Related link: http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

My Windows install: going, going

Last week, my desktop’s Windows install cracked up, and started pegging
both CPUs when certain programs were launched. Task Manager reported that System was responsible for the entire load, which is not, as they say, actionable intelligence.

I tried a variety of
things to fix it, including

MySQL Clustering v1.0 …

only works if you can put all your data in RAM, according to O’Reilly’s Andy Oram. That’s a big limitation.

OTOH, he also mentions that there are commercial alternatives for MySQL clustering that don’t have this limitation, like Emic’s clustered MySQL.

If you don’t need a true RAC-like single-system image, but can deal with a replicated solution, you can do what Sabre did for their MySQL cluster and choose a commercial replication solution.

Also via Jeremy Z, very cool slides on LiveJournal’s progression from vanilla LAMP site running on rented h/w to fault-tolerant megasite

I have to say, I love case studies like this. They’re great ammo if you need to pitch an open source alternative, or maybe just keep your Oracle rep honest.

Is MySQL clustering ready for prime-time?

Richmond Shee’s presentation “If Your Memory Serves You Right.” gave the
audience a better understanding of the activities related to sorting in the
database. He demonstrated how to use events 10032 and 10033 to learn how
sorts are being done. I liked the sliding scale where he showed the fastest
sorts (in memory) all the way to slowest sorts (multi-pass) and for the
one-pass sorts, what the best utilization of memory is to maximize
performance.

Peter Robson discussed data integrity and demonstrated the methodology he
has been a part of to have ongoing monitoring to ensure data and information
about the data (metadata) is complete and accurate. He showed how they have
used this method to produce reports that help to track the “Database Health
Quotient” on a historical basis. This alerts you to new data or structures
that have potential problems for further follow-up.

As I mentioned in another note, this year has sessions starting earlier and
ending later than they have in years past. One of the presentations I am
doing this year started at 4:45 this afternoon and I was concerned with how
many attendees would be there and still relatively conscious at that time in
the afternoon. I had a good turnout and my audience was responsive, alert
and asking some good questions. There have been some people that have
attended conference events in the past and taken advantage of all the
vendor-sponsored entertainment events and social events, reducing or
minimizing their attendance or participation at the educational events.
Conferences were therefore considered by some to be a bonus of sorts and
attendance was allowed as a reward or incentive for selected staff. I think
the IOUG events that I have attended over the past 4 years demonstrate that
the focus of most of the attendees here is the educational benefit rather
than strictly the entertainment events and the t-shirts, pens and other
vendor give-away gifts. Not that most of the people here won’t be bringing
home a few vendor souvenirs, but that most people will be bringing home more
knowledge and practical skills than they had when they arrived.

In terms of the education options available here, we have come a long way in
a few years in the world of Oracle tuning is just a few years. Looking over
the presentation titles for this conference, many sessions talk about the
Wait Interface, extended SQL Trace and Event 10046. Several years ago, the
common tuning presentations focused on checklists and ratios. Watching
trends like this at this conference is always interesting and an important
way to stay alert to trends in our industry.

Do you have any thoughts on the most effective tuning methodology?

At the official kickoff and opening session, IOUG President, Kimberly Floss
talked about the benefits of user groups and gave an overview of the
G.R.E.A.T. strategy that IOUG is implementing to continue to make this
organization valuable for it’s members. They are always improving member
benefits.

The International Oracle Users Group (IOUG) is run by volunteers and so recognition is important to ensure that
some of the valuable contributors are recognized and this annual conference
is a great venue for that so that the attendees can thank them for their
diligent and hard work. This year the Chris Wooldridge Award recipient is
Stan Yellott and the winner of the SELECT Editor’s Choice Award for
excellence in a technical article is Jeff Maresh. Congratulations to both
of them for their contributions to make the Oracle world a better place to
be a DBA.

As with any large gathering early in the morning, some stragglers were still
coming in as the HP keynote speaker was being introduced. Jim Milton talked
about HP’s Adaptive Enterprise and how it works with Oracle for benefit of
all.

At both the morning and afternoon keynotes, I was impressed with the large
crowd. When a large auditorium if so full that people are sitting right
next to each-other with few empty spots, you know the attendees are serious
about learning as much as they can from this conference. At the afternoon
keynote, the Oracle Contribution Award was presented to Ken Jacobs (a.k.a.
Dr. DBA). After graciously receiving the award, he discussed to vision and
promise of 10g. He discussed how the grid features address scalability and
reliability requirements of the business world. He also talked about
Automatic Storage Management, which promises more performance and less DBA
overhead with no IO tuning required to maximize performance. I like to hear
senior-level people talk about what excites them most about products and Ken
spent some time talking about some of what he feels are cool features
including html db with no middle tier needed. As far as 10g implementation
plans,
he recommended starting a conversion by using Enterprise Manager to manage
existing Oracle version 8, 8i and 9 databases as well as 10g databases as they
are deployed and upgraded.

