Be an Effective DBA using

Oracle 10g Automatic

Database Diagnostic Monitor

Edward Hayrabedian
Semantec Bulgaria OOD
Agenda
 Oracle 10g and Oracle 9i Database Manageability Comparison
 Self-Managing Database
 Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
 Features
 Configuration
 Collection Process
 Database Statistics
 Metrics
 Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM)
 Features
 Problems which can be detected
 Using ADDM
 Drawbacks
 Test cases & Examples
 Using literals instead of bind variables
 Concurrent updates
Oracle 10g and Oracle 9i Database
Manageability Comparison
 How to compare?
 A set of basic and typical DBA tasks are measured on a common set of metrics

 Used typical DBA tasks

 A sample of 21 tasks covering all the key DBA functionality, grouped in 5 categories
 Each group of tasks has an associated weight value. It defines how much of the DBA
work it takes

Category Weight
Installation and Simple “Out-of-Box” Setup 13%
Day-to-Day Database Administration 27%
Backup & Recovery 6%
Performance Diagnostics & Tuning 34%
Miscellaneous 20%

 What type of metrics?

 Time – the total time that a DBA spends in caring out the task
 Steps – the number of steps required to complete the task
Oracle 10g and Oracle 9i Database
Manageability Comparison
 Test Results – Task Time Comparison (minutes)
Installation Day-to-Day Backup & Performance Total
and Simple Database Recovery Diagnostics &
Setup Administration Tuning
Oracle 9i 45 35 46 19 147
Oracle 10g 29 13 17 5 64
Oracle 10g 36% 63% 63% 74% 56%
Time Savings
Weighting 13% 27% 6% 34%
Factor
Weighted 5% 17% 4% 25% 50%
Time Saving
Workday = 8 hr DBA need
---------------------- 50% less
time to
9i tasks = 163min perform their
10g tasks = 41min function
----------------------
Saving = 122 min
Oracle 10g and Oracle 9i Database
Manageability Comparison
 Test Results – Complexity Comparison (steps)
Installation Day-to-Day Backup & Performance Total
and Simple Database Recovery Diagnostics &
“Out-of-Box” Administration Tuning
Setup
Oracle 9i 7 15 19 15 56
Oracle 10g 4 9 6 5 24
Oracle 10g 43% 40% 68% 67% 57%
Step Savings
Oracle 10g took
67% fewer steps
to complete the
performance
diagnostics &
tuning tasks
Self-Managing Database

 Manual regular health checks, monitoring activities and bottleneck

investigations are replaced by automatic statistics collection, storage
and analysis

 Introduction of the Advisory Framework

 Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM)
 SQL Tuning Advisor – automates the tuning of SQL statements and gives an advice
 SQL Access Advisor – provides an expert advice on materialized vies, indexes and MV logs
 Segment Advisor – responsible for space issues involving a database object. Analyzes the growth
trends and shrink possibility for the segments
 Undo Advisor - suggests parameter values and how much additional space will be needed to support
flashback for a specified time. However, most of the undo tuning (like undo retention) is automatic in Oracle
10g
 Redo Logfile size Advisor - determines the optimal smallest online redo log file size, based on
the current fast_start_mttr_target setting and MTTR statistics
 Automatic Shared Memory Tuning - no longer need to tune SGA individual memory pools.
Only 2 memory parameters should be set and their values is recommended by ADDM
Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
Features

 Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) – new persistent store, which

automatically collects and stores statistics

 Called periodically at configured time interval

 More precise and granular information is collected
(compared to StatsPack snapshots)
 The statistics survive database reboots and crashes
 An efficient capture algorithm is used
 Provide historical analysis – no need to repeat the workload
 Completely self-managed
 The statistics are accessible to external users, who can
build their own performance monitoring tools
Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
Configuration

 AWR can be managed either via:

 the Enterprise Manager, or
 PL/SQL API (dbms_workload_repository package)

 Two of the most important procedures are:

 modify_snapshot_settings - defines the interval and
retention of snapshot generation
 create_snapshot – takes a new snapshot

Examples #1 and #2
Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
Collection Process
 Collection Process –
the new MMON BG process
captures in-memory statistics
from SGA and transfers them
to the Workload repository

 The statistic_level parameter -

controls the number and type of statistics
collected and stored (a dynamic init.ora parameter)
 Basic – almost all advisors are turned off
 Typical - default
 All
Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
Database Statistics
 The better Oracle kernel is instrumented the better diagnosis –
developing a tool located inside the server allows to resolve hard to diagnose problems by adding
more instrumentation
 Increase to over of 700 wait events
 Easier high-level analysis based on grouping the wait events in the
following categories:
 Application
 Administration
 Commit
 Concurrency
 Configuration
 User I/O
 Network Communications
 Idle

 Time model –
Time is used as a common currency for comparing across modules. Most of the
advisors report their findings in time
 The new most important “db_time” statistics –
The total time spent in db calls. The reduction of db_time can be used as a measure of
the effectiveness of the tuning efforts
Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
Metrics
 Metrics – delta values between the snapshots

 Metrics are normalized by:

 Time
 Transaction
 SQL statement, and so on..

 The rate of change is important rather than statistic’s absolute value

 Alerting thresholds can be set based on 183 predefined metrics

 User-defined metrics (alerts) can be created

Examples #3 and #4
Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) -
Features
 ADDM is an advisory framework that provides expert
recommendations to improve DB performance
 Build into the 10g kernel
 Called periodically after each AWR run
 Findings are presented in a convenient fashion
 Reports the impact of each finding
 Recommendations and step-by-step instructions
 Using time as a common metric between components
 Focusing on the activities that the DB spends most db_time
time, and then drills down through a sophisticated problem
classification tree to determine the root cause
 Documents also the non-problem areas of the system
Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) -
Problems which can be detected
 CPU bottlenecks
 Poor connection management
 Excessive parsing
 Lock contention
 IO capacity
 Under sizing of Oracle memory structures e.g. PGA, buffer
cache, log buffer
 High load SQL statements
 High PL/SQL and Java time
 High checkpoint load and cause e.g. small log files, aggressive
MTTR setting
 RAC specific issues
Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) -
Using ADDM
 Accessed either via Enterprise Manager or PL/SQL API
(dbms_advisor package)
 The main procedures of the dbms_advisor package
 Create_task
 Execute task – generates the report
 Get task report – gets the report text
 Findings
 Recommendations
Drawbacks
 The documentation is not complete and not enough

 The web based Enterprise Manager is slow and

buggy (I won’t comment the user interface design :)

 It is not clear what type of problems won’t be

detected

 The ADDM and AWR are too new to be proved by the

Oracle user community
Summary
 Oracle makes a significant step to makes complicated
things simple to manage

 Give ADDM a try – there is nothing to lose and maybe

something to earn

 ADDM allows to do more for less time – just be effective

 It is time to show some examples …

Examples
Test cases & Examples
 Example #1 - Managing AWR via the EM
 Example #2 - Creating a snapshot via the PL/SQL API
 Example #3 - Manage Metrics in EM
 Example #4 - User-defined Metrics in EM

 Test case #1 – Using Literals instead of bind variables

 Test case #2 – Concurrent updates
Example #1 - Managing AWR via EM
Movie #1 - Managing AWR via EM
Example #2 – Creating AWR Snapshot
via the PL/SQL API
Movie #2 – Creating Snapshot via PL/SQL
Example #3 - Manage Metrics in EM
Movie #3 - Manage Metrics in EM
Example #4 - User-defined Metrics in EM
Movie #4 - User-defined Metrics in EM
Test case #1 – Using Literals instead of bind variables
What will be shown
 The bad practice of
using literals will be
effectively detected by
ADDM

 The number of steps

performed by a DBA in
Oracle 10g is obviously
less than in Oracle 9i
Test case #1 – Using Literals instead of bind variables
The code
declare
l_start_snapshot_id number;
l_end_snapshot_id number;
n number;
begin
l_start_snapshot_id := dbms_workload_repository.create_snapshot();
dbms_output.put_line('Start snapshot id : ' || to_char(l_start_snapshot_id));
--
for i in 1..100000 loop
n := dbms_random.random;
execute immediate 'select ' || to_char(n) || ' from dual'
into n;
end loop;
--
l_end_snapshot_id := dbms_workload_repository.create_snapshot();
dbms_output.put_line('End snapshot id : ' || to_char(l_end_snapshot_id));
end;
Test case #1 – Using literals instead of bind variables
Movie #5
Test Case #2 – Concurrent Updates
What will be shown

 ADDM will catch a performance problem with application locks

due to concurrent updates against one row

 Reactive Performance Diagnostics

 The Active Sessions graph – diagnosing the problem becomes

‘point and click’ !

 ADDM recommendations and findings

Test Case #2 – Concurrent Updates
The code
Two sessions are concurrently running:

begin
for i in 1..300 loop
update t set x = i;
dbms_lock.sleep(1);
commit;
end loop;
end;
/
Test Case #2 – Concurrent Updates
Movie #6 - Reactive tuning/monitoring
References

 Oracle Database 10g and Oracle9 i Database Manageability Comparison February 2004
Copyright © 2004 Oracle Corporation

 Oracle Database 10g New Features Oracle 10g Reference for Advanced Tuning & Administration
by Mike Ault, Daniel Liu and Madhu Tumma

 Oracle Database 10g: The Self-Managing Database

An Oracle White Paper Nov. 2003

 The Self-Managing Database: Automatic Performance Diagnosis

An Oracle White Paper Nov. 2003