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61 Oracle 10g Datamining Connector 2.1 for SAP BI customers ... We welcome
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Oracle for SAP is safe, reliable and scalable – the Grid enabled platform
No. 17 Oracle for SAP, April 2008 www.oracle.com/sap
Oracle for SAP is safe, reliable and scalable – the Grid enabled platform
CONTENTS
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1 2 6 8 13 14 18 23 26 28 30 33 36 40 42 45 46 48 52 55 58 60 61 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 72 73
Editorial Oracle 11g outlook and 10g supported features for SAP Oracle Advanced Security Option (ASO) for SAP Q & A Oracle Database Vault Oracle Database Security Interview – Between Oracle for SAP Technology Update Magazine and Dr. Christian Graf, SAP AG New Oracle Technology Features for SAP customers (Compression, Partitioning, ASO) Oracle Data Guard at Vilene Ltd. Japan Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at HR Group (Reno shoes) Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Staedtisches Klinikum Munich Oracle RAC for SAP at Gruppo Hera Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Stadtwerke Munich Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Cat Logistics Services COOP is benefiting from Oracle Partitioning Option for SAP Winter Corporation: Field Experience with Large-Scale Data Warehousing on Oracle (Colgate Palmolive Company) Certified SAP on RAC Configurations for Windows and Linux DELL-SAP on RAC Promotion Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP Mentor Graphics – Technology leader manage financial data and its most important assets – people Oracle 10g RAC World Record: SAP Standard Application Benchmarks SWAROVSKI increases SAP System availability with Oracle Data Guard IOUG – SAP Special Interest Group (SAP SIG) Oracle 10g Datamining Connector 2.1 for SAP BI customers Delta Consulting E2SCorp – Everest Business Solution, Inc UPW Innovative IT-Solutions – Policy Guard Manager – PGM for SAP, Oracle and Operating System IS4IT – SAP on RAC Implementation and IT-Consulting TUSC – Oracle Partner for SAP SAP Press – SAP Database Administration with Oracle California State University, CHICO College of Business – Hosting SAP on Oracle (IOUG SAP SIG) Useful links Oracle Database for SAP customers Imprint
Oracle for SAP – The #1 Database safe, reliable, scalable, optimized for SAP customers
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DEAR SAP CUSTOMER, For almost 20 years Oracle has been the safe, reliable, and scalable database of choice by SAP customers. The Oracle database is optimized for SAP applications and two thirds of SAP customers around the world, in every industry, entrust their application deployments on Oracle databases. Customers are running their SAP applications with Oracle on all major operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Unix. Oracle Corporation and SAP AG have an ongoing commitment to our joint customers and have just extended the long-standing reseller and customer support agreements, which provide enhanced access to Oracle Database technology and improved customer support. Today, the Oracle database and the high availability and scalability option Real Application Clusters (RAC) as well as Oracle Dataguard (DG) are supported and widely adopted by SAP customers. Oracle is again breaking down the barriers and leading the way in the creation, development, and manufacturing of the industry’s most advanced database security functionality, like Oracle Advanced Security and Oracle Database Vault. Last year was a busy year for Oracle/SAP Development as well as for the Oracle/SAP Support and Services team. Numerous new Oracle features, tools and methodologies have either been developed or integrated into SAP solutions. In this edition, we describe some of the most important new technologies and the benefits they offer to SAP customers. One of the biggest challenges today is the rapid growth in database size. In addition to Oracle Database technologies that have been available for several years like Bitmap Indexing or variable length storage for all data types, now SAP on Oracle customers can utilize Index Key Compression to save disk space. Huge amounts of data continue to increase and threaten systems performance. Oracle offers a rich collection of partitioning strategies to reduce I/O and improve performance. SAP BI customers have known the benefits for many years. Thanks to tools and a methodology developed by the Oracle/SAP Support and Services team, Oracle Partitioning is now available for SAP ERP systems as well. Compliance and security are more important than ever before. Therefore, Oracle Advanced Security, an Oracle Database Option that allows customers to encrypt data, has been certified with SAP applications and implemented by customers. Oracle Database Vault, a product that helps customers meet regulatory compliance requirements by enforcing separation of duty. Customers are always concerned about manageability. We discuss SAP DBA Cockpit for Oracle; in particular it’s use of Oracle Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). AWR automatically stores workload and performance statistics, so administrators and support engineers can analyze and quickly resolve performance issues, even if the root cause happened hours or days before. In this edition, you will learn more about these features and selected customer success stories. See more information at http://oracle.com/sap. We welcome your comments and questions, contact us at:
[email protected] Sincerely
Gerhard Kuppler Senior Director Corporate SAP Account Oracle Corporation
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U P D A T E O N O R A C L E 1 0g D A T A B A S E F U N C T I O N A L I T Y , R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N C L U S T E R S A N D O R A C L E 1 1 g FOR SAP OUTLOOK INTRODUCTION
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Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for Enterprise Grid Computing to lower hardware costs by leveraging low cost components and by greatly increasing resource utilization levels, therefore complementing the Advanced Computing Infrastructure concept of SAP. Oracle Database 10g Release 2 is available to SAP customer for 24 months now and is rapidly been used by SAP customers. The following provides a list of important features available to SAP customers today. Multiple Oracle Patch (MOPatch) Utility
The Maintenance of single patches for databases on Unix and Linux platforms can be a time-consuming and complex job when dealing with many SAP installations. Also the experience from many support calls especially in the area of database performance shows that many databases are not always at a current patch level. To help database administrators in these areas a new patch utility MOPatch was developed to guarentee that an Oracle database for the SAP application always uses the most current set of patches certified by SAP. SAP note 1027012 provides more details on how to use MOPatch. Index Key Compression
This feature allows B*Tree Indexes to be stored more efficiently on disk and in main memory which reduces disk space and improves query performance. Up to 70% of space for indexes can be saved on disk and query performance may improve by up to 30%. SAP Note 1109743 provides more details on how the index compression feature should be used in SAP environments. Instant Client
Instant Client allows you to run your applications without installing the standard Oracle client or having an ORACLE_HOME. OCI-based applications like SAP work without modification, while using significantly less disk space than before.
With the release of new SAP kernels 4.6D_EX2 and 6.40_EX2 the Instant Client is now available for all SAP versions starting from 4.6C on. Please refer to SAP Notes 1086956 and 1058988 for more details. Advanced Security Network Encryption
Oracle Advanced Security Network Encryption provides an easy-to-deploy and comprehensive solution for protecting communication to and from the Oracle Database using both standards based network encryption, and robust native encryption/integrity algorithms. Network Encryption between ABAP and Java Application Servers and the Oracle Database is available for all SAP products based on NW2004s. Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
Makes encryption of sensitive data simple by transparently encrypting data when it is written to disk. Rename Tablespace
You can now rename a tablespace. You no longer have to create a new tablespace, copy the contents from the old tablespace, and drop the old tablespace. This feature makes it easier, for example, to convert a dictionary-managed tablespace to a locally managed tablespace, or to add a tablespace to a database that already contains a tablespace with the same name, an operation being used in a MCOD environment. Online Segment Shrink
This feature shrinks segments of tables and indexes online and in-place that have free space in them, thereby enhancing efficiency of space utilization. End-to-End Application Tracing
The feature simplifies the debugging of performance problems in multi-tier enviroments. It will only be available for new versions of the SAP software and not for existing versions. Online LONG to LOB Migration
In this release tables with LONG and LONG RAW data, still used by many SAP applications, can now be migrated online to LOB data from within the BR*SPACE utility of SAP.
