Nov 2: 11.1.0.7 Fun
Well, I make that about 4 weeks since I installed 11.1.0.7 on my laptop on, yes, Vista but the weeks have flown by and I've only had a very quick play with it.
It was released along with another few ports that I was surprised to see appear so quickly, specifically AIX. As I'm working at an AIX site at the moment, I'm used to the long wait for 'Tier 2' ports to appear. It's usually about 6 months minimum. In a fit of wild speculation based on no solid information, I'd venture that the Linux port was ready long ago but was held back for Openworld as part of the Exadata announcement, which meant that the other porting teams caught up and were able to release soon after Openworld. As I said, wild speculation, but most of the Exadata blog posts I've seen in the past month seem to be similarly uninformed which is all the more surprising when there are plenty of white papers online. Frankly, you'd think if someone sets themself up as an industry analyst, they would take the time to read public information before they start spouting opinions. I suppose that's probably why I'll never make it as an industry analyst.
So what's in 11g that would have given some of the Exadata game away if it had been released before Openworld? Here are a few little fun details.
Because of the OEM performance presentations and the course, one of the first things I do is take a look at DB Control for any new update (and I need to remember to respond to Noon's post one day soon). At the bottom of the main Performance Page for the instance in the 11g screens is a tabbed section that includes an I/O tab which is one of the most noticeable improvements in 11g.

What may or may not be obvious from a small graphic is that the first of the I/O types listed in the key in the right hand side is 'Smart Scan', but I don't expect I'll be seeing that appearing in graphs on my laptop any time soon
While I was at it, I thought I'd see if there were any Exadata-related parameters or timed events.
Just a bit of fun, but nowhere near as much fun as Real Time SQL Monitoring. Now *that's* a feature worth upgrading for!
It was released along with another few ports that I was surprised to see appear so quickly, specifically AIX. As I'm working at an AIX site at the moment, I'm used to the long wait for 'Tier 2' ports to appear. It's usually about 6 months minimum. In a fit of wild speculation based on no solid information, I'd venture that the Linux port was ready long ago but was held back for Openworld as part of the Exadata announcement, which meant that the other porting teams caught up and were able to release soon after Openworld. As I said, wild speculation, but most of the Exadata blog posts I've seen in the past month seem to be similarly uninformed which is all the more surprising when there are plenty of white papers online. Frankly, you'd think if someone sets themself up as an industry analyst, they would take the time to read public information before they start spouting opinions. I suppose that's probably why I'll never make it as an industry analyst.
So what's in 11g that would have given some of the Exadata game away if it had been released before Openworld? Here are a few little fun details.
Because of the OEM performance presentations and the course, one of the first things I do is take a look at DB Control for any new update (and I need to remember to respond to Noon's post one day soon). At the bottom of the main Performance Page for the instance in the 11g screens is a tabbed section that includes an I/O tab which is one of the most noticeable improvements in 11g.

What may or may not be obvious from a small graphic is that the first of the I/O types listed in the key in the right hand side is 'Smart Scan', but I don't expect I'll be seeing that appearing in graphs on my laptop any time soon
While I was at it, I thought I'd see if there were any Exadata-related parameters or timed events.
SYS@TEST11> select name, value from v$parameter
2 where name like '%cell%';
NAME
----------------------------------------
VALUE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cell_partition_large_extents
DEFAULT
cell_offload_processing
TRUE
cell_offload_parameters
cell_offload_compaction
ADAPTIVE
cell_offload_plan_display
AUTO
SYS@TEST11> select name, wait_class from v$event_name where name like '%cell%';
NAME WAIT_CLASS
---------------------------------------- --------------------
cell smart table scan User I/O
cell smart index scan User I/O
cell statistics gather User I/O
cell smart incremental backup System I/O
cell smart file creation User I/O
cell smart restore from backup System I/O
cell single block physical read User I/O
cell multiblock physical read User I/O
Streams miscellaneous event Other
9 rows selected.
Just a bit of fun, but nowhere near as much fun as Real Time SQL Monitoring. Now *that's* a feature worth upgrading for!
Oct 26: UKOUG 2008
Wow. Three weeks since I last posted. I'm not sure if it's been that long before. There are a couple of posts that I have in mind, including some initial fun impressions of 11.1.0.7, which I installed a couple of weeks ago but, for now. Here's my current best guess as to which presentations I'll be attending in the first week of December. There were quite a few clashes in the schedule between different presentations I wanted to see, not least when I'm presenting myself. It looks like a pretty good line-up.
Monday
11:00 - 12:00 Beginners' Guide to Partitioning - Jonathan Lewis
12:20 - 13:20 What ASM & ZFS Can Do For You - Jason Arneil
14:30 - 15:15 Flashback features in Oracle11g - Carl Dudley
15:40 - 16:25 Flash Recovery Area - Tuomas Pystynen
17:05 - 18:05 The best way... by Thomas Kyte, Database Product Evangelist, Oracle
18:15 - 20:30 UKOUG 2008 Opening Party
Tuesday
09:35 - 10:35 'What's New from Oracle Openworld' - Andrew Mendelsohn
11:05 - 11:50 Follow up session to 'What's New from Oracle Openworld' - Andrew Cleverly
12:10 - 12:55 Boost your environment with Oracle XMLDB - Marco Gralike
14:05 - 14:50 Practical Data Pump - Patrick Hurley
15:10 - 15:55 Drive Heads Revisited - James Morle
16:15 - 17:00 Oracle and storage IOs, explanations, experience at CERN and SSD tests - Eric Grancher
17.20 - 20.00 FOCUS PUBS
Wednesday
09:25 - 10:10 Implementing DR for Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control - Phil Grice
10:35 - 11:20 Proactive Detection of Oracle Performance Events using Adaptive Thresholds - John Beresniewicz
11:45 - 12:30 The Danish Experiment: 11g-Shock Upgrades and Massive Workload Reduction via C.O.B.S. (TM) - Mogens Norgaard
12:45 - 13:30 Backup and Recovery Tuning for VLDBs - Hüsnü Şensoy
14:35 - 15:20 Performance Tuning Basics - Me
15:40 - 16:25 Benchmarking Parallel Query Performance - Steve Shaw
18.15 - 21.00 25th YEAR CELEBRATION PARTY
Thursday
09:25 - 10:10 Cool Stuff with Hot ASHes - Graham Wood
10:35 - 11:20 Further RMAN Optimizations in 11g - Stephan Haisley
11:50 - 12:35 Audit Vault Deployment Lessons - Me
13:00 - 13:45 Stopping the Madness with Root Cause Analysis - Robyn Sands
15:00 - 15:45 CSI Oracle – Investigate Past Performance Problems Using ASH, AWR, ADDM, and Optimizer Statistics - Patty Charlebois
16:20 - 17:05 Variance as a Tool: Measuring for Robust Performance - Robyn Sands
17:30 - 18:15 Optimizing Systems by Eliminating Throwaway - Daniel Fink
Friday
10:00 - 12:00 Execution Plans - Christian Antognini
12:45 - 14:45 Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting: No Magic Is Needed, Systematic Approach Will Do - Tanel Poder
(Crikey - only a matter of weeks away now - I'd better get cracking on those presentations.)
Monday
11:00 - 12:00 Beginners' Guide to Partitioning - Jonathan Lewis
12:20 - 13:20 What ASM & ZFS Can Do For You - Jason Arneil
14:30 - 15:15 Flashback features in Oracle11g - Carl Dudley
15:40 - 16:25 Flash Recovery Area - Tuomas Pystynen
17:05 - 18:05 The best way... by Thomas Kyte, Database Product Evangelist, Oracle
18:15 - 20:30 UKOUG 2008 Opening Party
Tuesday
09:35 - 10:35 'What's New from Oracle Openworld' - Andrew Mendelsohn
11:05 - 11:50 Follow up session to 'What's New from Oracle Openworld' - Andrew Cleverly
12:10 - 12:55 Boost your environment with Oracle XMLDB - Marco Gralike
14:05 - 14:50 Practical Data Pump - Patrick Hurley
15:10 - 15:55 Drive Heads Revisited - James Morle
16:15 - 17:00 Oracle and storage IOs, explanations, experience at CERN and SSD tests - Eric Grancher
17.20 - 20.00 FOCUS PUBS
Wednesday
09:25 - 10:10 Implementing DR for Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control - Phil Grice
10:35 - 11:20 Proactive Detection of Oracle Performance Events using Adaptive Thresholds - John Beresniewicz
11:45 - 12:30 The Danish Experiment: 11g-Shock Upgrades and Massive Workload Reduction via C.O.B.S. (TM) - Mogens Norgaard
12:45 - 13:30 Backup and Recovery Tuning for VLDBs - Hüsnü Şensoy
14:35 - 15:20 Performance Tuning Basics - Me
15:40 - 16:25 Benchmarking Parallel Query Performance - Steve Shaw
18.15 - 21.00 25th YEAR CELEBRATION PARTY
Thursday
09:25 - 10:10 Cool Stuff with Hot ASHes - Graham Wood
10:35 - 11:20 Further RMAN Optimizations in 11g - Stephan Haisley
11:50 - 12:35 Audit Vault Deployment Lessons - Me
13:00 - 13:45 Stopping the Madness with Root Cause Analysis - Robyn Sands
15:00 - 15:45 CSI Oracle – Investigate Past Performance Problems Using ASH, AWR, ADDM, and Optimizer Statistics - Patty Charlebois
16:20 - 17:05 Variance as a Tool: Measuring for Robust Performance - Robyn Sands
17:30 - 18:15 Optimizing Systems by Eliminating Throwaway - Daniel Fink
Friday
10:00 - 12:00 Execution Plans - Christian Antognini
12:45 - 14:45 Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting: No Magic Is Needed, Systematic Approach Will Do - Tanel Poder
(Crikey - only a matter of weeks away now - I'd better get cracking on those presentations.)
Oct 4: Belgium Seminar Cancelled
Unfortunately, the two day performance course I was due to be teaching in Belgium in a couple of weeks has been cancelled. It also means that I won't be getting to see the DUDE as soon as I thought 
Oct 4: C. J. Date in Edinburgh
With the help of Oracle as sponsors, Peter Robson has organised a new seminar with Chris Date in Edinburgh on 10-12th of November. The format of "A Relational Approach to SQL" will be two days of tutorial-like presentation from Date, followed by a Wednesday morning of discussion and debate. It sounds fascinating to me but unfortunately I can't make those dates. Oh, and the cost for this opportunity? Fifty quid, to cover refreshments! That sounds like an opportunity that's too good to pass up if you're interested in the subject so I suspect that places will disappear quickly.
More information here and here.
More information here and here.
Oct 4: OOW 2008 Presentations Update
Well, I'm very pleased to see that non-attendees can access the presentations now, using this approach. I had confirmation from someone at Oracle that they wouldn't be accessible so either their information was wrong or there's been a change of heart.
For example, here is Juan Loaiza's Exadata presentation from Thursday.
For example, here is Juan Loaiza's Exadata presentation from Thursday.
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Comments
Mon, 10.11.2008 10:24
Yup, been there, seen that. On a related point, I've seen people run into [...]
Sun, 09.11.2008 08:41
Hans-Peter, I'm afraid I don't but I'm sure I've seen something similar [...]
Sat, 08.11.2008 20:21
I haven't come across this myself, but thanks for another example of the [...]