Accessing MySQL Database(s) from StarOffice / OpenOffice.org Suite of Applications

This blog post is organized into two major sections and several sub-sections. The major sections focus on the tasks to be performed at the MySQL server and the *Office client while the sub-sections talk about the steps to be performed in detail.

To show the examples in this exercise, we will be creating a new MySQL database user with user ID SOUSER. This new user will be granted read-only access to couple of tables in a MySQL database called ISVe. The database can be accessed from any host in the network. ben10.sfbay is the hostname of the MySQL server.

Tasks to be Performed at the MySQL Server

This section is intended only for the MySQL Server Administrators. If you are an end-user, skip ahead to Tasks to be Performed at the Client side.

Create a new MySQL user and grant required privileges.

eg.,

% mysql -u root -p
Enter password: *****
Server version: 5.1.25-rc-standard Source distribution
..

mysql> CREATE USER SOUSER IDENTIFIED BY 'SOUSER';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> show grants for SOUSER;
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for SOUSER@%                                                                                   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'SOUSER'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*8370607DA2602E52F463FF3B2FFEA53E81B9314C' | 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> USE ISVe;
Database changed

mysql> show tables;
+--------------------------+
| Tables_in_ISVe           |
+--------------------------+
| CustomReport             | 
| CustomSQL                | 
| ISVeOldProjects          | 
| ISVeOrg                  | 
| ISVeProject              | 
| ISVeProjectExecution     | 
| ISVeProjectGoalAlignment | 
| ISVeProjectMiscInfo      | 
| ISVeProjectScoping       | 
| ISVeProjectStatus        | 
| ISVeProjects             | 
| ISVeProjectsVW           | 
| ISVeSearchLog            | 
| LastRefreshed            | 
+--------------------------+
14 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT SELECT ON ISVe.ISVeOldProjects TO 'SOUSER'@'%';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT SELECT ON ISVe.ISVeProjects TO 'SOUSER'@'%';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> show grants for SOUSER;
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for SOUSER@%                                                                                   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'SOUSER'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*8370607DA2602E52F463FF3B2FFEA53E81B9314C' | 
| GRANT SELECT ON `ISVe`.`ISVeOldProjects` TO 'SOUSER'@'%'                                              | 
| GRANT SELECT ON `ISVe`.`ISVeProjects` TO 'SOUSER'@'%'                                                 | 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> quit
Bye

Check the database connectivity and the accessibility from a remote location.

% mysql -h ben10.sfbay -D ISVe -u SOUSER -pSOUSER
Server version: 5.1.25-rc-standard Source distribution

mysql> show tables;
+-----------------+
| Tables_in_ISVe  |
+-----------------+
| ISVeOldProjects |
| ISVeProjects    |
+-----------------+
2 rows in set (0.03 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from ISVeOldProjects;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|     2880 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from ISVeProjects;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|     4967 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.33 sec)

mysql> delete from ISVeOldProjects;
ERROR 1142 (42000): DELETE command denied to user 'SOUSER'@'vpn-192-155-222-19.SFBay.Sun.COM' for table 'ISVeOldProjects'

mysql> delete from ISVeProjects;
ERROR 1142 (42000): DELETE command denied to user 'SOUSER'@'vpn-192-155-222-19.SFBay.Sun.COM' for table 'ISVeProjects'

mysql> quit
Bye

---

Tasks to be Performed at the Client side (End-User's Workstation)

---

StarOffice and OpenOffice suite of applications can access the MySQL Server using JDBC or native drivers.

MySQL Connector/J is a platform independent JDBC Type 4 driver that is developed specifically to connect to a MySQL database. Using Connector/J, it is possible to connect to almost any version of MySQL Server from any version of StarOffice or OpenOffice.org

Sun|MySQL recently developed a native MySQL driver to facilitate connecting from StarOffice / OpenOffice.org suite of applications to a MySQL database. The new native driver is called MySQL Connector/OpenOffice.org. However the current version of the MySQL Connector for OO.o is compatible only with OpenOffice 3.1, StarOffice 9.1 or newer and it can connect only to MySQL Server 5.1 or later versions. This native connector is supposed to be faster in comparison with the Java connector.

We will explore both MySQL connectors in this section.

Note:

As an end user, you need not be concerned about the internal workings of these MySQL connectors. You just need to worry about installing and configuring the drivers so the *Office applications can connect to the MySQL database in a seamless fashion.

I. Connector/J approach

1. Installation steps for MySQL Connector/J
   
   Using the following navigation, find the location of the JRE that is being used by StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
   
   
   
   
   • Launch StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
     
   • Tools Menu -> Options
     
   • In the 'Options' window, StarOffice / OpenOffice.org -> Java
     
   
   
   Here is a sample screen capture from a Mac running StarOffice 9.
   
   
   
   
   
   In the above example, /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home is the location of the JRE. Here onwards, this location will be referred as JRE_HOME.
   
   
   
   
   1. Download the connector from the following web page:
              http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/
      
      As of this writing, 5.1.10 is the current version for Connector/J
      
      
   2. Extract the driver and the rest of the files from the compressed [downloaded] archive
      
      eg.,
      

      
      % gunzip -c mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
      
      

      
      
      
   3. Locate the jar file that contains the driver --- mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar, and copy it into the <JRE_HOME>/lib/ext directory with 'root' privileges.
      
      eg.,
      

      
      % sudo cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/lib/ext
      
      % ls -l /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/lib/ext/*connector*jar
      /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/lib/ext/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar
      
      

      
      
      
   4. Restart StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
      
   
   
   This concludes the installation of MySQL Connector/J.
   
   
   2. Configuration steps for Connector/J
   
   
   
   
   1. Launch StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
      
      
   2. In the Welcome screen, click on "Database". A database wizard pops up to help us create, open or connect to an existing database from StarOffice / OpenOffice.org.
      
      
   3. Since our main interest is only to connect to an existing database in this exercise, click on "Connect to an existing database" radio button and select "MySQL" from the drop-down menu that is underneath the selected radio button.
      
      
      
      
      
      Click on "Next >>" button
      
      
   4. In the next screen, select JDBC by clicking on "Connect using JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)" radio button
      
      
      
      
      
      Click on "Next >>" button
      
      
   5. In "Set up connection to a MySQL database using JDBC" screen, provide the name of the database, hostname or IP address of the MySQL database server (server URL) that you want to connect to along with the port# on which the MySQL server is actively listening for new database connections.
      
      MySQL JDBC driver class text field will be automatically filled with the string com.mysql.jdbc.Driver. Leave that string intact, and click on "Test Class" button to make sure that the relevant class can be loaded with no issues. Unless the driver class is loaded successfully, you will not be able to connect to the MySQL database. In case of unsuccessful class loading, double check the installation steps for MySQL Connector/J.
      
      
      
      
      
      Click on "Next >>" button
      
      Note:
      
      In the above screenshot, notice that the "Name of the database" was filled with ISVe?zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull (It is not completely visible in the above screen capture, but you just have to believe me). In this example, ISVe is the database name and zeroDateTimeBehavior is the configuration property which was set to a value of convertToNull. Without this configuration property, Connector/J throws an exception when it encounters date values such as 0000-00-00. In such cases, the error message will be something similar to java.sql.SQLException: Value '0000-00-00' can not be represented as java.sql.Date.
      
