These documents were written during a recent tuning project. They have been sanitized to remove proprietory references.
These were written for Oracle11g. 19c is the current Oracle version, and more changes are coming in 20c. Pluggable databases are an option today, but they are the default standard starting with 20c. We have to learn how to design, install, use and manage them. There is a whole new dimension in the Oracle catalog and another set of specialized views. In addition to the all_, user_ and dba_ views, we now have cdb_views.
Things multiply from there. The Oracle footprint changes as the number of databases increases. System tables, users and permissions increase. All of this at the same time the industry is becoming more security conscious. Those pluggable databases are going to use encryption, and the slickest forms of that encryption are called “options” in Oracle… extra-cost options. Licenses anyone?
Things multiply on the hardware side, too. Memory is cheap, and there’s lots of it. Only to a point though. The constraints of configuring the required memory model, not for just one database, but for the ASM instance, a management database instance, and another for the application instance are restrictive to start. Now we take multiple databases, pluggable, yes, apply them in a grid, perhaps; but, doing all of this in a manner to achieve the required memory model, for each… ugh! Very ugly.
In reading more recent documents it seems that Oracle is backing away from this feature. The installation procedures make it difficult, sometimes impossible, to configure the correct memory model. Correct, in that only one configuration implements self-tuning.
My plan is to investigate whether these techniques can still be applied today. I find it hard to believe that Oracle is just giving up on the self-tuning bit. As a corporation, Oracle makes various claims regarding “unbreakable” and “autonomous health’. Larry Ellison makes similar claims which are far more out-reaching than the corporate picture. We are here to figure out which and where.
Not all Oracle solutions can make all of the claims. There’s a very definite hierarchy between having an Oracle database and these other claims. Before this is all over, I hope to see detailed configuration information on Oracle’s highest level installations, presumably Exadata in their corporate cloud.
I bet it is very different than any you and I have configured.
Let’s see!