Oracle SAP for T E C H N O L O G Y U P D A T E NEW Request Exadata V2-Sun Oracle Database Machine for your SAP implementation NOW! 11 g D A T A B A S E Oracle database for SAP is safe, reliable and scalable No. 19 Oracle for SAP, May 2010 www.oracle.com/sap
Oracle Exadata Storage Servers combine Oracle s smart storage software and Oracle s industry-standard Sun hardware to deliver the industry's highest database storage performance. To overcome the limitations of conventional storage, Oracle Exadata Storage Servers use a massively parallel architecture to dramatically increase data bandwidth between the database server and storage. In addition, smart storage software offloads data-intensive query processing from Oracle Database 11g servers and does the query processing closer to the data. The result is faster parallel data processing and less data movement through higher bandwidth connections. This massively parallel architecture also offers linear scalability and mission-critical reliability. Exadata Smart Flash Cache Now with the newest release of the Oracle Exadata Storage Server, you can also achieve extreme performance for transaction processing and consolidated mixed application workloads. Exadata Smart Flash Cache addresses the disk random I/O bottleneck problem by transparently moving hot data to Oracle s Sun FlashFire cards. You get ten times faster I/O response time and use ten times fewer disks for business applications from Oracle and third-party providers. Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression The most advanced data compression technologies are included in Oracle Exadata Storage Servers. Oracle Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression can, on average, reduce the size of Data Warehousing tables by 10x, and archive tables by 50x. This offers significant savings on disk space for primary, standby and backup databases, and will improve the performance of Data Warehousing queries. Benefits for SAP Customers Extreme Performance for Business Warehouses Improves both query performance and concurrency by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring from database servers and bringing it closer to the data. Extreme Performance for OLTP Applications Addresses the disk random I/O bottleneck problem by transparently moving hot data to Sun FlashFire. You get ten times faster I/O response time and use ten times fewer disks for business applications from Oracle as well as third-party providers. Extreme Performance for Mixed Workloads Allows you to consolidate data warehousing, transaction processing, and mixed workloads on a massively parallel server grid and eliminate the cost of third-party specialty hardware, security, and management solutions. UNVEILING ORACLE EXADATA V2 The World s First OLTP Database Machine With Sun FlashFire Technology
ORACLE EXADATA V2 The World s First OLTP Database Machine With Sun FlashFire Technology To: Dr. Christian Graf (SAP AG) and Mr. Gerhard Kuppler (Oracle) Regarding: Exadata V2 Sun Oracle Database Machine Dear Sirs; The purpose of this request is to express our interest in adopting Exadata V2 Sun Oracle Database Machine for our SAP Applications and we are asking you for its immediate release, once the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for SAP is available. Send this request to christian.graf@sap.com and gerhard.kuppler@oracle.com (or fax this page to +49 6227 8398 199) and please answer the following questions about your current Oracle/ SAP configurations. Operating System and version? Database version? Database size? SAP Application Modules and release level? Number and type of application servers running on the existing database server? Number and type of dedicated application servers? Name: Company: Address: Yes / No we are using BI Accelerator? Oracle Corporation Oracle DB for SAP GTC Altrottstr. 31 D-69190 Walldorf Germany E-mail: Please fill out the Oracle Exadata V2 for SAP request form and send (or fax) it to Faxnr.: +49 6227 8398 199
Oracle database for SAP is safe, reliable and scalable CONTENTS DATABASE 11 g 3 Editorial 4 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for SAP 10 Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT) Option certified for SAP 14 Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT) at Stadtwerke Munich (SWM) 16 SAP Partitioning Engine 18 Relationship Interview Oracle Database and SAP 20 Benchmark SAP on Oracle with Fujitsu 23 Benchmark SAP on Oracle Database 11g Release 2 with Fujitsu 24 Benchmark SAP on Oracle-Solaris 28 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at République Française, Ministère de la Défense 30 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Southwest Airlines 34 Oracle Database Vault for SAP customers 36 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Coca-Cola Hellenic 39 Oracle Index Compression at Tyson Foods 41 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Sodexo Brazil 42 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Verizon 44 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Essent Netherlands 46 SAP on Oracle at Steelcase, HP-UX 50 Oracle Partner Connectria 52 SAP on Oracle Database at Dow Corning 54 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Bauerfeind 58 Hosting on Oracle at Freudenberg IT 61 Oracle Partner Delta Consulting 62 Oracle Partner All4IT Group 64 Oracle Data Guard Freudenberg ITj 70 Oracle Advanced Customer Services (ACS) for SAP 74 SAP Fast Start with Oracle and HP 77 Oracle Partner IS4IT, SAP on RAC 78 Useful links Oracle Database for SAP customers 79 Imprint