There are many opinions about the Oracle Certification Program (OCP), and I
could write a whole article just on that. I may do that another time, but
for now, I will just say that the benefits of the OCP program are not simply
a resume builder. I attended one of the OCP EXAM CRAM sessions for the 9i
upgrade test. I was reminded that the material covered is not just for
certification! You learn about features you are not using that you could
benefit from. An example of that is the discussion I’ve been witnessing
lately about backup direct to tape vs. backup to disk followed by backup to
tape using OS utilities. BACKUP . . .BACKUPSET allows an RMAN backup to be
made of a disk backup. This allows RMAN to “know” where the backup is
stored.

Don Burleson is a very dynamic speaker who is always popular with the crowd.
His session on SQL Tuning attracted a large crowd. Attendees learned things
like if you are using 9i and are not using DBMS_STATS, you are not taking
full advantage of Oracle as there are many benefits over using the
traditional ANALYZE commands. Don also put forth the question that every
DBA should start their tuning effort with: “Are you first_rows or all_rows?”
Depending on that answer, a tuned SQL statement could mean different things.

Another always-popular speaker is Gaja Vaidyanatha who today presented “It’s
time to do ASH”. Gaja always rewards his listeners with enough information
to make their brain grow and this session was no different. He introduced
the audience to the Active Session History in 10g and discussed how it can
be beneficial for the tuning DBA.

The “Performance Tuning your 9i Database” round table late in the afternoon
was a valuable time spent discussing obstacles in using things like
DBMS_STATS and stored outlines. There were about a dozen people there that
also spent time discussing I/O problems and tools available to identifying
and troubleshooting them as well as strategies for winning cooperation from
other groups like the “storage administrators” or “system administrators”.
Most of the people there had solid experience and were open and willing to
share ideas. The round tables (that are actually squares <grin>) is one of
the least formal educational opportunities here at the conference and yet, I
walked out of there with more knowledge than I walked in there with and I
know others felt the same way.

I also had the opportunity to visit with some vendors that I have meet in
the past either as a customer or through other user group events. It was a
great opportunity to see how various vendors can help to meet needs in our
organization.

Later in the evening, the oracle-l mailing list had a IRL reunion and it was
fun to meet some people in person for the first time and renew other
friendships from years past. I tried to make a list of everyone that was
there, but I missed many names because there was around 50 people from all
over the world. We put a bunch of tables together and spent at least the
next couple hours getting to know each other better. I say at least a
couple hours because by the time I said “goodnight” at about 10pm, there was
still about half the original group there with no sign of letting up.

Oracle-l is a mailing list that provides an incredible amount of knowledge
transfer and help from many of the leading experts. Do you have a favorite mailing list for technical things?

Day One of the International Oracle Users Group (IOUG) conference started with registration and the full-day
“University” classes. At the airport yesterday, I ran into several people
that I knew from past conferences and other local User Group events.
Several of them were attending University events today and from talking to
them this evening, it sounds like they had a great time. I wish I had been
able to participate this year.

First impressions of Toronto as a venue are:

• Location. The airport was great and all my luggage made it at about the
  same time as I did. It was easy to get through the airport and find the
  shuttle bus. Check-in at the hotel was painless. The conference center is
  not too far from the hotel, but without directions from another attendee, it
  would have been a bit longer of a walk. Fortunately, IOUG attendees are a
  friendly sort and I think everyone is trying to make sure that people know
  the easiest ways to get back and forth.

• Kudos to the decision to have the Internet cafe open Sunday! It was nice
  to be able to check my e-mail when I went over to the convention center to
  register.

• Having the bookstore open Sunday was also nice as it was easier to browse
  through before the crowds that will be there most of the rest of the week.

• Registration was smooth - I don’t know how it was during peak times, but
  based on my experiences in past years, things always seem to run pretty
  smooth and quick.

The speaker orientation is a great opportunity to give the speakers
information about the mechanics and procedures to ensure a successful
speaking experience. There are many new speakers this year. These new
speakers bring new excitement and experiences to all the attendees. There is
a speaker mentor program to help support new speakers. Last year as a new
IOUG speaker, I found the support provided very beneficial. Apparently,
others agreed as this program was continued and expanded this year.

