Next Round Of ANZ “Let’s Talk Database” Events (July/August 2016)

I’ll be presenting the next round of “Let’s Talk Database” events around Australia and NZ this winter in July/August 2016. These are free events but due to limited places have often “sold out” in the past, so booking early is recommended to avoid disappointment.

All events run between 9:00am – 12:30pm and are followed by a networking lunch.

We always have a fun time at these events and feedback suggest everyone learns something, so I hope if you’re lucky enough to be in the ANZ region, you can make it to your local event 🙂

Currently, the confirmed events and topics are as follows:

• Sydney – Wednesday, 20 July 2016: Let’s Talk Oracle Database: Intro To CBO Costings, Database Futures. To register, email: mitch.foster@oracle.com

• Melbourne – Thursday, 21 July 2016: Let’s Talk Oracle Database: Performance Diagnostics – How To Correctly Use AWR Reports. To register, email: johanne.sergeant@oracle.com SOLD OUT !!

• Canberra – Thursday, 28 July 2016: Let’s Talk Database: Oracle Database 12c – Built for Data Warehousing. To register, email: richard.foote@oracle.com

• Wellington –  Wednesday, 10 August 2016: Let’s Talk Oracle Database: Performance Diagnostics – How To Correctly Use AWR Reports. To register, email: tanya.fea@oracle.com

• Auckland – Thursday, 11 August 2016: Let’s Talk Oracle Database: Performance Diagnostics – How To Correctly Use AWR Reports. To register, email: tanya.fea@oracle.com

• Perth – Wednesday, 17 August 2016: Let’s Talk Database: Intro To CBO Costings, Database Futures. To register, email: dennis.ward@oracle.com

• Adelaide – Thursday, 18 August 2016: Let’s Talk Database: Oracle Database 12c – Built for Data Warehousing. To register, email: brodie.james@oracle.com

• Brisbane: Wednesday, 24 August 2016: Let’s Talk Oracle Database: Intro To CBO Costings, Database Futures. To register, email: gordon.laing@oracle.com

 

Details of sessions.

Performance Diagnostics – How To Correctly Use AWR Reports

I often get called in by customers to determine and address the root cause of database performance issues. Depending on the issue, a request for a simple Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) report is often sufficient to accurately diagnose the root problem(s). However, many DBAs find AWR reports daunting as they contain so much database diagnostic information, they don’t even know where to begin to find the truly useful information.

In this session, I begin by discussing the basic concepts of response times, DB times, the Oracle Wait Interface and how to focus on what is truly important. I then look at how to best read an AWR report to quickly go to the most relevant sections that detail any specific issues. I also discuss a general tuning and diagnostic methodology that ensures one can quickly determine whether an AWR report will indeed be sufficient and how to accurately and consistently use the AWR report to pinpoint and determine root causes for global database performance issues. We’ll go through a number of actual “real-life” examples that highlight various performance issues and how one accurately determines the actual root issues through an appropriate AWR report.

Time permitting, we’ll go through some other useful diagnostic tools such as the AWR Warehouse, Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM), Active Session History (ASH)  and SQL Extended Tracing and scenarios when they can prove to be invaluable in addressing database performance issues.

 

Introduction Into The CBO (Why Is The CBO doing a Full Table Scan?)

A common issue is confusion on why the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) has made the decision the use a full table scan or use that index and not the one that appears more appropriate. The costing figures that the CBO derives and displays in execution plans are often viewed as cryptic, which is unfortunate as these costings are key to CBO decisions. Often the attempt to resolve such issues is to set inappropriate database parameters that introduces as many issues as it tries to resolve. This session looks under the covers of the CBO to see how it precisely derives its various costings and hence how to correctly troubleshoot and resolve inefficient queries when they arise. Bring a calculator, it might come in handy 🙂

Database Futures – Exadata Secret Sauce and Software on Silicon

Oracle has recently released the new generation of the Exadata machine, the X6-2. Not only is it bigger and faster but also has a host of features and capabilities that is unique to the Exadata storage platform including Smart Scans, Storage Indexes, Exafusion, Smart Fusion Block Transfer, Dual Format Columnar Flash Cache, I/O Latency Capping, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Sparse Snapshots and In-Memory Database Fault Tolerance. All these unique features and their enhancements with the new X6-2 will be discussed. Additionally, Oracle’s Software-in-Silicon features extend the concepts of co-engineering hardware and software inherent in engineered systems such as the Exadata. Embedding software which has traditionally sat in the database layer into the hardware layer can yield both performance and security beyond that available of a traditional CPU. This presentation also covers how Oracle Database 12c can leverage Software-in-Silicon features, where the Oracle Database is heading in the future and why you should care.

 

Oracle Database 12c – Built for Data Warehousing

The Oracle Database is the leading database in market but it might come as a surprise to some that it’is also the leading database with respect to Data Warehousing in terms of both sales and analyst rankings. The focus today is a detailed look at all the special database capabilities that makes the Oracle Database the perfect platform for Data Warehouse type applications.

We explore the overall Data Warehousing Information Management architecture and how it relates to both data warehouses and data reservoirs. We then deep dive into standard database features such as Materialized Views, Dimensions, Bitmap Indexes, Query Re-Write, JSON in the database, Partitioning, Parallel Processing, Compression, Attribute Clustering and SQL for analysis, reporting, aggregation and pattern matching.

We then discuss more advanced Oracle database capabilities such as Data Mining, Predictive Analytics, R in the database, Database In-Memory, Big Data SQL, Spatial & Graph and the specific engineered systems capabilities that makes Oracle such an effective Data Warehouse platform, especially when combined with the enterprise capabilities already associated with the Oracle Database such as security, high availability, scalability and manageability.