Transcript Piper, Gary 1.ppt

PIPER-Rx
New Zealand Oracle Users
Group Conference 2010
Effective OEBS Application
monitoring and management –
latest news, views and techniques
By
Gary Piper
March 2010
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Agenda…
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Recent trends impacting OEBS Applications
monitoring and management
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Better OEBS management – free code & reports
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Workflow
User activity profiling
Performance
Concurrent manager activity
Change the way you think about Applications
management
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Managing OEBS is like a frog in a pot…
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Stick a frog in boiling water and it jumps out, stick it in
cold water and very slowly bring to a boil and it dies
Why? - Its body temperature keeps adapting to the
surrounding slow change in temperature. The frog does
not know that the temperature can rise so high it will
collapse under the heat. It feels nice and comfortable at
each point on the road to death
“We don’t know what we don’t know”
The challenge for DBAs, Apps DBAs and IT managers is to know how hot the water is
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OEBS Applications management trends…
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Improvements in OEBS Applications
management in the last few years have been
limited
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Workflow is still a problem child
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User behavior has not changed
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Monitoring tools that include OEBS have become bigger and
more complex and still largely take us down a technical path
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OEBS Applications management trends…
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The problem with the current crop if OEBS tools as I see it
is:
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The market direction has moved a way from point products to
massive “all seeing all knowing” enterprise monitoring, SLA, SOA,
CMDB etc… tools
Tools do lots of “cool” stuff
• unfortunately there is so much cool stuff you end up only using the bits you are
familiar with. So you do the same stuff, only more efficiently
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Tool complexity requires a greater learning investment - you need to
be quite experienced to understand the output…and who has that
time?
You ignore the output because you get too much of it – (index
rebuild example)
“Its what you do with the information that makes the
difference”. If you don’t have the information in a form that is easily
understood it is relatively useless
• The output needs to be in a format that can be communicated to the business
users (NB: The business is not IT)
We still don’t know what we don’t know……
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What you want and what you get….
I want to monitor my OEBS application
 What's available are enterprise monitors
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I wanted a shovel and I get a D9 earth mover
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But WOW, all the cool stuff you can do with the D9
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What occurred in the market that took us here?…
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Oracledoubt
10g &on
11
Casting
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RAC
– Selfaccounting
managing you
wont need
a DBA
your
controls
is often
much less sophisticated
Oracle – acquired
companies…
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Vendors were predominantly database based - Even
OEBS did not support this architectures for
360Commerce
 though
MetaSolv
some
time
AdminServer
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Moniforce
Advanced Visual Technology (AVT)
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mValent
Agile
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Net4Call
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Record and play back
AppForge
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Netsure Telecom Limited
AutoVue • The repository became larger than the instance - Solved by Appliances
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Oblix– Central repository
BEA
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OctetString
Bharosa
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PeopleSoft
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CMDB
Crystal Ball
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Portal Software
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Configuration and vulnerability tools – (One tool even
measured
high buffer gets as part of the vulnerability
Bridgestream
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Primavera
tool)
Captovation
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ProfitLogic
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Database Activity Monitoring – table level changes – (theRelsys
SQL)
ClearApp
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Casting
less sophisticated Eg Unposted batches
Context
Media doubt on your accounting controls is often much
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Retek
Demantra
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Siebel
e-Test (acquired from Empririx)
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Sigma Dynamics
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PeopleSoft,
Siebel,(GKS)
Oracle purchases
Global
Knowledge Software
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Skywire Software
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Many of these products also required vendor solutions
G-Log
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Sleepycat Berkeley DB
Haley
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Stellent
HotSip
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SPL WorldGroup
Hyperion
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Sun Microsystems (pending)
iFlex
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Sunopsis
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Most companies do not have an SLA let alone an enterprise
wide SLAs
Innobase
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Tacit Software
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Service level and event
Interlace •Systems
Tangosol
If I have some idiot run X jobs the whole system is affected 
JD Edwards
EnterpriseOne
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Telephony@Work
•
If the database is down the whole Application is down.