Oracle Database for SAP The #1 Database safe, reliable, scalable, optimized for SAP customers 3 DEAR SAP CUSTOMER, For 21 years Oracle Corporation and SAP AG has maintained an ongoing commitment to our joint customers and have long-standing reseller and customer support agreements in place, which provides enhanced access to Oracle database technology and world class customer support. In this edition, we focus on Oracle Database 11g Release 2, and the most important technologies that benefit SAP customers in terms of return on investment, space savings and performance. Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition comes with a wide range of options to extend the world s #1 database to help grow your business and meet your users performance, security and availability service level expectations. The innovation continues with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 to lower IT costs and deliver a higher quality of service by: Consolidating business applications onto fast, reliable and scalable databases (Real Application Clusters RAC) Maximizing availability and eliminating idle data center redundancy (RAC, Data Guard, online Patching) Compressing data onto low cost storage partitions for faster performance (Oracle Advanced Compression) Securely protecting information and enabling compliance (Oracle Advanced Compression, Oracle Database Vault) Doubling DBA productivity and reducing the risk of change (Diagnostic Pack, integrated in BR* Tools and SAP DBA Cockpit). The Exadata V2 Sun Oracle Database Machine the world s fastest for any type of database workload and the only database machine that does online transaction processing (OLTP). Oracle Exadata Storage Software runs on each storage server performing data-intensive processing that reduces the volume of data returned to database servers. Smart Scans, Storage Indexes, Data Mining Model Scoring and Hybrid Columnar Compression are all components of Oracle Exadata Storage Software that enable extreme performance. If you would like to adopt Exadata V2 Sun Oracle Database Machine for your SAP Applications please see the Exadata for SAP request form in this edition or on www.oracle.com/sap. Read more about the benefits, why customers moved from single instance to Oracle Real Application Clusters for SAP (Coca Cola Hellenic) and why Oracle database has the best cost of ownership (Tyson Food, Partitioning and Compression). Compliance and security are getting more and more important today, please see the Oracle Database Vault for SAP article. Please read more about the Oracle Advanced Customer Services (ACS) for SAP customers, including: database migrations, Oracle-to-Oracle (O2O), performance tuning, health check and internal training workshops. For more information or to see current and previous editions go to: www.oracle.com/sap. We welcome your comments and questions, please contact us at: saponoracle_de@oracle.com Sincerely Gerhard Kuppler Senior Director Corporate SAP Account, Oracle Corporation
4 SAP CERTIFIED ORACLE DATABASE 11g RELEASE 2 FUNCTIONALITY Note: A general release of Oracle Database 11.2 is not provided for earlier SAP releases (SAP R/3 3.1I up to and including SAP R/3 4.6C). Similar to Oracle Database Version 10.2, there will only be a temporary 11.2 release in direct connection with an SAP upgrade project for these older SAP versions. INTRODUCTION Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition delivers industry leading performance, scalability, security and reliability on a choice of clustered or single-servers, running Windows, Linux, and UNIX. It provides comprehensive features to easily manage the most demanding transaction processing, business intelligence, and content management applications. Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition comes with a wide range of options to extend the world s #1 database to help grow your business and meet your users performance, security and availability service level expectations. SAP has certified Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (please see SAP Note 1398634) with the following details: Only SAP products based on SAP Kernel 6.40, 7.x and higher are certified with Oracle Database 11.2. The certification and rollout by SAP happens in three waves: End of March 2010 (wave 1): major UNIX platforms (AIX, HP-UX IA64, Solaris SPARC & x64) and Linux x64 were released (done) End of Q2/2010 (wave 2): Windows x64 and HP- UX PA-RISC platforms are planned to be released Windows IA64 tbd Oracle Database 11g Release 2 provides customers more benefits: saving disk space with lower hardware costs, more performance, higher security, better manageability, exceeding productivity and at least in an outstanding high availability/disaster recovery for SAP applications. The following provides a list of important features available for SAP customers today and many of them are unique to Oracle. Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g Release 2 The SAP release of Oracle Database 11.2 RAC occurs at the same time as the general release of Oracle Database 11.2 in the SAP environment. For information about Oracle RAC support, see SAP Note 527843. It contains important details about the released RAC configurations, like the fact that all used software stacks with 10g RAC will continue to stay in place and can be used with 11g RAC, so neither support for raw devices (not supported any more with 11.2) nor ASM is available for 11.2 RAC databases in SAP environments. OLTP Table Compression Oracle Database 11g introduced a new feature called OLTP Table Compression that allows data to be compressed during all types of data manipulation operations, including conventional DML such as INSERT and UPDATE. In addition, OLTP Table Compression reduces the associated compression overhead of write operations making it suitable for transactional or OLTP environments as well. OLTP Table Compression, therefore, extends the benefits of compression to all application workloads.
