Concept:
The oracle Shared pool is the area where things (objects) are loaded for execution compilation (all database operations).
Pinning refers to the concept of keeping an object in the shared pool area.
The main reason to keep objects in shared memory is to improve system performance.
If the object is a code object such as a procedure, package, etc., you can pin the code in the cache to stop it from being removed.

How about you try to find out which objects are being loaded way too many times into the shared pool ?

Example:

/* The following query lists Owner / Object_name / Number_of_Loads*/
select OWNER,
NAME||’ - ‘||TYPE object,
LOADS
from v$db_object_cache
where LOADS > 3
and type in (’PACKAGE’,'PACKAGE BODY’,'FUNCTION’,'PROCEDURE’)
order by LOADS desc;

Using the Query above you and other factors (such as the size you have allocated to you shared pool) you can find that paramters in
$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/init.ora.

It should be listed such as:
shared_pool_size = 524288000 # 500M

Pinning Method:

connect sys/passwd
execute dbms_shared_pool.keep(OWNER_NAME.OBJECT_NAME, ‘FLAG_TYPE’);

FLAG_TYPE =
‘P’ for procedure/package/function
‘R’ for trigger
‘Q’ for sequence
‘T’ for type

Notes:
The package dbms_shared_pool must be created by running the following scripts as sys.
dbmspool.sql

-Thanks for reading.

Oracle said early Thursday that it will acquire business intelligence software maker Hyperion Solutions for $3.3 billion, or $52 a share. Oracle (ORCL) said in a release that the acquisition is “the latest move in our strategy to expand Oracle’s offerings to SAP customers,” referring to German rival SAP AG (SAP).

Shares of Oracle rose more than 2%, while shares of Hyperion (HYSL) surged more than 20%. U.S. depositary shares of SAP fell more than 2%.

Shares of most tech bellwethers also fell, including those of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Dell Inc. (DELL) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW)

Read full details

I have great respect for the author of this article. Arup Nanda is an ACE Oracle DBA and was named DBA of the year by Oracle Magazine. This article details the top features introduced to 10g and that affect the quality of work (support, performance, maintenance etc…) of DBAs specifically.

I found this article very useful and I hope you do too. Enjoy the read.

If you think politics does not impact IT. Think again !

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by US Congress and then signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8 2005, the start and end dates of Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the US have been changed, starting in 2007. so What ?
Think again, it s the database stupid. How about your timestamps ? What if you have a process that selects records from a table based on their last_update_date then massages that data and then sends an email to you customers ? All of a sudden your customers are asking themselves, why the hell am I getting this email ?

How does oracle handle Time in general:

* TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE (TSLTZ) and TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE (TSTZ) datatypes and the TZ_OFFSET function take their time zone information from Oracle’s time zone files. These files are part of the database installation, the changes to DST in the USA from 2007 are included in version 3 and higher of these time zone files. These datatypes can be used as column types or as PL/SQL types.
* The Oracle Java Virtual Machine (OJVM) uses time zone information embedded in the Oracle JVM in the database itself.
Impact of 2007 USA daylight saving changes on the Oracle database
Do I need a patch?
There are 2 database patches, one for the Oracle JVM (OJVM) and one for the time zone files. These are completely separate, and do not depend on each other in any way. The OJVM patch is only ever needed on the database side, the time zone patch might be needed on the database side and the clients.

Oracle JVM patch - for all Oracle versions 8.1.7, 9.x, 10.x (database only):

* If you have the Oracle JVM installed you are advised to apply the OJVM patch.
Time zone file patch - database side:
* This really depends on the version- I ‘d suggest you contact Oracle.

Conclusion:

I really dont recommend you take this lightly, There are patches to fix this but they all differ depending on where you have oracle installed, how it is configured etc…Instead take this seriously and treat these patches as a major release since you will experience downtime
-Thanks for reading

If you ask an American Manager or Executive the following question:

What is the most important asset in your organization ? What would he say ? Most likely the answer will be: PEOPLE.

Without people, there is no “body”, but better yet without information, there is no value added by these people. One of the hardest things global companies are having to cope with is the dispersion of information accross the enterprise. Need more storage, buy more… Before you know it, The same system you spent so much time and resources building is now is “Black Box”. What goes in never comes out.

Most companies are doing there best to come up with an internal search engine that looks at the Database(s), 8i 9i, 10g possibly the warehouse, Word Docs, Excel Docs, Executive PowerPoints, confidential Memos, notes databases, mysql DBs, the share drives, the unix files etc… (all across the WAN). and the solution just seems to be a very complicated one simply because of the following factors:

1. Each suiteof software is not supposed to easily integrate with the rest of the tools you have.
2. Too many customizations across the enterprise i.e we need a web page for the chinese branch not so much the italian one.
3. Rights and access, Users should only be able to search what they can see/edit/exec ??
4. SSO - single sign on ??
5. Network Latency and the impact on performance accross the board.

Oracle got tired of it ! and being who they are they kept this project in the back burner for years, to come out with SES:

Secure Enterprise Search Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) provides a simple Internet-like search experience to users searching secure content inside the enterprise. Oracle SES leads to higher productivity and better access to enterprise informationâ??while protecting sensitive data from unauthorized users.

His highness Larry Ellison likes to refer to it as: The Comprehensive Secure Search For All Your Data

Listen to Larry Ellison Talk about SES in the yearly Conference @ SF, Cali

Read More on SES Thanks for reading.