BY TO M H AU N E RT

BY TO M H AU N E RT

Building a Better Database Machine

The Sun Oracle Database Machine is the first for OLTP and better for all applications.

uan Loaiza, senior vice president of very fast mode called compress for query, systems technology at Oracle, sat down

and we have a mode that optimizes with Tom Haunert, Oracle Magazine editor

space called compress for archive. A very in chief, to talk about Oracle Exadata V2

large financial company has achieved and the Sun Oracle Database Machine. The

19 times compression with compress following is an excerpt from that interview.

for query mode, which is a tremendous Download a podcast of the full interview at

compression rate. And a scientific cus- oracle.com/magcasts.

tomer saw 70 times compression with Oracle Magazine: What are the key tech-

compress for archive mode. nology innovations in Oracle Exadata V2

Oracle Magazine: What’s new and inno- and the Sun Oracle Database Machine?

vative about the Flash technology in Loaiza: There are three key innova-

Oracle Exadata V2? tions in Oracle Exadata V2. The first is

Loaiza: In Oracle Exadata V2, we’ve the intelligent Oracle Exadata storage

incorporated a new technology from (which we introduced in Oracle Exadata

Sun called FlashFire technology in V1) that is deployed in a grid scale-out

every storage server. architecture using InfiniBand network-

Up to now, Flash had been intro- ing. So it’s very high performance with

duced as kind of a disk replacement. very high-speed networking.

It included a disk-drive interface and Second, we’ve introduced a technology Technology at Oracle

Juan Loaiza, Senor Vice President of Systems

sat behind a disk controller, but inside called Hybrid Columnar Compression,

it was actually a bunch of Flash chips. which provides much better compres-

That was the first generation of Flash sion than we or anyone else has achieved

base servers very quickly, especially as

technology, and it worked pretty well. before. We think it’s going to have dra-

we bring Flash into the picture.

But having Flash look like a disk drive matic benefits for very large databases.

Oracle Magazine: How does Oracle’s

and sit behind a disk controller actually Third, we’ve incorporated Flash tech- Loaiza: With Hybrid Columnar

Hybrid Columnar Compression work?

limits the performance quite a bit. nology into the Sun Oracle Database

With FlashFire, Sun has introduced Machine, and we’ve done it in an inno-

Compression, we transparently reorganize

a technology where the Flash memory vative way that’s high performance, easy

the data into a column-oriented format to

actually sits on a PCI card that goes to use, low cost, and highly available.

achieve much better compression. With

directly into the motherboard of the Oracle Magazine: What’s new in intelli-

our previous generations of compres-

servers. That’s what we’re using in our gent storage in Oracle Exadata V2?

sion, we usually achieved 2 to 4 times

Oracle Exadata storage, and it’s much, Loaiza: Intelligent storage was the big

compression on user data. With Hybrid

much faster than using Flash as a disk innovation in Oracle Exadata V1, and

Columnar Compression, we typically

drive. Imagine putting DRAM into a we’ve enhanced it in Oracle Exadata

achieve 10 times or more compression.

disk form factor and sitting it behind V2. We’ve done three things to avoid

We are starting to get the early

the disk controller. You’re going to lose storage bottlenecks. First, we do query

results back from customers with very

a lot of the performance of that DRAM. processing inside storage. Second, we

large databases, and they are amazing.

Flash is a lot more like DRAM than like went away from the monolithic storage

For example, a telecom customer that

a disk drive. Flash is a semiconduc- architecture to a scale-out storage

tried Hybrid Columnar Compression

using call data records, which tradition- tor technology, and it’s much better to architecture. Our storage is made from

introduce it closer to the processors. modular building blocks that are basi-

ally don’t compress very well, is achiev-

We’re primarily using the Flash in cally servers with disks in them. Third,

ing over 6 times compression. This is

our Oracle Exadata Storage Servers we use an InfiniBand network that runs

much higher compression than we’ve

as a cache in front of the disk drives. at 40Gb/second. That’s key to getting

ever seen before with call data records.

