Carlos Sierra's Tools and Tips

As I get frequent questions about eDB360 I decided to post some FAQ here. First, some links to prior posts:

1. Video: Introducing the eDB360 Tool
2. What to do if edb360 takes long to run
3. eDB360
4. What is new with EDB360?
5. How to execute eAdam and eDB360
6. Meet “edb360″: a free tool that provides a 360-degree view of an Oracle database
7. Presentations

Q: When is the best time to execute edb360?

A: At the end of a regular working day. Since it may take several hours to execute, some customers schedule it for a Friday evening.

Q: How long will edb360 take to execute on my production environment?

A: I don’t know. Best way to predict this is by executing edb360 in a lower but similar environment, like QA or TEST.

Q: Are there any risks on executing edb360 on a production environment?

A: No that I know. Think edb360 as a long sequence of SQL statements against DBA and GV$ views. Are they going to break anything? In theory not. So far I haven’t see edb360 breaking any environment. And if it does most probably it would a database bug. Most conservative approach is to try it first on a lower environment.

Q: Does edb360 install anything on my database?

A: No.

Q: Does edb360 changes the state of my database?

A: No.

Q: My edb360 seems to be hanging. How can I tell for sure?

A: Use any normal method: OEM, query long operations, look at V$SQL for active SQL. If you see edb360 is “stuck” at one SQL for let’s say more than one hour, you may want to report this to me. You can also find the SQL, kill the session, comment out that SQL out of edb360 code, and retry. When I have seen this, it happens to be either a known database bug, or lack of good statistics on schema objects behind particular query.

Q: Why is the output of edb360 so extensive?

A: We don’t know what we don’t know. Since edb360 is used for Oracle databases health-checks, trying to minimize the number of round trips to collect diagnostics, this tool collects many pieces of information. Sometimes we use most, sometimes we use a small subset. It all depends what we see.

Q: How do I read edb360?

A: Personally, I read everything. It takes me at least one day for an initial review. When I look at it for the 2nd or 3rd time, my search is narrower and deeper. While I look at it the 1st time I take some light notes, else I forget what I have seen so far.

Q: Can I use edb360 on any Oracle database?

A: Yes, as long as it is 10g, 11g or 12c. It works on any platform, but it works better on Linux and UNIX. It works for any application, including EBS, PSFT, Siebel, SAP and any custom one.

Q: Can I use edb360 on a non-Oracle database?

A: No.

Q: Is edb360 certified to run on 12c?

A: Not yet. It should work fine for single-tenant databases. I haven’t tested it on 12c although. I will do soon.

Q: Can I use edb360 for sizing and/or capacity?

A: Yes and no. edb360 captures sizing metadata using the eSP collector. The eSP application for Sizing and Provisioning is Enkitec’s proprietary (now Accenture’s). So we can use edb360 for sizing, but only internally and when our client asks for it.

Q: Is edb360 free software?

A: Yes. look for license file included on tool.

Q: Where do I get the latest version of this tool?

A: Look at the column at the right of this entry. There is a section with a “Download” title. That links will take you to a GitHub location where you can download the latest version.

Q: Can I use edb360 for SQL Tuning?

A: Actually, for that you may want to get SQLd360, which is work in progress by Mauro Pagano. In the meantime you can use planx.sql, sqlmon.sql, sqlash.sql (under my cscripts) or download SQLTXPLAIN and/or SQLHC from MOS.

Q: Can I share edb360 tool with others?

A: Absolutely! I developed this tool thinking on our Oracle community.

Q: I have some ideas to improve edb360. How can I provide them?

A: Send me an email, or post them here. Every so often I get some good ideas, which I put on my list and one day I get to them. Keep in mind that I work on edb360 on my free personal time, so some ideas take longer to implement than others.

Q: Where can I learn more about edb360?

A: Look at links at the top. There is a 1hr presentation that goes over what this tool does. There is also a fresh sample output available.