Oracle 10g Update for SAP
Automatic Optimizer Statistics Collection
Full Database Begin Backup Command
This feature automates the collection of optimizer statistics for objects. Objects with stale or no statistics are automatically analyzed, so administrators no longer need to keep track of what does and what does not need to be analyzed, nor to perform analysis by hand.
It is no longer necessary to issue a separate command to place each tablespace in hot backup mode. You can now use the ALTER DATABASE statement to place all tablespaces in backup mode. Also, the BEGIN BACKUP command now runs faster than before.
Change-Aware Incremental Backup
NEW FUNCTIONALITY WITH SAP BI 7.0
By using a new type of log file to track blocks that have changed in the database, RMAN can avoid scanning the entire datafile during an incremental backup. Instead, the amount of data scanned is proportional to the amount of data changed. Flashback Database
The Flashback Database feature provides a way to quickly revert entire Oracle database to the state it was in at a past point in time. It is also possible to bring a single table back in time. SAP Note 1125923 provides more detail on the usage of this feature in SAP environments. Data Pump Export and Import Utilities
The Data Pump Export and Import utilities provide very high-speed bulk movement of data and metadata from one database to another. These utilities offer several significant advantages over the original Export and Import utilities, including: the ability to completely restart export and import jobs; the ability to detach from and reattach to long-running jobs; the ability to estimate how much space an export job would consume; support for export and import operations over the network; and support for fine-grained object selection, based upon objects and objects types. This feature will initially not be integrated within the SAP administration tools. The new Data Pump Export and Import utilities can each be run in parallel, resulting in better performance in loading and unloading data and metadata. Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespaces
The transportable tablespace feature now enables tablespaces to be transported across different platforms therefore making a platform migration for a SAP customer much faster.
SAP BW users will benefit most from the new features describes in this section. These features are immediately available to all SAP BI customers. Faster Drop and Truncate Table
These two operations perform substantially faster by using improved algorithms in accessing the database buffer cache. In particular small tables, often used by SAP BW, benefit the most. In Memory Undo
Block changes by short transactions are now managed better by the database server resulting in less CPU cycles. Improved Scalability for Partitioned Objects
Dropping partitioned tables and indexes is now substantially faster by using a new algorithm for identifying the blocks of a partitioned object in the buffer cache and for cleaning these blocks in the buffer cache. The SAP BW application benefits the most, as dropping partitioned objects is a frequently used operation in SAP BW. Tests performed using a query on a table with 1,000 partitions show that Oracle 10g’s new strategy of sharing partitioning metadata results in less SQL memory usage in the SGA (9.2.0.6: 52KB, 10.2: 11KB) – this means that every single query on this table will use 5 times less memory. ODM Connector 2.1
Oracle Data Mining Connector 2.1 leverages all advanced Data Mining algorithms from Oracle Database 10g Data Mining Option. Oracle Data Mining Connector 2.1 is fully integrated with the Analysis Process Designer providing a secure, scalable and indatabase analytics engine for both BW 3.5 and BI 7.0 customers (see page 61).
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Oracle 10g Update for SAP
O R A C L E 1 0 g R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N CLUSTERS (RAC)
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Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) allows Oracle Database to run any packaged or custom application, unchanged across a set of clustered servers. This provides the highest levels of availability and the most flexible scalability. To keep costs low, even the highest end systems can be built out of standardized, commodity parts. Oracle 10g RAC provides a foundation for Oracle’s Enterprise Grid Computing Architecture. Oracle RAC technology enables a low-cost hardware platform to deliver the highest quality of service that rivals and exceeds the levels of availability and scalability achieved by the most expensive, mainframe SMP computers. Oracle 10g RAC is available on all platforms for SAP versions 4.6C and on. Integrated Clusterware
Oracle 10g RAC offers a complete clusterware management solution as an integral component of Oracle10g RAC available on all platforms Oracle 10g Database runs on. This clusterware functionality includes mechanisms for cluster connectivity, messaging and locking, cluster control and recovery, and a services provisioning framework. No 3rd party clusterware management software need be purchased. Oracle will, however, continue to support selected 3rd party clusterware products on specified platforms. With Oracle 10g Database Release 2, Oracle provides a High Availability API so that non-Oracle processes can be put under the control of the high availability framework within Oracle Clusterware.
additional virtual IP addresses used by the SAP Enqueue Service for ABAP and/or JAVA. With the introduction of SAPCTL no 3rd party software is needed to manage and control SAP Enqueue and Replication Service, from 6.40 based systems of SAP and upwards (as of today, available only for Linux and AIX). Additional Support for EMC Celerra NFS Servers
In addition to the already SAP certified NetApp NFS servers for SAP/RAC deployments on Linux platforms now SAP customers can use EMC NAS Celerra systems using NFS. Single System Image Management
Oracle 10g Enterprise Manager has been significantly enhanced to enable true single system image management of cluster database deployments. Enterprise Manager’s Cluster Database Page provides a single view of system status across multiple nodes. It also enables direct drill down to individual instances when needed. A new cluster configuration verification tool and improvements in the diagnostic tools first introduced in the Oracle9i Database release help users both avoid problems and resolve problems more quickly should they occur. Data Guard Integration for Disaster Recovery
With Oracle 10g Enterprise Manager, the management component of Oracle Data Guard, Data Guard Broker, is now completely integrated with RAC. Data Guard disaster recovery environments involving Oracle RAC databases can now be as easily managed as those employing single instance databases.
SAPCTL
Oracle Clusterware does provide high availability for SAP resources just as it does for Oracle resources. Oracle has created an Oracle Clusterware tool, SAP Control (SAPCTL), to enable you to easily manage SAP high availability resources. SAPCTL provides an easy-to-use interface to administer the resources, scripts, and dependencies of Oracle Clusterware and SAP high availability components. SAPCTL consolidates the functionality of the Oracle command-line tools by enabling you to easily manage the SAP Enqueue Service for ABAP and JAVA, the SAP Replication Service for ABAP and JAVA, and the
F E AT U R E S T O B E R E L E A S E D SOON BY SAP Database Vault
Database Vault provides strong internal controls for regulartory Compliance and protection against insider threats. By implementing Database Vault a DBA is no longer able to see user data. Database Vault will be available to all SAP customers in the second half of 2008 with 10.2.0.4 running 700 kernel based applications of SAP such as ECC 6.0 or BI 7.0.