We have 5TB of Flash in a one-rack lots of data from storage into the data-

We have two modes for Hybrid

Columnar Compression. We have a

Sun Oracle Database Machine, and

BOB ADLER

18 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

in Oracle Exadata V2. If we achieve 10 goes on disk and which data goes on

Oracle Exadata V2 to greatly speed up

times compression with our Hybrid Flash. And as data becomes active, we’ll one-rack Sun Oracle Database Machine,

OLTP. With the Flash that we have in a

Columnar Compression technology, the move it automatically into Flash so that

customers’ very large data warehouses— subsequent accesses will get the perfor-

we can run at more than a million

whether they’re 1TB, 10TB, 50TB, or mance of Flash.

I/Os per second, which is a rate that has

100TB, can be shrunk in size. This Oracle Magazine: How can OLTP [online

never been seen before. Before Oracle

greatly improves performance. Also, transaction processing] customers

Exadata V2, it would take around 100

it’s very cumbersome to do backup or benefit from Oracle Exadata V2?

racks of storage to achieve that kind of

restore or reorganization of the data on Loaiza: In Oracle Exadata V2, we’ve

performance, and it would cost millions

these extremely large systems. If you introduced support for OLTP, so OLTP

and millions of dollars.

can shrink the size by a factor of 10, it customers get great benefits from the

Oracle Magazine: How do storage and

makes it an order of magnitude easier to intelligent storage grid. We’re able to

performance compare between Oracle

manage and also gives much lower cost offload query operations for OLTP just

Exadata V1 and Oracle Exadata V2?

and much higher performance. ■ like we do for data warehousing.

Loaiza: In Oracle Exadata V1 we had

the intelligent, scale-out storage grid,

One of the unique features of Oracle

and we were able to run queries at a

next STEPS

technology is that we’re able to run

rate of 14GB/second off disk. That’s 5

very complex and sophisticated OLTP

to 10 times faster than other storage

LISTEN to the podcast

applications in a scale-out grid infra-

devices that were much bigger than

oracle.com/magcasts

structure using Oracle RAC [Oracle Real

ours. In Oracle Exadata V2 the disk

READ more about

Application Clusters]. This includes

performance is 50 percent faster than

Oracle Exadata V2

applications such as Siebel, PeopleSoft, oracle.com/database/exadata.html in Oracle Exadata V1. But more impor- and Oracle E-Business Suite. The other

tantly, the compression technologies are

Sun Oracle Database Machine

oracle.com/database/database-machine.html

key OLTP feature is the use of Flash in

a key part of the data-warehousing story

ORACLE MAGAZINE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

book BEAT

Oracle JDeveloper 11g Handbook

By Duncan Mills, Peter Koletzke, and Avrom

INQUIRA NOW INTEGRATES WITH SIEBEL CONTACT CENTER AND ORACLE CRM ON DEMAND Roy-Faderman

customer inquiries. iConnect for Siebel www.mhprofessional.com

Oracle partner InQuira has announced

Oracle Press

iConnect for Siebel Contact Center,

Contact Center also provides historical

context for customer requests and sum- This book shows you how to build Java

an enterprise knowledge management

maries of relevant content. Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) Web

solution that integrates with Oracle’s

In other news, InQuira’s on- Oracle Application Development Framework

Siebel Contact Center desktop. Key

applications using Oracle JDeveloper 11g,

demand Web self-service applications (Oracle ADF), and JavaServer Faces. The

features of iConnect for Siebel Contact

are now integrated with Oracle CRM authors, a group of Oracle JDeveloper experts,

Center include guided assistance, linked

On Demand. The integrated solution discuss the latest technologies and explain how

answers, smart excerpts, and managed

enables customers to go seamlessly to develop code using multiple techniques. They

answers. Siebel Service Request data,

from self-service to agent-assisted you through the creation of a complete sample

such as product information and request

provide hands-on practice examples to walk

service, while providing service agents application that employs highly interactive

summaries, provides context for agent

with a view of customer issues and user interface components and declarative

searches, while InQuira’s natural lan-

guage processing capabilities understand

actions taken.