      Configuration properties define how Connector/J will make a connection to a MySQL server. The list of Connector/J configuration properties are documented in the following web page:
      
              http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/connector-j-reference-configuration-properties.html
      
      If you have more than one configuration property, you can define all of those properties in the "Name of the database" field. The syntax would be:
          <MySQL_DB_Name>?<Config_Property1=Value>&<Config_Property2=Value>&..&<Config_Propertyn=Value>
      
      
   6. Provide the database user name and the password details in "Set up the user authentication" screen. Click on "Password required" check box if there is a password setup for the database user.
      
      
      
      
      
      Click on "Test Connection" button to ensure a successful connection to the MySQL database using the credentials provided in this window.
      
      Click on "Next >>" button
      
      
   7. In the final screen, simply accept the default values and click on 'Finish' button.
      
      "Yes, register the database for me" and "Open the database for edition" are the defaults selected in this screen.
      
      When you click on the 'Finish' button, you will be prompted to provide a name to the database to save it as a file on your local machine. The saved file contains information about the database including the queries, reports and forms that are linked to the MySQL database. The actual data remain in the MySQL database. Hence you need not worry about the size of the file that is being saved on your local machine. It will be small in size.
      
      
      
      
      
      
   8. Ultimately the Database area of the Base main window appears as shown in the following screen capture.
      
      
      
      
      
      Notice the RDBMS name, Type of Connectivity, MySQL Database Name along with the configuration properties, Database user name and the Database server hostname at the bottom of the window.
      
      You will be able to query the database, create new forms/reports etc., from this window. Unfortunately discussion around those topics is beyond the scope of this blog post - so, we will stop here.
      
   
   

---

II Connector/OpenOffice.org approach

MySQL Connector for OpenOffice.org is a MySQL driver for OpenOffice suite of applications. Even though it appears to be a native driver, MySQL Connector/OpenOffice.org has no implementation for the MySQL Client Server protocol. It is in reality a proxy on the top of MySQL Connector for C++ aka MySQL Connector/C++.

Unlike MySQL Connector/J, Connector/OpenOffice.org has no dependency on JRE, and it can easily be installed using the OpenOffice.org Extension Manager. Due to the underlying native code, Connector/OpenOffice.org may outperform Connector/J in performance.

1. Installation steps for MySQL Connector/OpenOffice.org

Before installing the connector, make sure that you have OpenOffice.org 3.1 [or later] -OR- StarOffice 9.1 [or later] suite installed, and the version of the MySQL server on which the database is hosted is at least 5.1. If any of these requirements are not met, skip this entire section and check the I. Connector/J approach for the instructions that may work with your current versions of StarOffice / OpenOffice and MySQL server.

1. Download the connector for your platform from the following location:
           http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/mysql_connector
   
   
2. Launch StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
   
   
3. Bring up the "Extension Manager" by clicking on Tools Menu -> Extension Manager ...
   
   
4. Click on "Add" button, then locate the OpenOffice connector that you downloaded in step #1 (see two steps above). Click on "Open" button. The name of the connector will be something similar to mysql-connector-ooo-....oxt.
   
   
5. Choose appropriate response to the question "For whom do you want to install the extension?". In this example, I chose the option "Only for me".
   
   
6. Read the "Extension Software License Agreement" and accept the agreement to install the Connector/OpenOffice.org as an extension to StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Restart StarOffice / OpenOffice.org to complete the installation.
   

2. Configuration steps for MySQL Connector/OpenOffice.org

1. Launch StarOffice / OpenOffice.org
   
   
2. In the Welcome screen, click on "Database". A database wizard pops up to help us create, open or connect to an existing database from StarOffice / OpenOffice.org.
   
   
3. Since our main interest is only to connect to an existing database in this exercise, click on "Connect to an existing database" radio button and select "MySQL" from the drop-down menu that is underneath the selected radio button.
   
   
   
   
   
   Click on "Next >>" button
   
   
4. In the next screen, select "Connect native" radio button
   
   
   
   
   
   Click on "Next >>" button
   
   
5. In "Set up connection to a MySQL database" screen, provide the name of the database, hostname or IP address of the MySQL database server (server URL) that you want to connect to along with the port# on which the MySQL server is actively listening for new database connections. If the MySQL Server is running on the same machine as that of the StarOffice / OpenOffice.org application, you can provide the location of the socket under "Socket" field. If not, leave it blank.
   
   
   
   
   
   Click on "Next >>" button
   
   
6. Provide the database user name and the password details in "Set up the user authentication" screen. Click on "Password required" check box if there is a password setup for the database user.
   
   Click on "Test Connection" button to ensure a successful connection to the MySQL database using the credentials provided in this window.
   
   
   
   
   
   Click on "Next >>" button
   
   
7. In the final screen, simply accept the default values and click on 'Finish' button.
   
   "Yes, register the database for me" and "Open the database for edition" are the defaults selected in this screen.
   
   When you click on the 'Finish' button, you will be prompted to provide a name to the database to save it as a file on your local machine. The saved file contains information about the database including the queries, reports and forms that are linked to the MySQL database. The actual data remain in the MySQL database. Hence you need not worry about the size of the file that is being saved on your local machine. It will be small in size.
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. Ultimately the Database area of the Base main window appears as shown in the following screen capture.
   
   
   
   
   
   Notice the RDBMS name, Type of Connectivity, MySQL Database Name along with the configuration properties, Database user name and the Database server hostname at the bottom of the window.
   
   You will be able to query the database, create new forms/reports etc., from this window. Unfortunately discussion around those topics is beyond the scope of this blog post - so, we will stop here.
   

That is all there is to it in installing and configuring the MySQL connectors for *Office suite of applications. Now enjoy the flexibility of fetching the data from your favorite office productivity software.

(Original blog post is at the following location:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/setting_up_staroffice_openoffice_org)

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PeopleSoft North American Payroll on Sun Solaris with F5100 Flash Array : A blog Reprise

(Copied from my other blog at blogs.sun.com. Original post is at: http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/peoplesoft_north_american_payroll_on)

During the "Sun day" keynote at OOW 09, John Fowler stated that we are #1 in PeopleSoft North American Payroll performance. Later Vince Carbone from our Performance Technologies group went on comparing our benchmark numbers with HP's and IBM's in BestPerf's group blog at Oracle PeopleSoft Payroll (NA) Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 and Sun Storage F5100 World Record Performance. Meanwhile Jeorg Moellenkamp had been clarifying few things in his blog at App benchmarks, incorrect conclusions and the Sun Storage F5100. Interestingly it all happened while we have no concrete evidence in our hands to show to the outside world. We got our benchmark results validated right before the Oracle OpenWorld, which gave us the ability to speak about it publicly [ and we used it to the extent we could use ]. However Oracle folks were busy with their scheduled tasks for OOW 09 and couldn't work on the benchmark results white paper until now. Finally the white paper with the NA Payroll benchmark results is available on Oracle Applications benchmark web site. Here is the URL:

        PeopleSoft Enterprise Payroll 9.0 using Oracle for Solaris on a Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000

Once again the summary of results is shown below but in a slightly different format. These numbers were extracted from the very first page of the benchmark results white papers where PeopleSoft usually highlights the significance of the results and the actual numbers that they are interested in. The results are sorted by the hourly throughput (payments/hour) in the descending order. The goal is to achieve as much hourly throughput as possible. Since there is one 16 stream result as well in the following table, exercise caution when comparing 8 stream results with 16 stream results. In general, 16 parallel job streams are supposed to yield better throughput when compared to 8 parallel job streams. Hence comparing a 16 stream number with an 8 stream number is not an exact apple-to-apple comparison. It is more like comparing an apple to another apple that is half in size. Click on the link that is underneath the hourly throughput values to open corresponding benchmark result.

