1. Look Before You Leap! Oracle 11g Real Application Testing
Gavin Soorma,
Senior Oracle DBA, HBOSA

2. Change Management and its challenges
Change is mandatory – Legal compliance, security, product support
Change is technology driven to enable business to have a competitive edge
Significant time, effort and money is spent before system changes can be successfully deployed in a production environment
Many issues go undetected until production deployment adversely affecting application availability, user confidence and reputation
Inability of test scripts and simulation tools to test using real production workloads.
Test workloads not accurate representations of peak production workloads.

3. Oracle 11g Real Application Testing
Two Components
Database Replay
SQL Performance Analyzer
Capture live workload on production system
Replay production workload on test system with the same timing, concurrency, dependency and transactional properties of the original workload
Testing cycles for complex applications is reduced from months to few days – faster deployment
Reduce cost of change and risk of change

4. Database Replay
With Database Replay, DBA’s and System Administrators can test:
Database upgrades, patches, parameter, schema changes, etc.
Configuration changes such as conversion from a single instance to RAC,ASM, etc.
Storage, network, interconnect changes
Operating system migrations
Hardware migrations
Patches, upgrades,
Database parameter changes
**Database Upgrades – to 11g is now supported**

5. SPA – SQL Performance Analyzer
Predict regression in SQL statements performance before end users are affected.
Assess impact of change on SQL response time
Unit testing of single SQL or set of SQL statements
Optimizer version changes, access path changes, database parameter changes, index addition and deletion etc
Database Replay
Replay real database workload
Assess impact of change on total workload throughput
SPA
‘What if’ analysis and predicts deviations in SQL performance

7. apex:/u01/oracle/scripts> cat load.sh
for i in do
echo Running Query $i ...
echo
sqlplus -s sh/sh <<EOF
set timing on
@query.sql
EOF
Done
apex:/u01/oracle/scripts> cat query.sql
select b.country_id,country_name,sum(quantity_sold),sum(amount_sold)
from sales a, customers b,countries c
where a.cust_id=b.cust_id
and b.country_id =c.country_id
and a.cust_id=987
group by b.country_id,country_name /
...
and a.cust_id=1660

16. SQL> SELECT INDEX_NAME FROM USER_INDEXES WHERE TABLE_NAME='SALES';
SALES_PROD_BIX
SALES_CUST_BIX
SALES_TIME_BIX
SALES_CHANNEL_BIX
SALES_PROMO_BIX
SQL> ALTER INDEX SALES_PROD_BIX INVISIBLE;
Index altered.
SQL> ALTER INDEX SALES_CUST_BIX INVISIBLE;
SQL> ALTER INDEX SALES_TIME_BIX INVISIBLE;
SQL> ALTER INDEX SALES_CHANNEL_BIX INVISIBLE;
SQL> ALTER INDEX SALES_PROMO_BIX INVISIBLE;
SQL> SHOW PARAMETER USE_INVISIBLE
NAME TYPE VALUE
optimizer_use_invisible_indexes boolean FALSE

26. Database Replay Workflow
Workload Capture
External client requests to the database tracked and stored in binary files called capture files
Workload Processing
Before replay, captured workload files have to be processed.
Process once – replay many times
Transforms captured data into replay files
Workload Replay
Replay Clients will run the captured and processed workload files on the target server
Analysis and Reporting
Analyze capture and replay and report any errors or divergence in data. Compare AWR reports gathered at both capture and replay and provide comparison reports

33. apex:/u01/oracle/capture> ls -l
total 66640
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkch00384c.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkch003n6y.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkch003s46.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkcs00245s.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkcs00284k.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkd000202y.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkd0003s50.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkd4003s3h.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:11 wcr_4j3pkd8003h0c.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkds002h0w.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkds003c6q.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkf8002c14.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_4j3pkg0003w6k.rec
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:15 wcr_ca.dmp
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:15 wcr_ca.log
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:11 wcr_cr.html
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:11 wcr_cr.text
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:11 wcr_fcapture.wmd
-rw-r oracle dba Jul 29 14:02 wcr_scapture.wmd

43. Start The Replay Clients
apex:/u01/oracle/capture> wrc replaydir=/u01/oracle/capture userid=system password=oracle
Workload Replay Client: Release Production on Tue Jul 29 14:41:
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Wait for the replay to start (14:41:23)

51. Q & A Thanks for attending!! Q U E S T I O N S A N S W E R S
GAVIN SOORMA
Senior Oracle DBA Specialist
HBOS Australia
Contact me at : or A