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for SAP 5 DATABASE 11 g Oracle s OLTP Table Compression, part of Advanced Compression, uses a unique compression algorithm that eliminates duplicate values within a database block, even across multiple columns. Compressed blocks contain a structure called a symbol table that maintains compression metadata. When a block is compressed, duplicate values are eliminated by first adding a single copy of the duplicate value to the symbol table. When compared with competing compression algorithms that maintain a global database symbol table, Oracle s unique approach offers significant performance benefits by not introducing additional I/O when accessing compressed data. The benefits of OLTP Table Compression go beyond just on-disk storage savings. One significant advantage is Oracle s ability to read compressed blocks directly without having to first uncompress the block. Therefore, there is no measurable performance degradation for accessing compressed data. In fact, in many cases performance may improve due to the reduction in I/O since Oracle will have to access fewer blocks. Further, the buffer cache will become more efficient by storing more data without having to add memory. Since Oracle 10.2.0.2, SAP has certified the use of Index compression to save disk space for indexes and reduce total database size on disk. Customer experiences show that even after a full database reorganization has taken place, an additional 20% of total disk space reduction for the whole database can be achieved using index compression. SecureFile Data Compression SecureFiles is a new feature in Oracle Database 11g that introduces a completely re-engineered large object (LOB) data type to dramatically improve performance, manageability, and ease of application development. SecureFiles data is compressed using industry standard compression algorithms. Compression not only results in significant savings in storage but also improved performance by reducing IO, buffer cache requirements, redo generation and encryption overhead. SecureFile compression provides significant storage and handles in-line and out-of-line LOB data which are getting more and more important in SAP applications and are widely used in SAP products such as SAP CRM, SAP XI, SAP NetWeaver Portal, and even in SAP ERP. Almost all non-cluster tables in SAP ERP use out-ofline LOBs that are unique to the Oracle database. RMAN Backup Compression The continuous growth in enterprise databases creates an enormous challenge to database administrators. The storage requirements for maintaining database backups and the performance of the backup procedures are directly impacted by database size. Oracle Advanced Compression includes compression technology that can dramatically reduce the storage requirements for backup data. Due to RMAN s tight integration with Oracle Database, RMAN backup (widely used by SAP customers) data is compressed before it is written to disk or tape and doesn t need to be uncompressed before recovery providing an enormous reduction in storage costs. Data Pump Compression The ability to compress the metadata associated with a Data Pump job was first provided in Oracle Database 10g Release 2. In Oracle Database 11g, this compression capability has been extended so that table data can be compressed on export. Data Pump compression is an inline operation, so the reduced dump file size means a significant savings in disk space. Unlike operating system or file system compression utilities, Data Pump compression is fully inline on the import side as well, so there is no need to uncompress a dump file before importing it. The compressed dump file sets are automatically decompressed during import without any additional steps by the Database Administrator. Data Guard Network Compression Data Guard provides the management, monitoring, and automation software infrastructure to create, maintain, and monitor one or more standby databases to protect enterprise data from failures, disasters, errors, and data corruptions. Data Guard maintains synchronization of primary and standby databases using redo data (the information required to recover a transaction). As transactions occur in the primary database, redo data is generated and written to the local redo log files. Data Guard Redo Transport Services are used to transfer this redo data to the standby site(s).
6 DATABASE 11 g With Advanced Compression, redo data may be transmitted in a compressed format to reduce the network bandwith in an efficient way. Redo transport compression is no longer limited to compressing redo data only when a redo gap is being resolved. When compression is enabled for a destination, all redo data sent to that destination is compressed. Deferred Segment Creation Beginning in Oracle Database 11g Release 2, when creating a table in a locally managed tablespace, table segment creation is deferred until the first row is inserted. In addition, creation of segments is deferred for any LOB columns of the table, any indexes created implicitly as part of table creation, and any indexes subsequently explicitly created on the table. The advantages of this space allocation method for customers running Oracle database underneath their SAP applications are the following: Empty database objects will not consume any disk space Very important for SAP environments as 60-70% of all tables, lobs, indexes and partitions in an SAP installation are empty Makes database installation for SAP a lot faster because creation of empty tables, LOBs, and indexes are dramatically faster. Oracle Data Dictionary Space queries run substantially faster Enhanced Add COLUMN Functionality Before Oracle 11g adding new columns with DEFAULT values and NOT NULL constraint required both an exclusive lock on the table and the default value to be stored in all existing records. Now in Oracle 11g the database can optimize the resource usage and storage requirements for this operation, default values of columns are maintained in the data dictionary for columns specified as NOT NULL. Adding new columns with DEFAULT values and NOT NULL constraint no longer requires the default value to be stored in all existing records. This not only enables a schema modification in subseconds and independent of the existing data volume, it also consumes no space. Especially for large tables, updating table column results in reduced execution time and space saving. Because add column is very common within SAP BW applications and SAP upgrades, enhanced ADD Column Functionality leads to: factor 10-20 performance improvement for SAP BW during add column process saving large amount of disk space Bitmap Indexes Especially SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse customers now can use Bitmap Indexes. Bitmap Indexes are high densed indexes which need minimal disk space. This reduces the size of a database very effectively. Oracle is the only database vendor who offers disk-based Bitmap Indexes. Variable Length Datatype Representation Also Oracle is the only vendor to provide a comprehensive Variable Length Datatype Representation. With Variable Length Datatype Representation minimum disk space is allocated. Bitmap Indexes and Variable Length Datatype Representation are the main reasons why the Oracle database is smaller than databases from other vendors. Compared to Oracle Database 10g the listed Oracle Database 11g features give the following results: First the size of the 11.2 database will be 3 times smaller. So a 10.2 database with a size of 3 Terabytes will only consume 1 TB in disk space with 11.2. Second backups will also be smaller up to 10 times smaller.
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for SAP 7 SecureFile Performance SecureFiles offer the best solution for storing file content, such as images, audio, video, PDFs, and spreadsheets. Traditionally, relational data is stored in a database, while unstructured content both semi-structured and unstructured is stored as files in file systems. SecureFiles is a major paradigm shift in the choice of files storage. SecureFiles is specifically engineered to deliver high performance for file data comparable to that of traditional file systems, while retaining the advantages of the Oracle Database. SecureFiles offers the best database and file system architecture attributes for storing unstructured content. Performance Improvement Factor SAP VBDATA Throughput (Insert/Read/Delete) row size in KB LONGs (9.2,10.2) LOBs (10.2,11.2) Securefiles 11.2 SAP customers benefit from SecureFiles because of Significantly faster access times compared to LOBs in SAP environments Increased transaction throughput on SAP cluster tables especially with RAC Prerequisite for compression of SAP tables containing LOBs (e.g. cluster tables) Overall transaction throughput increases when LOB data is stored in SecureFiles (see figure below). LOB data stored in SecureFiles delivers equal or better performance compared with LOB data stored in LONG or BasicFiles (LOB implementation prior to 11g). SecureFiles improve dramatically the scalability of SAP applications running against Oracle Database 11g RAC but also Oracle Database 11g Single Instance benefits substantially from SecureFiles. Therefore a clear recommendation is given to migrate all existing LONG and Basicfile LOB data to SecureFiles.Hi Tablespace Encryption On many agendas security is in the forefront and for customers becoming much more important. Oracle has a lot of features in the area of security. Especially for SAP customers it is now very easy to encrypt sensitive data. Included within the Advanced Encryption is the technology to encrypt all data in a tablespace. Prior to 11g, Oracle provided security features such as Column Encryption through Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Client Server (SAP Application Server) Network Encryption.g Additional Encryption Advanced Encryption within 11g includes RMAN Backup Encryption, so no one can read data from a (stolen) backup. In addition customers can easily encrypt export file with Oracle Data Pump unstructured LOB data with SecureFile Encryption. DG Secure Network Transport Data Guard provides a secure environment and prevents tampering with redo data as it is being transferred to the standby database. To enable secure transmission of redo data, set up every database in the Data Guard configuration to use a password file, and set the password for the SYS user identically on every system. More Security Database Vault Oracle Database Vault is also certified for use with SAP applications. With Oracle Database Vault, protective realms around SAP application database objects can be established to prevent privileged database users from accessing sensitive data and to enforce separation of duties among privileged database users.
8 DATABASE 11 g Real Application Testing (RAT) Database Replay provides DBAs and system administrators with the ability to faithfully, accurately and realistically rerun actual production workloads, including online user and batch workloads, in test environments. By capturing the full database workload from production systems, including all concurrency, dependencies and timing, Database Replay enables you to realistically test system changes by essentially recreating production workloads on the test system, something that a set of scripts can never duplicate. With Database Replay, DBAs and system administrators can test: Database upgrades, patches, parameter, schema changes, etc. Configuration changes such as conversion from a single instance to RAC, ASM, etc. Storage, network, interconnect changes Operating system, hardware migrations, patches, upgrades, parameter changes SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) can predict and prevent SQL execution performance problems caused by environment changes. SQL Performance Analyzer provides a granular view of the impact of environment changes on SQL execution plans and statistics by running the SQL statements serially before and after the changes Direct NFS With Oracle Database 11g Release 2, you can configure Oracle Database to access NAS devices directly using Oracle Direct NFS Client, rather than using the operating system kernel NFS client. Oracle Database will access files stored on the NFS server directly through the integrated Direct NFS Client eliminating the overhead imposed by the operating system kernel NFS. These files are also accessible via the operating system kernel NFS client thereby allowing seamless administration. SAP customers can benefit from Direct NFS in the following way: Improves throughput of NAS solutions such as NetApp Up to 50% more database throughput in NAS environments with multiple NICs Up to 20% CPU savings on database server Works for Single Instance and Real Application Clusters (RAC) Works for UNIX/Linux and Windows Platforms Highly Available Network Solution Faster, easier and more available than any OS or NAS based bonding or trunking solution Direct NFS with NAS may provide higher throughput than traditional, more complex SAN solutions Superior to any bonding solution faster and easier Better throughput than most SAN solutions Online Patching A regular RDBMS patch is comprised of one or more object files and/or libraries. Installing a regular patch requires shutting down the RDBMS instance, relinking the oracle binary, and restarting the instance; uninstalling a regular patch requires the same steps. With Oracle Database 11g, it is possible to install single or bundle patches completely online, without requiring the database instance to be shut down, and without requiring RAC or Data Guard configurations. With online patching, which is integrated with OPatch, each process associated with the instance checks for patched code at a safe execution point, and then copies the code into its process space. Snapshot Standby Easy conversion of a physical standby database to a reporting database A physical standby database can be opened read/write for reporting purposes, and then flashed back to a point in the past to be easily converted back to a physical standby database. At this point, Data Guard automatically synchronizes the standby database with the primary database. This allows the physical standby database to be utilized for read/write reporting activities for SAP applications e.g. NetWeaver BI.