Oracle PeopleSoft North American Payroll 9.0 - Number of employees: 240,000 & Number of payments: 360,000

Vendor	OS	Hardware Config	#Job Streams	Elapsed Time (min)	Hourly Throughput Payments per Hour
Sun	Solaris 10 5/09	1x Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 with 4 x 2.53 GHz SPARC64-VII Quad-Core processors and 32 GB memory 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array with 40 Flash Modules for data, indexes 1 x Sun Storage J4200 Array for redo logs	8	67.85	318,349
HP	HP-UX	1 x HP Integrity rx6600 with 4 x 1.6 GHz Intel Itanium2 9000 Dual-Core processors and 32 GB memory 1 x HP StorageWorks EVA 8100	16	68.07	317,320
HP	HP-UX	1 x HP Integrity rx6600 with 4 x 1.6 GHz Intel Itanium2 9000 Dual-Core processors and 32 GB memory 1 x HP StorageWorks EVA 8100	8	89.77	240,615*
IBM	z/OS	1 x IBM zSeries 990 model 2084-B16 with 313 Feature with 6 x IBM z990 Gen1 processors (populated: 13, used: 6) and 32 GB memory 1 x IBM TotalStorage DS8300 with dual 4-way processors	8	91.7	235,551

This is all public information -- so, feel free to draw your own conclusions. ^*At this time of writing, HP's 8 stream results were pulled out of Oracle Applications benchmark web site for some reason I do not know why. Hopefully it will show up again on the same web site soon. If it doesn't re-appear even after a month, probably we can simply assume that the result is withdrawn.

As these benchmark results were already discussed by different people in different blogs, I have nothing much to add. The only thing that I want to highlight is that this particular workload is moderately CPU intensive, but very I/O bound. Hence the better the I/O sub-system, the better the performance. Vince provided an insight on Why Sun Storage F5100 is a good option for this workload, while Jignesh Shah from our ISV-Engineering organization focused on the performance of this benchmark workload with F20 PCIe Card.

Also when dealing with NA Payroll, it is very unlikely to achieve a nice out-of-the-box performance. It requires a lot of database tuning too. As the data sets are very large, we partitioned the data in some of the very hot objects and it showed good improvement in query response times. So if you are a PeopleSoft customer running Payroll application with millions of rows of non-partitioned data, consider partitioning the data. We are currently working on a best practices blueprint document for PeopleSoft North American Payroll that presents a variety of tuning tips like these in addition to the recommended practices for F5100 flash array and flash accelerator F20 PCIe card. Stay tuned ..

Related Blog Post:

• PeopleSoft HRMS 8.9 Self-Service Benchmark on M3000 & T5120 Servers

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Java Code to Convert TWiki URLs to HTML Links

Few days ago I was looking for some code or tool with the ability to convert TWiki URLs to equivalent HTML URLs. (For the uninitiated, TWiki supports wide variety of URL formats in addition to the standard HTML format.). I spent almost 3 hours searching the web and trying out different code, Java classes etc., But at the end, none of the things that I found elsewhere seems to have the ability to convert almost all the TWiki URL formats that I'm trying to convert [to HTML]. So, I gave up looking for some readymade code and quickly wrote some Java code to resolve the issue that I'm trying to solve.



Now that I have the code, thought publishing it in my blog would help other people who are looking for something similar to this. So here it is. Download the source code from the following location.



        TwikiToHTML.java



The code assumes that the TWiki system is deployed on http://www.mandalika.com (a fake web site), and is capable of handling the following TWiki URL formats:

[[http://twiki.etclabs.com/pub/MDE/IsveSeeameRomanIvanovMeraJanuaryTechEval/MeraJanuaryScoping.pdf][MeraJanuaryScoping]]

[[Main.JNetX#April_22nd_2008_Whats_new_at_Sun][report]]

[[Main.RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet][Executiontrackingpage]]

[[MDE.IsveBravoJeffTaylorProgressApamaSolarisx64Pott][Link]]

[[IsveSeeameOrgadKimchiIGTvLabProcedures][docs]]

[[http://scweb.france.com/~fparient/pub/europa08solaris.odp][solarisprezo]]<br>[[http://scweb.france.com/~fparient/pub/europa08fx.pdf][fxbenchmark]]

[[OmalleyDataProject]]

[[http://twiki.etclabs.com/bin/view/Main/MySQL64NvPlan][Plan]],[[http://twiki.etclabs.com/bin/view/Main/IntegrateSFW][Detail]]

MDE.IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization

http://sidc.israel.com/~mk147459/Reports/ana.html

SofCheck

<a href="http://twiki.org">twiki</a>

Sample inputs and outputs:

% java TwikiToHTML



TWiki URL: NotSoPl@inY0uKnow

HTTP equivalent:



TWiki URL: ItIsJustplain

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/ItIsJustplain" target="_new">ItIsJustplain</a>



TWiki URL: GiriK@lyanaChakravarth!

HTTP equivalent:



TWiki URL: &ersand

HTTP equivalent:



TWiki URL: Harisha

HTTP equivalent:



TWiki URL: Janaki Lakshmi

HTTP equivalent:



TWiki URL: JanakiLakshmi

HTTP equivalent:



TWiki URL: [[OmalleyDataProject]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/OmalleyDataProject" target="_new">OmalleyDataProject</a>



TWiki URL: [[Giri][Mandalika]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Giri" target="_new">Mandalika</a>



TWiki URL: [[Giri][Mandalika]], [[Kalyana][Chakravarthy]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Giri" target="_new">Mandalika</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Kalyana" target="_new">Chakravarthy</a>



TWiki URL: [[Giri][Mandalika]], [[Kalyana][Chakravarthy]], [[IsveSeeameOrgadKimchiIGTvLabProcedures][docs]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Giri" target="_new">Mandalika</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Kalyana" target="_new">Chakravarthy</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/IsveSeeameOrgadKimchiIGTvLabProcedures" target="_new">docs</a>



TWiki URL: [[Giri][Mandalika]], [[Kalyana][Chakravarthy]], [[IsveSeeameOrgadKimchiIGTvLabProcedures][docs]], [[OmalleyDataProject][Omalley]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Giri" target="_new">Mandalika</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/Kalyana" target="_new">Chakravarthy</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/IsveSeeameOrgadKimchiIGTvLabProcedures" target="_new">docs</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Downloads/OmalleyDataProject" target="_new">Omalley</a>



TWiki URL: http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~mk147459/Reports/ana.html

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~mk147459/Reports/ana.html" target="_new">ana.html</a>



TWiki URL: http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~mk147459/Reports/ana.html,http://technopark02.blogspot.com

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~mk147459/Reports/ana.html" target="_new">ana.html</a><BR><a href="http://technopark02.blogspot.com" target="_new">technopark02.blogspot.com</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/pub/MDE/IsveSeeameRomanIvanovMeraJanuaryTechEval/MeraJanuaryScoping.pdf][MeraJanuaryScoping]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/pub/MDE/IsveSeeameRomanIvanovMeraJanuaryTechEval/MeraJanuaryScoping.pdf" target="_new">MeraJanuaryScoping</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/RomanIvanovRStyleSoftlabRSBankV6][execution details]] <BR> [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/OracleRAConLDom][OracleRAConLDom]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/RomanIvanovRStyleSoftlabRSBankV6" target="_new">execution details</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/OracleRAConLDom" target="_new">OracleRAConLDom</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/pub/ISVeProjects/ISVeProject20080213161851/Project20080213161851scoping.odt][scoping document]] , [[http://www.mandalika.com/pub/MDE/IsveSeeameRomanIvanovMeraJanuaryTechEval/MeraJanuaryScoping.pdf][MeraJanuaryScoping]] <BR> [[http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~ok134283/techeval/snooggie.html][techeval]] , [[http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~ok134283/techeval/servision.html][techeval]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/pub/ISVeProjects/ISVeProject20080213161851/Project20080213161851scoping.odt" target="_new">scoping document</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/pub/MDE/IsveSeeameRomanIvanovMeraJanuaryTechEval/MeraJanuaryScoping.pdf" target="_new">MeraJanuaryScoping</a><BR><a href="http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~ok134283/techeval/snooggie.html" target="_new">techeval</a><BR><a href="http://sidc.israel.etclabs.com/~ok134283/techeval/servision.html" target="_new">techeval</a>



TWiki URL: [[Main.RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet][Execution tracking page]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet" target="_new">Execution tracking page</a>



TWiki URL: [[MDE.IsveBravoJeffTaylorProgressApamaSolarisx64Pott][Link]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveBravoJeffTaylorProgressApamaSolarisx64Pott" target="_new">Link</a>



TWiki URL: [[Main.JNetX#April_22nd_2008_Whats_new_at_Sun][report]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/JNetX#April_22nd_2008_Whats_new_at_Sun" target="_new">report</a>



TWiki URL: [[Main.RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet][Execution tracking page]], [[MDE.IsveBravoJeffTaylorProgressApamaSolarisx64Pott][Link]]   <BR>  [[Main.JNetX#April_22nd_2008_Whats_new_at_Sun][report]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet" target="_new">Execution tracking page</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveBravoJeffTaylorProgressApamaSolarisx64Pott" target="_new">Link</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/JNetX#April_22nd_2008_Whats_new_at_Sun" target="_new">report</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveKylinPDSChinaVolumeISVWorldonline][World-Online]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveKylinPDSChinaVolumeISVWorldonline" target="_new">World-Online</a>



TWiki URL: [[ISVeProjects.IsveIndividualSummaryCarylTakvorian][Caryl Takvorian]] Tom Duell

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/ISVeProjects/IsveIndividualSummaryCarylTakvorian" target="_new">Caryl Takvorian</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveGANEIndividualSummaryAndrewWalton][Andrew Walton]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveGANEIndividualSummaryAndrewWalton" target="_new">Andrew Walton</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://etclabswebcollab.east.etclabs.com/gm/folder-1.11.1890618][Project Folder]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://etclabswebcollab.east.etclabs.com/gm/folder-1.11.1890618" target="_new">Project Folder</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://etclabswebcollab.east.etclabs.com/gm/document-1.9.3262994/SUN%25E4%25B8%25BB%25E6%259C%25BAOCS%25E6%2580%25A7%25E8%2583%25BD%25E6%25B5%258B%25E8%25AF%2595%25E6%258A%25A5%25E5%2591%258A.doc][Cust. Report]], [[http://etclabswebcollab.east.etclabs.com/gm/document-1.9.3270163/ocs_perftune_t2000.odt][ISVE Report]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://etclabswebcollab.east.etclabs.com/gm/document-1.9.3262994/SUN%25E4%25B8%25BB%25E6%259C%25BAOCS%25E6%2580%25A7%25E8%2583%25BD%25E6%25B5%258B%25E8%25AF%2595%25E6%258A%25A5%25E5%2591%258A.doc" target="_new">Cust. Report</a><BR><a href="http://etclabswebcollab.east.etclabs.com/gm/document-1.9.3270163/ocs_perftune_t2000.odt" target="_new">ISVE Report</a>



TWiki URL: MDE.IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization" target="_new">IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization</a>



TWiki URL: [[Main.RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet" target="_new">RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet</a>



TWiki URL: MDE.PostgreSQLAutoTune <BR> [[Main.RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet]] , MDE.IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/Main/RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet" target="_new">RomanIvanovLDomsCheatSheet</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/PostgreSQLAutoTune" target="_new">PostgreSQLAutoTune</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization" target="_new">IsveAlphaBogdanVasiliuSynopsysVCSPerformanceOptimization</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/ISVeProjects/IsveIndividualSummaryMohammedYousuf][Mohammed Yousuf]], Thiagarajan Chandrasekaran

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/ISVeProjects/IsveIndividualSummaryMohammedYousuf" target="_new">Mohammed Yousuf</a>



TWiki URL: MDE.IsveDabuboirProsDamienCookeMyStaffMyStaffPostgreSQLAdoption  [[http://twiki.etclabs/pub/MDE/IsveDabuboirProsDamienCookeMyStaffMyStaffPostgreSQLAdoption/MyStaff.html][Project Status]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://twiki.etclabs/pub/MDE/IsveDabuboirProsDamienCookeMyStaffMyStaffPostgreSQLAdoption/MyStaff.html" target="_new">Project Status</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/IsveDabuboirProsDamienCookeMyStaffMyStaffPostgreSQLAdoption" target="_new">IsveDabuboirProsDamienCookeMyStaffMyStaffPostgreSQLAdoption</a>



TWiki URL: [[http://www.xxx.yyy]], <a href="http://www.xyz.com">xyz</a>, http://www.yahoo.com , <a href="www.giril.com">giri</a> , [[http://www.harisha.com][harisha]], <a href="www.etclabs.com">etclabs</a>

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.xyz.com">xyz</a><BR><a href="www.giril.com">giri</a><BR><a href="www.etclabs.com">etclabs</a><BR><a href="http://www.xxx.yyy" target="_new">www.xxx.yyy<BR><a href="http://www.harisha.com" target="_new">harisha</a><BR><a href="http://www.yahoo.com" target="_new">www.yahoo.com</a>



TWiki URL: New link YousufCertificationofOracleRAConSolaris10u6Containers ,  old link http://blogs.etclabs.com/rac

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://blogs.etclabs.com/rac" target="_new">rac</a>



TWiki URL: attached email.

HTTP equivalent: 



TWiki URL: [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/Caucho Caucho]] [[http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/ISVeProject20070812164315 20070812164315]]

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/Caucho" target="_new">Caucho</a><BR><a href="http://www.mandalika.com/bin/view/MDE/ISVeProject20070812164315" target="_new">20070812164315</a>



TWiki URL: http://download.sap.com/download.epd?context=40E2D9D5E00EEF7CB82813BD3F95797BAEB80527B36EC026E03386D659E4DE48

HTTP equivalent: <a href="http://download.sap.com/download.epd?context=40E2D9D5E00EEF7CB82813BD3F95797BAEB80527B36EC026E03386D659E4DE48" target="_new">download.epd?context=40E2D9D5E00E ... BAEB80527B36EC026E03386D659E4DE48</a>

Disclaimer:

This code is poorly documented, not perfect and most importantly may not even meet the minimum Java coding standards. However it does the intended job with minor modifications. Feel free to use, modify, reproduce or redistribute - but please do not come back complaining. I have no intention of fixing or improving this code.

