7 Managing Database Workload Using Services

About Oracle Services

Oracle Database 10g introduced an automatic workload management facility, called database services. Database services (services) are logical abstractions for managing workloads in Oracle Database. Services divide workloads into mutually disjoint groupings. Each service represents a workload with common attributes, service-level thresholds, and priorities.

A single service can represent an application, multiple applications or a subset of a single application. For example, the Oracle E-Business suite defines a service for each responsibility, such as general ledger, accounts receivable, order entry, and so on. A single service can be associated with one or more instances of an Oracle RAC database, and a single instance can support multiple services.

Services provide the following benefits:

• A single entity for managing applications that compete for the same resources

• Allow each workload to be managed as a unit

• Hide the complexity of the cluster from the client

To manage workloads, you can define services that you assign to a particular application or to a subset of an application's operations. You can also use services to manage the workload for different types of work. For example, online users can use one service while batch processing can use a different service and reporting can use yet another service type.

Traditionally an Oracle database provided a single service and all users connected to the same service. A database always has this default database service that is the database name. This service cannot be modified and always enables you to connect to the database.

When a user or application connects to a database, Oracle recommends that you use a service for the connection. Oracle Database automatically creates one database service when the database is created. For many installations, this may be all you need. For more flexibility in the management of the workload using the database, Oracle Database enables you to create multiple services and specify which database instances offer the services.

You can define services for both policy-managed and administrator-managed databases.

• Policy-managed database: When you define services for a policy-managed database, you assign the service to a server pool where the database is running. You can define the service as either uniform (running on all instances in the server pool) or singleton (running on only one instance in the server pool).

• Administrator-managed database: When you define a service for an administrator-managed database, you define which instances normally support that service.These are known as the PREFERRED instances. You can also define other instances to support a service if the preferred instance fails. These are known as AVAILABLE instances.

Services are integrated with the Database Resource Manager, which enables you to restrict the resources that are used by a service within an instance. In addition, Oracle Scheduler jobs can run using a service, as opposed to using a specific instance.

About the Database Resource Manager

The Database Resource Manager is a database feature you can use to control the database resources allocated to users, applications, and services. This approach ensures that users, applications, and services receive their share of the available database resources. The Database Resource Manager enables an Oracle RAC database running on one or more nodes to support multiple applications and mixed workloads with optimal efficiency.

The Database Resource Manager provides the ability to prioritize work within an Oracle database or your Oracle RAC environment. For example, high priority users, such as online workers, would get more resources to minimize response time, while lower priority users, such as batch jobs or reports, would get fewer resources, and could take longer to run. This allows for more granular control over resources.

Resources are allocated to users according to a resource plan specified by the database administrator. The following terms are used in specifying a resource plan:

• A resource plan specifies how the resources are to be distributed among various users (resource consumer groups).

• Resource consumer groups allow the administrator to group user sessions by resource requirements. Resource consumer groups are different from user roles; one database user can have different sessions assigned to different resource consumer groups.

• Resource allocation methods are the methods or policies used by the Database Resource Manager when allocating for a particular resource. Resource allocation methods are used by resource consumer groups and resource plans. The database provides the resource allocation methods that are available, but the DBA determines which method to use.

• Resource plan directives are a means of assigning consumer groups to particular plans and partitioning resources among consumer groups by specifying parameters for each resource allocation method.

• Subplans, which the DBA can create within a resource plan, allow further subdivision of resources among different users of an application.

• Levels provide a mechanism to specify distribution of unused resources among available users. Up to eight levels of resource allocation can be specified.

The Database Resource Manager enables you to map a resource consumer group to a service so that users who connect using that service are members of the specified resource consumer group, and thus restricted to the resources available to that resource consumer group.

To learn more about managing the Database Resource Manager using Enterprise Manager:

1. Access the Database Home page.

2. At the top of the page, click Server to display the Server page.

3. In the Resource Manager section, click Getting Started.

About Oracle RAC High Availability Framework

The Oracle RAC high availability framework enables Oracle RAC to maintain the database, components, and applications in a running state always. If an instance, component, or application fails, then it can be automatically restarted to keep Oracle Database operating at full capacity

Oracle Database focuses on maintaining service availability. In Oracle RAC, Oracle services are designed to be continuously available with workloads shared across one or more instances. The Oracle RAC high availability framework maintains service availability by storing the configuration information for each service in the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR). Oracle Clusterware recovers and balances services across instances based on the service definition.

