optimizing Oracle SQL Is Intensive in Hotsos HQ

2009-05-12T15:23:00.006-06:00

We thought it might be fun to host one of our classes in the office for a change. Our first opportunity was the Optimizing Oracle SQL, Intensive class, which started on May 11th, 2009.

You might be able to tell how "intense" this class is by the expressions on the students faces below:

Monty said that the students didn't want to leave after his first day of teaching. He wasn't sure if they needed some extra time to absorb all of the material, or if they were scared to run the gauntlet through the Hotsos staff.

After all, they'd have to walk by Sales and Accounting to get out. Does this adorable face look like she'd bite?

Or these?

Heck, no! Well...at least not hard, any way. We're a friendly crew.

BTW, Monty is in fine form today so the students better beware!

We'll see what happens at the end of Day 2! Will the students stay after class or bolt?

Whatever they do, we love having the students inhouse. It's fun having new faces and stories around the water cooler.

Back from Down Under

2009-04-30T20:14:00.005-06:00

Australia is a great country. I was mostly in Sydney this go around so I didn't see much of the country really. But what I did see and the folks I did meet were all good. Cary the restaurant you recommended is gone, so couldn't try it. We were able to find many other splendid places to eat. An Italian place close to Curricular Quay was very good.

Went to Manly (of course!) and hand lunch at the Manly Grill (arr-arr-arr!) right on the beach. Unfortunately it was cold and rainy, it is fall there right now after all. Only a few brave souls were out surfing, and I was not one of them.

The presentation at the Sydney Meetup went very well. Tanel and I had a great time. Alex runs a great group, here is Alex and I just before I started. (Note to self, remember NO beer with Alex until AFTER the presentation next time.)

I hope to make it back soon.

Ric Down Under

2009-04-08T09:12:00.007-06:00

I'll be in beautiful Sydney Australia (is there another Sydney in the world?) next Friday (17 April) at the Sydney Meetup doing a presentation on using Oracle Trace data to tune SQL.

Tanel Põder will be there as well doing his "No Slides" gig. I saw this at the Hotsos Symposium this year, and it's a presentation not to be missed. I'm glad that I'll be able to see it twice; hopefully, I can fill in the gaps in my notes from the first go.

Stop by and have some great Oracle training and some beer and Pizza with other Oracle geeks!

Ta, Da! Hotsos Symposium 2010

2009-04-02T15:23:00.005-06:00

We have been busy getting the website updated for Hotsos Symposium 2010 and have some great announcements for you:

Mark your calendars! Hotsos Symposium 2010 will be held March 7 — 11, 2010 at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, TX.

Tom Kyte will be the keynote speaker!

Tanel Põder is doing the Training Day!

We're holding registration prices the same! We've even added a really early bird registration option. If you register before September 30, 2009, you'll pay only $995 for the Symposium. The optional Training Day is an extra $500, but it's worth it to get a whole day with Tanel. To register, click here.

Want a free registration? Submit a presentation idea, and if you're chosen as a speaker, you get in free for Symposium and Training Day. However, this doesn't include travel and hotel. The call for presentations opens May 5, 2009.

Registration is capped at 500 attendees to ensure that you have plenty of networking opportunities with the speakers and other attendees.

See our website for more information. We hope to see you there.

Hotsos Symposium Training Day 2009 with Jonathan Lewis

2009-03-31T14:21:00.005-06:00

We had a higher percentage of attendees stay for Jonathan Lewis' Training Day this year. Jonathan's topic was "Understanding Troubleshooting".

As always, Jonathan got rave reviews, and we're really pleased to have hosted him again this year.

Hotsos Symposium 2009 - Final Day

2009-03-27T09:54:00.016-06:00

For 8:30 on the Wednesday morning after the big party night, Chen Shapira drew a nice crowd (see below) who wanted to learn about the "Seven Sins of Concurrency":

"Oracle Performance for Developers (and the DBAs Who Have to Work with Them)" was presented by Kerry Osborne:

Tanel Põder's "Zero Slides: The Scripts and Tools which Will Make Your Life Easier and Allow You to Troubleshoot Better" was definitely a big "thumbs-up".