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CONCLUSION Oracle 10g Database provides the necessary infrastructure for making the SAP landscape more responsive to the changing business environment. Oracle 10g Database gives you the flexibility you need to implement Enterprise Grid Computing, even using low cost servers and disks. The design of Enterprise Grid Computing complements the Adaptive Computing Infrastructure concepts of SAP. Oracle 10g Database provides the benefit of lowering risks with lower manageability costs, greater scalability and predictability and the highest level of availability.
11g
improving query performance. In combination with index key compression and Secure File compression every type of data in the Oracle database can now be stored in a compressed way. •
Secure File Compression
In addition to relational table data also unstructured data may be compressed. In the Oracle database. Secure File compression is part of the Advanced Compression Option.
O R A C L E D AT A B A S E 1 1 g F O R S A P OUTLOOK Oracle Database Release 11g is currently beeing tested by SAP. As with previous certifications SAP will certify Oracle Database 11g Release 2 with their products. There are features of Oracle 11g which will greatly benefit SAP customers. Below you’ll find a list of features which are currently planned by SAP, once Oracle 11g is certified by SAP or shortly after:
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SAP AG has participated in Oracle Database Beta Programs for many years. The joint Oracle and SAP development teams in Walldorf, Germany, have completed extensive tests of Oracle Database 11g Release 1 Beta and will continue testing with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Beta.
Secure Files
Secure Files implements a new architecture for storing unstructured data and will replace the LOB datatypes of previous database versions. Secure Files deliver improved performance and scalability over LOBs and offers additional functionality to save disk space. •
Optimizer Enhancements and Statistics Maintenance
The 11g Optimizer provides performance enhancements for complex SAP BI queries and better recognizes value changes in R/3 SQL statements. Statistics maintenance especially for partitioned objects is improved and calculation of statistics is more accurate and faster compared to previous database versions. •
Automatic Interval Partitioning
Maintenance of partitioned objects is now fully automatic as the database server will manage partitions on the fly. •
OLTP Table Compression
As part of the Advanced Compressed Option table data may be compressed reducing disk space and
ASM and ASM File System
ASM implements an Oracle volume manager to manage data efficiently on storage subsystems. While ASM is intended only for databases the ASM file system provides the same functionality for non-database data which is for instance needed to deploy RAC with SAP.
The release strategy of SAP AG for Oracle Database versions is to certify only the terminal release of a new database version. This strategy is based on the overall requests of the SAP customer community to minimize the number of version upgrades in complex SAP environments. It has been proven a successful roll out process with previous terminal release certifications of Oracle Database Versions 8i, 9i and 10g. Therefore, SAP AG will skip Oracle Database 11g Release 1 and certify Oracle Database 11g Release 2, at least 12 months before Oracle Database Release 10g goes into the extended support cycle. Oracle Database 11g Release 2 will contain various specific functionality designed and implemented for the needs of the SAP Application Product Suite.
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Oracle Database Vault provides strong internal controls for regulatory compliance and protection against insider threats. Oracle Database Vault not only prevents highly privileged users from viewing sensitive application data, it also enforces policies on who, when, where and how applications, databases and data can be accessed. Oracle Database Vault transparently protects database applications without requiring any changes to the existing application.
O R A C L E D ATA B A S E VA U LT F O R S A P C E R T I F I C AT I O N
Oracle Database Vault
Regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI), and the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require strong internal controls to protect sensitive information such as financial, healthcare and credit cards records from unauthorized access and modification. Oracle Database Vault provides a powerful and easy-to-use security solution inside the Oracle Database, enabling enterprises with new and existing applications to easily comply with these and future regulations. Insider threats are an increasing concern for customers worldwide. The CSI/FBI 2005 Computer Crime and Security study documented that more than 70% of information system data losses and attacks have been perpetrated by insiders, that is, by those authorized at least some level of access to the system and its data. Complying with regulations and protecting against the insider threats requires two primary enhancements to existing environments: • Preventive controls to restrict unauthorized access to sensitive data by highly privileged users. • Flexible and adaptable controls over who, when, where and how applications, databases and data can be accessed. Oracle Database Vault Realms, Factors, and Rules (described below) work together inside the database to restrict access from even the most powerful users without interfering with the normal day-to-day database administration. These features can be used in a flexible and adaptable manner to enforce security requirements, without changing the existing applications.
Highly Privileged User Controls
IT administrators, database administrators, and application administrators fill highly trusted positions within the enterprise. However, regulatory compliance, outsourcing, application consolidation and increasing concerns over insider threats have resulted in an almost mandatory requirement for strong controls on access to sensitive application data.
Realms Reports
Multi-Factor Authorization
Command Rules
Separation of Duty
Figure 1: Oracle Database Vault Overview
Retrofitting existing application code with new access controls can be costly and time consuming, and is not an option for many enterprises. With Oracle Database Vault Realms, enterprises can restrict highly privileged users, even the powerful DBA, from accessing application data. Realms are easily defined and can be placed around an entire application or set of tables quickly and easily.
O r a c l e D a t a b a s e Va u l t f o r S A P
Flexible and Adaptable
SAP ERP Validation in process
Oracle Database Vault Rules and Factors significantly tighten application security by limiting who, when, where and how databases, data and an applications can be accessed. Multiple factors such as IP address and authentication method can be used in a flexible and adaptable manner to enforce authorization requirements, without requiring changes to the existing applications. For example, access to the database could be restricted to a specific middle tier. Command rules can be defined for all SQL commands to provide additional control.
Oracle has validated Oracle Database Vault with SAP applications.
DBA
select * from HR.employees create user...
HR DBA
HR HR Realm
Oracle/SAP Development have started the SAP certification with Database Vault. For that reason, we would like to collect the SAP customer names who are interested in using this product. Prerequisites are: • existing production customer with SAP on Oracle • installation has to be on Oracle 10.2 • installation has to be on SAP ERP 2005 (no older versions). If you are are interested in participating in the SAP pilot program for Database Vault and the installation meets the requirements, please send us the following information to
[email protected]
FIN DBA
Fin Fin Realm
Figure 2: Oracle Database Vault Realms, Rules and Factors
Separation of Duty
Oracle Database Vault provides powerful separation of duty controls and protects the database from unauthorized changes. Oracle Database Vault provides three distinct responsibilities out-of-the-box for security administration, account management, and resource management. For example, Oracle Database Vault blocks a DBA with the create user privilege from creating a new user if the DBA doesn’t have the proper responsibility. You can further subdivide the resource administration responsibility into backup, performance and patching responsibilities. Optionally, responsibilities can be consolidated.
• SAP release level customer is running on • Oracle release level customer is running on • Operating System SAP/Oracle Development will contact you shortly.