development methods. Oracle PL/SQL

ARROW ECS TARGETS RESELLERS WITH ORACLE TRAINING BOOT CAMPS Programming

ligence, business process management, By Steven Feuerstein and

Oracle Certified Advantage Partner

content management, Oracle Coherence, Bill Pribyl

Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions

Oracle WebLogic Server, and Oracle O’Reilly Media

(Arrow ECS) has become an authorized

Application Integration Architecture. www.oreilly.com

Oracle Enablement 2.0 Delivery Partner,

which allows Arrow ECS to offer Oracle

The two- and three-day regional boot

camps provide a combination of class- In the fifth edition of this definitive reference,

boot camp training to resellers. Oracle

room lectures and hands-on training. authors Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl cover

boot camp training, designed exclu-

Arrow ECS will also offer one-day sales language fundamentals, advanced coding

sively for Oracle resellers, focuses on

demand-generation training in conjunc- techniques, and best practices for using Oracle’s

Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion

tion with the technical boot camps. procedural language. Thoroughly updated for

Middleware, including business intel-

Oracle Database 11g Release 2, this edition reveals new PL/SQL features and provides

ORACLE ANNOUNCES ORACLE EXADATA PARTNER PROGRAM

extensive code samples that range from

ucts. Solution providers and systems inte- simple examples to complex and complete real

Oracle has created the Oracle Exadata

grators in the program can build Oracle applications. The book is ideal for novices and

Partner Program, which supports Oracle

Exadata expertise and implementation experienced Oracle programmers alike.

partners that resell Sun Oracle Database

services around business intelligence, Oracle Essbase &

Machines and Sun Oracle Exadata

data warehousing, very large databases, Oracle OLAP

Storage Servers. Resellers participating in

and online transaction processing envi- By Michael Schrader,

the Oracle Exadata Partner Program must

ronments, as well as expertise in the Dan Vlamis, Mike Nader,

be enrolled in the Oracle PartnerNetwork

retail, financial services, communications, Chris Claterbos, Dave Collins, Mitch Campbell,

and hold a valid Full Use Distribution

healthcare, and public sector industries. and Floyd Conrad

Agreement to resell Oracle Exadata prod-

Oracle Press

ATTUNITY INTRODUCES DATA REPLICATION SOLUTION

www.mhprofessional.com

Attunity, an Oracle partner with Oracle

and processes only the changes made to

heterogeneous relational and nonrela- In the first-ever book to cover both Oracle

Warehouse Builder certification, has

tional enterprise datasources. processing), a group of product experts explains

introduced solutions enabling Oracle

Essbase and Oracle OLAP (online analytical

Attunity solutions include a stand- the unique features and benefits of these

customers to replicate data in real time

alone operational data replication products. This book details how to architect an

to and from Oracle databases. The solu-

application for replicating data across het- OLAP solution that meets varying requirements.

tions are based on a concept Attunity

erogeneous datasources, an operational It provides proven techniques for building

calls “operational data replication,”

data replication solution that can be an OLAP environment and presents real-world

which supports real-time business intel-

robust applications and tuning and maintaining

integrated with existing database invest- case studies.

ligence requirements and is an alterna-

tive to homegrown data replication

ments, and an event-driven operational

data replication that captures database Look for Oracle books at otn.oracle

solutions and enterprise data replication

change events. All three solutions support .com/bookstore.

software packages. Attunity’s low-impact

change data capture technology captures

Oracle as a source or target for data.

20 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

ORAC LE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

ORACLE MAGAZINE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

WIPRO ANNOUNCES SAAS PLATFORM Oracle Certified Advantage Partner

Wipro Technologies has unveiled w-SaaS, a platform for rapid software- as-a-service (SaaS) enablement of busi- ness applications using Oracle Grid Computing and Oracle application grid middleware. The w-SaaS platform will help independent software vendors (ISVs) move business applications to SaaS so traditional single-tenant applica- tions can operate in multitenant mode. The platform is initially aimed at the energy and utilities, retail, transporta- tion, healthcare, and manufacturing industries in North America.

Wipro has also signed a codevelop- ment agreement with Oracle to develop process integration packs using Oracle Application Integration Architecture for the communications, retail, consumer products, high-tech, and industrial manufacturing industries. The process integration packs will include campaign to cash for high-tech companies, order to activate for communications compa- nies, and design to release for process manufacturing companies.

