Ranko Mosic

( For latest information on Oracle 12c database update please refer to the following article: Oracle 12c Database and How It Relates to SAP Hana ) RDBMSs are stable and mature products. While there is nothing radically new on horizon that would challenge Codd's relational theory and related advances in data processing there are some developments that force established vendors like Oracle to come up with new features and products. Column Stores and Oracle Column store concept has been around for quite a while. Vendors like HP Vertica grabbed some market share in data warehousing segment with their column store,  MPP databases. Oracle Exadata is offering Hybrid Columnar Compression -  solution that modifies Oracle standard row based storage (NSM, or row-major) into proprietary format that is probably closer to PAX (as opposed to DSM) classification. Rows of data are reo... (more)

Oracle 12c In-Memory, Columnar Database & How It Relates to SAP Hana

All major relational database vendors are developing or already shipping  in-memory, columnar databases. The next release of Oracle 12c - an in-memory, columnar database, will be available next year. It will feature simultaneous transaction-level updates to both  row and column stores i.e. data will be stored in both formats at the same time, in the same transaction. This is quite an improvement over SAP Hana's awfully clumsy delta merge process ( data changes in SAP Hana are first accumulated in delta store, then periodically merged into column store - process which locks targe... (more)

Oracle Database Backups to the Amazon Cloud

The traditional way of performing backups includes using Oracle RMAN in combination with media management layer software ( typically Netbackup, Tivoli or similar ), which writes backup data to remote robotic tape unit. Tapes are then stored offsite to a secure location. It is well known fact that tape media poses certain challenges in reliability and physical manipulation areas. Cloud-based backups' main attraction is that they are inherently disk based, always accessible, offsite and there are no capex expenditures. All tape related costs are thus eliminated. On the other hand ... (more)

Importance of Having DR Procedures

A recent BlackBerry outage is the nightmare for both RIM and its users. Nature and mass popularity of Blackberry service  make this particular outage highly visible. There are many other in-house outages we never hear about. Companies prefer to keep silent about them, if they can. The only insight we get into the poor state of DR procedures is in some public cases like this one, or from limited personal experience. In my Oracle database infrastructure consulting career I have seen several serious production outages and was part of a few data recovery efforts. Backups and DR proc... (more)

Oracle RMAN, BMC Patrol Catalogs Hosted in Amazon Cloud

Oracle RMAN  (Recovery Manager) catalog database contains backup metadata for all enterprise wide Oracle databases. Each database backed up through RMAN needs connection to a central backup repository database. RMAN catalog  is purged and maintained by removing obsolete backup records, crosschecking with existing media etc. If central repository grows too big then backup performance will suffer since it will take too long for RMAN to locate metadata. Amazon Web Services gives us the ability to quickly and easily create either brand new RMAN catalog database or move an existing c... (more)