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Sun achieves the Magic Number 50,000 on T5440 with Oracle Business Intelligence EE 10.1.3.4

Less than two months ago, Sun Microsystems published an Oracle Business Intelligence benchmark with the best single system performance of 28,000 concurrent BI EE users at ~75% CPU utilization. Sun and Oracle Corporation announced another Oracle Business Intelligence benchmark result today with two identical T5440 servers in the Oracle BI Cluster serving 50,000 concurrent BI EE users.

An Oracle white paper with Sun's 50,000 user benchmark results can be accessed from Oracle's Business Intelligence web.

The hardware specifications for each of the T5440s are similar to the hardware that was used in the prior benchmark effort on a single T5440 server. However this time the Presentation Catalog (also frequently referred as the Web Catalog) was moved to a T5220 server where the NFS server was running. Besides this the only other change from the earlier 28,000 user benchmark exercise is the addition of another T5440 to the test rig.

The following graph shows the scalability of the application from one node to four nodes to eight nodes running on T5440 servers.



Without further ado, here is the summary of the benchmark results along with their significance and some interesting facts:

• One of the major goals of this benchmark effort is to show the horizontal and vertical scalability of the application (OBIEE) by highlighting the superior performance and the resilience of the underlying hardware (T5440) and the operating system (Solaris). Needless to say the goal has been met.
  
  
• Another goal of this benchmark is to show decent number of concurrent BI EE users executing transactions with good response times. Since we already showed the maximum load that can be achieved on a single BI instance (7500 users) and on a single T5440 server running multiple BI instances (28,000 users), this time we did not attempt to get the peak number that can be achieved from the two T5440 servers in the benchmark environment. Now that there is an additional server in the test setup that is taking care of the Presentation Catalog and the database server, 2 * 28000 = 56,000 BI EE users would have been an achievable target -- but we opted to stop at the "magic" and the "respectable" number 50,000 instead.
  
  
• The entire benchmark run lasted for about 9 hours 45 minutes, and out of which 8 hours were the rampup hours where the 50,000 BI virtual users were logging into the application few users at a time. LoadRunner tool reported only 4 errors for the entire duration of the run; and there are zero errors in the 60 minute steady state period during which the statistics reported in the document were collected.
  
  
• Two Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 servers each with 4 x 8-Core 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors delivered the best performance of 50,000 concurrent BI EE users at around 63% CPU utilization.
  
  
• The BI EE Cluster was deployed on two T5440 servers running Solaris 10 5/09 operating system. All the nodes in the BI Cluster were consolidated onto two T5440 servers using the free and efficient Solaris Containers virtualization technology.
  
  
• The Presentation Catalog was hosted on ZFS powered file system that was created on top of four internal Solid State Drive (SSD) disks. The Catalog was shared among all eight BI nodes in the cluster as an NFS share. One 8-Core 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor powered T5220 server was used to run the NFS server. Due to the minimal activity of the database, Oracle 11g database was also hosted on the same server. Solaris 10 5/09 is the operating system.
  
  
• Solid State Drive (SSD) disks with ZFS file system showed significant I/O performance improvement over traditional disks for the Presentation Catalog activity. In addition, ZFS helped get past the UFS limitation of 32767 sub-directories in a Presentation Catalog directory.
  
  
• Caching was turned ON at the application server, which led to minimal database activity on the server. Note hat the caching mechanism was turned ON even in the prior benchmark exercise.
  
  
• The low end CoolThreads CMT Server T5220 and the mid-range T5440 server once again proved to be ideal candidates to deploy and run multi-thread workloads by exhibiting resilient performance when handling large number of simultaneous requests from 50,000 BI EE virtual users. T5220 handled large number of concurrent asynchronous read/write requests from eight different NFS clients.
  
  
• NFS v3 was configured at the NFS Server as well as at the NFS Client nodes. NFS version 4 is the default on Solaris 10, and it might have worked as expected. However a handful of bug reports prompted us to go with the more matured and less buggy version 3.
  
  
• 3283 watts is the average power consumption when all the 50,000 concurrent BI users are in the steady state of the benchmark test. That is, in the case of similarly configured workloads, the T5440 server supports 15.2 users per watt of energy consumed and supports 5,000 users per rack unit.
  
  
• A summary of the results with system-wide averages of CPU and memory utilization is shown below. The latest results are highlighted in blue color.
  
  
  

  #Vusers	Clustered	#BI Nodes	#CPU	#Core	RAM	CPU	Memory	Avg Trx Response Time	#Trx/sec
  7,500	No	1	1	8	32 GB	72.85%	18.11 GB	0.22 sec	155
  28,000	Yes	4	4	32	128 GB	75.04%	76.16 GB	0.25 sec	580
  50,000	Yes	8	8	64	256 GB	63.32%	172.21 GB	0.28 sec	1031

TOPOLOGY DIAGRAM

The topology diagram in the benchmark results white paper is almost illegible. Here is the original topology diagram that was inserted into the white paper.



Quite frankly I'm not very proud of this drawing -- but that's the best that I could come up with in a short span. Rather than showing the flow of communication between each and every component in the benchmark setup, I simplified the drawing by introducing a "black box" sort of thing - "private network" - in the middle, which protected the drawing from getting messy.

CPU USAGE GRAPH

The following two-dimensional graph shows the CPU utilization patterns at all 3 nodes in the benchmark setup for the 60 minute steady state of the benchmark run. This graph was generated using the free GNUplot tool with sar data as the inputs.



COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

And finally here is a quick summary of all the results that are published by different vendors so far with similar benchmark kit. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. All this is public information. Check the corresponding benchmark reports by clicking on the URLs under the "#Users" column.

Server	Processors					#Users	OS
	Chips	Cores	Threads	GHz	Type
2 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 (APP)   1 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (NFS,DB)	8 1	64 8	512 64	1.6 1.2	UltraSPARC T2 Plus UltraSPARC T2	50,000	Solaris 10 5/09
1 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440	4	32	256	1.6	UltraSPARC T2 Plus	28,000	Solaris 10 5/09
5 x Sun Fire T2000	1	8	32	1.2	UltraSPARC T1	10,000	Solaris 10 11/06
3 x HP DL380 G4	2	4	4	2.8	Intel Xeon	5,800	OEL
1 x IBM x3755	4	8	8	2.8	AMD Opteron	4,000	RHEL4

---

Before you go, do not forget to check the best practices for configuring / deploying Oracle Business Intelligence on top of Solaris 10 running on Sun CMT hardware.