JD Edwards World
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TempoSoft
LODESTAR
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TimesTen in Memory DB
LogicalApps
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Thor Technologies
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TripleHop
Enterprise monitoring
Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002
Mergers & SAP
SLA & SOA Service orientated architecture - if something is wrong who or what will
be / is affected
Virtualisation
Fusion
This will get you audited within an inch of
your life
Source: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/index.htm (Oct-2009)
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Oracle E-Business Suite Ecosystem…
Mergers
Takeovers
Business Growth
Management
Reporting
(Business)
Full Service
Self Service
Customer Support
Architecture
Database
Management
Reporting
(Business)
Management
Reporting
(Technical)
Application
Fin, PO,OE,HR,PA….
Workflow
Concurrent
Processing
Self Service
Customers
Support
Interfaces
UPGRADES
Development
Apps DBA
Tuning : Patching : Cloning : “Cool” : Upgrades : Maintenance : Capacity Planning : Development :
Professional Development : Change Control : Backups : DR Planning And Other
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And what do we have to help us?…
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Our D9 – which is great if we want to build a road…
An enterprise tool sign-off process that takes years
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If your Application is slow its all slow… If some idiot users runs X jobs, the whole application
is affected
Number of alerts raised
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Live with cra# for 2 years then decide to buy a tool it that takes 1 year to purchase
The Oracle and OEBS portions of tools are generally designed by DBAs for
DBAs. There are rare acceptations but in most cases the OEBS stuff is
buried so deep in a technical tool you cannot find what you want
SLA - SOA breaches
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This is fine from a database / network approach when items are monitored 24/7 CPU….
OEBS – Once per month # of unposted journals
Index rebuilds
Aged user accounts
SLA breach on the last day of each month
SLA levels set for month end processing, miss the middle of the month
When a tool tells you something is wrong.. It often
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Doesn’t tell you what to do about it
Doesn’t provide the information in terms a business user can understand
I even remember one tool company saying you need to hire a tool manager
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and then came the GFC…
There's now no money for new tools…
Dow Jones Industrial Average
ASX
 The climate is still uncertain?
 Who has any budget?
 How will the vendors ride this out?
 Where will their development effort be?
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Today’s practical approach to OEBS management:
Get back to basics…
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Start by getting a handle on your processing profile
Overall activity / usage patterns covering a full business
cycle
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The great thing about OEBS implementations is that they are so
predictable - if it was slow on day 2-4 of last month end you can be sure
it will be slow on days 2-4 this month end
Idiot user actions - a constant challenge to monitor and
manage
Forget the new stuff and get the current stuff working
properly first
If you’re an OEBS DBA and still primarily living in SQL
land – you may want to rethink your strategy
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Paradigm shift: Change the way you think about
Applications management …
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“In a stabilised environment the majority of performance issues are user related”
Technical
User Activity
Issue
SELECT /*+ ORDERED
USE_NL(cc bal)
INDEX(per GL_PERIOD_STATUSES_U2)
INDEX(bal GL_BALANCES_N1) */
MAX (bal.period_name) period_name,
SUM (NVL (bal.begin_balance_dr, 0)) begin_dr,
SUM (NVL (bal.begin_balance_cr, 0)) begin_cr,
SUM (NVL (bal.begin_balance_dr, 0) + NVL (bal.period_net_dr, 0)
) end_dr,
SUM (NVL (bal.begin_balance_cr, 0) + NVL (bal.period_net_cr, 0)
) end_cr
FROM gl_period_statuses per, gl_code_combinations cc, gl_balances bal
WHERE cc.segment11 BETWEEN '00' AND '11'
AND cc.chart_of_accounts_id = :struct_num
AND per.application_id = 101
AND per.set_of_books_id = :p_set_of_books_id
AND per.effective_period_num BETWEEN :start_effective_period_num
AND :end_effective_period_num
AND bal.code_combination_id = cc.code_combination_id
AND bal.period_name = per.period_name
AND bal.actual_flag = :p_actual_flag
AND budget_version_id = 1000
AND 1 = 1
AND bal.set_of_books_id = :p_set_of_books_id
AND bal.template_id IS NULL
GROUP BY per.period_year, per.period_num
ORDER BY per.period_year, per.period_num
X
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Getting started towards better OEBS Apps management…
“How to” in 4 crucial areas (free reports):
1 – Workflow
2 - User activity profiling
3 - Performance & the affect of an issue
4 - Concurrent manager activity
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Every report provided with this paper does not
require any recording. The information is already
there in your OEBS application.