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Q & A O R A C L E D ATA B A S E VA U LT W H AT I S O R A C L E D ATA B A S E VA U LT ?
the compliance requirements resulting from a deluge of privacy and corporate governance regulations. The latter include Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI, HIPAA, GrammLeach Bliley, the Japanese Privacy Act, BASEL II, and much more. 5. Who are super and privileged users? 1. What is Oracle Database Vault?
Oracle Database Vault is a database security option that you use to protect application data from DBA access, enforce protection of database structures from unauthorized change, and set a variety of access controls to implement dynamic and flexible security requirements. These features help you to adhere to standards for separation of duties, regulatory compliance, and internal control. You configure Oracle Database Vault to manage the security for an individual Oracle database instance. You can use Oracle Database Vault on standalone Oracle Database installations and in Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) environments. 2. Where can I get online information about Oracle Database Vault? http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/ products/database_vault/index.html 3. What Oracle software is required to run Oracle Database Vault?
Oracle Database Vault requires Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition. 4. What is driving security requirements for IT organizations today?
There are two macro issues driving security requirements for IT organizations today: How to protect against the “insider threat” — attack from within an organization by rogue individuals with privileges who are thought to be trustworthy, but prove otherwise and the need to put in place controls to address
Privileged users are users who have been granted powerful privileges or administrative roles within the database. Such users are generally administrators, but can be developers who are given access to the system for application development, partners who are given such privileges for application integration, or even an analyst who has access to database development tools such as Oracle Discoverer. A super user is the highest level of privileged user, oftentimes with SYSDBA access. 6. What else does Oracle Database Vault do?
In addition to that described above, Oracle Database Vault provides a web based management console that can be used to configure and manage the offering. Database Vault provides a dashboard to allow for monitoring of policies and configuration setup. Finally, Oracle Database Vault ships over three (3) dozen out-of-the box reports to show who has access to what, helping to demonstrate proof of compliance. 7. Is Oracle Database Vault the same as Oracle Audit Vault?
No. Oracle Audit Vault is a new product from Oracle focuses on securing and consolidating audit data. Oracle Database Vault and Oracle Audit Vault are intended to co-exist in the enterprise to assist customers with security, compliance, and privacy needs. 8. Does Oracle have partners signed up to support Oracle Database Vault?
Yes, Oracle has been working closely with a number of partners. These include global System Integrators (SIs) with risk management and security practices and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who plan to leverage
Q & A O r a c l e D a t a b a s e Va u l t
Oracle Database Vault to better secure and help address compliance requirements with their solutions. Examples of these partners include Protivity and BearingPoint as well as ArcSight, LogicalApps, Lumigent, Mantas, Tripwire, Vormetric and SAP. 9. How does Oracle Database Vault help customers achieve separation of duty?
Oracle Database Vault helps customers achieve separation of duty by creating different responsibilities to manage the different aspects of the database environment. Oracle Database Vault creates responsibilities for managing security, managing user accounts, and managing database resources. Separation of duty helps customers prevent unauthorized access to business data. Preventing unauthorized access to business data is a crucial requirement for many regulations such as SOX, Basel II, HIPAA, Graham-LeachBliley, PCI, and J-SOX (Japan). By creating separation of duty in the database, Oracle Database Vault helps customers achieve better internal control on who does what and when in the database which is also part of the regulatory compliance requirements. 10. What performance overhead does Oracle Database Vault incur on the database?
Our TPC-C benchmark testing showed that Database Vault has a minimal overhead of less than 1%. Customers should test their custom security settings for performance and try to make them as simple as possible. Normal database tuning still applies when Database Vault is installed.
13. How does Oracle Database Vault enforce these security mechanisms? Oracle Database Vault introduces several new concepts:
Realm – A container that serves as a “protection zone”. The Database Vault administrator can create a Realm and define the content within the realm. This realm can be comprised of database objects such a single table, multiple tables or an entire application, or multiple applications Command Rules – A collection of rules that you can create to control how users can execute almost any SQL statements, including SELECT, ALTER SYSTEM, database definition language (DDL), and data manipulation language (DML) statements. Command rules can work with rule sets to determine whether or not the statement is allowed. Rule sets use factors such as time of day, IP address, host name, or any number of identifiable attributes associated with the user. For example, a user will only be granted access to certain data if the command rules states that access to the application is restricted to working hours, from an internal IP address, and/or any other number of configurable parameters. These restrictions can be applied to all system users, including the most powerful DBAs. Multi-Factor Authorization – Rule sets that leverage multiple factors in their decision process. Security administrator‘s can define rules that are based on specific compliance requirements or security requirements. For example, limiting connections to a specific IP or range of IP addresses. 14. How is Oracle Database Vault different from Virtual Private Database?
11. Does Database Vault require a separate database?
No. Oracle Database Vault is an option to the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. It can be enabled on any Oracle Database Enterprise Edition release 10.2. and above. 12. Does Oracle Database Vault require Oracle Real
Virtual Private Database is a fine-grained solution within the Database that enables customers to build customized row level security solutions using PL/SQL. Oracle Database Vault provides a higher level solution that provides security for the database and application, by controlling access of privileged users (DBAs) and implementing separation of duty inside the database.
Application Clusters (RAC)? 15. Do the existing Oracle Database Security Features
No. However, you can use Database Vault in Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) environments (tbc by SAP).
co-exist with Oracle Database Vault?
Yes. All security features available with the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, for example VPD and Secure Application Roles, work with Oracle Database Vault. In Addition, other security options, like ASO and OLS, work with Oracle Database Vault as well.
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21. How do you apply patches in a Database that has the Oracle Database Vault option enabled? 16. Does Oracle Database Vault work with Oracle Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)?
Yes. Oracle Database Vault works with TDE. Database Vault Realms, Mutli-Factor Authorization, and Command Rules provide security controls around access to databases and applications as well as controlling activity within the database through separation of duty. 17. Who can grant roles like the DBA role in a Database protected by Database Vault?
In a Database Vault environment, if a realm protects a database role, then only the Realm Owner can grant this role to others. For example the Data Dictionary Realm protects the DBA role. The SYS user by default is the owner of the Data Dictionary Realm and can grant the DBA role to others. 18. Can the Database Vault Administrator (owner)
For each released database patch, there would be a section describing how to apply it in a Database Vault enabled Database. 22. Who can create new users in a Database Vault environment?
In an Oracle Database with the Database Vault option enabled, a new account management responsibility is created. Only a user with the account management responsibility can create new users in a Database Vault environment. This helps customers achieve separation of duty. Separation of duty is good for regulatory compliance. 23. Would Enterprise Manager Grid Control continue to work on a Database Vault environment?
Yes. It would continue to work. However, the restrictions that Database Vault put in place would apply to EM Grid Control administrators as well.
see data protected by a Realm? 24. Does Oracle Database Vault integrate with Oracle
No. The Database Vault owner account can only setup realms. It cannot see data protected by a realm. It also cannot add itself to the list of authorized users for any Realm it creates. This is part of the separation of duty that Oracle Database Vault enforces. 19. Does Oracle Database Vault allow database connections using Java?