About Fast Application Notification (FAN)

One of the main requirements of a highly available application is for it to be quickly notified when something happens to critical system components. This allows the application to execute event-handling programs. The timely execution of such programs minimizes the time it takes to react to cluster resource organizations and the impact of cluster component failures by avoiding costly connection time outs and application time outs.

Fast Application Notification is a notification mechanism that Oracle RAC uses to notify other processes about cluster configuration and service-level information, including status changes such as UP or DOWN events. FAN UP and DOWN events can apply to instances, services, and nodes. FAN also publishes Load Balancing Advisory events.

FAN enables the automated recovery of applications when cluster components fail. For cluster configuration changes, the Oracle RAC high availability framework publishes a FAN event immediately when a change occurs regarding the state of the instances in the cluster. Instead of waiting for the application to query the database and detect a problem, applications can receive FAN events and react immediately.

FAN UP and DOWN events provide the following benefits:

• For DOWN events, the disruption to the application can be minimized because sessions that are connected to the failed instance or node can be terminated. Incomplete transactions can be terminated and the application user notified immediately. Application users who request connections are directed to instances that are started and are providing the requested service.

• For UP events, when services and instances are started, new connections can be created so that the application can immediately take advantage of the extra resources.

Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC utilize Oracle Notification Service (ONS) to propagate FAN messages both within the Oracle cluster and to client or mid-tier machines. ONS is installed with Oracle RAC and the Oracle Clusterware resources to manage the ONS daemon are created automatically during the installation process. ONS daemons run locally sending messages to and receiving messages from a configured list of nodes (where other ONS daemons are active).

About FAN Callouts

FAN callouts are server-side executable files that Oracle RAC runs immediately when high availability events occur. A callout is essentially a shell script or precompiled executable written in any programming language. Some examples of how you can use FAN callouts to automate the actions performed when events occur in a cluster configuration are as follows:

• Starting and stopping server-side applications

• Relocating low-priority services when high-priority services come online

• Sending text or numeric messages to pagers

• Executing shell scripts

The executable files for FAN callouts are stored in the Grid_home/racg/usrco subdirectory. If this subdirectory does not exist in your Grid home, then you must create this directory with the same permissions and ownership as the Grid_home/racg/tmp subdirectory.

All executables in the Grid_home/racg/usrco subdirectory are executed immediately, in an asynchronous fashion, when a FAN event received through the ONS. A copy of the executable files used by FAN callouts should be available on every node that runs Oracle Clusterware. Example callout scripts are available on Oracle Technology Network at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/twpracwkldmgmt-132994.pdf

About the Load Balancing Advisory

The Load Balancing Advisory provides information to applications or clients about the current service levels that the Oracle RAC database instances are providing. Applications can take advantage of the load balancing Fast Application Notification (FAN) events to direct work requests to the instance in the cluster that provides the best performance based on the workload management directives that you have defined for that service. Also, when an instance is restarted, Oracle RAC uses FAN events to notify the application's connection pool so that the connection pool can create connections to the recently started instance and take advantage of the additional resources that this instance provides

The load balancing advisory is integrated with the Automatic Workload Repository built into Oracle Database 11g. The Automatic Workload Repository measures response time and CPU consumption for each service.

The advice given by the Load Balancing Advisory takes into account the power of the server and the current workload of the service on the server. Enabling the Load Balancing Advisory helps improve the throughput of applications by not sending work to instances that are overworked, running slowly, not responding, or have failed.

Your application can take advantage of the Load Balancing Advisory without any programmatic changes if you use an integrated Oracle client, one that has the Run-time Connection Load Balancing feature. Due to the integration with FAN, Oracle integrated clients are more aware of the current status of an Oracle cluster. This prevents client connections from waiting or trying to connect to an instance that is no longer available. The integrated clients for FAN events include Oracle Database 11g JDBC, Oracle Database 11g ODP.NET, and Oracle Database 11g Oracle Call Interface (OCI).

