WebLogic Express Edition Discontinued

I was notified yesterday by a colleague that Oracle will no longer be selling WebLogic Server Express Edition as of June 1, 2009.

What about a public announcement from Oracle regarding this event?  I can’t find one.  In fact, the response I was given is Oracle has made no public statement about the discontinuance and they do not intend to do so.   Oracle is handling it on a case by case basis when customers request quotes or information.  However, Oracle will continue to support WebLogic Server Express Edition for the next 9 years.

We use WebLogic Server Express Edition because it provided a more cost effective solution and we didn’t need the full functionality and higher cost associated with WebLogic Server Standard Edition.

According to the Oracle Online Store (http://oraclestore.oracle.com), WebLogic Server Standard Edition is licensed at $200 per named user or $10,000 per processor.  At the moment it is unclear to me regarding the Named User Plus minimum requirements.  I will need to talk to an Oracle Rep.

If I recall correctly, a WebLogic Server Express license was around $800 per processor.  One will expect to pay 10x more when comparing that to Oracle’s $10,000 per processor cost.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else is aware of and/or affected by WebLogic Sever Express being discontinued.

Oracle 10.2.0.4 memory corruption

Thanks to a September 23, 2008 Oracle-L post by Jesse Rich, I was notified of a memory corruption problem in 10.2.0.4 Patch 5 and above.

According to Metalink Note 737957.1, the “problem is introduced by the fix of Bug 5386874 in 10.2.0.4, Patch 5.”  Additional information found in the Note:

If the move to Patch 5 or higher has been made and there is no option to revert back to the situation before applying, then the following workaround can be considered:

“event=”10049 trace name context forever, level 2″
# memory protect KGL objs

Do NOT set this event at session level. Only set it in the init.ora / spfile.

It is not possible to get the corrected fix into Patch 9.  The corrected fix is anticipated for Patch 10 but this cannot be guaranteed at the time of writing.

I forgot about this for a couple of months  when I decided to check again.  On November 6, 2008, the same note was updated with:

It is now confirmed that the correct fix is indeed made available into Patch 10.

Upon further investigation, it appears 10.2.0.4 Patch 12 (Patch 7522473) is the most recent patch available for 32-bit Windows.

Oracle10g ORA-27300 error

My Oracle10g (10.2.0.4 Standard Edition) database running on Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition SP2 with 3GB of RAM was intermittently encountering the errors below in the alert.log:

Thu Oct 02 13:06:09 2008
Process startup failed, error stack:
Thu Oct 02 13:06:09 2008
Errors in file i:\oradba\admin\stad101\bdump\stad101_psp0_7268.trc:
ORA-27300: OS system dependent operation:CreateThread failed with status: 8
ORA-27301: OS failure message: Not enough storage is available to process this command.
ORA-27302: failure occurred at: ssthrddcr

In addition, a corresponding error was found in the Windows Event Viewer:

Unable to begin another thread.

Searched Google using “unable to begin another thread” and found a discussion on the OTN Discussion Forum mentioning the /3GB switch.

More information on how to set this switch in this Microsoft Technet article.  Some in-depth information about the /3GB switch from Ask the Performance Team.  Amit Bansal provides some insight on AWE at AskDba.org.

The plan right now is to set the OS switch and reboot the server.  We’ll see if this resolves the problem.  My initial thoughts are positive from what I have read and when this error occurs.  I will update this blog entry once I have a more definitive result.

References
DBASupport.com Forum – Calculate Size of PGA

Update (24-Oct-2008)
The Oracle instance has been running for two weeks now since we set the /3GB switch.  We have yet to encounter any errors as previously mentioned.

Oracle10g RECYCLEBIN

Shortly after using Oracle10g on a more regular basis, I knew about the RECYCLEBIN and how it might be a good idea to purge it on a nightly basis especially for a development environment. However, I recently noticed on one of my development databases the developers appeared to be dropping and re-creating all objects in a schema on a daily basis. Sometimes more than once a day which made for a lengthy purge process in terms of duration.

I do not utilize the Flashback Table feature which made me ponder the thought of how to disable the RECYCLEBIN and just have objects dropped and be forever gone as in versions prior to Oracle10g.

Now I could explain to the developers that if they use the PURGE clause, this will delete the objects and bypass the RECYCLEBIN.

DROP TABLE t1 PURGE;

But somehow I know that knowledge will be lost somewhere down the line and I will be right back where I started and still purging the RECYCLEBIN on a nightly basis.

Instead I disabled the RECYCLEBIN in the currently running instance:

alter system set recyclebin = off;

and set the recyclebin parameter in the init.ora.

recyclebin = off

Now the objects will be dropped and forever gone. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to live with in this specific development environment.

You can find more detailed information about the RECYCLEBIN in Madan Mohan K’s post called “How to Purge the RECYCLEBIN in Oracle 10g“.

References
Oracle® Database Reference 10g Release 2
Oracle® Database Administrator’s Guide 10g Release 2

Oracle10g Privileges to Create Materialized Views

In a previous post, I mentioned the privileges required to create materialized views in Oracle8i and Oracle9i Standard Edition. In Oracle10g, the requirement appears to be much more simplified.

Just needed to grant the CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW system privilege.

MIKE@statest> select * from user_sys_privs;

USERNAME      PRIVILEGE                         ADM
MIKE        CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW      NO

Roles granted are listed below for completeness of the topic.

MIKE@statest> select * from user_role_privs;

USERNAME       GRANTED_ROLE             ADM DEF OS_
MIKE           CONNECT                  NO  YES NO
MIKE           RESOURCE                 NO  YES NO

We are running Oracle10g Release 2 Standard Edition in which QUERY REWRITE is not an enabled feature. Describing what I mean, I create a test table below upon which the materialized view will be based.

MIKE@statest> create table t1 as select owner,object_name,object_type from all_objects;

Table created.

MIKE@statest> select count(*) from t1;

COUNT(*)
———-
4196

Again when I attempt to create the materialized view with the “enable query rewrite” clause, I encounter the “feature not enabled” error.

MIKE@statest> create materialized view mv_test
2 refresh complete on commit
3 enable query rewrite
4 as
5 select object_type, count(*)
6 from t1
7 group by object_type;

from t1
*
ERROR at line 6:
ORA-00439: feature not enabled: Materialized view rewrite

I remove the “enable query rewrite” clause and the materialized view is created successfully.

MIKE@statest> create materialized view mv_test
2 refresh complete on commit
3 as
4 select object_type, count(*)
5 from t1
6 group by object_type;

Materialized view created.

References
Oracle Database 10g Product Family

Additional information on materialized views from Oracle8i to Oracle11g can be found on this post.