I thought there was a great turnout at the general orientation where
attendees were provided some information about the conference, including the
fact that the general sessions will include shorter keynotes closer to 30
minutes that 60 minutes. They also talked about the shorter conference this
year (3 days instead of 4) and made note that sessions starting earlier and
running later combined with one less day balances out to the same amount of
education. This is beneficial to some people where it is easier to justify
the smaller cost of a shorter trip. It will be interesting to see how many
people attend the earlier and later sessions. One of my sessions starts at
4:45 in the afternoon, so I will get to see firsthand what turnout is like.

The selection of Toronto — the location of Toronto allows many (most?) folks to
return home on Wed evening after closing sessions. With security and flight
schedules, I was not able to schedule my return until Thursday and would
like to hear from others whether they were able to return Wednesday evening.
The general orientation reminded people about the importance of feedback for
speakers and conference committee. The information gathered from the feedback
forms provide information that helps improve both speaker skills and future
conference planning.

After the orientation session, a bunch of DBA’s (or would that be a flock, a
herd or maybe a thicket) went out to get a bite to eat and the chance to
chat. We ended up at a sports bar that was so crowded, that we ended up at
about 3 different tables and it was so loud due to a certain sporting event
that the only conversation took place on napkins. It was a fun place and it
was entertaining watching the fans get so excited about their team. Our
table got into the action with some chants and cheers of our own (D-B-A,
D-B-A, D-B-A and O-ra-cle, O-ra-cle, O-ra-cle).

Tomorrow is a full day with the opening session and keynote as well as a
great lineup of speakers. I will post again after tomorrow with the
highlights from the day, so stay tuned.

If you are not attending the IOUG conference this year, why not? Budget, location or schedule?

In 30 minutes I leave for the airport to begin my journey to this year’s MySQL Users Conference in Orlando, Florida. Last year’s conference interesting, and attendees enthusiastic. I expect more of the same this year.

Some sessions I’m particularly looking forward to attending tomorrow are:

• Best Practices: Using MySQL at Sabre
• Converting MS-SQL and Access Databases to MySQL
• Data Warehousing with MySQL
• MySQL 4.1 C API (I can use this for a book I’m writing)
• MaxDB - Easy Administration

I see several sessions on MaxDB, and that intrigues me. MaxDB seems to be SAP DB reborn, but is anyone really using it? I hope to find out. If my Thinkpad wasn’t in the shop getting a cracked keyboard bezel replaced, I’d hit that Hands on MaxDB installation workshop in the evening.

I’m excited to be going to the conference, and I hope to have some interesting news to report tomorrow.

Related link: http://www.colinux.org

CoLinux has been ported to linux. This, combined with some much needed stabilization in their 0.6.0 release means it’s closing in on being a decent free VMWare clone in terms of platform support… well, if you only want to run Linux VMs.

While that’s an interesting development, a more compelling one is the prototyped coLinux running as a Windows service. As a server-based software developer, headless VMs have long been a top feature request of mine for VMWare Workstation. A headless VM would be great for running fire-and-forget types of server applications, where the UI isn’t a very important consideration. VMWare probably won’t go this route with Workstation because it would overlap too much with their server edition. And I hold out no hope for VirtualPC, because headless Windows is just too much of an oxymoron (datacenter notwithstanding). So colinux is boldly going where it’s commercial competitors fear to tread.

What’s the significance of this colinux milestone? I think the potential of embedding a Linux brain + 10Gig or so of assorted free software into any Windows computer is staggering. LiveCDs like Knoppix are an excellent way to mess around with alternative OS’s, but running a coLinux instance as a headless service has a much better chance of breaking through the novelty barrier and becoming part of someone’s routine. you install the service, and stop thinking about it. If you need to run an app you don’t have, you check your coLinux instance (via web page/vnc applet/etc) to see if it’s already installed for you, or is apt-get-able etc. like Lindows Click-n-Run. I run the excellent gramps geneology program from my Windows box in just this way: starting an X session from cygwin and connecting to a RedHat VM. There’s definitely some desktop gluing for authentication/clipboard/file sharing that would be involved to make it friendly to non-unix users, but I think it’s an easier approach towards large-scale platform advocacy than the alternatives. Even without the glue, in some instances the lack of desktop integration could even be a feature: one of the many Windows specific email-based virii would have a difficult time doing anything destructive to your box if you read your email using Evolution on a colinux VM as a nonpriveleged user.

The packaging folks have done all the hard work to make this useful … let the 95% of computer users who run Windows take advantage of their labor and you have the makings of an inflection point that could happen much sooner than the widespread desktop Linux rip-and-replace that most big companies are betting on.

Resources: