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Larry Ellison always has something interesting to say during his first keynote of Oracle OpenWorld, and OOW 2013 has been no exception. Larry talked about a new feature for Oracle Database 12c – the in-memory database option – that’s going to allow simultaneous row-level storage (just like we’ve always stored data) and column-level storage (essentially as an in-memory object structure) which will … wait for it! … make the need for non-selective, non-PK indexes irrelevant.

This new feature will be quite simple to implement; all we’ll need to do is

• Set a new initialization parameter (inmemory_size) to an appropriate size
• Identify the tables that we want to leverage IMDO
• Remove any non-selective indexes
• Step back and watch the performance for all queries for those tables increase dramatically

During a live demo on Sunday, Larry remarked this new feature can offer well over 100x query performance improvements; in fact, the demonstrated query performance improvement actually peaked at 1390x for several billion rows queried.

As an Oracle DBA, I am pumped to try this feature out, as I’ve got several clients who can leverage this option immediately, and it offers a compelling reason to consider upgrading to 12c as soon as possible. I talked with several Oracle representatives at the Exhibitor’s Hall yesterday and they told me that IMDO (that’s my acronym for now) will be available in Oracle Database release 12.1.0.2. I’ll keep you posted on IMDO in future posts.

First off, if you attended my presentation this morning at 08:00 AM PDT in San Francisco: thanks very much! We had a great turnout of over 300 people with a bit of SRO in the back of the room, even for a Sunday right after the chaos of everyone attempting to register at OOW 2013 just a few moments earlier.

Several of you asked me if my presentation was available for review. Since I’m not sure if it will be available until OOW 2013 concludes, I’ve posted it here on my Presentations page. Please take a look and don’t be shy if you have questions – send me an e-mail and I’ll do the very best I can to answer them.

If you’re still at OOW 2013, have a great conference and safe travels to wherever home is for you.

After what seems an interminable wait, Oracle Database 12c Release 1 has finally been approved for general availability. I’ve been presenting on, experimenting with, and writing about 12c topics for the past several weeks and months and I’m pleasantly surprised with what I’ve found so far, especially the new Container Database (CDBs) and Pluggable Database (PDB) features.

I’ve also been working with my able colleague and good friend Anuj Mohan to build and promote the IOUG Oracle Database 12c Special Interest Group (SIG) on LinkedIn. Anuj and I will be posting new topics every week or so on that LinkedIn SIG, so please be sure to stay tuned to that SIG for new topics. We’ve already reached nearly 100 members, but we’re looking for contributions and discussions as we continue to explore Oracle Database 12c’s rich new feature sets.

Finally, I recently found out that I’ll be one of the lead-off hitters at the IOUG Sunday session extravaganza at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 on September 23, 2013. I’ll be presenting an updated version of my COLLABORATE13 session on my exploration of Oracle Database 12c’s most useful new features. If you’d like to get a taste of that presentation before OOW, we’ll be presenting it as an IOUG webinar at 13:00 CDT on Wednesday, August 28th. You can sign up for this webinar here.

Happy computing! and I hope to meet you virtually at the upcoming webinar, or in person at OOW2013.

 

Cowardly Lion: I just hope my courage holds out.

Scarecrow: I just hope your tail holds out!

–          From The Wizard of Oz (with apologies to Frank L. Baum)

There’s an old saw in the IT industry about the difference between an old contractor and a new contractor. The new contractor is always saying, “I just wish I had more clients!” while the old contractor sighs and says, “I just wish I had more time.” The past several weeks has made me appreciate the truth behind that proverb, as I’ve finally gotten my marching orders for the next several months:

On February 6, 2013 at 11:00 CST, I’ll be presenting at the Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) 2^nd annual 2013 Exadata SIG Virtual Conference. I’ll do my level best to demystify Exadata’s I/O Resource Manager (IORM) features, including a detailed discussion of how to implement and monitor IORM in an Exadata Database Machine environment. Perhaps just as importantly, I’ll also discuss why IORM offers several potential advantages in every Exadata environment as our C-level management continues to insist that we all get used to “doing more with less.”

If you’re planning to attend IOUG’s COLLABORATE13 conference in Denver, Colorado during the week of Sunday, April 7th, be sure to set aside some time to attend my presentation, An Exploration of the Next Generation of the Oracle Database, on the rich new feature set of Oracle 12c Database. I’ll be talking about the top features that any Oracle 11g DBA can bring to bear immediately in the cloud-centric world of Oracle 12c, especially Container databases (CDBs) and Pluggable databases (PDBs), Automatic Data Optimization (ADO), automatic data redaction via security policies, and several other impressive new features. (Note: My presentation is scheduled for Thursday, April 11^th at 11:00 MST, but be sure to check the conference’s schedule in the coming weeks because I have a feeling I may be presenting this topic more than once at that conference.)

Finally, if you’re in the neighborhood of Scandinavia during the week of Sunday, April 14^th, please join the Oracle User’s Group Norway (OUGN) for its 2013 Oracle Varseminar. This conference starts in Oslo, Norway on April 17^th and proceeds shipboard via the MV Color Magic across the Baltic Sea for a three-day round-trip cruise between Oslo and Kiel, Germany. I’ll be presenting on two of my favorite topics: When Smart Scan Plays Dumb, Teach Exadata Some New Tricks – in other words, how to make Smart Scan “pay attention” when it otherwise refuses to cooperate; and Parallelize or Perish! Implementing Oracle 11gR2 Parallelism Features for Maximum Performance, during which I’ll
discuss how to leverage Oracle 11gR2 Database’s parallelism features like Auto Degree of Parallelism (ADOP) and In-Memory Parallel Execution (IMPE) for faster, more efficient execution of both SQL queries and DML statements

So cue the flying monkeys. And I just hope my tail holds out.