Dan Norris tells us how to "Avoid Common RAC Issues":

The lovely Robyn Sands presented an informative "Variance as a Tool: Measuring for Robust Performance".

Captain Morgan? Uh, I mean Ric Van Dyke tells us about "Intelligent Cursor Sharing".

Jonathan Lewis begins the first part of his presentation, "Hints on Hints".

Kyle Towle teaches us how to "Predict Oracle Performance" in his presentation:

Jonathan Lewis finishes up with the second part of his "Hints on Hints".

Last, but definitely not least, Monty Orme presents "Give 'Em What They Need!":

OK, either Gary really secretly liked the earring from his pirate costume, or someone bet him a lot of money that he wouldn't wear the earring during the Closing Ceremony. What do you think?

Enrapt crowd waiting for the Silent Auction Winner announcements:

Bah-bye! We hope to see you all next year!

Thanks to everyone (presenters, attendees, Omni Mandalay hotel staff and Hotsos teammates) who made this Sym one of the best yet!

Hotsos Symposium 2009 Day 2

2009-03-26T07:53:00.018-06:00

Bright and early on a Tuesday morning, attendees gathered for the first presentation of the day:

Cary Millsap delivers an entertaining presentation on "Lessons Learned v2009.03":

In this photo, Dan Tow convinces attendees to just say "no" to the safe use of views:

Margaret Norman teaches attendees how to control their environments with the Resource Manager:

Tanel Põder tells us how Oracle SQL Plan Execution really works in this session.

Amit Poddar's presentation was entitled "One-Pass Distinct Sampling".

Toon Koppelaars presents "The Helsinki Declaration, Part I" before lunch:

Mark Bobak and Jan van Mourik have their picture taken with Flat Larry during break:

He's ba-a-a-ack! Toon Koppelaars gives Part II of "The Helsinki Declaration" after lunch:

Below, Dave Abercrombie gives us a captivating tour of the AWR tables:

I'm sure that Bryn Llewellyn gave a very interesting talk on "Using the PL/SQL Hierarchical Performance Profiler". Such a character, he is...

Mark Williams taught us that "Instrumented Code is Better Code":

Oh! And Kerry Osborne and Stephan Haisley pulled the old switch-a-roo on the attendees just to keep them guessing. Stephan spoke about "Streams Optimization and Diagnostics".

Christian Antognini presented "Bloom Filters":

Hotsos' own, Monty Orme, facilitated the speaker panel after the last session:

And finally...the speaker panel:

What a great day it was! Stay tuned for Day 3...

Hotsos Symposium 2009 Day 1

2009-03-09T20:17:00.013-06:00

Welcome back to Hotsos Symposium! Gary Goodman opens the proceedings:

Andy Zitelli gives a warm welcome to our keynote speaker, Chris Date:

Chris Date delivers the keynote and a bonus two technical sessions:

Wolfgang Breitling was gracious to fill-in for Joze Senegacnik. Wolfgang's presentation was entitled, Tuning by Cardinality Feedback. Thank you, Wolfgang!

Oh, no! It's Cary Millsap. Cary's presentation is called "Making Friends with the Oracle Database".

Andy Zitelli gives a great presentation entitled "Using Oracle's Extended SQL Trace Data to Quell Disputes".

Joe Johnson gave an awesome presentation (of course, we'd think so, any way!) called "Using Hotsos Tuning Techniques to Find & Fix Performance Issues: 6 Real World Examples"...and no, Joe doesn't work for Hotsos. Yet...