Related Blog Posts:
T5440 Rocks [again] with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Workload

(Originally posted on blogs.sun.com at:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/oracle_business_intelligence_10_1)

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Hindi Music - V.Man's Recommendations

*****
1. Race - Race is On My Mind
2. Bluff Master - Right Here Right Now
3. Rang De Basanti - Pathshala
4. Bhool Bhulaiya - Hare Rama Hare Krishna

****
1. Pyar Tu Ne Kya Kiya - Kambakth Ishq
2. Bluff Master - Bure Bure
3. Dus - Deedar De
4. Cash - Title Song
5. Dhoom 2 - Dhoom Again
6. Dus - Dus Bahane
7. Delhi 6 - Masakali
8. Cash - Mind Blowing Mahiya
9. Tashan - Chaliya Chaliya
10. Shootout at Lokhandwala - Ganapat
11. Blue - Chiggy Wiggy

***
1. What's Your Rashee - Chehre Jo Dekhe Hain
2. Taxi No 9211 - Meter Down
3. Main Aur Mrs Khanna - Happening
4. 13B - Oh Crazy Mama
5. Kaminey - Rat ke Dhai Baje
6. Tashan - Dil Hara
7. Luck - Jee Le


**
1. Aksar - Jhalak Dikhlaja
2. Slumdog Millionaire - Jai Ho

*
Rest of them ...

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T5440 Rocks [again] with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Workload

A while ago, I blogged about how we scaled Siebel 8.0 up to 14,000 concurrent users by consolidating the entire Siebel stack on a single Sun SPARC^® Enterprise T5440 server with 4 x 1.4 GHz eight-core UltraSPARC^® T2 Plus Processors. OLTP workload was used in that performance benchmark effort.

We repeated a similar effort by collaborating with Oracle Corporation, but with an OLAP workload this time around. Today Sun and Oracle announced the 28,000 user Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 10.1.3.4 benchmark results on a single Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server with 4 x 1.6 GHz eight-core UltraSPARC T2 Plus Processors running Solaris 10 5/09 operating system. An Oracle white paper with Sun's 28,000 user benchmark results is available on Oracle's benchmark web site.

Some of the notes and key take away's from this benchmark are as follows:

• Key specifications for the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 system under test are: 4 x UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors, 32 cores, 256 compute threads and 128 GB of memory in a 4RU space.
  
  
• The entire OBIEE solution was deployed on a single Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server using Oracle BI Cluster software.
  
  
• The BI Cluster was configured with 4 x BI nodes. Each of those BI nodes were configured to run inside a Solaris Container.
  
  
  
  1. Each Solaris Container was configured with one physical processor (that is, 8 cores or 64 virtual cpus), and 32 GB physical memory.
     
  2. Each BI node was configured to run BI Server, Presentation Server and OC4J Web Server
     
  3. Two of the BI nodes have the BI Cluster Controller running (primary & secondary)
     
  4. One out of four Containers was sharing CPU and memory resources with Oracle 11g RDBMS and the host operating system that are running in the global zone
     
  
  
• Caching was turned ON at the application server, which led to minimal database activity on the server.
  
  
  1. In other words, one can use these results only to size the hardware requirements for a complete BI EE deployment excluding the database server.
     
     
  2. All the OBIEE benchmark results published so far are with the caching turned ON. This fact was not explicitly mentioned in some of the benchmark results white papers. Check the competitive Landscape for the pointers to different benchmark results published by different vendors.
  
  
• From our experiments with the OBIEE benchmark workload, it appears that a BI deployment with a single non-cluster BI node could reasonably scale well up to 7,500 active users on a T5440 server. To scale beyond 7,500 concurrent users, you might need another instance of BI. Of course, your mileage may vary.
  
  
• BI EE exhibited excellent horizontal scalability when multiple BI nodes were clustered using BI Cluster software. Four BI nodes in the Cluster were able to handle 28,000 concurrent users with minimal impact on the overall average transaction response times.
  
  
  It appeared as though we can simply add more BI nodes to the BI Cluster to cope with the increase in user base. However due to the limited hardware resources, we could not try running beyond 4 nodes in the BI Cluster. As of today, the theoritical limit for the number of BI nodes in a Cluster is 16.
  
  
• The underlying hardware must behave well in order for the application to scale and perform well -- so, credit goes to UltraSPARC T2 Plus powered Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server as well. In other words, it is fair to say the combination of (T5440 + OBIEE) performs and scales well on Solaris.
  
  
• A summary of the results with system-wide averages of CPU and memory utilization is shown below.
  
  
  

  #Vusers	Clustered	#BI Nodes	#CPU	#Core	RAM	CPU	Memory	Avg Trx Response Time	#Trx/sec
  7,500	No	1	1	8	32 GB	72.85%	18.11 GB	0.22 sec	155
  28,000	Yes	4	4	32	128 GB	75.04%	76.16 GB	0.25 sec	580

  
  
  
• Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with ZFS file system showed significant I/O performance improvement over traditional disk for the BI catalog activity. In addition, ZFS helped get past the UFS limitation of 32,767 sub-directories in a BI catalog directory.
  
  
• The benchmark demonstrated that 64-bit BI EE platform is immune to the 4 GB virtual memory limitation of the 32-bit BI EE platform -- hence can potentially support even more users and have larger caches as long as the hardware resources are available.
  
  
  Solaris runs in 64-bit mode by default on SPARC platform. Consider running 64-bit BI EE on Solaris.
  
  
• 2,107 watts is the average power consumption when all the 28,000 concurrent users are in the steady state of the benchmark test. That is, in the case of similarly configured workloads, T5440 supports 13.2 users per watt of the power consumed; and supports 7,000 users per rack unit.

TOPOLOGY DIAGRAM:

A picture is worth a thousand words. The following topology diagram(s) says it all about the configuration.

1. Single Node BI Non-Cluster Configuration : 7,500 Concurrent Users



Even though the Solaris Container was shown in a cloud like graphical form, it has nothing to do with the "Cloud Computing". It is just a side effect of fancy drawing.

2. Four Node BI Cluster Configuration : 28,000 Concurrent Users



COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Here is a quick summary of all the results that are published by different vendors. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. All this is public information. Check the corresponding benchmark reports by clicking on the URLs under the "#Users" column.

Server	Processors					#Users	OS
	Chips	Cores	Threads	GHz	Type
1 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440	4	32	256	1.6	UltraSPARC T2 Plus	28,000	Solaris 10 5/09
5 x Sun Fire T2000	1	8	32	1.2	UltraSPARC T1	10,000	Solaris 10 11/06
3 x HP DL380 G4	2	4	4	2.8	Intel Xeon	5,800	OEL
1 x IBM x3755	4	8	8	2.8	AMD Opteron	4,000	RHEL4

CAUTION

Although T5440 possesses a ton of great qualities, it might not be suitable for deploying workloads with heavy single-threaded dependencies. The T5440 is an excellent hardware platform for multi-threaded, and moderately single-threaded/multi-process workloads. When in doubt, it is a good idea to leverage Sun Microsystems' Try & Buy program to try the workloads on the T5440 server before making the final call.

---

Check the second part of this blog post for the best practices for configuring / deploying Oracle Business Intelligence on top of Solaris 10 running on Sun CMT hardware.

Related Blog Posts:

• Sun T5440 Oracle BI EE World Record Performance
  
• Oracle BI 10.1.3.x 10,000 User Benchmark on SunFire T2000
  
• World Record Performance of Sun CMT Servers
  
• Why does 1.6 beat 4.7?
  
• Siebel 8.0 on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 - More Bang for the Buck!!
  

