Carlos Sierra's Tools and Tips

As many of you know, eDB360 is a free tool that provides a 360-degree view of an Oracle database without any installation. A new version is available like once per month, but occasionally a large number of enhancements are implemented at once. This new release v1708 (March 25, 2017) includes several new features requested recently by some users of the tool, thus the need to blog about what is new:

1. Reducing the scope of eDB360 is now possible without having to generate a custom configuration file. Prior to this version, if a user wanted to generate output for let’s say AWR reports only (section 7a), the tool needed a custom.sql file with line DEF edb360_sections = ‘7a’;. Then we would pass to edb360.sql as 2nd execution parameter the name of this custom configuration file (too cumbersome!). Starting on v1708, we can directly pass to edb360.sql the section that we desire (i.e. SQL> @edb360 T 7a). This 2nd parameter can either input the name of a custom configuration file (legacy functionality), but now it also accepts a column, a section, a list of columns or a list of sections; for example: 7a, 7, 7a-7b, 1-4 and 3 are all valid values.
2. A couple of reports were added to section 3h: “SQL in logon storms” and “SQL executed row-by-row”. The former identifies those SQL statements that are seen frequently on very short-lived sessions (based on ASH), and the latter presents a list of SQL statements with large number of executions and small number of rows processed.
3. eDB360 now extracts ASH from eAdam for top 16 SQL_ID (as per SQLd360 list) + top 12 SNAP_ID (as per AWR MAX from column 7a). What it means is that eDB360 includes now a tar file with raw ASH data for both: SQL statements of interest and for AWR periods of interest (both according to what eDB360 considers important). Using eAdam is easy, so when content of eDB360 does not include a very specific aggregation of ASH data that we need, or when we have to understand the sequence of some ASH samples for example, we can then restore this eAdam data on any Oracle database and data mine it.
4. Some reports on section 2b show now totals at the bottom. That is to SUM some numeric values. Other reports may follow in future releases.
5. RMAN section includes now a new report “Blocks with Corruption or Non-logged”.
6. Added Load Profile (Per Sec, Per Txn and Count) as per DBA_HIST_SYSMETRIC_SUMMARY. This Load Profile resembles what we see on AWR at the top, but this is computed for the entire period of diagnostics (31 days by default). It shows max values, average, median and several percentiles. With this new report on section 1a, we can glance over it and discover in minutes some areas of further interest, for example: logons per second too high, just to mention one.
7. There is a new section 4i with “Waits Count v.s. Average Latency for top 24 Wait Events”. With this set of 24 reports (one for each of the top wait events) we can observe if patterns on the number of counts relate to patterns on the latency for such wait event; for example we are able to see if an increase in the number of waits for db file sequential reads correlates to an increase of average latency for such wait event. We can also observe cases were latency for a wait event cannot be explained by load on current database, thus hinting an external influence.
8. Fixed “ORA-01476: divisor is equal to zero” on planx at DBA_HIST_SQLSTAT.
9. Added AWR DIFF reports for RAC and per instance. These are computed comparing MAX reports to MEDIAN reports, and they help to quickly identify large differences on load. These new AWR DIFF reports are regulated by configuration parameter edb360_conf_incl_addm_rpt (enabled by default). They exist on 11R2 and higher.
10. Added the ASH Analytics Active report for 12c. This new ASH report is regulated by configuration parameter edb360_conf_incl_ash_analy_rpt (enabled by default). This applies to 12c and higher.
11. The name of the database is now part of the main filename. Some users requested to include this database name as part of the main zip file since they are using eDB360 periodically on several databases. This new feature is regulated by configuration parameter edb360_conf_incl_dbname_file (disabled by default).
12. At completion, main eDB360 zip file can now by automatically moved to a location other than the standard SQL*Plus working directory. All output files are still generated on the local SQL*Plus directory from where the script edb360.sql is executed (i.e. edb360-master directory), but at the completion of the execution the consolidated output zip file is now moved to a location specified by a new parameter. This new feature is regulated by configuration parameter edb360_move_directory (disabled by default).
13. Added new report on “Database and Schema Triggers” under column 3h. This new report can be used to see potential LOGON or other global triggers. For triggers on specific tables, refer to SQLd360 which is automatically included on eDB360 for top SQL.
14. All queries executed by eDB360 to generate its output were modified. New format is q'[query]’. Reason for this change is to improve readability of the code.

Always download and use the latest version of this tool. For questions or feedback email me. And I hope you get to enjoy eDB360 as much as I do!