Karen Morton worked her magic with her presentation entitled "Managing Statistics for Optimal Performance". Karen is shown here with Flat Larry. Karen's niece sent us a Flat Stanley, and we took pictures of him in all kinds of places. When Larry Klein couldn't make it to the Sym due to a go-live, we decided to make a Flat Larry.

Gerwin Hendriksen presented "Practical Use of Method GAPP to Find Performance Bottlenecks for Business Processes in Complex Architectures".

Henry Poras gave Part 2 of his presentation from last year, entitled "Queueing Theory Analysis of Statspack Reports Obtained from Database Load Tests".

Tanel Põder presented his extra session entitled "Latch, Lock and Mutex Contention Troubleshooting in Oracle".

Monday was a very good day!

The place to be this March

2009-02-14T08:28:00.002-06:00

Have you signed up yet? You know you need to be there so sign up now.

Undocumented Feature 11g BULK In-BIND

2009-01-23T07:58:00.002-06:00

Really this is a FEATURE, not a bug. Prior to 11g if you tried to refer to a field of a bulk bind in a FORALL statement you would get an error:

PLS-00436: implementation restriction: cannot reference fields of BULK In-BIND

In 11g this works just fine. Consider this simple example:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
SQL> DECLARE
2 TYPE little_rt IS RECORD (
3 empno emp.empno%TYPE,
4 sal emp.sal%TYPE );
5 TYPE empno_sal_list_tt IS TABLE OF little_rt INDEX BY PLS_INTEGER;
6 the_list empno_sal_list_tt;
7 BEGIN
8 SELECT empno, sal BULK COLLECT INTO the_list FROM emp;
9 FOR idx IN 1 .. the_list.COUNT LOOP
10 the_list (idx).sal := (the_list (idx).sal) * .15;
11 END LOOP;
12 FORALL idx IN 1 .. the_list.COUNT
13 UPDATE emp SET sal = the_list (idx).sal
14 WHERE empno = the_list (idx).empno;
15 dbms_output.put_line('Records updated: '||to_char(the_list.COUNT));
16 END;
17 /
Records updated: 14

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Not sure why this is undocumented. Likely is just slipped thru the cracks. Maybe not as cool and market flashy as the Exadata is, but a nifty feature none the less.

A bug perhaps

2008-10-06T10:00:00.006-06:00

OK in talking with Karen Morton and Jonathan Lewis it looked like a bug with the trace mechanism might be the root of the problem with the stat lines for a sort and not some new fancy way Oracle is doing the sorts. And I think that is true. Here is a look at getting the stats directly from v$sql_plan_statistics_all for my test SQL:

Select * from emp, dept where emp.deptno = dept.deptno
/

Now all the times look very nice. So I'm going with the BUG theory for now. (EDIT1 - Sorry I thought I had a way to keep the spacing but NO!) (EDIT 2 - Well let's try this little screen shot, a little small, but the numbers are easier to read.)

SORTs, TIMEs and 11g

2008-08-26T12:04:00.004-06:00

A while back I noticed that the TIME values in the STAT lines for an 11g Database weren't adding up right if there was a sort operation in the plan. I talked with several folks and everyone agreed that this was going on but no one seemed to know why. I've just been working with Oracle support and I think I know what is happening.

This was an important issue to me for several reason not the least of which is I'm working on a paper for the upcoming UKOUG meeting about SORT MERGE joins, so knowing where the time was going was critical. Also this really makes the math look a bit odd when a SORT operation appears in a plan you are trying to optimize.