Yes. Database Vault honors all connection types supported by any regular database. 20. How do you move Oracle Database Vault security Policies from a development system to a production system?
Label Security (OLS)? Can OLS leverage Oracle Database Vault Factors?
Oracle Database Vault integrates well with Oracle Label Security (OLS). Oracle Database Vault factors can provide an additional dimension in deciding the security clearance of a user’s session. For example, let us assume a user has been authorized to access sensitive data. However the security administrator wants to ensure the user accesses sensitive data only if he/she is in the office and connected to the trusted network. A Database Vault factor like Network Domain can be used to determine the security clearance of a user’s database session. If the user is coming from the public Internet, he/she can see only non-sensitive data. If the user is coming from the trusted network, then the user is allowed access to sensitive data.
There are two ways to do this currently: You can either clone the database that has Database Vault policies in it, or you can use the Database Vault API to create your security policies in a development system and apply the same scripts to the production system when ready. In the future we are planning to leverage Enterprise manager Grid Control to move Database Vault security policies between databases.
25. How is Database Vault packaged?
Oracle Database Vault is an option for the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Oracle Database Vault can be installed into Oracle Database 10g Release 2 or higher.
Q & A O r a c l e D a t a b a s e Va u l t
26. Are there example business use cases for Database Vault?
Yes. These are available on OTN at http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/ database-security/database-vault 27. Are other Oracle Database Security Options included in Oracle Database Vault?
Both Oracle Label Security and Oracle Advanced Security can be used with Oracle Database Vault, but are licensed separately. Oracle Label Security provides the ability to turn on security clearances inside the Oracle Database and enforce multi level security. Oracle Advanced Security provides encryption of network traffic, strong authentication and Transparent Data Encryption. Transparent Data Encryption provides key management and encryption transparency to applications, protecting personally identifiable information (PII) on disk and backup tape. 28. Can I use Oracle Database Vault to meet SarbanesOxley requirements?
Oracle Database Vault is designed to help address technical security requirements found in various regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley. Oracle Database Vault provides strong internal controls inside the database through separation of duty and preventing the DBA from viewing application data. 29. How does Oracle Database Vault help address customer compliance requirements?
Database Vault can be used by organizations as a preventive control. In other words, organizations can configure Database Vault to prevent users with super-privileges (DBAs) from accessing application data. By instituting a control in this manner, an organization can demonstrate compliance with specific regulations that require separation of duties among individuals accessing a system. Such is a common requirement across a number of regulations and is specifically called out in Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. Payment Card Industry regulations such as PCI Requirement 7 calls for restricting access to cardholder data by business need-to-know. This can be enforced with Oracle Database Vault help. Additionally, Oracle Database Vault ships with a set of pre-defined reports that show who is accessing what data and under what conditions. These reports offer a means by which to demonstrate proof of compliance for organizations.
30. How does Database Vault address the “insider threat”?
Database Vault addresses the “insider threat” by enabling powerful controls on how databases, applications and data are accessed. In addition, Database Vault enables additional protections against power users in the database such as those with super-privileges (DBAs). Database Vault places restrictions on what data these users can access using a security feature called a realm. Additionally, Database Vault provides command rules and multi-factor authorization to control when, how, and where databases, applications and data can be accessed. 31. What are internal controls?
Internal controls are mechanisms put in place to enforce business best practices. They are generally closely associated with addressing regulatory compliance requirements. Internal controls can be preventive, detective or corrective in nature. Preventive controls are designed to discourage or pre-empt errors or irregularities from occurring. They are generally thought to be more cost-effective than detective controls. Oracle Database Vault serves as an automated preventive control — something highly desirable by the internal audit function of companies. 32. Is there training available for Oracle Database Vault?
Yes. Oracle University has developed a training class for Oracle Database Vault. This class is a two-day, instructorled class. Customers can enroll in it. For the latest schedule and location check the Oracle University website at: http://education.oracle.com and search for Oracle Database Vault.
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33. Where can I get more information about Oracle Database Vault?
Visit http://www.oracle.com/goto/databasevault for white papers, data sheets, and other materials or contact an Oracle representative near you – http://www.oracle.com/corporate/contact/index.html
35. Does Oracle Database Vault replace the security mechanisms in applications?
No. Oracle Database Vault secures the database and application by adding security protections within the database kernel, preventing direct access to the application tables by super-privileged users (DBAs). Oracle Database Vault complements any application security mechanisms.
34. Does Oracle Database Vault replace the security mechanisms?
36. Will Oracle Database Vault undergo a formal security evaluation?
No. Oracle Database Vault secures the database and application by adding security protections within the database kernel, preventing direct access to the application tables by super-privileged users (DBAs). Oracle Database Vault complements any application security mechanisms.
Oracle Database Vault is now undergoing a formal evaluation under the Common Criteria security certification program.
Oracle Database Security
O R A C L E D ATA B A S E S E C U R I T Y
SAP certification has started with Database Vault.
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INTERVIEW Between Oracle for SAP Technology Update Magazine Dr. Christian Graf, SAP AG Development Manager DB Platforms Oracle, OS Platform Unix, Solaris, Tru64. and Jan Klokkers, Senior Director, Oracle for SAP Development, Oracle Corporation.