You configure your Oracle RAC environment to use the Load Balancing Advisory by defining service-level goals for each service used. Defining a service-level goal enables the Load Balancing Advisory for that service and enables the publication of FAN load balancing events. There are two types of service-level goals for Run-time Connection Load Balancing:

• Service Time—The Load Balancing Advisory attempts to direct work requests to instances according to their response time. Load Balancing Advisory data is based on the elapsed time for work done by connections using the service, and the available bandwidth to the service. This goal is best suited for workloads that require varying lengths of time to complete, for example, an internet shopping system.

• Throughput—The Load Balancing Advisory measures the percentage of the total response time that the CPU consumes for the service. This measures the efficiency of an instance, rather than the response time. This goal is best suited for workloads where each work request completes in a similar amount of time, for example, a trading system.

If you do not select the Enable Load Balancing Advisory option, then the service-level goal is set to None, which disables load balancing for that service.

About Connection Load Balancing

Oracle Net is a software component that resides on the client and on the Oracle database server. It establishes and maintains the connection between the client application and the server, and exchanges messages between them using industry standard protocols. For the client application and a database to communicate, the client application must specify location details for the database it wants to connect to, and the database must provide some sort of identification or address.

On the database server, the Oracle Net Listener, commonly known as the listener, is a process that listens for client connection requests. The configuration file for the listener is the listener.ora.

Oracle Database 11g database clients use SCAN and the easy connect method to connect to the database. SCAN can resolve to multiple IP addresses, reflecting multiple listeners in the cluster handling public client connections. When using the easy connect method, you do not have to configure any client network files. You simply specify a connect identifier with the following format:

SCAN[:port]/service_name

SCAN represents the SCAN for your cluster. Specifying the TCP port identifier is optional. The service_name is the name of a database service.

You can also use Net Configuration Assistant (NETCA) to create a net service name, a simple name for the database service. The net service name resolves to the connect descriptor, which is the network address of the database and the name of the database service. The address portion of the connect descriptor is actually the protocol address of the listener. The client uses a connect descriptor to specify the database or instance to which the client wants to connect.

When a net service name is used, establishing a connection to a database instance takes place by first mapping the net service name to the connect descriptor. This mapped information is stored in one or more repositories of information that are accessed using naming methods. The most commonly used naming method is Local Naming, where the net service names and their connect descriptors are stored in a localized configuration file named tnsnames.ora.

When the client connects to the cluster database using a service, you can use the Oracle Net connection load balancing feature to spread user connections across all the instances that are supporting that service. There are two types of load balancing that you can implement: client-side and server-side load balancing. In an Oracle RAC database, client connections should use both types of connection load balancing. When you create an Oracle RAC database using Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA), DBCA configures and enables server-side load balancing by default.

About Run-time Connection Load Balancing

Run-time Connection Load Balancing is a feature of Oracle connection pools that can distribute client work requests across the instances in an Oracle RAC database based on the Load Balancing Advisory information. The connection allocation is based on the current performance level provided by the database instances as indicated by the Load Balancing Advisory FAN events. This provides load balancing at the transaction level, instead of load balancing at the time of the initial database connection.

With Run-time Connection Load Balancing, applications use Load Balancing Advisory information to provide better performance to users. OCI Session pools and ODP.NET connection pools support Run-time Connection Load Balancing. For Java applications, Oracle recommends the Universal Connection Pool (UCP). The Universal Connection Pool is integrated to take advantage of Load Balancing Advisory information. UCP, introduced in Oracle Database 11g patch set 1 (11.1.0.7), can be used against Oracle Database 10g or Oracle Database 11g.

You must enable the client data source for Run-time Connection Load Balancing with a service that has the following configuration:

• The Load Balancing Advisory is enabled and the service-level goal is set to either Service Time or Throughput.

• The service connection load balancing goal is set to Short.