So here is what things would look like in 10, I've put the STAT line times and done the math to show how much time each step took for it self:

Plan and stats in 10g for a sort merge join (I know this is hard to read when all the spacing is mashed, I don't know how to retain the spacing in HTML):

Select /*+ use_merge(e,d) */ * from emp e, dept d
where e.deptno = d.deptno
/

--------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | Name |
--------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | |
| 1 | MERGE JOIN | |
STAT Time=821 self=201 (821-183-437)
| 2 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | DEPT |
STAT Time=183 self=102 (183-81)
| 3 | INDEX FULL SCAN | DEPT_DEPTNO_PK |
STAT Time=81 self=81
|* 4 | SORT JOIN | |
STAT Time=437 self=235 (437-202)
| 5 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMP |
STAT Time=202 self=114 (202-88)
|* 6 | INDEX FULL SCAN | EMP_DEPT_IDX |
STAT Time=88 self=88
---------------------------------------------------------

Total of all selfs = 821us Top Line in STAT = 821us

OK that is all well and good. Now here is what that same plan looks like in 11g, notice in 11 I don't need a hint to get a SORT MERGE:

--------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | Name |
--------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | |
| 1 | MERGE JOIN | |
Stat Line=135us SELF=2us (135-35-24-74)
| 2 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID | DEPT |
Stat Line=35us SELF=13us
| 3 | INDEX FULL SCAN | DEPT_DEPTNO_PK |
Stat Line=22us SELF=22us
|* 4 | SORT JOIN | |
Stat Line=24us SELF=24us
| 5 | TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMP |
Stat Line=74us SELF=49us (74-25)
|* 6 | INDEX FULL SCAN | EMP_DEPT_IDX |
Stat Line=25us SELF=25us
--------------------------------------------------------

Total of all selfs = 135us Top Line in STAT = 135us

Notice that the SORT JOIN (#4) step shows a TIME of 24us, now in the past that time should have included it's children, which is #5 and #6, that would be impossible since 74us is much more then 24us.

What appears to be happening is that the SORT is now done "while" the child steps are accruing. I think the best way to describe this new behavior is that sorts now happen simultaneously with the child steps. I don't believe that this is a parallel action, it is an action that happens simultaneously. There is a subtle but distinct difference.

Well if you want to here more about this, you could come to my talk at the UKOUG meeting in December, or drop me a line and I'd be glad to chat about this more.

Nice surprise...

2008-07-10T21:16:00.007-06:00

Imagine that, a bit over a week ago I walk out of the office building and am surprised by this view:

Turns out I stumbled into the 2008 Porsche Parade! That was a nice surprise. The weather wasn't too bad either, so it made for a nice afternoon stroll. Along with a few other people...

If you happen to like old school Porsche's, there were a few of those too:

The judges took their job seriously, they really checked all the nooks and crannies of the cars:

I was told there were around one thousand Porsches in town...

A recent email from a former student

2008-04-19T18:29:00.003-06:00

I heard from Ken Deutschmann of Anheuser Busch and he made my day knowing he'd used knowledge and techniques from the Optimizing Oracle SQL, Intensive class. Here's what he had to say.

"I had always considered myself a decent query tuner/writer. But, I will have to say that I did pick up some nice little tidbits that I have been making use of - like using GROUP BY's in subqueries to force no rewrites, etc. One case I did today was to drop a query from 3.5MM I/O's down to 20K with just such a change. Knowing more about the 10046 trace output is very helpful. I have been helping my main application group in tuning their stuff, most often droping run times in half or better. "

Right on Ken, you go brother!!!

Collaborate Tradition

2008-04-18T12:28:00.004-06:00

Back in 2005, I attended the IOUG-A show in Toronto. James Thomson, a good friend from Canada, and I wanted to attend the hockey playoff game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Carolina Hurricanes. The tickets were extremely expensive so we set off to watch the game over dinner and a beer.

While walking to a sports bar between the 1st and 2nd period, we passed a ticket scalper still trying to unload the last two tickets he had. Long story short, we were in our seats before the puck dropped for about 10% of the pre-game price.
This is turning into a bit of a tradition now.

During my recent visit to Collaborate in Denver, my friends at PIOCON invited some of the Hotsos team to join them at the Pepsi Center to watch Colorado play Minnesota. It was a great game with the home team winning somewhat easily.

Many thanks to Matt Vranicar and Eric Camplin for the invite and a great time - we owe you one!