(Originally posted on blogs.sun.com at:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/t5440_rocks_again_with_1)

________________
Technorati Tags:
Oracle | BI | Business Intelligence | Solaris | Performance | T5440 | Benchmark | UltraSPARC T2 Plus

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Oracle Business Intelligence on Sun : Few Best Practices

The following suggested best practices are applicable to all Oracle BI EE deployments on Sun hardware (CMT and M-class) running Solaris 10 or later. These recommendations are based on our observations from the 28,000 user benchmark on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440. It is not the complete list, and your mileage may vary.

• Ensure that the system's firmware is up-to-date.
  
  
  Check the Sun System Firmware Release Hub for the latest firmware.
  
  
• Upgrade to the latest update release of Solaris 10.
  
  
• Solaris runs in 64-bit mode by default on SPARC platform. Consider running 64-bit BI EE on Solaris.
  
  
  64-bit BI EE platform is immune to the 4 GB virtual memory limitation of the 32-bit BI EE platform -- hence can potentially support even more users and have larger caches as long as the hardware resources are available.
  
  
• Enable 256M large pages on all nodes. By default, the latest update of Solaris 10 will use a maximum of 4M pages even when 256M pages are a good fit.
  
  
  256M pages can be enabled with the following /etc/system tunables.
  
  

  
  * 256M pages for the process heap
  set max_uheap_lpsize=0x10000000
  
  * 256M pages for ISM
  set mmu_ism_pagesize=0x10000000
  
  

  
  
• On larger systems with more CPUs or CPU cores, try not to deploy Oracle BI EE in the global zone.
  
  
• If the BI catalog is hosted on a local file system, create a ZFS file system to store the catalog.
  
  
  If there are more than 25,000 authorized users in a BI deployment, the default UFS file system may run into Too many links error when the Presentation Server tries to create more than 32,767 sub-directories (refer to LINK_MAX on Solaris)
  
  
• Ensure that all the BI components in the cluster are configured in a many-to-many fashion
  
  
• For proper load balancing, configure all BI nodes to be almost identical in the BI Cluster
  
  
• When planning to add an identically configured new node to the BI Cluster, simply clone an existing well-configured BI node running in a non-global zone.
  
  
  Cloning a BI node running in a dedicated zone results in an exact copy of the BI node being cloned. This approach is simple, less error prone and eliminates the need to configure the newly added node from scratch.
  
  
• Increase the file descriptors limit. Edit SAROOTDIR/setup/systunesrv.sh to increase the value from 1024 to any other value of your choice. In addition you must increase the shell limit using the ulimit -n command
  
  
• Configure 256M large pages for the JVM heap of Chart server and OC4J web server (this recommendation is equally applicable to other web servers such as WebLogic or Sun Java system Web Server). Also use parallel GC, and restrict the number of parallel GC threads to 1/8th of the number of virtual CPUs.
  
  eg.,

  
  -XX:LargePageSizeInBytes=256M -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8
  
  

  
  
• The Oracle BI Presentation Server keeps the access information of all the users in the Web Catalog. When there are large number of unique BI users, it can take a significant amount of time to look up a user if all the users reside in one single directory. To avoid this, hash the user directories. It can be achieved by having the following entry in SADATADIR/web/config/instanceconfig.xml
  
  eg.,

  
  <Catalog>
  <HashUserHomeDirectories>2</HashUserHomeDirectories>
  </Catalog>
  

  
  HashUserHomeDirectories specifies the number of characters to use to hash user names into sub directories. When this element is turned on, for example, the default name for user Steve's home directory would become /users/st/steve.
  
  
• BI Server and BI Presentation Server processes create many temporary files while rendering reports and dashboards for a user. This can result in significant I/O activity on the system. The I/O waits can be minimized by pointing the temporary directories to a memory resident file system such as /tmp on Solaris OS. To achieve this, add the following line to the instanceconfig.xml configuration file.
  
  eg.,

  
  <TempDir>/tmp/OracleBISAW</TempDir>
  

  
  Similarly the Temporary directory (SATEMPDIR) can be pointed to a memory resident file system such as /tmp to minimize the I/O waits.

Related Blog Posts:

• T5440 Rocks [again] with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Workload
  
• Siebel on Sun CMT hardware : Best Practices

(Originally posted on blogs.sun.com at:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/oracle_business_intelligence_on_sun)
________________
Technorati Tags:
Oracle | BI | Business Intelligence | Solaris | Performance

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Instructions to Create a Facebook Application

Here is a quick HOW-To document with step-by-step instructions to create a simple Facebook application.

1. Create an account with Facebook at facebook.com
   
2. To create an application in Facebook, go to Facebook Developers web site
   
3. Click on Set Up New Application.
   
4. Name the Appliaction and click on save changes.
   
5. Enter a brief description for the application.
   
6. On the left side of the page click on Canvas.
   
7. Fill the application name in Canvas Page URL field.
   
8. Fill the Canvas Callback URL field.
   
   Canvas Callback URL is the address of the website where the appliaction is hosted.
   For example if the appliaction is hosted on a website www.xyz.com, then the Canvas Callback URL address will be http://www.xyz.com/your_application.


9. Click on save changes.
   
10. A summary of the application is shown at this point.
    
11. Sample code is shown at the bottom of this page. Click on the sample code.
    
12. Download and unzip the tar.gz file.
    
    In the footprints folder, you will find a sample Facebook application with the file name index.php


13. Facebook appliaction can be developed in JavaScript, PHP or HTML.
    
    For more details about the langauges in which the application can be developed, check Facebook Developers web site.


14. Create your Facebook application and host it on any web site of your choice. Be aware that Facebook does not host the actual application - so you are on your own in finding a hosting site to deploy your Facebook application.


15. You can test the application from the Canvas Page URL address.
    
    The url will be in the format http://apps.facebook.com/appliaction_name/

Few Caveats:

If the application is developed in JavaScript, note that all the functions may not work as expected in Facebook. For example, to set the value of 5 to a text box, the following is the code in JavaScript:

var k = 5;
document.getElementById("someid").value = k;

The above code may not work in Facebook application. The following modified code works in Facebook:

var k = 5;
document.getElementById("someid").setValue(k);

To see all the Facebook equivalent functions for the JavaScript functions, check the FBJS wiki page.

If you encounter the error, FBML Error : illegal tag "body" under "fb:canvas", remove the <body> tag from the HTML application. When Facebook parses the appliaction, it addes the <body> tag automatically.

The code shown below is ready to be used as an example Facebook application. This a very basic calculator with limited functionality.