Figure 7-1, "Run-time Connection Load Balancing" illustrates Run-time Connection Load Balancing. In this illustration, the Oracle RAC database has three instances. Suppose that the Load Balancing Advisory indicates that Instance1 and Instance3 have the best performance, while Instance2 currently has less than optimal performance. When Run-time Connection Load Balancing is enabled on the implicit connection cache, the following process occurs:

1. A client requests a connection from the connection pool.

2. Run-time Connection Load Balancing selects the connection that belongs to the most efficient (best) instance from the connection pool. In Figure 7-1, there are three possible nodes to which the connection can be routed. Instance1, which has the least amount of CPU workload, is currently being assigned about 60 percent of the incoming connections. Instance2, which is currently overloaded, is only being assigned around 10 percent of the incoming connections. Instance3, which has a high workload, is being assigned around 30 percent of the incoming connections. The best instance to handle the connection request in this case would be Instance1.

3. The client receives the connection that would process the work request with the best response time.

Figure 7-1 Run-time Connection Load Balancing

Description of "Figure 7-1 Run-time Connection Load Balancing"

Oracle Database 11g introduces an additional flag in the load balancing advisory event called affinity hint. The affinity hint is automatic when load balancing advisory is turned on through setting the goal on the service. This flag is for temporary affinity that lasts for the duration of a web session. Web conversations often connect and disconnect many times during the entire session. During each of these connects, it may access the same or similar data, for example, a shopping cart, Siebel, and so on. Affinity can improve buffer cache efficiency, which lowers cpu usage and transaction latency. The Affinity Hint is a flag that indicates if Affinity is active or inactive for a particular instance and service combination. Different instances offering the same service can have different settings for the Affinity Hint.

Applications using Oracle Database 11g and UCP, can take advantage of this new affinity feature. If the affinity flag is turned on in the Load Balancing Advisory event, then UCP creates an Affinity Context for the Web session such that when that session does a get connection from the pool, the pool always tries to give it a connection to the instance it connected to the first time it acquired a session. The choice of instance for the first connection is based on the current load balancing advisory information.

About Service Administration Using Enterprise Manager

The Cluster Managed Database Services page is the master page for beginning all tasks related to services. To access this page, go to the Cluster Database Maintenance page, then click Cluster Managed Database Services in the Services section. You can use this page and links from this page to do the following:

• View a list of services for the cluster.

• View the instances on which each service is currently running.

• View the status for each service.

• Create or edit a service.

• Start or stop a service.

• Enable or disable a service.

• Perform instance-level tasks for a service.

• Delete a service.

Using the Cluster Managed Database Services Page

When managing services using Enterprise Manager, you use the Cluster Managed Database Services page.

On the Cluster Managed Database Services page you can perform the following tasks:

• View a list of services for the cluster, the instances on which each service is currently running, the status of each service, the server pool associated with the service, the responsiveness of the service, and any alerts or messages for that service.

• Start or stop a service.

• Test the connection for a service, or display the Oracle Net TNS strings being used.

• Access the Create Service page.

• Edit, delete, enable, or disable a service.

• Access the Edit Server Pool page for the server pool associate with each service.

To access the Cluster Managed Database Services page:

1. On the Cluster Database Home page, click the Availability tab.

2. On the Availability subpage, under the Services heading, click Cluster Managed Database Services.

   The Cluster and Database Login page appears.

3. Enter credentials for the database and for the cluster that hosts the Oracle RAC database, then click Continue.

   The Cluster Managed Database Services page appears and displays the services that are available on the cluster database instances.

Verifying Oracle Net Supports Newly Created Services

By using GNS and configuring a SCAN for your cluster, you no longer have to modify the network setup on each client. This section shows you how to verify that the new service is recognized by Oracle Net and available to the database clients.

When using utilities to manage your cluster, databases, database instances, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM), and listeners, use the appropriate binary that is in the home directory of the object or component you are managing and set your ORACLE_HOME environment variable to point to this directory. For example, to use lsnrctl to manage a database instance or its listener, then use the binaries located in the Oracle home where the database instance or listener is running, and set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable to the location of that Oracle home.

