Tuesday, February 27, 2007

10g new background processes

With 10g many new background processes were introduced.
This note highlights those.

MMAN

Memory Manager (MMAN) coordinates the sizing of different memory components within SGA. MMAN keeps a track of sizes of components and allocates/de-allocates memory based on their usage. This process is used only when you enable Automatic Shared Memory Management.



RVWR

Process responsible for writing flashback logs which stores pre-image of data-blocks.

These logs can be used to flash back database to past point in time. It proves very handy specially in situation of logical data corruptions like an accidental drop/truncate of a table or commit of an unwanted transaction.



CTWR

Change Tracking Writer (CTWR) Process introduced in 10g to track changes to block to assist fast RMAN incremental backups.

MMNL

The Memory Monitor Light (MMNL) process introduced in 10g is responsible for writing out statistics buffer to disk as needed. It works with Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)




MMON

The memory monitor (MMON) process was introduced in 10g is responsible for gathering statistics for Automatic Workload Repository. This helps Oracle doing automatic problem detection and self tuning.


M000

MMON background slave (m000) processes.


RBAL

RBAL (Re-balancer) is the ASM related process that performs rebalancing of disk resources controlled by ASM.

ARBx

These processes are managed by the RBAL process and are used to do the actual rebalancing of ASM controlled disk resources. The number of ARBx processes invoked is directly influenced by the asm_power_limit parameter.

ASMB

The ASMB process is used to provide information to and from the Cluster Synchronization Services used by ASM to manage the disk resources. It is also used to update statistics and provide a heartbeat mechanism.


For more detailed info check following note on metalink:

Server Architecture on UNIX and NT

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Size your Undo tablespace

What should be the size of UNDO tablespace? Generally this question is vaguely answered saying that sizing comes with experience (of DBA) or looking at load on server or sometimes even by the number of ORA-1555 or out of space errors.

This paper is to help DBA’s in calculating the size of UNDO tablespace by using a simple formula.

While designing an application, generally it is tough to know about the number of transactions and subsequently number of rows changed per second.
So I suggest having a “big undo tablespace” to start with and based on load, after doing some calculations and resize your UNDO tablespace.

In my case one of the applications was going to production (live), and I had no idea that how many transactions will happen against this database. All what I was told that there will be optimum (transactional) activity on this database. The word “optimum” itself is vague.

So I started with UNDO tablespace with size of 2GB and datafiles with autoextend “on” .

Note:
In production, you must be very careful in using this (autoextend on) as the space may grow to inifinity very fast. So my advice is either dont use this option, or use with "maxsize" or continuously monitor space (which is tough).

I month later, I noticed the activity from V$undostat.

Here is the step by step approach:

Step 1: Longest running query.

SQL> select max(maxquerylen) from v$undostat;


MAX(MAXQUERYLEN)
----------------
1793

This gives you ideal value for UNDO_RETENTION. To be on the safer size you should add few more seconds to get the right value. So in my case, the size of undo retention should be say 2000 secs.

Step 2: Size of UNDO tablespace.

Size of UNDO needed = UNDO_RETENTION x [UNDO block Generation per sec x DB_BLOCK_SIZE] + Overhead(30xDB_BLOCK_SIZE)

Out of these we know UNDO_RETENTION and DB_BLOCK_SIZE

All we need is to find out “UNDO Blocks per second”

Which can be easily fetched from v$undostat

SQL> SELECT (SUM(undoblks))/ SUM ((end_time - begin_time) * 24*60*60) "UPS"
2 FROM v$undostat;


UPS
------------------------------
8.11985583

V$undostat stores data for every 10 mins and begin/end times are start/end time of those intervals. We multiplied it with 24*60*60 because the difference between two dates will be in days and to get to seconds, we need it to multiply with 24hrs*60mins*60secs

So now we have all the values needed.

Undo size needed = [8.12 x 2000 x 8192] + [30 x 8192] = 133283840 bytes = 127.11 MB

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Identify and fix table fragmentation in Oracle 10g - how?

Table fragmentation – when?

If a table is only subject to inserts, there will not be any fragmentation.
Fragmentation comes with when we update/delete data in table.
The space which gets freed up during non-insert DML operations is not immediately re-used (or sometimes, may not get reuse ever at all). This leaves behind holes in table which results in table fragmentation.

To understand it more clearly, we need to be clear on how oracle manages space for tables.

“High water mark” of table actually defines the border line between (ever) used and unused (never) space. While performing full table scan, Oracle will always read the data up to HWM. And if there is lot of free space with-in HWM, that is read too, and hence degrading the performance of FTS.

Now lets see how to identify HWM, unused (never used) space and free space (used but deleted/updated) and then take a call whether the concerned table is candidate for a reorganization or not.

SQL> create table test as select * from dba_tables; -- Create a table

Table created.

SQL> analyze table test compute statistics; -- Analyze it

Table analyzed.

SQL> select blocks "Ever Used", empty_blocks "Never Used", num_rows "Total rows"
2 from user_tables where table_name='TEST'; -- The number of blocks used/free

Ever Used Never Used Total rows
---------- ---------- ----------
49 6 1680

SQL> delete from test where owner='SYS'; --- Im deleting almost half the number of rows.

764 rows deleted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> analyze table test compute statistics; -- Analyze it again

Table analyzed.

SQL> select blocks "Ever Used", empty_blocks "Never Used", num_rows "Total rows"

2 from user_tables where table_name='TEST'; -- No difference in blocks usage

Ever Used Never Used Total rows
---------- ---------- ----------
49 6 916

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Even though you deleted almost half the rows, the above shows that table HWM is up to 49 blocks, and to perform any FTS, Oracle will go up to 49 blocks to search the data. If your application is so-written that there are many FTS on this table, you may consider, reorganizing this table.


Reasons to reorganization

a) Slower response time (from that table)
b) High number of chained (actually migrated) rows.
c) Table has grown many folds and the old space is not getting reused.

Note: Index based queries may not get that much benefited by reorg as compared to queries which does Full table scan.

How to reorganize?

Before Oracle 10g, there were mainly 2 ways to do the reorganization of the table
a) Export, drop, and import.
b) Alter table move (to another tablespace, or same tablespace).

Oracle 10g provides us a new way of reorganizing the data.

Shrink command: This command is only applicable for tables which are tablespace with auto segment space management.

Before using this command, you should have row movement enabled.

SQL> alter table test enable row movement;

Table altered.

There are 2 ways of using this command.

1. Break in two parts: In first part rearrange rows and in second part reset the HWM.

Part 1: Rearrange (All DML's can happen during this time)

SQL> alter table test shrink space compact;

Table altered.

Part 2: Reset HWM (No DML can happen. but this is fairly quick, infact goes unnoticed.)

SQL> alter table sa shrink space;

Table altered.

2. Do it in one go:

SQL> alter table sa shrink space; (Both rearrange and restting HWM happens in one statement)

Table altered.

Few advantages over the conventional methods

1. Unlike "alter table move ..", indexes are not in UNUSABLE state. After shrink command, indexes are updated also.

2. Its an online operation, So you dont need downtime to do this reorg.

3. It doesnot require any extra space for the process to complete.


Conclusion

Its a new 10g feature to shrink (reorg) the tables (almost) online which can be used with automatic segment space management.