Only Oracle Database 11g Release 2 provides for SAP customers Best Performance & Scalability Fully integrated, platform independent active-active clustering solution for both SAP and database through RAC and Clusterware/SAPCTL Dictionary only add column with default High Performance NAS Storage through Direct NFS Best Deployment Flexibility Online Patching Real Application Testing Option Best Availability & Reliability Updatable Standby Database Fully integrated, platform independent active-active clustering solution for both SAP and database through RAC and Clusterware/SAPCTL Best Support for Very Large Databases RMAN Backup Compression SecureFile out-of-line LOB data compression Deferred Segments Creation Disk-Based Bitmap Indexes Dictionary only add column with default High Performance NAS Storage through Direct NFS Best Database Security Tablespace Encryption RMAN Backup Encryption Data Guard Secure Network Transport Database Vault Best Manageability & Self-Management Real Application Testing Option Online Patching Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) Oracle other DBs Oracle the # 1 Database for Deploying SAP Applications oracle.com/sap saponoracle_de@oracle.com Copyright 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its a affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
10 REAL APPLICATION TESTING CERTIFIED FOR SAP Making a change to the SAP database can represent a significant risk to an organization. The effects of an unexpected problem could be widely felt and have serious consequences. For this reason, testing of changes prior to production deployment is considered critical. The cost involved in testing using traditional methods can be very high both in time and money. Even after testing, many problems will only be discovered in production, and as a result end-users will suffer from poor performance or possibly even outages. Oracle now has a new and unique testing tool for the Oracle Database called Real Application Testing. This Database option is comprised of two complementary features, SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) and Database Replay. Together, these features can help ensure that database changes do not negatively impact SAP availability and performance. They significantly improve the quality and lower the cost of testing changes to the SAP database system. SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) One of the key tasks for a DBA is to tune SQL statements for optimal performance. Changes to database systems (such as optimizer statistics refresh, database upgrades, and patches) can cause the performance of previously well tuned SQL statements to regress, which can dramatically impact system performance for endusers. Until now, it was difficult if not impossible to predict how day to day operational changes to the database will impact application SQL performance. With SQL Performance Analyzer, or SPA, you can now know exactly how SQL will behave after routine system changes. SPA automatically captures production SQL statements from your SAP database and re-executes them following a change to measure the impact. The statements are executed serially, in isolation from each other and regressed statements are automatically highlighted. Integration with SQL Plan Management and SQL Tuning Advisor enables automatic tuning of these statements to address any regressions prior to a change being implemented in production. Orchestration of the entire SPA process can be done using Enterprise Manager, which provides a number of workflows for testing common operations such as Database Upgrades. There is also a Guided Workflow which enables custom experiments to be conducted.
Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT) Option certified for SAP 11 Real Application Testing was introduced in the 11g release of the Oracle Database, however, SQL Performance Analyzer is also available for previous releases of the Oracle Database. Consequently, SQL Performance Analyzer can be used to test changes in SAP environments even if there are no immediate plans to move to Oracle Database 11g Release 2. Some examples of changes that could be assessed using SQL Performance Analyzer in SAP environments are: Upgrade SAP Database from Oracle Database 10g Release 2 to 11g Release 2 Install Database Patchset Migration from single instance to RAC Implement Partitioning Implement Advanced Compression Changes to FIX_CONTROLS parameter settings Creation of Histograms on SAP tables Some of these changes can actually be tested safely on the production system, therefore removing the need for establishing a separate test environment. There are no SAP specific patches required to use SQL Performance Analyzer. Further general information on using SQL Performance Analyzer can be found in the following documents: Technical White Paper: SQL Performance Analyzer Viewlet: SQL Performance Analyzer in Oracle Database 11g Oracle Database Real Application Testing User s Guide Database Replay Load testing today is generally done using tools that allow testing teams to generate synthetic workloads based on what they expect users to do on a system. These workloads can then be replayed by application virtual users, which simulate the end users by submitting requests to the application. Although widely used, this approach has a number of shortcomings when it comes to testing database level changes: Creating the synthetic workload can take a considerable time and requires programming expertise User behaviour is not well understood, so many possible workflows are often missed in the synthetic tests Production scale database concurrency is near impossible to simulate with these tools A full application stack is required for testing as these tools simulate end users Database Replay makes it possible to capture a workload on a production system with negligible performance overhead and replay it on a test system with the exact timing, concurrency, and transaction characteristics of the original workload. Database Replay is suitable for testing changes to the database tier and anything below it, such as storage or OS platform. This also means that tiers such as the Web and Application Server tier are not required in the test environment. The Database Replay capture process has been backported and certified for SAP databases running on Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.4). Changes that Database Replay could be used to validate include: SAP Database upgrade from 10gR2 (10.2.0.4) to 11gR2 Platform migration such as from Windows to Oracle Solaris Database Patchset install Changes to FIX_CONTROLS parameter settings Schema changes Migration from single instance to RAC Implement Partitioning Implement Advanced Compression Database storage changes (e.g. Direct NFS) Tablespace encryption Object Reorganization
12 Database Replay is included with Oracle Database 11g. In addition, Database Replay capture can be run against Oracle Database 10.2.0.4 and higher version. To use Database Replay in SAP environments, Patch 9233285 is required on the Replay database. For more technical information on using Database Replay please refer to the following whitepaper: Technical White Paper: Database Replay Viewlet: Database Replay in Oracle Database 11g Oracle Database Real Application Testing User s Guide Results of Testing The Oracle/SAP Development Team recently concluded comprehensive testing of SAP applications using both SQL Performance Analyzer and Database Replay. The testing consisted of SAP ERP and BW workloads running in-house on the ABAP stack. Further testing was undertaken at a large utilities customer running the SAP IS-U (Industry Specific Utilities) module. The objective was to use Real Application Testing to measure the effects of Advanced Compression for OLTP and SecureFiles on DML operations for SAP ERP. The testing activity consisted of using Database Replay to capture a production workload from a 10.2.0.4 SAP database. This workload was then replayed multiple times against both compressed and non-compressed Oracle Database 11g Release 2 databases. Key AWR metrics from the replays are shown below. DB size after normal reorg: DB size after reorg and OLTP + SecureFiles (med) + Index compression: Space saved (~ 55%) 3562,00 GB 1589,00 GB 1973,00 GB KEY AWR Metrics Replay without Compression Replay with Compression Diff% Load Profile Redo size/s Logical reads/s Block changes/s Physical reads/s Physical writes/s User calls/s Parses/s Hard parses/s W/A MB processed/s Executes/s Transactions/s Instance Efficiency Percentages (Target 100%) Buffer Hit % Library Hit % Host CPU (CPUs: 8 Cores: 8 Sockets: 4) %User %System %WIO %Idle 1) 153456,80 18748,80 459,70 3820,60 74,60 1806,50 247,20 32,70 12,50 2572,10 4,50 81,91 95,08 12,30 4,40 12,30 81,80 203407,00 18210,00 595,20 1635,80 72,00 2042,10 254,10 33,60 12,70 2834,60 4,80 91,79 95,52 12,80 4,20 11,20 81,80 32,55-2,87 29,48-57,18-3,49 13,04 2,79 2,75 1,60 10,21 6,67 12,06 0,46 4,07-4,55-8,94 0,00 1) normalized redo (+6,67%) is 163692/s for uncompressed run
Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT) Option certified for SAP 13 Compression SQL ID SQL Text Executions Elapsed Time CPU Time Buffer Gets Disk Reads Module N g9makkh1cnq94 INSERT INTO ALCLASTOOL VALUES( :A0, :A1, :A2, :A3, :A4... 37648 180,29 152,97 1136194 32901 SAPLSALU Y g9makkh1cnq94 INSERT INTO ALCLASTOOL VALUES( :A0, :A1, :A2, :A3, :A4... 40434 215,54 164,10 1118975 33911 SAPLSALU N 6kxdz6nknay0m INSERT INTO ALGRPCUSGE VALUES( :A0, :A1,:A2, :A3, :A4... 18257 80,88 71,32 518407 9978 SAPLSALU Y 6kxdz6nknay0m INSERT INTO ALGRPCUSGE VALUES( :A0, :A1,:A2, :A3, :A4... 18889 92,12 74,99 532217 9615 SAPLSALU N c42810chs804v INSERT INTO ALGRPCUSPF VALUES( :A0, :A1, :A2, :A3, :A4... 4100 20,51 16,67 134523 3652 SAPLSALU Y c42810chs804v INSERT INTO ALGRPCUSPF VALUES( :A0, :A1, :A2, :A3, :A4... 4202 24,07 17,32 137029 3493 SAPLSALU N 8wz2ywwcrh7c7 INSERT INTO ALGRPCUSMC VALUES( :A0, :A1, :A2, :A3, :A4... 2144 12,48 9,08 77571 2758 SAPLSALU Y 8wz2ywwcrh7c7 INSERT INTO ALGRPCUSMC VALUES( :A0, :A1, :A2, :A3, :A4... 1820 13,18 7,94 65849 2289 SAPLSALU Sample SQL Tuning Set Comparison In order to further analyze the effects of Advanced Compression on DML operations, SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) was used concurrently with Database Replay. As the workload was being replayed, SPA s automatic cursor cache capture feature was used to capture the SQL statements into a SQL Tuning Set. SQL Tuning Set contains the text of the SQL statements along with their bind values, execution plans and statistics. This was done for both replays, with compression enabled and without compression. In all over 5000 SQL statements were analyzed. The table below shows the SQL Tuning Set comparison of some the most frequently executed DML operations in the SAP workload. Conclusion Real Application Testing proved a vital tool for validating upgrade from Oracle Database 10g Release 2 to 11g Release 2. The ability to test with production workloads and SQL statements is essential for testing business critical applications like SAP and this feature will significantly mitigate upgrade and change risk when used by experienced DBAs. Overall the test results were very instructive. Key findings are described as follows (note: results will vary according to your workload): No significant overhead observed during capture process Advanced Compression reduced database size by 50% Redo generated increased by ~25% Physical reads reduced by 60% CPU usage stayed flat Problems encountered: During the testing bug # 9233285 was encountered. Patch for this bug must be applied before using Real Application Testing with SAP systems.
14 The positive results from using the RAT option for the first time enable us to look to the future and the upcoming changes in a much calmer manner than before. CHRISTIAN DUSCHL, Teamleader System Operations Management Stadtwerke Munich Services GmbH SUCCESSFUL TEST OF ORACLE DATABASE 11g RELEASE 2 REAL APPLICATION TESTING OPTION AT STADTWERKE MUNICH (SWM) Industry: Utility/Public Sector Annual Revenue: 4.2 billion Employees: Around 6,800 Im Making a change to the SAP database can represent a significant risk to an organization. The effects of an unexpected problem could be widely felt and have serious consequences. For this reason, testing of changes prior to production deployment is considered critical. The cost involved in testing using traditional methods can be very high both in time and money. Even after testing, many problems will only be discovered in production, and as a result end-users will suffer from poor performance or possibly even outages. The Real Application Testing (RAT) Option is comprised of two complementary features, SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) and Database Replay. Together, these features can help ensure that database changes do not negatively impact SAP availability and performance. They significantly improve the quality and lower the cost of testing changes to the SAP database system. Facts instead of surprises The IT specialists at SWM, are among the pioneers who are using the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Real Application Testing option together with the SAP application. SWM Stadtwerke München, a public utility and service company based in the mega city of Munich that offers a wide range of products, has data volumes of more than 3 Terabyte which are being accessed by 1500 to 1800 SAP users. The CPU utilization of the production systems is therefore extremely high. For Christian Duschl, SAP Team-Leader System Operations Management, the risks and contingencies associated with making changes to the SAP environment were always a high-cost challenge: Previously, we were not able to determine the dialog load with sufficient precision before commissioning new systems. Surprises were part of our day-to-day work. Having used RAT for the first time and gained some experience with it, we believe that this will finally become a thing of the past. The test scenario was compressing the database using the Advanced Compression option and to examine the effects on system performance. The production load of two RAC nodes was recorded over two working days and the database was transferred to a test server along with the data volume for this period. In a first step, the database was reorganized in a conventional manner, without being compressed. A representative 12 hour section of the recorded production load was then replayed. The replay contained the SAP ERP user load only. Other applications, such as those from the call center area (non-sap), were not taken into account and were filtered out during replay. The results from the replay were later used as a basis for further analysis. In the next step, all tables and indexes were compressed using OLTP Table, SecureFiles and Index compression.
Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT) at Stadtwerke Munich (SWM) 15 A second run, which included exactly the same dataset as the first run, was then tested against the compressed database and the results were compared with the first run. No additional costs and less disk space Manfred Fischer, Manager of SAP system maintenance in information and process technology and general coordinator of the RAT project, summarizes the results as follows: When we were recording the basic data over two days for the test, we couldn t find any negative effects on the CPU or I/O load of the production system and the dialog response times didn t change. The compression result was quite impressive. The amount of disk space shrunk from almost 3.6 TB to around 1.6 TB, resulting in a space saving of 55%. What was even more interesting was the effect on the CPU load when using compression. The result was amazing. Thanks to the enormous reduction in I/O of almost 60% and considerably better utilization of the main memory, the additional costs expected for compression were compensated in full for the CPU load. Another positive side-effect was a slight increase in transaction throughput. Because the hit rate of the database buffer cache improved considerably, there was less physical I/O to the disk subsystem. As the solution does not show any performance impacts, the Advanced Compression option can be used on the SAP ERP production systems at Stadtwerke München if necessary. According to Manfred Fischer, SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) also proved to be a key functionality. It was particularly helpful in evaluating the performance of important queries at statement level, which must not be negatively impacted. Calculated risks and cost savings In the future, the SAP environment at Stadtwerke München is to be split into three units (Network, Delivery and Coresystem) which will be designed to mirror the data volumes in the production system and various test and security systems, among other things. Because each one of these segments should have the capacity of the current system, the data volumes will triple in the final expansion stage. Given such complex tasks, Christian Duschl is giving an extremely positive conclusion from the test results with RAT: The positive results from using the RAT option for the first time enable us to look to the future and the upcoming changes in a much calmer manner than before. Unknown risks when making release changes, growing data volumes or deregulating an entire SAP system, as was the case here, loose their fears for many users at least for the database level. Using RAT will enable IT departments to demonstrate extremely positive cost-value results to the controlling departments.
16 SAP PARTITIONING ENGINE RELEASED BY SAP The SAP Partitioning Engine provides a solution for SAP on Oracle database systems that can use a predefined set of about 30 large application tables for partitioning, based on a technology concept from Oracle. SAP Partitioning Engine was released for customers in January 2010. The solution offers full integration of range partitioning into SAP OLTP products (e.g. ERP). Fully integrated The principle of partitioning is splitting a large table in smaller parts, called partitions, grouping and separating the rows of the table based on the content of one or more columns. Rows fulfilling the same criteria are placed in the same partition. This also allows queries of a table to execute faster because the data will now be grouped, instead of being distributed across the whole table. Dr. Christian Graf, Development Manager, DB Platforms Oracle & Informix, OS Platforms HPUX, Solaris, Tru64 SAP AG Unlike SAP BI, partitioning is not used by default in the SAP ERP system, for mainly historical reasons. Today, SAP installations typically have database sizes of around 1TB, whereas SAP customers using special functionalities such as the SAP retail module are running databases of 10TB and greater. Such large databases have several challenges: Old data must be archived, but archiving can have a negative impact on database performance. Deleting data from the database generates a huge transaction load, affecting normal data processing. Archiving very large tables can be a never-ending job. Once archiving is complete, follow-up tasks are needed either to rebuild fragmented indexes and/or to free up space in the tablespaces. These additional tasks occupy maintenance windows for the system, reducing overall availability. Response times to user queries and batch processing must be guaranteed. This becomes more and more difficult because the tables are constantly growing in size. Processing larger tables uses up much more time and resources on the database as well as on the application servers. Because of the longer runtime, work processes take longer which means that more powerful application servers are needed. Complex analysis and maintenance jobs of partitioning can be automated. Therefore, Oracle in the initial phase of the project had developed a set of tools that was based on Oracle s own technologies, mainly PL/SQL procedures. This worked fine for a few installations but, it was a consulting based solution which is useful for non-standard SAP requirements, it should not be necessary for standard environments. To make the innovative method available to more customers SAP has developed their own solution, based on the concept provided by Oracle. The SAP Partitioning Engine is fully integrated in the SAP system. It offers a predefined set of about 30 application tables to be partitioned based on time based criteria. So existing non-partitioned tables will be converted through ABAP/SAP brtools task. Also partition maintanance is fully automated through the internal SAP SM37 job, requiring no DBA intervention. A partitioning service for non-bi SAP systems has been available from Oracle for several years but, until now was not integrated into SAP s DB admin tools. The Partitioning Engine will be available with WEB AS 6.20, SAP ECC 5.0/6.0, Business Suite 7, brtools 7.10 and running Oracle 10.2.0.4 or higher. For other prerequisits please see SAP Note 1333328. For partitioning without the Partitioning Engine, please see SAP Note Oracle Partitioning 742243 and SAP note 722188 FAQ.