To verify Oracle Net Services supports the newly created service:

1. Determine if the listener on the local node recognizes the new service by using the following command:

   lsnrctl status LISTENER_SCAN1
   

   You should see a list for the new service, similar to the following:

   Services Summary...
   Service "DEVUSERS.example.com" has 2 instance(s).
     Instance "sales1", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
     Instance "sales2", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
   

   The displayed name for your newly created service, for example DEVUSERS.example.com, is the service name you use in your connection strings.

2. Test the Oracle Net Services configuration by attempting to connect to the Oracle RAC database using SQL*Plus and the SCAN. The connect identifier for easy connect naming has the following format:

   "[//]SCAN[:port]/service_name"
   

   SCAN is the SCAN for your cluster, which defaults to cluster_name.GNS_sub_domain. The service_name is the name of the database service you want to use for connecting to the database. You can optionally specify the TCP port number on which the Oracle SCAN listener listens for connections.

   For example, you might use the following commands to connect to the DEVUSERS service for Oracle RAC database in the docrac cluster:

   $ sqlplus /nolog
   SQL> CONNECT system@"docrac/DEVUSERS.example.com"
   Enter password: password
   

   After you enter the password, you should see a message indicating you are successfully connected to the Oracle RAC database. If you get an error message, then examine the connect identifier and verify the user name, password, and service name were typed in correctly and all the information is correct for your Oracle RAC environment.

Configuring JDBC Clients

An application that uses JDBC connections can use a connection pool, so an existing connection can be used in the pool instead of making a new connection to the database every time you access data. The Universal Connection Pool (UCP) is a Java-based connection pool that supports any type of connection (JDBC, LDAP, JCA), to any type of database (Oracle or non-Oracle) with any middle tier (Oracle or non-Oracle). It also supports standalone deployments such as TopLink or BPEL. UCP includes integration features of Oracle Database such as Oracle RAC, including Fast Connection Failover, Run-time Connection Load Balancing, and Connection Affinity for Oracle RAC instances.

Without Fast Connection Failover, if a node goes down and the application attempts to connect to that instance, then the connection request might hang for several minutes waiting for the TCP time-out to be reached. If you chose not to use a connection pool with the integrated FCF feature, then your application can still be notified of Oracle RAC high availability events by configuring the Connection Failure Notification feature.

This section explains how to configure Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) clients for:

• Configuring JDBC Clients for Fast Connection Failover

• Configuring JDBC Clients for Connection Failure Notification

Configuring OCI Clients

The Oracle Call Interface (OCI) provides integration with FAN and Load Balancing Advisory events. To take advantage of the Load Balancing Advisory, you must enable the OCI Session pool. OCI clients can register to receive notifications about Oracle RAC high availability events and respond when events occur. This improves the connection failover response time in OCI and also removes terminated connections from connection and session pools. This feature works for all OCI client applications.

To configure OCI clients to receive FAN notifications:

1. Use the Cluster Managed Services page in Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control or Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control to a create services for the OCI clients. See "Creating Services" for more information about creating services.

   You should configure the primary instance as preferred for that service. For Notification Properties, choose "Enable Fast Application Notification for OCI and ODP.NET Applications".

   See "Administering Services" for more information about modifying services using Enterprise Manager.

2. Enable FAN for OCI clients by initializing the environment with the OCI_EVENTS parameter, as in the following example:

   OCIEnvCreate(...OCI_EVENTS...)
   

3. Link the OCI client applications with thread library libthread or libpthread.

4. In your application, you must check if an event has occurred, using code similar to the following example:

   void evtcallback_fn(ha_ctx, eventhp)
   ...  
   printf("HA Event received.\n");
     if (OCIHandleAlloc( (dvoid *)envhp, (dvoid **)&errhp, (ub4) OCI_HTYPE_ERROR, 
                         (size_t) 0, (dvoid **) 0))
       return;
     if (retcode = OCIAttrGet(eventhp, OCT_HTYPE_EVENT, (dvoid *)&srvhp, (ub4 *)0,
                              OCI_ATTR_HA_SRVFIRST, errhp))
       checkerr (errhp, (sword)retcode;
     else {
        printf("found first server handle.\n");
        /*get associated instance name */
        if (retcode = OCIAttrGet(srvhp, OCI_HTYPE_SERVER, (dvoid *)&instname,
                              (ub4 *)&sizep, OCI_ATTR_INSTNAME, errhp))
          checkerr (errhp, (sword)retcode);
        else
          printf("instance name is %s.\n", instname);
   