JGI LAUNCHES ORACLE ACCELERATE SOLUTION FOR NONPROFITS JGI, an Oracle Certified Partner, has released an application implementa- tion solution for Oracle’s PeopleSoft enterprise human capital management and financial management software for midsize nonprofit organizations. This Oracle Accelerate solution provides a fixed-cost and fixed-scope approach to human capital management and finan- cial management. JGI uses a lab-based deployment approach in which it hosts the development environment on its servers and conducts the majority of the project development work there. The solution can later be moved to the cus- tomer’s data center, or it can continue to

be hosted by JGI. JGI also offers Oracle Accelerate solu- tions for the financial, media and enter- tainment, healthcare, and professional services industries.

ZEUS ANNOUNCES ZEUS TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE TEMPLATE FOR ORACLE VM Zeus Technology, a software-based

application traffic management company and an Oracle partner, has announced the Zeus Traffic Manager Template,

a preinstalled, preconfigured virtual machine for Oracle VM. The Zeus Template for Oracle VM speeds deploy- ment of the Zeus Traffic Manager, an enterprise-class, layer-7 load-balancing and application-traffic-management

solution, in an Oracle VM environ- ment. Developers can use Zeus Traffic Manager to control Web application traffic via Zeus TrafficScript, a program- ming language that works with Eclipse through the Zeus Eclipse plug-in.

The product, available for free down- load, is certified with Oracle Enterprise Linux and can be deployed in any phys- ical, virtual, or cloud environment.

NETSUITE LINKS CLOUD-BASED SOFTWARE WITH ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE NetSuite, a vendor of cloud comput-

ing business management software, has unveiled NetSuite OneWorld for Oracle,

a new version of its NetSuite OneWorld software-as-a-service application that enables Oracle E-Business Suite enterprise customers to deploy NetSuite business applications at the divisional level while retaining corporate Oracle applications.

The offering uses a new integration solution called SuiteCloud Connect for Oracle to integrate NetSuite OneWorld for Oracle with Oracle E-Business

Suite. With SuiteCloud Connect for Oracle, companies can combine Oracle E-Business Suite and NetSuite OneWorld for Oracle to manage multinational, multisubsidiary businesses in real time. Division-level transaction and summary data can be rolled from NetSuite OneWorld for Oracle into Oracle E-Business Suite for an enterprisewide view of business operations. For example,

a company could roll up general ledger, order, and revenue information for aggre- gate financial reporting.

INFOGAIN UNVEILS FIVE INITIATIVES FOR RETAILERS Oracle Certified Partner Infogain is offer-

ing five solutions to support retailers of all sizes that use Oracle Retail applica- tions. Infogain’s Retail Store System Implementation uses a dual-shore model and an iterative methodology to assess and implement Oracle Retail store appli- cations. Infogain’s Retail Merchandising Solution uses built-in accelerators, inter- faces, and reusable templates and scripts to integrate Oracle Retail merchandising applications with back-end financial and front-end store solutions. Infogain’s Retail Application Management Solution manages the application lifecycle and product environments across devel-

opment, support, and production, and provides assessment monitoring, maintenance support, administration, and other services. Infogain’s Retail Oracle E-Business Suite Integration, a framework of prebuilt accelerators and interfaces, integrates front-end store and point-of-sale solutions with back-end systems, including financials and inven- tory. The last solution, Infogain’s Oracle BI for Retailers, enables Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, Enterprise Edition Plus functionality on Oracle Retail Data Warehouse, so an organization’s employ- ees can access analytical information optimized for their roles.

ALTOVA UPDATES MAPFORCE DATA MAPPING TOOL MapForce 2010, the latest version of

Oracle partner Altova’s data mapping tool, allows users to process data from or into multiple files, making it easy to consolidate file collections or output data from one file to many. Input or

output filenames can now be used as parameters, enabling the user to generate dynamic mappings in which this information is defined at runtime. MapForce 2010 provides native support for Oracle Database 11g.