SAP Partitioning Engine 17 The bulding concept of the SAP Partitioning Engine is based on the following three main parts: Analysis and Statement Creation First part is an ABAP program, which analyzes the content of the document column of an application table and creates as output a DDL (Data Definition Language) statement for the table and indexes with suitable partition ranges. This kind of transaction initially generates non-partitioned tables into partitioned ones. This includes built-in functionality. Such as well-known SAP tables, their partitioning key as well as an automatic adjustment for partition sizes. Analysis task can be done even on very large tables in short time with the help of the underlaying number-ranges object defined in table NRIV ( NRIV Partitioning ). Partition Transformation Second part of partitioning engine is a new function in the brspace tool, which reads the previously created DDL statement and performs the online redefinition. It includes LOB migration if the table contains long field. The new online table generation can be done without downtime, because brspace use Oracle Technology (DBMS_REDEFINITION-Package). Partitioning Care Process Third part is also an ABAP program, specifically for maintaining the partitioning schema. One maintaining task done by this program is that if new transaction data are inserted in the partitioned table automatically additional partitions are created if needed. If the table is archived, the number of rows stored in the oldest partitions will decrease. The transaction of the SAP Partitioning Engine is responsible for freeing up the space no longer used in these partitions. The space is freed by executing a merge operation on the old partitions. The result is one small partition containing the remaining rows and a lot of free space within the tablespace, which can be used for creating new partitions. This transaction can also be executed while SAP is up and running. Advantages and Benefits The SAP Partitioning Engine avoids negative sideeffects when archiving by seperating historic and current application data using range partitioning (Oracle offers several other types of partitioning including: list and hash partitioning, which are normally not suitable for SAP ERP systems). Range Partitioning has a couple of advantages or benefits: Index and table formatting is restricted to the partition with the data records to be archieved. Archiving transactions and running application transactions access different partitions of the table. Block usage is improved by avoiding mixing old data and new data. Further advantage, disk space is reclaimed by merging the partitions that are empty after archiving and partitioning can also improve query performance. Using the SAP Partitioning Engine allows SAP customers to make use of the Oracle partitioning technology, without the need to be familiar with Oracle programming. The predefinition of the most common candidate tables for partitioning allows less experienced Oracle users to benefit from this innovative approach. Starting Partitioning to select a table with SAP Partitioning Engine (Source: SAP)
18 RELATIONSHIP INTERVIEW ORACLE DATABASE AND SAP Horst Udo Schulte, Vice President Global Partner Programs, SAP AG Gerhard Kuppler, Senior Director Corporate SAP Account, Oracle Corporation Listen to the Oracle webcast at www.oracle.com/sap 2.) Mr. Kuppler, what importance does Oracle attach to the database technology partnership with SAP? Gerhard Kuppler Horst Udo Schulte 1.) Mr. Schulte, the database partnership with Oracle has thrived for more than 20 years. Can you summarize this for us in a few key words? Schulte: Firstly, our intent is to continue to satisfy the tens of thousands mutual SAP on Oracle database customers. Our joint work has always been characterized by a constant desire to provide mutual customers with efficient service and support solutions for their application needs in order to bring additional benefit to their business and to offer optimum protection of their investments. Secondly, continually accelerating and optimizing the use of safe, reliable and scalable database technology in a mission-critical application environment, something we have achieved time and again. And thirdly, we have enjoyed a very successful service and support partnership with Oracle Corporation. For the benefit of our mutual customers, we have a long term contractual frame work and resources in place driving this forward. The Oracle team supporting our joint relationship has been in place for more than 10 years, this stability in personnel has been very benefical to both SAP and our mutual customers. The Oracle SAP resources include database development engineers and 24 by 7 follow the sun customer support. Kuppler: Satisfied mutual customers! For more than 20 years Oracle has been the safe, reliable, and scalable database of choice for SAP customers. The Oracle database is constantly optimized for SAP Business Suite Applications and around the world more than two thirds of all mid-size to high-end SAP customers in every industry, entrust their application deployments to Oracle databases. Customers are running SAP applications with Oracle databases on the same code base on Unix, Linux and Windows operating systems. Oracle was one of the technology partners involved in developing SAP R/3, when SAP began developing R/3 in 1988. Oracle s database technologies and SAP s solutions are very closely linked and perfectly integrated with one another. We managed to establish our Oracle database technologies as the number one database amongst SAP customers around the globe. The very large and growing customer base expects a cost benefit from our two companies technologies in the long term and also to receive first-class database support from both of us. Oracle is deploying a significant amount of resources at SAP HQ Walldorf Germany, Palo Alto and Tokyo to deliver safe, reliable and scalable DB technology and round the clock services with a great long term commitment to the mutual customer base.