5. After a HA event is received, clients and applications can register a callback that is invoked whenever a high availability event occurs, as shown in the following example:

   /*Registering HA callback function */
     if (checkerr(errhp, OCIAttrSet(envhp, (ub4) OCI_HTYPE_ENV, 
                                (dvoid *)evtcallback_fn, (ub4) 0,
                                (ub4)OCI_ATTR_EVTCBK, errhp)))
     {
       printf("Failed to set register EVENT callback.\n");
       return EX_FAILURE;
     }
     if (checkerr(errhp, OCIAttrSet(envhp, (ub4) OCI_HTYPE_ENV,
                                   (dvoid *)evtctx, (ub4) 0, 
                                   (ub4)OCI_ATTR_EVTCTX, errhp)))
     {
       printf("Failed to set register EVENT callback context.\n");
       return EX_FAILURE;
     }
   return EX_SUCCESS;
   

   After registering an event callback and context, OCI calls the registered function once for each high availability event.

Configuring ODP.NET Clients

Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) connection pools subscribe to FAN notifications from Oracle RAC that indicate when nodes are down and when services are up or down. Based on these notifications, ODP.NET connection pools make idle connections, connections that were previously connected to node that failed, available again. It also creates new connections to healthy nodes if possible.

ODP.NET provides Run-time Connection Load Balancing to provide enhanced load balancing of the application workload. Instead of randomly selecting an available connection from the connection pool, it chooses the connection that can provide the best service based on the current workload information.

The procedures for enabling ODP.NET are similar to the procedures for enabling JDBC in that you must set parameters in the connection string to enable FCF. This section explains how to configure Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) clients for failover using FAN events.

To configure ODP.Net clients to receive FAN notifications:

1. Use the Cluster Managed Services page in Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control or Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control to a create services for the ODP.NET clients. See "Creating Services" for more information about creating services.

   For Notification Properties, choose "Enable Fast Application Notification for OCI and ODP.NET Applications". Set the Connection Load Balancing Goal to Long.

2. Enable Fast Connection Failover for ODP.NET connection pools by subscribing to FAN high availability events. Do this by setting the ha events connection string attribute to true either at connection time or in the data source definition. Note that this only works if you are using connection pools (the pooling attribute to true).

   You can also enable Run-time Connection Load Balancing by setting the load balancing connection string attribute to true.

   Use code similar to the following, where username is the name of the database user that the application uses to connect to the database, password is the password for that database user, and the service name is odpserv:

   // C#
   using System;
   using Oracle.DataAccess.Client;
   class HAEventEnablingSample
   {
     static void Main()
     {
       OracleConnection con = new OracleConnection();
   
       // Open a connection using ConnectionString attributes
       // Also, enable "load balancing"
       con.ConnectionString =
         "User Id=username;Password=password;" +
         "Data Source=//docrac.example.com/odpserv;" +
         "Min Pool Size=10;Connection Lifetime=120;Connection Timeout=60;" +
         "HA Events=true;Incr Pool Size=5;Decr Pool Size=2";
   
       con.Open();
       // Carry out work against the database here.
       con.Close();
       // Dispose OracleConnection object
       con.Dispose();
       }
    }
   

3. The HA events are published as messages in the SYS.SYS$SERVICE_METRICS queue. You must grant dequeue permission on this queue to the database user that the application uses to connect to the database.

   Use a command similar to the following, where username represents the database user that the .NET application uses to connect to the database:

   execute
   dbms_aqadm.grant_queue_privilege('DEQUEUE','SYS.SYS$SERVICE_METRICS', username);
   

   The username specified in this step equals the username used for the User Id argument in the previous step.