Recent Brazil Visit

2008-04-04T12:44:00.005-06:00

I had the opportunity to visit Brazil last week to meet with our reseller firm Teor. I was also speaking at a Dell Performnace Summit in Porto Alegre and the ENPO-BR event in Sao Paulo. Both events were well organized and enjoyed strong attendance.

It was an amazing visit although it seems we were eating Brazilian BBQ non-stop for my entire stay.
I was also able to attend a local Palmeiras soccer game. There is considerable passion surround soccer in Brazil with amazing loyalty to specific clubs. I was almost denied entry into the hotel gym based on wearing the wrong soccer club jersey :-)

If you ever get the opportunity, I would definitely recommend visiting this great country.

SYM 2008

2008-03-08T09:10:00.006-06:00

Another excellent symposium has come to an end. The speakers were great as always and Tom Kyte had a great training day to top everything off. Tuesday night was the party where the theme was "Bike Night"! What a hoot that was. Here I am in my get up. Some folks claim that I was a wild man on the dance floor, we'll have to see if there is any photographic evidence to back up these outlandish claims.

Make sure you make plans for next year. I don't think the dates are set just yet but plan on about this time next year.

(Behind me is Mike E. and Elise B.)

Ora-600 [Qctvco:Csform]

2007-12-07T12:36:00.000-06:00

At one recent engagement we ran into a problem with queries against some views running slow. The CBO didn't use complex view merging because this was turned off due to a 10G bug. This bug is documented in Metalink note 437376.1: “A query involving inline subqueries from mulitple tables whose columns are encrypted using Transparent Data Encryption [TDE] results in ORA-600 [qctVCO:csform]”. The Oracle recommended workaround, turn off complex view merging, had been implemented (_complex_view_merging=false) at this site.
We resolved this by turning back on complex view merging, and targeting the views suffering from this bug one by one. We added the /*+ no_merge */ hint to the view definition. Now most queries ran fast again, and the queries on the views suffering from the bug didn't fail with ora-00600.

And this week Ric is in....

2007-11-28T09:14:00.000-06:00

Quite a change from Atlanta. They tell me the week before I got here it was rather nice, but the snow and cold arrived just in time for me. Humm there seems to be a pattern going on here... This a shot from the classroom facility. Very flat here, you can see for a very long distance. As a hint they have a very large mall here, at one time the largest in the world I'm told.

Where is Ric?

2007-11-13T13:34:00.000-06:00

I'm haveing a great time in _____. Weather is nice and the view from my hotel is great compared to what it was on the west coast a little while ago. Here is a picture of the nice view from the window. Can you guess where I am? (Karen, Stacy and Monty, you can't guess!!)

Fire in the West

2007-10-25T15:18:00.000-06:00

I've been out here in Irvine CA teaching this week with the wild fires raging around the area. I haven't been closer then 3-4 miles from the fires so not a big threat to me from the fire it self. However the smoke and ash from these fires is everywhere. This is a shot as I left my hotel yesterday and that is not morning clouds, that is smoke you see between the buildings. Fortunately I'm inside for the vast majority of the day and the air conditioning systems seem to filter out most of the smoke. I can still smell smoke inside, but not like out side. My eyes still sting sometimes when I'm out side.

100,000

2007-08-14T18:25:00.001-06:00

Back when I was a kid, a car turning over 100,000 miles was a big deal. The odometer on most cars back then didn't even show 100,000. Today it's pretty common for a car to "roll over" as we used to say. I was able to catch it happening on my car the other day. Still a cool thing to see.

Summer Safety Tip: Vinyl Siding and Gas Grills

2007-06-27T12:16:00.000-06:00

I suppose this happens to folks now and then, we forget to turn off the gas grill after cooking up some burgers for the family. Just be sure your grill isn't close to the vinyl like we see here. Fortunately for this person (who will remain nameless) the job to fix the siding cost about $30 at the local home depot and about 3 hours of time.