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Oracle for SAP Technology Update: Dr. Graf, Mr. Klokkers, please briefly describe how new Oracle Database features and Database Options are adopted, tested and certified by SAP? Dr. C. Graf: We have to distinguish between different types of features. Regarding those different feature types we have a staged certification approach:
New intrinsic or very basic DB features are supported initially with the SAP certification of this new DB release. Examples of those features are: New Memory Management, Optimizer, Online Reorganization, Rename TBLspace, etc. New more complex Oracle features will be supported after the required technical integration has happened on a development level and further SAP internal testing or one or more customer pilot projects have been successfully completed. Examples for this type of features are: LMTS, ASSM, Automatic Workload Repository, Fast loader, etc. New ‚sophisticated‘ Oracle features are only supported based on successful pilot customer projects. Examples are: RAC, Oracle Data Mining, ASO Features, Cross Platforms Transportable Tablespace, ASM, etc. The guiding principle is always to ensure a maximum of quality when a new Oracle feature reaches the SAP customer base. The testing and the certification of the first two types of new Oracle features happens mainly by first testing them intensively in the
SAP/Oracle platform team. The second step is to activate those features in the Oracle databases of the SAP development landscape. If the complexity of a feature exceeds a certain level we always run several pilot customer projects before the feature gets generally released for the SAP customer base. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: How is the collaboration between Oracle and SAP in terms of certification, e.g. with Oracle 11g? Dr. C. Graf: In the database area the collaboration between Oracle and SAP is very tight. We have a joint development team in Rot/Germany with developers from both companies sitting door to door. In this joint development team the integration and certification of a new Oracle release, like 11g, is accomplished. The different tasks are distributed among the team members of the joint platform team. To do this most effectively we are leveraging the partly complementary areas of expertise of the individual team members. In addition, with this team setup we are well connected to all other development teams of both companies. In case of any issues this ensures fast response and resolution times. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: When an Oracle Database support call is received at SAP, can you please describe the process followed to resolve the customer problem? Dr. C. Graf: The standard process for an SAP customer to open a support call in any area is to create an OSS message. This message is picked up by the SAP Primary Support line and, if not already done by the customer, routed to the
I n t e r v i e w O r a c l e f o r S A P Te c h n o l o g y U p d a t e M a g a z i n e
appropriate technical component (queue). If the appropriate component is not obvious a first analysis is required to identify it. This process also applies for Oracle database support calls. For example, as soon as it is clear that a call is Oracle related it is sent to the Oracle queue. Next the Oracle support experts of SAP try to resolve the issue. Over 90% of the Oracle related support calls the SAP Primary support provides the solution. In case this is not possible the call is forwarded to the Development Support level. On this level we have support engineers from Oracle working on solutions. The Oracle support engineers are directly connected to the general Oracle support organization. This concept ensures that the combined Oracle and SAP expertise is available for our customers in a support situation. Since the integration of the Oracle database into the SAP technology is so intertwined, for many problems it is not enough to tackle them from a pure Oracle point of view. The best support result is achieved if the support engineers understand the SAP specifics of the Oracle integration into the SAP technology stack. Therefore, we strongly recommend that all SAP customers call the SAP support lines with any SAP related Oracle support issues. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: A new utility MOPatch was developed by Oracle especially for SAP customers to simplify the patch process. Can you please elaborate the advantages of this utility and the feedback you have received so far from the SAP community? Dr. C. Graf: Oracle provides a patch set which is a bundle of individual patches on a regular basis. Between two patch sets it is necessary to provide individual patches to correct problems. The maintenance of these individual patches with OPatch for multiple SAP systems may become a time-consuming and error-prone task for the DBA. To simplify the patch maintenance a one-step utility MOPatch (Multiple Opatch) was developed. MOPatch provides the DBA the capability with one single command to bring the database server to the most current patch level. MOPatch works for both new
installations of the database software and also updates to an existing database installation. MOPatch takes all available patches from the SAP Service Marketplace and automatically installs all patches, or a delta of patches to the database server. MOPatch takes care of unpacking the patches or dealing with patch conflicts. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: Oracle has some interesting new database features/options, why doesn’t SAP adopt and certify these new features immediately for use by your SAP customers? Dr. C. Graf: New features usually come with new database versions. Therefore, the use of new features often requires a database upgrade. However, when we talk to our customers directly or via the user groups we get the clear message that the majority of the customers want to run upgrades as rarely as possible. Due to this SAP and Oracle jointly decided years ago to certify, if possible, only the terminal release of a new Oracle release for SAP customers. We did that for Oracle release 9i, 10g and we will also do it for 11g. Together with an intensive test and certification program, for every new release, this leads to the observed delayed availability of new Oracle features. However, we clearly believe that the gain in terms of quality and stability and the reduced number of database upgrades required by far outweighs the disadvantage. Every new database release significantly increases the logistic and the support effort. We reduce this effort by limiting the number of parallel supported database releases, this makes us more agile and more efficient in the support area, which in turn leads to an immediate benefit for the customers.
In addition, I would like to mention that we believe that good quality and a good technical integration is more important than speed. As a result of this guiding principle we have a staged approach for the certification of new features, as mentioned before. Testing and running pilot customer projects takes time which leads to a delayed availability of those features. A prominent example is Oracle RAC.
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It took nearly 3 years until we finally had the SAP certification on all OS platforms. During the pilot projects we found several issues in the different stack levels of a RAC configuration that needed to be resolved, which took some time. However, as a result all customer projects that started after the certification and are in production today (approx. 50 customers) are successful and see their expectations met. That proves that our careful approach is the right one. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: Security is a very important aspect to corporate customers. Can you please explain which encryption technologies from Oracle are available to SAP customers and what the roadmap is to certify Database Vault? J. Klokkers: Transparent Data Encryption
(TDE) and Client-Server Network Encryption are available to SAP customers today running Oracle 10.2 and SAP Business Suite 2005. TDE allows customer to encrypt sensitive data on disk. Database Vault will be available with Oracle 10.2.0.4 to all SAP customers running a 7.0 kernel based system (i.e. ECC 6.0 or BI 7.0) in late Q2CY2008. With Database Vault a DBA is not able to see any SAP user data in the database providing better compliance with regulatory rules such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: The amount of data customers are storing is increasing at a dramatic rate and space efficient storage mechanisms are very critical. Which advantages does Oracle provide and what can be expected in the future? J. Klokkers: In order to provide a space-efficient
database for SAP applications Oracle provides numerous features. Oracle is the only database that stores number and varchar datatypes in variable length and not in full length. This benefits especially an SAP BW system, making it very space efficient. Also, Unicode data is stored in variable length using the UTF8 format in the database unlike other databases that always store Unicode data
in full length. Another important technology to save space on disk and in-memory is Index Key Compression. This technology not only reduces space requirements but also improves query performance as it results in less physical disk I/O and less logical I/O to the database buffer cache in main memory. Index Key Compression is available to SAP customers with Oracle 10.2. With Oracle 11g advanced compression techniques for tables and Secure Files (LOB) data is provided. Redo data between primary and standby databases can be compressed, this will reduce the bandwidth and time for the transport. These compression techniques are part of the new Advanced Compression Option in 11g. Once 11g is certified by SAP these compression techniques will be available to SAP customers. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: How important is database performance and how does this affect overall SAP performance? Dr. C. Graf: The database performance is the key for a good overall SAP performance. If the database performance is bad the whole SAP system performance is immediately in danger, affecting all application areas. In other words: Bad database performance easily leads to a systemic performance problem that affects the system in total. So, it is very important that a database provides the features, tuning capabilities and, extremely important diagnostic features that permanently keeps the database at a good performance level. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: What features or functions do you especially like in the Oracle database? Dr. C. Graf:
• One of the most positive aspects of the current Oracle release (10.2) is the area of diagnostic ability and supportability. Compared to any other database platform Oracle version 10.2 offers the most sophisticated options for in depth analysis.
