Inside O-Zone

Oracle can help you go green and reduce your costs at the same time. Graham Keitch explains.

In this issue of Inside Oracle, we look at two Oracle technologies that can help reduce computing costs and energy consumption by making more efficient use of the hardware. The first is Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (R2) which became available on 1 Sept 2009. Many of the new features in this latest release reduce storage and hardware overheads. The other is Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database which can dramatically improve database performance without the need to increase hardware resources.

With Oracle Database 11g R2, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) delivers grid plug-and-play and new server pooling capabilities that will help streamline the provisioning and management of database grids. Oracle RAC One Node is a new Database option that allows for the consolidation of less mission-critical database environments on the grid. RAC is traditionally used in a multi-node architecture where many separate instances of RAC reside on separate servers for high availability and scalability. RAC One Node allows multiple instances of RAC running on a single node in a cluster, and provides instance relocation in the event of catastrophic server failure. It also centralises and simplifies software maintenance and facilitates on-demand RAM and CPU sharing within a single large server.

Enhancements to both Oracle Advanced Compression and Oracle Partitioning can improve the data compression up to fourfold. Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is also extended in R2 to support a general purpose cluster file system.

Oracle TimesTen

Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database is an alternative database technology that provides instant responsiveness and very high throughput for performance critical applications. The applications are able to access or update information many times faster using standard relational database technology and familiar programming interfaces.

Oracle In-Memory Database Cache caches performance-
critical data in the application tier for greatly improve
response times.

TimesTen is not exclusively for use with Oracle Database. It can be used to enhance the performance of Microsoft SQL Server and other platforms. It can also be used as a high performance cache for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Used in this way, the Oracle In-Memory Database Cache improves application response times and throughput by caching performance critical subsets of an Oracle Database in the application tier. Bringing the data closer to the application and processing queries using an in-memory database allows applications to access or update information many times faster and with a flatter response time profile. Automatic data synchronisation between the cache and the Oracle Database ensures data consistency. The In-Memory Database Cache option of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition provides out-of-the-box integration with the Oracle Database, reducing development time. Oracle ASM, RAC and Oracle Active Data Guard allow storage and server resources to be used not only for fault tolerance but also for running production workloads. This ensures servers and storage resources are not sitting idle waiting for failures.

New to R2 is Edition-based Redefinition which allows database applications to be upgraded online, eliminating the need for separate upgrade environments. Automated self-management capabilities can help double database administrator productivity over older versions of Oracle Database and reduce the time required to upgrade earlier releases. Taken together, these innovations help reduce hardware and management costs as well as the carbon footprint.

Performance improvements also feature in the new release. R2 delivers enhanced query performance with the ability to execute a query against data stored in memory across all the servers in a grid. Some of the most exciting new innovations are, for the moment, reserved for the Oracle Database Machine. This is an implementation of Oracle Database that is packaged with hardware and other Oracle storage software components for optimum performance.

The Machine can now deliver up to ten times faster query execution using column level data storage. With data stored in adjacent columns, compression algorithms can be used to detect patterns in the columns and achieve very high rates of compression. This packs more data onto each data block allowing data warehouse queries to run faster. Oracle provides tools like sorted hash clusters to group related rows together along with row sequencing that can improve the performance of SQL queries by placing all information on a single data block. Oracle cluster tables can be used to put customer and order rows together on a single data block, greatly reducing the number of trips to the database to retrieve the desired result set.

GRAHAM KEITCH

Graham manages the Oracle on Windows O-Zone portal for Grey Matter and has worked in IT for over 20 years. He also helped co-ordinate the European ground-based efforts that supported the space missions to Comet Halley. In his spare time, Graham uses computer sampling technology for music composition.

grahamk@greymatter.com

Find out more...

External Links

Grey Matter runs two portals for users of Oracle technologies. Oracle on Windows Zone is for .NET developers while the ISV Resource Centre provides information resources for the ISV community. For further information, see www.oracleonwindows.com and www.oracleisv.com.