What are the Features of Oracle 11g

Oracle 11g has many new exciting features to offer but this article takes glance at the most valuable features that talked more about. Propose of article is to take you through the concepts of these features rather than syntax.

Oracle 11g has come with new feature that helps database administration to large extent. Let us have in depth glanced at them one by one:

Database Replay:

A exclusive tool that records the SQL statements and let you replay them at your will on same or different database server. It acts like DVR within the database. Using this approach this tool captures all the database activities beneath the SQL level in binary format and then you can replay those captured activities any time you wish. What is the benefit of such tool?

This tool reduces the risk involved in making any sort major or minor changes to your production databases. The minor changes can be like altering initialization parameters or major like upgrading systems or applying patches. This is changes are always the biggest ever concern in any of the organizations.

Even though there are many third party tools for the same purpose but Oracle Database Replay is most reliable, efficient and robust amongst them.

Database Health Monitor:

It comes to production database servers, it very essential that everything is smoothly humming. There are no time-consuming, resource consuming or error-prone processes that harm overall performance. Oracle 11g introduces Automatic Health Monitor that monitors database components automatically and records the statistics in the repository called Automatic Diagnostic Repository. It really simplifies the tasks of database administrators of monitoring various components for failures It monitors database for various components like data files and dictionaries, to make sure that they are not logically and physically corrupted. When anything goes wrong the information is recorded and also fed into various recovery advisory. Along with this there is Packing Service that creates packages when an error occurs or anything goes wrong and sent it to the Oracle support.

Various checks that Automatic Health monitor does are:

• Database structure checks.
• Data Block integrity checks.
• Resonance
• Redo Integrity checks.
• Undo segment integrity checks.
• Transaction integrity checks.
• Dictionary integrity checks, etc..

Performance Analyzer and Real-Time Monitor for SQL:

If you are interested in knowing how an execution plans for you SQL statement is and what impact it has on initialization parameters, know about the optimizer statistics refreshes etc then Oracle 11g provides more sophisticated tool that serves this purpose known as SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA). With SPA you can play out some specific SQL queries and even your entire workload against various types of changes that have impact on overall performance of database like initialization parameters and compare the reports to help improve their impact on database. With database replay you can only capture the database activities but with SPA you can know about your SQL and impact that various changes in parameters and SQL plan that has on database.

New Features in Manageability:

One thing that oracle promises with every database release is ease in manageability of database at various levels, Oracle 11g is no exception. Oracle 11g goes much more ahead in the case of manageability. It takes the responsibility of memory management, which is real big deal in production environment. Also various areas where it eases manageability is applying patches. Yes applying patches. It grabs available patches only for those features that an organization uses. Further it gathers the optimizer statistics and examines them before publishing and many more.

There is lot more about manageability but cannot be covered in the article.

Backup and Recovery Advisory:

New functionality provides advice on data recovery in database and parallel backups for same files etc. Oracle 11g has made RMAN more powerful with new features like virtual catalogs for security, duplicate databases from backups and secure backups to cloud and many more.

ASM New Features in Oracle 11g:

With introduction of Oracle 10g ASM there has been blur between database administrators and system administrators in terms of storage allocation functions. Various storage related functions till release of Oracle 11g were performed by DBA's with SYSDBA role. But now Oracle 11g has brought new role for admin who manage ASM instances know as SYSASM role. This role provides better controls for ASM administration.

Another added storage related features include:

• Variable extent size allocation that reduces the shared pool usage.
• Ability of instance to from specific disk of diskgroup.

SecureFiles New Concept of Large Object:

SecureFiles can be simply explained as extended version of LOB's that offers the best features of both the external files and database LOB's to store unstructured data. SecureFiles also allows encryption, deduplication and compression along with storage of such unstructured data.

Enhanced Caching and Pooling:

Caching is the process of storing data in memory instead of disk because accessing memory is much quicker than accessing disks. Oracle 11g has enhanced the performance of database by using new and very strong caches like SQL Result cache, PL/SQL function cache, Client Side cache and Database Resident Connection Pooling.

Schema Management:

Oracle 11g new functionality that manage database object efficiently and execute common operations fast and in simple way. Various schema management functionality that this release provides:

• DDL wait Option
• Virtual Column
• Invisible indexes
• Online Segment Shrink
• Read-only tables, etc..

OLAP and Data Warehousing:

This release of Oracle has added very powerful features for OLAP and Data Warehousing activities. The some of the features are named below, but their explanation is beyond the scope of this article.

Database Resident Cube-Organized Materialized Views:

Partition change tracking that makes identification of refresh much easier:

Analytical Workspace Manager:

And many more feature that make database more compelling platform for Data Warehousing:

Oracle 11g introduces so many automation features. Tasks of Oracle DBA is increasing. ASM feature maintains storage and so many new features are introduced like Job Scheduler. High expertise database administration is highly essential for every company. Oracle support and remote dba services is becoming important to maintain critical databases.Indeed, remote dba experts are able to manage Oracle database in critical condition and troubleshoot issues very quickly. Maintaining high security is most essential part of remote dba work. Proactive database administration tasks are equally important to manage smooth database operations during remote dba services. Dbametrix is worldwide leader in remote dba support and database services. For competitive quote, kindly contact our sales department with your technical specification and requirements.