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• The evaluation of the data provided by the Oracle Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) and the Advanced Session History (ASH) allows root cause analysis on every desired level. This is a huge benefit for example, every time you encounter a performance problem or any other error situation. The SAP and Oracle support lines can act very effectively based on those features. This situation is hardly measurable in numbers, but proven by several statements I received from our support engineers. • The scalability and high availability features provided by Oracle RAC are nearly unique in the market as of today. Only DB2/OS390 offers something similar. Oracle for SAP Technology Update: What
features in Oracle 11g are you most interested in testing and certifying for use by SAP customers? J. Klokkers:
- Advanced Compression Option - SecureFiles - Automatic Interval Partitioning - ASM and ASM Filesystem - Cost Based Optimizer Bind Peeking
Oracle for SAP Technology Update: Dr. C
Graf, why is there so much time lag between when Oracle releases a new database version and the time that SAP certifies that new release? For example, when Oracle released version 10.1 of the database, SAP waited to certify 10.2. • This is actual a planned and thought out process for the benefit of our joint customers. Through our user group participation our customers made it know to us that they were not interested in so many upgrades, which require so much planning, time and effort. So to satisfy our customer wishes we decided to only certify the terminal release of Oracle databases; ie 9.2, 10.2, 11.2. • This certification strategy keeps the number of parallel supported Oracle releases low, which makes the whole logistics and support processes much easier. Every database release comes on a growing set of operating systems, releases and processor types. For every database release we have patch sets, One off Patches, CPUs etc. Facing this the logistics around a database release is a huge effort. The smaller the number of parallel supported releases, the more agile we are in regard of e.g. platform and patch provisioning. This finally leads to a benefit for the customers as well.
Oracle for SAP Technology Update: How
will these 11g features benefit SAP customers in terms of performance, manageability, scalability, high availability and reliability? J. Klokkers: It is too early to provide hard facts on how much improvement Oracle Database 11g will provide for SAP customers. But it’s clear that Oracle Database 11g will provide better performance for applications such as SAP BI or reduce storage costs through more compression techniques.
Last but not least: I would like to draw your
attention to our SAP on Oracle page in the SAP Developer Network (SDN) and the SAP on Oracle Forum. Here you will find information and news directly from my development team, including a presentation by myself the “SAP on Oracle Development Update” which contains information about current and upcoming projects. Here is the link to the corresponding web page within the SAP portal: www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/ora Oracle for SAP Technology Update:
Thank you for the interview.
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NEW ORACLE TECHNOLOGY FOR SAP CUSTOMERS
SUMMARY 2007 has been a busy year for Oracle/SAP Development as well as for the Oracle/SAP Support and Services team. Numerous new Oracle features, tools and methodologies have been developed or integrated into SAP solutions. In this article, we describe some of the most important new technologies and the benefits they offer to SAP customers:
Except for Oracle Database Vault, which is discussed in a separate article (page 6), all technologies are described in more detail in the following sections.
D I S C S PA C E S AV I N G S : COMPRESSION Compression – What Is It And Why Do We Need It?
• One of the biggest challenges today is the rapid growth of databases. In addition to technologies that have been available for several years, SAP on Oracle customers can now use Index Key Compression to save disk space.
• Huge amounts of data are a threat to performance as well. Oracle’s rich collection of partitioning strategies is available to reduce I/O and improve performance. The benefits have been known to SAP BI customers for many years. Thanks to a methodology and tools developed by the Oracle/SAP Support and Services team, Oracle Partitioning is now available for SAP ERP systems as well.
We are witnessing an explosion in data volumes as the average size of databases triples every two years. Even though the cost of storage has been declining, enormous growth in the volume of data that needs to be retained online makes storage one of the biggest elements in IT budgets. In addition, application scalability and performance must continue to meet the demands of the business – even as data volumes continue to grow. Oracle has been working for many years to help customers cope with these challenges: Implicit Compression:
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Data Compression: Data compression was introduced in Oracle9i Release2. An Oracle/SAP team that tested the feature as early as 2002 demonstrated up to 70% less disk space usage at table leveland up to 40% less disk
• Compliance and security are more important than ever before. Therefore, Oracle Advanced Security, an option that allows customers to encrypt data, has been certified with SAP applications and implemented by customers. Oracle Database Vault, a product that helps customers meet regulatory compliance requirements by enforcing separation of duty, has also been integrated in SAP applications.
• Manageability is always an issue. We discuss SAP’s DBA Cockpit for Oracle, in particular the use it makes of Oracle’s Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). AWR automatically stores workload and performance statistics, so administrators or support engineers can analyze and quickly resolve performance issues, even if the root cause happened hours or days before.
Oracle stores numerical values more efficiently than other databases. It supports bitmap indexes, which need considerably less disk space than traditional index structures. It uses a Unicode implementation which stores a plain ASCII character in 1 byte (instead of 2 bytes, as is the case with most databases). Features like these can be called implicit compression, as they are installed and used by default, in the background, without any administrator intervention. But whenever customers migrate from other databases to Oracle or test a migration from Oracle to an other database, they recognize that because of these features Oracle needs up to 40% less disk space than other databases to store a given amount of data.
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space usage at the database level, and no negative (but in many cases a positive) impact on performance. Data compression has been available for use in SAP BI systems since 2003. • Index Key Compression: With data compression, duplicate values in table rows (data blocks) are removed. Index key compression works in a similar manner in that duplicated values are removed from index entries (index blocks). • Advanced Compression: Oracle Database 11g introduces the Advanced Compression Option which helps customers significantly reduce their overall database storage footprint for all types of data (structured or unstructured) and all kinds of systems (OLTP or BI). As Index Key Compression was certified for use in SAP environments in 2007, it will be discussed in the next section. For more information on Advanced Compression see our interview with Dr. C. Graf (page 14). For an overview of Oracle’s compression technologies and their applicability to different types of SAP systems see Figure 1.
Both pieces can consist of one column or several columns (see Figure 2). Every single index block contains a list that specifies the original key values for each token used in this block, so decompression can be done easily. Of course, there is no point in compressing all indexes existing in a given database. Administrators should look for large indexes only. A tool (PL/SQL package IND_COMP) is available that helps administrators find good candidates. This tool also answers the question of which columns should be part of the prefix and which ones should be left for the suffix. Index Key Compression: Advantages
What are the advantages and disadvantages of key compression?
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Disk space savings: Customer experiences show that up to 75% less disk space is needed for a single key compressed index. On average, the total database size can be reduced by 30% by using key compression for the largest indexes.
Index Key Compression: Concepts and Tools
Oracle’s two major index types are B*Tree indexes and bitmap indexes. B*Tree indexes are the “regular” type frequently used by OLTP whereas bitmap indexes tend to be used primarily for data warehouses. As bitmap indexes are already compressed (index key values are replaced by bitmaps), Index Key Compression is only available for B*Tree indexes. Key compression allows repeating values for columns in a B*Tree index to be replaced with shorter tokens in the index blocks. To make that happen, index key compression requires indexes that consist of two or more columns – a requirement that is met by many indexes in SAP systems. The compression mechanism then looks at the values of the leading columns of the index (prefix entry) and replaces repeating values with shorter tokens. In other words, the compression mechanism breaks down the index key into a prefix entry (the piece that holds the repeating values) and a suffix entry (the piece that holds the unique or almost unique values).
