It has been a while since I last posted, but here I  go again.

I was recently installing Oracle Data Guard for a client that is running 11.2.0.2 on a Windows Servers 2008 system.  After configuring Data Guard I started testing the switch overs. As per the  instructions I was using  for Data Guard, I tested. I was  issuing a switchover to standby and then issuing a shutdown in the primary server. The shutdown caused Oracle to display an error ORA-01092 Oracle Instance Terminated. This was a bit disconcerting as without anything to go by it seemed that the instance had done an abort. Some research found in the alert log the following

Switchover: Primary controlfile converted to standby controlfile successfully. Switchover: Complete – Database shutdown required Completed: alter database commit to switchover to physical standby with session shutdown Fri Oct 21 10:21:15 2011 Performing implicit shutdown abort due to switchover to physical standby Shutting down instance (abort) License high water mark = 28 USER (ospid: 6244): terminating the instance Instance terminated by USER, pid = 6244 Fri Oct 21 10:21:18 2011 Instance shutdown complete ORA-1092 : opitsk aborting process

Now for me I don’t like when I issue a command and something entirely different happens, i get a little concerned. The SQLPlus session may have to be closed after this happens., as it is no longer connected to the instance.

In the absence of finding the knowledge from the documentation, it is there, I raised an SR and got a response explaining that this is in fact now the behaviour from 11.2 onwards as this allows the switchover to proceed faster. I would have liked either an error when I tried to issue the shutdown or the shutdown immediate however at this time this is not the case, I am not sure if there is any alternative with the SQLplus handling the abort

So don’t be concerned by this error if you are using Data Guard in 11.2 onwards as this is expected behaviour.

I hope this makes some else life a little easier

See ya round

Peter

Well we all have had a love hate relationship with My Oracle Support/Metalink or Metablink as it was satirically known by some in its earlier days. More recently I along with some friends and colleagues have had issues with how the flash interface altered how we do some things and I have had a grievance with using the knowledge base in particular how to return to a prior location when I click through support notes. It has neither been intuitive nor has it really worked all that well. This would not be my only gripe but I did what I could at various times raising concerns with things that bothered me.

I raised a call about a problem I was encountering with the function to log in again when the session expired and had a surprising response, stick with my work around as the Flash interface is leaving us. Of course the usual Safe harbor statements where included, but joy oh joy it is going, one can only hope the usability of the next iteration is a whole lot better. The question I am now interested is will it be HTML5 and does that mean the next update of APEX is html5 compliant. I can see a lot of developers being very happy about that.

I gues teh other question everyone will now want to know is when?? OpenWorld or sooner, this is the big question, I guess when the next Apex release is out might be the time.

See ya round

Peter

The decision that was announced on the 23rd March 2011 to drop Itanium support for new development seems to have ruffled some feathers and is being taken as an anti competitive stance. Well this is probably a very long bow to draw. Oracle may have an agenda to force people to use Sun/Oracle hardware. This will only have one benefit and that will be for IBM as a database vendor with wider cross platform support. Customers who bought Oracle for its open platform availability that there is no vendor lock in probably didn’t buy it for all the right reasons. Of course it is also a pretty hard to argue that they are somehow shrinking the vendor options with Oracle supporting the database and other products on Linux of various flavours as well as hardware vendor of choice. I think many bought Oracle for its feathres and whilst cross platform has enhanced its power as a vendor its not the key reason businesses bought it

Itanium has had a troubled history and as a result probably never reached the market penetration it might have had. I can remember going to a HP roadshow back around1998, where HP touted the replacement of the current PA-Risc architecture with these new fancy Itaniums. Unfortunately they had many performance issues in the early days that took the gloss of the platform. I think it was being touted as a Alpha killer. This never eventuated and the Alpha only got killed when DEC was sold to Compaq who on sold to HP who sold the Alpha to Intel and then Intel after studying it scrapped it as they had already made an investment in Itanium.

So this now looks like the end of Itanium and it is probably a lesson to the world on outsourcing. HP outsourced the chip which was a flagship product in effect and now suffer the consequences of this decision. Without Microsoft and Oracle on the platform that takes a lot out of the software choices for that platform.

Image via CrunchBase

I suspect it will take more than ten years to see its end and the last one to end its life in business.

So is it anti-competitive as it pulls the rug from under HP well no not really unless you some how equate databases as only being from Oracle and that means you haven’t looked very deep in the market. HP will still have Oracle on Intel. IBM still have Oracle on P series and with the choice of any Intel vendor with Windows or Linux there is little place for calling it anti-competitive.

I am sure Larry will sell HP some Sparcs for a few servers if they want them

See ya round

Peter

• Practical Analysis: Oracle Vs. HP — Who’s Got Your Back? (informationweek.com)
• Oracle on Intel Itanium: HP misleading customers (zdnet.com)

Working to get an Identity Management installation up and running using Oracle 11g Fusion Middleware and hit a stumbling block. You see I found an error code I cannot find any reference to when trying to get Oracle Internet Directory installed. It seems to be trying to find something of which I cannot seem to identify.  The error contains the error code INST-5145 This is caused by having firewalls and SE Linux enabled, it seems it couldn’t connect to some component to asses something and that breaks the installation process.

It is a little annoying that Oracle hasn’t published these installer errors anywhere, it would be good if they were available as a list in My Oracle Support. I have found a number of these INST errors in my attempts to build this test all caused by issues that are not shown as prerequisites, like 4gb RAM is an absolute minimum to get an installation Identity Management  running. I have come across a number of blogs relating to installing Identity Management (OIM) and I must be the luckiest guy around, because none of them it seems encountered any errors.

I have a beef about the installer as well, I have run into errors, caused by me for the most part, hey if you don’t break it how do you learn. The installer once you start configuring if it finds an error you need to go back and redo your configuration again, why can I not use the back button why only the retry, this seems a little silly to me, but hey I am only the guy trying to install it.

Some additional issues encountered are problems with Nodemanager doesn’t start during configuration, if this is supposed to be started why doesn the install guide say so.

There is a good one here to help with a real show stopper i had and that is the problem of running out of memory. Check out this “My Oracle Support” note [ID 865166.1] to get some very useful assistance. Until you are ready to go into some solid testing or production I would suggest you try altering the described parameters to suit your requirements getting the best out of a given set of physical resources.

So my recommendation for anyone trying to install OID use more than 4GB, it should save you finding out some things.

See ya round

Peter

For those interested a copy of my presentation at Insync 2010 has been placed on slideshare, you can find out what it was all about, if you have questions then feel free to comment

Also after my presentation Gareth Llewellyn from Oracle caught up for a little chat which you can view here.