To test how this example code works, visit the following URL:
http://apps.facebook.com/basic_calc

Sample Facebook Application : Simple Calculator

<html>

<head>
<style type = "text/css">
input {
 width : 30px;
 height: 30px;
 font-size: 1.2em;
 color: red;
       }
</style>

<script language="JavaScript">
var num2 = 0 , num1=0;

function Assign(myvalue)  
{
 var button_value , Key = 0; 
 button_value = myvalue.getValue();

 switch(button_value)
 {
  case '+':
  case '-':
  case '*':
  case '/':
  case '%':
  {
   key = button_value;
   num1 = num2;
   num2 = 0;
   break;
  }

  case '=':
  {
   if (key == '+')
   {
    Sum(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '-')
   {
    Subtraction(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '*')
   {
    Product(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '/')
   {
    Reminder(num1,num2);
   }

   if (key == '%')
   {
    Modulo(num1,num2);
   }
   break;
  }

  case '+/-':
  {
   num2 = num2 * (-1);
   document.getElementById("output").setValue(num2);
   break;
  }

  default:
  {
   button_value = parseInt(button_value);
   combine(button_value);
   break;
  }
 }
}

function combine(input) 
{
 num2 = (num2 * 10) + input;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(num2);
}

function Cancel() 
{
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(num2);
}

function Sum(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1+val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

function Subtraction(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1-val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

function Product(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1*val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0; 
}

function Reminder(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1/val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

function Modulo(val1,val2) 
{
 var result;
 result = val1%val2;
 document.getElementById("output").setValue(result);
 num2 = 0;
 num1 = 0;
}

</script>

<title>Very Basic Calculator</title>
</head>

<form>

<table border="1" bgcolor = "#CDCDCD">

<tr>
<td colspan="6"><input id ="output" type="text" name="result" value="0"  style="width: 169px; height: 30px; color:blue;" readonly = "readonly"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="one" value="1" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="two" value="2" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="three" value="3" onclick = "Assign(this)"/>
<td><input type="button"  name="add" value="+" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td rowspan="2"><input type="button"  name="clear" style = "height : 64px;" value="C" onclick = "Cancel()"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="four" value="4" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="five" value="5" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="six" value="6" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="subtract" value="-" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="seven" value="7" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="eight" value="8" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="nine" value="9" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="multiply" value="*" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td rowspan="2"><input type="button"  name="equals" style = "height : 64px;" value="=" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><input type="button"  name="zero" value="0" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="negative" value="+/-" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="modulus" value="%" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
<td><input type="button"  name="divide" value="/" onclick = "Assign(this)"/></td>
</tr>

</table>

</form>

</html>

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Technorati Tags:
Facebook

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Oracle Business Intelligence : Workaround / Solution to "[46036] Internal Assertion" Error

Symptom:

When checking in changes to Oracle BI repository (RPD), Admintool fails with an error message:

    [46036] Internal Assertion: Condition FALSE, file server/Utility/Generic/NQThreads/SUGThread.cpp, line 515

Solution / Workaround:

Edit <BI_HOME>/server/Config/NQSConfig.INI configuration file to increase the value of SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE parameter. Replace the line SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 0; with SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 512 KB; and restart the Analytics server (SAS)

________________
Technorati Tags:
Oracle | Business Intelligence | Siebel Analytics

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Mac OS X 10.5 Tip: Outgoing Only sendmail

By default, sendmail is disabled on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). If you just want to enable/disable sending outgoing mail, run the following highlighted commands.

% sudo postfix start
Password:
postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system

% netstat -an | grep LIST | grep 25
tcp4       0      0  127.0.0.1.25           *.*                    LISTEN

% sudo postfix stop
postfix/postfix-script: stopping the Postfix mail system

% netstat -an | grep LIST | grep 25
%

One of several possible error messages [that might have lead you to this page] is pasted below. The above solution should fix it.

javax.mail.MessagingException: Could not connect to SMTP host: localhost, port: 25;
  nested exception is:
 java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
 at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.openServer(SMTPTransport.java:1391)
 at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.protocolConnect(SMTPTransport.java:412)
 at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:288)
 at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:169)
 at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:118)
 at javax.mail.Transport.send0(Transport.java:188)
 at javax.mail.Transport.send(Transport.java:118)
        ...
        ...
Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:333)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:195)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:182)
 at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:432)
 at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:520)
 at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:470)
 at com.sun.mail.util.SocketFetcher.createSocket(SocketFetcher.java:233)
 at com.sun.mail.util.SocketFetcher.getSocket(SocketFetcher.java:189)
 at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.openServer(SMTPTransport.java:1359)
 ... 9 more

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Installing Siebel Web Extension (SWE) on top of Sun Java System Web Server 7.0

As of today, Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 is not a certified platform to deploy Siebel 8.0 enterprise on. We are working with Oracle Corporation to make this certification happen so our customers can take advantage of the performance optimizations that went into the web server release 7.0.

Meanwhile those who want to give it a try can do so with little effort. In release SJSWS 7.0, the start/stop/restart/.. scripts were appropriately relocated to bin directory under the virtual web server instance. The installer for Siebel 8.0 Web Server Extension looks for the start script [of the web server] under the home directory of the virtual web server instance. (because it was the default location until the release of SJSWS 7.0). The installation fails if the installer cannot find the start script in the location it is expecting it to be.

Due to the relocation mentioned above, installation of the Siebel Web Server Extension fails at the very last step where it tries to modify the start script with a bunch of LD_PRELOADs so the Siebel Web Extension loads up and runs on the Sun Java System Web Server. To get around this failure, all you have to do is to create a symbolic link in the home directory of the virtual web server instance pointing to the startserv script residing in the bin directory.

The following example shows the necessary steps.

% pwd
/export/pspp/SJWS7U5/https-siebel-pspp

% ln -s bin/startserv start

% ls -l start
lrwxrwxrwx   1 pspp     dba           13 May 17 17:01 start -> bin/startserv

Install Siebel Web Extension in the normal way. No other changes are required.

AFTER SWE INSTALLATION:

% ls -l start*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 pspp     dba         4157 May 17 17:38 start
-rwxr-xr-x   1 pspp     dba         3456 May 17 17:38 start_.bak

% mv bin/startserv bin/startserv.orig
% mv start bin/startserv

Notice that the Siebel installer actually made two copies of the startup script from the symbolic link. The original bin/startserv remained intact after the SWE installation.

Finally start the Web Server instance by running the startserv script. It should start with no issues.

% pwd
/export/pspp/SJWS7U5/https-siebel-pspp/bin

% ./startserv
Sun Java System Web Server 7.0U5 B03/10/2009 16:38
info: swe_init reports: SWE plug-in log file
info: CORE5076: Using [Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM, Version 1.5.0_15] from [Sun Microsystems Inc.]
info: HTTP3072: http-listener-1: http://siebel-pspp:8000 ready to accept requests
info: CORE3274: successful server startup

Before we conclude, do not forget the fact that Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 is not yet certified with Siebel 8.0 release. Use the instructions mentioned in this blog post at your own risk. However if you do like to take that risk, consider installing the latest release of Sun Java System Web Server, which is SJSWS 7.0 Update 5 as of this writing.

Stay tuned for the certification news though.

(Originally posted on:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/installing_siebel_web_extension_swe)
_______________
Technorati Tags:
Oracle | Siebel | CRM | Solaris | Sun Java System Web Server | iPlanet

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Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Database Tier on Solaris 10 x64

The long wait for this certification is over. Oracle Corporation finally announced support for Solaris 10 x64 as the certified E-Business Suite platform for the database tier. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.4) is now certified with Oracle Database Server 10g R2 version 10.2.0.4 on the 'database tier only' (previously known as 'split configuration' in 11i) platform Sun Solaris x86/64.

The following Metalink documents might be of interest to Sun-Oracle customers who are waiting for this certification to happen.

• Frequently Asked Questions: Oracle E-Business Suite Support on x86-64
  
• Using Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with a Database Tier Only Platform on Oracle 10g Release 2
  
• Interoperability Notes Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0)

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Technorati Tags:
Oracle | E-Business Suite | Oracle Applications | Solaris

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