15 August 2003

Taking another look through the sessions catalogue for the San Franscisco Openworld next month, I noticed a session entitled "Data Pump in Oracle Database 10g: Foundation for Ultrahigh-Speed Data Movement Utilities". This looks interesting... According to the presentation due to be given by George Claborn, Consulting Software Engineer, Oracle Corporation: "This presentation covers the Data Pump, a callable database server facility for very-high-performance data and metadata movement, introduced in Oracle Database 10g. New export and import utilities are the first clients of the Data Pump API. They are designed to be complete replacements for the venerable exp and imp utilities and can perform tasks in minutes that previously took hours or even days. Among the Data Pump capabilities exploited by these new clients are coordinated high-speed parallel streams of unload and load, job stop and restart, direct loading of one instance from another, automatic dump file set management, job size estimating, improved job monitoring, flexible object selection, and SQL script generation. " So, at first glance, its looking like a replacement for IMP and EXP, rather than something building on the Oracle 9i ETL functions such as Oracle Streams. Nevertheless, should be worth a look at the paper and presentation when it becomes available. 7:03:17 PM

The Analytic Workspace Manager is now scheduled for release at the end of August 2003, and will require an additional patch on top of the 9.2.0.4.0 patch set. According to Anthony Waite on the OTN OLAP Forum: "The GUI Analytic Workspace Manager will release at the end of August. It will require an OLAP Catalog patch called 9.2.0.4.0x on top of the just released (Unix platforms only; Windows is within a week) RDBMS 9.2.0.4.0 patch set. In the meantime, you could start working with APIs found within the RDBMS 9.2.0.4.0 patch set. Please note, once AWM releases, we will release on OTN two new books - OLAP Reference Guide and OLAP Developer's Guide. " 6:35:27 PM

I'm in the process of taking my Oracle 9i Database Oracle Certified Professional exams, and this afternoon passed the third of the exams, Oracle 9i Database : Performance Tuning. I know the OCP gets a lot of stick from cynical old bearded DBAs who dismiss it as meaningless compared to years of on the job experience, but I have to say that, having taken three of the exams now, you've got to know your stuff to get a pass grade. Whilst i'd never consider a candidate for a DBA role who'd got the OCP but no 'on the job' experience, in most cases you're having to decide between two people with similar levels of experience, and having the OCP shows that they've taken the time to properly understand what is quite a complicated subject. More and more, all Oracle's tools and products are based on the Oracle server, and it's critically important to understand just how it works and fits together. Taking the OCP for me was a way to ensure that i've got a solid understanding of the core database product, especially now that so many of Oracle's previously standalone BI&W products are now integrated into the database. 4:49:27 PM