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1 - Workflow…
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NZOUG Mar-2010 Paper
“A better approach to OEBS workflow management”
It starts with managing workflow using
accounting’s “aging” principles
 Trick is excluding all those workflows that are
“old” and will not be cleaned up in the near
future
 Excellent source of business performance KPIs
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2 - User activity profiling…
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How many user accounts are actually being
used and more importantly when?
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How many active/inactive application accounts are there?
How do usage patterns vary / increase over time?
Aged Application users
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Clean them up (security)
Makes you look good
Who are your top users? (You need appear to
support these people)
 Very important profiling information
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Free user activity reports…
www.piper-rx.com/pages/reports_free.html
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User activity profiling…
SQL & Spreadsheet
Full Service Activity
3.5
3
29-Oct-09 (Thu)
28-Oct-09 (Wed)
2.5
08-Oct-09 (Thu)
2
07-Oct-09 (Wed)
1.5
07-Oct-09 (Tue)
1
06-Oct-09 (Mon)
05-Oct-09 (Sat)
0.5
23:00
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4:00
3:00
2:00
1:00
0:00
0
Self Service Activity
1.2
1
10-Oct-09 (Sat)
09-Oct-09 (Fri)
0.8
08-Oct-09 (Thu)
0.6
07-Oct-09 (Wed)
07-Oct-09 (Tue)
0.4
06-Oct-09 (Mon)
05-Oct-09 (Sat)
0.2
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23:00
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The future?...
Company 1 Self Service Users
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3 - Performance & the affect of an issue...
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It’s SLOOOOW!!!!
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The first and biggest issue is what does “IT” and “slow” mean?
Users just want a simple, fact based answer - No its not / No it
was not / Yes it was and we are looking into it.
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“Not all performance complaints are technical”
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Performance…
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In the zest to develop the holy grail of end-2-end and route
cause analysis - we have forgotten the end user. We need
something they can understand. Try using FNDOAMCOL
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3 - Performance & the affect of an issue...
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3 - Performance & the affect of an issue...
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There are three basic categories
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You need to know
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Performance issue now
Performance issue yesterday 
Outage
What is running and who is connected
What was running and who was connected
Look for
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Duplicate requests
Long running requests
External users
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3 - Performance & the affect of an issue...
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3 - Performance & the affect of an issue...
External Users
 User account
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Person (Employee)
Customer
Supplier
Requires SQL for reports (ECS)
'('||decode(employee_id, null ,'-', 'E')||
decode(customer_id, null ,'-', 'C')||
decode(supplier_id, null ,'-', 'S')||')' user_type
User Description
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Set a standardised user description
User can change their description via self service session
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4 - Concurrent manager activity…
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You need to know three things:
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What are you actually running?
What are the slowest programs? (these are
likely to jam up managers)
Are there requests that are assigned to the
wrong manager?
All new code should be assigned to the “slow”
manager until it earns the right to be migrated to
the standard manager
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Request Activity profiling…
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Request run times…
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Summary…
Identify the heat sources
 Turn down the heat
 Keep it tidy
 Keep it clean
 He who has the most charts wins…
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SAVE THE FROG
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Disclaimer…
The material contained in this presentation and any accompanying documents is provided by the
author "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties
of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the author be liable
for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited
to, loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability,
whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the
use of any content or information, even if advised of the possibility of such damage. It is always
recommended that you seek independent, professional advice before implementing any ideas or changes
to ensure that they are appropriate.
TOAD® is a registered trademark of Quest Software.
Oracle® is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation
© 2009 G Piper All Rights Reserved
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Clip art source…
Boiling Frog Picture
http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2006/08/the_power_of_th.html
Shovel http://www.dmiblog.com/
Spider - Free Halloween Clipart http://halloween.whipnet.net/clipart
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