In Normandy

2007-05-29T12:16:00.000-06:00

While here in Amsterdam I took a side trip this last week end to Normandy where the liberation of Europe started on June 6th 1944. I visited Pointe-Du-Hoc where the US Rangers climbed 100 foot cliffs to neutralizer an observation point which could have brought down devastating artillery fire on the landing beaches of Omaha and Utah. I also visited the Omaha beach where the US 1st and 28th divisions landed and suffered the worst casualties of the day. And I saw the US cemetery behind Omaha beach. I've read about the landings and battles across Europe for years, so this was a great event for me.

Too early!

2007-05-10T06:42:00.000-06:00

This morning at 6:33 my alarm starts blaring... Now, this is my second night in this hotel, yesterday morning nothing happened, and I did not touch the alarm clock.
This is not the first time this happened to me. So I'm suspecting a conspiracy. Or is the cleaning staff punishing me for not leaving a tip yesterday?

Going to Amsterdam

2007-04-18T11:43:00.000-06:00

I'm going to Amsterdam next month to teach a couple of classes, so I thought I'd ask Google how to get there. Over all thing looked ok until I got to step 29:

Google TiSP: Going with the Flow

2007-04-03T09:21:00.000-06:00

Google provided a nice April Fool's prank this year. I even thought the press release was real for about 5 seconds...then I looked at the installation page. The guys at Google must have the 2nd best job on the planet (2nd only to mine, of course!) if part of their job is to come up with stuff like this!

Which one are you?

2007-02-15T16:44:00.000-06:00

PC, Mac or Linux? I had to chuckle at this.

Hotsos Newsletter Correction

2007-02-15T16:27:00.000-06:00

Hotsos Newsletter Volume III - Issue 10 had an inadvertant truncation of the Tips & Techniques article written by Ric Van Dyke on "Delayed Block Cleanout and Read Only Tablespaces" when it was distributed. You can view the entire article in the newsletter copy stored on our web site.

Don't miss the punchline! Visit the link to get the full text of the article.

Have someone look at your work!

2007-02-14T17:17:00.000-06:00

Did anybody notice the main Google search page today? The problem actually had to be pointed out to me as my eye didn't catch it initially, but obviously I'm not the only one who didn't see the problem.

So...have you Googed anything today?

Six Students, Five Continents

2007-02-02T13:08:00.000-06:00

This week I taught a Performance Diagnosis (PD) class in Dallas with six great students. And we realized that we had five continents of the planet represented in the class! That is pretty darn good for such a small group. Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America. No penguins…

Also we all got to sing Happy Birthday to Cary when he stopped in for a quick visit. Big bonus for every one!

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire?

2007-01-17T23:39:00.000-06:00

It has been cold in Austin the last couple of days. The result of two days of freezing rain: a thick layer of ice on my roof! OK, not a strange sight in some parts of the country, but here in Texas...

I sure don't need no water :-)

Hotsos Support Discussion Forum

2007-01-13T12:42:00.000-06:00

We've recently consolidated our class forums into our main support facility. You can now find the new Hotsos Discussion Forum here.

At the Discussion Forum, you can discuss Hotsos products, services, events, and techniques. Feel free to ask new questions or post your own responses to questions or post responses from other posters.

Drop by and join in!

POW time !!!

2006-12-30T20:43:00.000-06:00

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and are getting ready for a Happy New Year. I was on vacation the week before Christmas. My brothers and nephews came to Idaho for a visit and a lot of Snowboarding. We've had pretty good snow the past couple of weeks. We had an "epic" day at Brundage Mountain just outside of McCall Idaho which is 2.5 hours North of Boise. It dropped over a foot one night and we were the first ones on the lift. It was great floating on the fresh POWder.

Heading to Grand Targee Ski/Board Resort in Eastern Idaho for New Years. A safe and Happy New Year to everyone.

Monty