This Log Buffer Edition covers Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL blog posts of the week.

Oracle:

Improving PL/SQL performance in APEX

A utility to extract and present PeopleSoft Configuration and Performance Data

No, Oracle security vulnerabilities didn’t just get a whole lot worse this quarter.  Instead, Oracle updated the scoring metric used in the Critical Patch Updates (CPU) from CVSS v2 to CVSS v3.0 for the April 2016 CPU.  The Common Vulnerability Score System (CVSS) is a generally accepted method for scoring and rating security …

You can get many returns from a Google search for “MySQL Query Best Practices” or “MySQL Query Optimization.” The drawback is that too many rules can provide confusing or even conflicting advice. After doing some research and tests, I outlined the essential and important ones below:

1) Use proper data types

1.1) Use the smallest data types if possible

MySQL tries to load as much data as possible into memory (innodb-buffer-pool, key-buffer), so a small data type means more rows of data in memory, thus improving performance. Also, small data sizes reduces disk i/o.

1.2) Use Fixed-length Data Types if Possible

MySQL can calculate quickly the position of a fixed-length column in a specific row of a table.

With the flexible-length data type, the row size is not fixed, so every time it needs to do a seek, MySQL might consult the primary key …

I’ve previously evaluated MariaDB’s 10.1 implementation of data encryption at rest (https://www.pythian.com/blog/data-encryption-rest), and recently did the same for Oracle’s implementation (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/innodb-tablespace-encryption.html) in their MySQL 5.7.

First, here’s a walkthrough of enabling encryption for MySQL 5.7:

1. Install keyring plugin.

1a. Add the following to the [mysqld] section of /etc/my.cnf:

View the code on Gist.

1b. Restart the server:

...
service mysqld restart

1c. Verify:

... …

This Log Buffer Edition rounds up blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

jq is a unix utility that can parse json files and pull out individual elements – think of it as sed/awk for json files.

Some thoughts about analyzing performance problems.

Microsites: Add a Map Component and Publish your Microsite

New Installation Cookbook: Oracle Linux 6.7 with Oracle 11.2.0.4 RAC

Are you worried about what to do now that …

This Log Buffer Edition digs deep into the realms of Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL and brings together a few of the top blog posts.

Oracle

We’ve all encountered a situation when you want to check a simple query or syntax for your SQL and don’t have a database around. Of course, most of us have at least a virtual machine for that, but it takes time to fire it up, and if you work from battery, it can leave you without power pretty quickly.

View Criteria is set to execute in Database mode by default. There is option to change execution mode to Both. This would execute query and fetch results from database and from memory.  Such query execution is useful, when we want to include newly created (but not …

This Log Buffer Edition rounds up Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL blog posts of the week.

Oracle:

When using strings such as “FREQ=DAILY; BYDAY=MON,TUE,WED,THU,FRI; BYHOUR=9,10? within the scheduler, sometimes its not readily apparent how this will translate to actual dates and times of the day that the scheduled activity will run. To help you understand, a nice little utility is to use EVALUATE_CALENDAR_STRING”.

Most developers have struggled with wires in SOA composites. You may find yourself in a situation where a wire has been deleted. Some missing wires are restored by JDeveloper. Other missing wires have to be added manually, by simply re-connecting the involved adapters and components. …

It is not uncommon that we need to filter out some DBs or Tables while setting up replication. It is important to understand how MySQL evaluates/process the replication filtering rules to avoid the conflicting or confusion while we setting them up.The purpose of this blog is to illustrate the rules and provide some suggestions for best practice.

MySQL provides 3 levels of filters for setting up replication: Binary log, DB and Table. The binlog filters apply on the master to control how to log the changes. Since MySQL replication is based on the binlog, it is the first level filter and has the highest priority. While the DB-level and Table-level filters apply on the slaves, since each table belongs to a schema, the DB-level filters have higher priority than the Table-level ones. Inside the Table-level filters, MySQl will evaluate the options in the order of: …

This Log Buffer Edition brings some top of the list blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

An Exadata quarter rack has two database servers and three storage cells. In a typical setup, such a system would have three ASM disk groups, say DATA, RECO and DBFS_DG. Usually the disk group DATA would be high redundancy and the other two disk groups would be normal redundancy.

Best practice for calling web services from Oracle Process Cloud Service

2 Min Tech Tips at Oracle OpenWorld: Are You Ready for Your Close-Up?

Are your …

Overview

DDL (Data Definition Language) statements create, alter, and remove database objects. These types of changes can be a very dangerous action to take on such a critical piece of your infrastructure. You want to make sure that the command that you are executing has been given proper thought and testing.

In this post I go through multiple version of MySQL and verify the best course of action to take in regards to executing DDL statements.  There are many things that you have to consider when making these types of changes, such as disk space, load on the database server, slave replication, the type of DDL statement you are executing, and if it will lock the table. 

Because of these risks, there are tools that can be used to help mitigate some of the dangers. But unless you have tested and verified their functionality, these tools in themselves can cause trouble. Whenever in doubt, take the time to test …

This Log Buffer Edition covers weekly round up of blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

The Universal Theme introduced with APEX 5 is immensely good looking and comes with a powerful Theme Roller to customize it.

The implementation of Ksplice has been greatly simplified. Now you just need to register your system(s) with Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN), subscribe to the appropriate Ksplice channel, use the yum command to install the uptrack package, and perform any custom configuration. Your systems will be automatically updated with the latest kernel and user space patches.

Every …