Figure 1: Oracle technologies for minimizing disk space requirements
Figure 2: Index Key Kompression.
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Compression reduces physical disk I/O and logical buffer cache I/O. It also improves the buffer cache quality.
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I/O reduction:
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CPU consumption: Every compression technique comes with higher CPU consumption. However, this is more than compensated for by a reduction in logical I/O for index blocks in the database buffer cache.
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Customer experiences have shown a 10%-20% improvement in database throughput for an SAP system by using index key compression in a non – CPU–bound environment.
Overall database throughput:
Index Key Compression: Example
Among the candidates for key compression in SAP ERP systems is GLPCA~1. The base table, GLPCA, consists of approximately. 100 columns, 5 of which are included in the index. GLPCA~1 is a somewhat special case, as the cardinality of the stored values is in many cases so low that IND_COMP (the tool that helps with the configuration) suggests including all 5 columns in the prefix. This means that the complete index entries are compressed. In one customer’s case, the original size of the uncompressed index GLPCA~1 was 18GB. By index key compression it was reduced to 4.5 GB, which represents a compression ratio of 75%.
PERFORMANCE: PA R T I T I O N I N G
Oracle Partitioning (see SAP Notes 105047, 742243, 722188), but it does not come with a default setup. As a result, many SAP on Oracle customers were looking for help. The main reason for partitioning not being used by default in ERP systems is the fact that, depending on the modules used, different tables should be partitioned in different systems. To overcome this obstacle, the Oracle for SAP Services and Support team developed a methodology and a set of tools which can be applied to determine the best candidates and the appropriate partitioning strategies. The service offering has been available since 2007, and customers who made use of it found that it resulted in remarkable improvements. Partitioning Schemes
Partitioning allows tables, indexes, and indexorganized tables to be subdivided into smaller pieces, enabling these database objects to be managed and accessed at a finer level of granularity. Oracle provides a rich variety of partitioning schemes to address every business requirement.
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Range partitioning maps data to partitions based on ranges of partition key values that you establish for each partition. It is the most common type of partitioning and is often used with dates. In standard SAP BI installations on Oracle, PSA and fact tables are range-partitioned.
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List partitioning
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Hash partitioning
Conventional wisdom has it that databases supporting data warehouse systems are typically the largest databases in an enterprise. As one of the most challenging areas of scalability is in supporting these large data volumes, data warehouses generally require the implementation of one type or several types of partitioning. However, many SAP customers find that the database size of their ERP system(s) is equal to or even greater than the database size of their BI system(s). SAP BI installs and uses partitioning by default – which gives customers a huge benefit in terms of manageability, availability, and query performance. SAP ERP supports
complements the functionality of range partitioning. Range partitioning is useful for segmenting a table along a continuous domain – e.g. time, so that each partition contains the data for a given range (week, month) of time values. In contrast, list partitioning is useful for segmenting a table along a discrete domain – e.g. locations. Each partition in a list partitioning scheme corresponds to a list of discrete values. maps data to partitions based on a hashing algorithm which Oracle applies to a partitioning key that you identify. The hashing algorithm evenly distributes rows among partitions, giving partitions approximately the same size.
r S P nC iuss tCoum O rNaecw le O DraatcalbeaTe s e c1h0ngo l–o g I nyf of or m a tAi o r reernsc y
Partitioning for SAP ERP
Customers implement Oracle Partitioning for SAP ERP for three main reasons. The first and obvious reason is the wish to improve performance. Some of the performance aspects are:
• Queries need less runtime, because the amount of data to process is defined by the number of partitions, which have to be scanned. On a primary key access this will be only a single partition. A few customer examples can be found in Figure 3.
• Query performance is stabilized, because the number of rows in a single partition is constant.
• DML operations are executed on single partitions instead of on the whole table. A second reason is partitioning for manageability. With partitioning, maintenance operations can be focused on particular portions of tables:
• Fewer index reorganizations are required, because delete operations affect only nonproductive partitions.
• The database buffer cache is unloaded, because fewer table / index blocks need to be read.
• As jobs finish faster, less load is generated on the system.
• Archiving will be faster, because only smaller partitions of the data must be scanned. Finally, partitioned database objects provide partition independence. This characteristic can be an important part of a high-availability strategy:
• Indexes can be reorganized on partition level instead of reorganizing the whole index. Reorganization does not affect the productive partitions.
• Single partitions can be reorganized instead of the whole table.
• Productive partitions (most recents) are not affected by the archiving process.
• Errors during archiving do not affect the system.
COMPLIANCE AND S E C U R I T Y: A S O Oracle Advanced Security provides robust encryption solutions to safeguard sensitive data and to address regulatory compliance requirements. It protects your data from unauthorized disclosure whether in transit or at rest. Strong Protection for Sensitive Data: Transparent Data Encryption
Transparent Data Encryption makes encryption simple by embedding encryption within the Oracle Database itself. With a simple, one time alter table statement, an administrator can encrypt sensitive data within a table. Most importantly, SAP applications continue to work after encryption has been enabled. Data is automatically encrypted when written to the database files and redo log files on disk. Data is automatically decrypted for all database users after they have authenticated themselves to the database and passed all additional authorization checks. These checks include verifying that the user has the necessary select and update privileges on the application table. Existing database backup routines will continue to work, with the encrypted columns remaining encrypted in the backup file. For more information on Transparent Data Encryption see SAP Note 974876. Strong Protection for Data in Transit: Network Encryption
Oracle Advanced Security provides an easy-todeploy and comprehensive solution for protecting communication to and from the Oracle Database using both standards-based network encryption, and robust native encryption/integrity algorithms. SSL based encryption is available for businesses that have deployed Public Key Infrastructure. For businesses with no PKI deployment, Oracle Advanced Security provides native encryption and data integrity algorithms to protect data in transit. The Oracle Database can be confi-
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statistics (by default every hour). This data is maintained for a week and then purged. You can then run reports against these statistics to performance tune your database. The Oracle database uses AWR for problem detection and analysis as well as for self-tuning. A number of different statistics are collected by the AWR including wait events, time model statistics, active session history statistics, various system and session level statistics, object usage statistics and information on the most resource-intensive SQL statements. Figure 3: Benefits of Oracle Partitioning for SAP ERP. Runtime of batch jobs before (blue) and after (green) implementation of range partitioning in a real life system. gured to reject connections from clients with encryption turned off, or optionally allow unencrypted connections for deployment flexibility. Configuration of network security is simplified using the Oracle Network Configuration administration tool, allowing businesses to easily deploy network encryption, as there are no changes required in the application. For more information on Network Encryption see SAP Note 973450. Strong Protection for Backup Media: Backup Set Encryption
In recent years, many companies have reported the theft or loss of backup media. While the Oracle Database protects data inside the database, once un-encrypted data is copied offline onto backup media, it is outside the secure perimeter of the Oracle Database. