OOW 2012 Twitter List

I've been urged to provide a Twitter list for OOW 2012 attendees. You can see last year's list here.





Check out the Storify story of how it unfolded on Twitter (love Storify).

OOW 2011 Twitter List

For the past couple of years George Woods has been compiling a list of Twitterites who will be attending Oracle OpenWord. 2009 and 2010. I realized this year I hadn't seen it yet, so I emailed him. Unfortunately he will be unable to attend, he's working with that other database right now.

There is no planned event for us yet, but it can't hurt to have if something does come up.

If you plan on attending, please fill out this simple form; twitter handle is the only thing required.



You can find the document here. If I can figure out how to embed the list here, I will do so.

OK, I just stole the iframe method from the above form. It's ugly, but it's better than nothing.



If you know of a better (and easy) way, let me know.

Developer Access to V$ Views in Production

I love The Twitter Machine.

.

Assuming you made it all the way through...how freaking awesome. Got a question? The Twitter Machine and a lot of really smart people have the answer.

Fun with Tuning!

It's been an interesting and fun night.

Started, innocently enough, with a tweet (go figure, reason #1042 why Twitter rocks) about my CTAS operation completing.



That resulted in a flurry of activity and some actual learning on my part.

Of course you have the smart-ass (tweet), Matt Topper [@topperge]



I quickly did the math, it was only 4,919 times faster than mine. Though after tonight, I would have a hard time believing anything I say.

My CTAS operation created 102 GB of data in a shade over 7 hours. He did 70 TB per hour. Whatever. Showoff.

I need to back up a little actually. I have been posting these numbers over the last few days. Yesterday, Martin Berger [@martinberx] sees one those tweets (a cry for help?), and follows up via email (he rocks anyway, he sent katezilla a postcard from Vienna last year too).

We've exchanged a few emails, mostly me telling him I have no idea what he's talking about and then me trying to explain what I am talking about. Or something.

Tonight (yesterday?) he asked for an AWR report. I told him I disabled everything via DBCA. He told me I probably didn't, nicely. Then he pointed me to Tim Hall's post on running awrrpt.sql. Following those easy instructions, I ran the report. I guess I didn't turn it off.

So far, Matt's a smart-ass, and Martin rocks.

Then Greg Rahn (@gregrahn) joins.



So I have cruddy disks? (read it again Justice).

"Seems likely that the disk writes are the slow side of the execution. The read side probably faster. Got SQL Monitor report?"

I'm thinking, "...", actually, I wasn't. I was stuck on disk. But I could get him a SQL Dev report.

With that, he gets the SQL ID and tells me to do this:

Oracle 11g: Real-Time SQL Monitoring Using DBMS_SQLTUNE.REPORT_SQL_MONITOR

That's 3 years old. Wow.

BTW, here's the SQL statement I was running:

CREATE TABLE claim
  COMPRESS BASIC
  NOLOGGING
AS
SELECT /*+ PARALLEL( c, 8 ) */
  date_of_service,
  date_of_payment,
  claim_count,
  units,
  amount,
  ...
  ...
  ( CASE
      WHEN application_year IS NULL THEN '9'
      ELSE application_year
    END ) application_year,
  ( CASE
      WHEN accounting_code IS NULL THEN '9'
      ELSE accounting_code
    END ) accounting_code,
  ( CASE
      WHEN claim_form_type IS NULL THEN '9'
      ELSE claim_form_type
    END ) claim_form_type,
  ( CASE
      WHEN diagnosis_code_1 IS NULL THEN '-999'
      ELSE diagnosis_code_1
    END ) diagnosis_code_1
  ...
  ...
FROM claims c;

The night gets even crazier, old friend, Tom Roach (@tomroachoracle) has now ssh'd into my VM. He's doing all kinds of craziness. He walked me through sar, iostat, and a few other tricks. At least now I know how to use the history command so I can replicate.

Meanwhile, Matt is still heckling me and I get an email from Greg after reviewing the SQL Monitor report.

(I'm paraphrasing here)

"Take a look at your CTAS again, anything jump out at you?"

Me: (To myself): "No"
Me: (staring at the email)

"Perhaps you have a parallel hint on the select but not on the table, like this"

CREATE TABLE claim
  COMPRESS BASIC
  NOLOGGING
  PARALLEL 8
AS
SELECT /*+ PARALLEL( c, 8 ) */
  date_of_service,
  date_of_payment,
  claim_count,
  units,
  amount,
  ...
  ...

Wow. Really? How did he do that? Impressive. Cool!

I admit to Greg that I thought he was talking about hardware in his original tweet. He said something pithy. I bowed.

So that information (kinda important huh?) couple with Mr. Roach's look at what was happening using sar told me something...I remember this, CPU wasn't being fully utilized. I can't remember the exact numbers so let's call it 50%. I told him I was about to rerun (it's about 1:30 AM at this point), he suggested upping the DOP to 16 from 8. Sure. I'll do what I'm told.

I reran the statement with the bug fix corrected and upping the DOP on both the table and the SELECT. As I was putting this together, it finished. 2.5 hours. Waaaay better than 7.5 hours. Tolerable for me since I'm not as cool as Matt (who was only on a 1/4 rack).

I learned stuff...mostly about how little I do know. I'll try to write up more notes in the future so I don't forget everything and so no one who helped me will have wasted their time.

Thanks so much to Tom, Martin and Greg, your help is greatly appreciated.

Follow Friday

I know this is a Twitter tradition and I know it is just a tad early, but here is my version of Follow Friday.

First up, Enrique Aviles. I met Mr. Aviles at Tanel Põder's visit back in January in Tampa. We had corresponded a bit prior via Twitter. For the longest time, I read his Twitter handle as "Evil Les 94," I hope that's not me projecting. Super nice guy and apparently has some fun horror stories he promises to share.



Next up, Don Seiler. Don and I have been verbal sparring partners on Twitter for a couple of years now. We appear to have a similar sense of humor, smart-ass. That might be a company-wide trait at Pythian, I seem to encounter a lot of smart-asses from that particular organization. :)



Finally, Lisa Dobson. My first introduction to Mrs. Dobson was through Tom Kyte's blog a few years ago. Since I can't seem to find the exact post that I think I remember, I link to this one where Mr. Kyte talks about introducing her at her presentation for Newbie DBAs.

Now, I'm not one to spread rumors, so don't mention this to anyone, but rumor has it, she "bitch slapped" Tom Kyte at some past event. This is wholly unsubstantiated, so don't hold me to it.



You may see a trend in my Follow Friday suggestions, you may not. If you do, go here, all proceeds go to katezilla (well, technically, to us, her parents, to offset her costs. Though she is a girl and girls are supposed to cost more...). :p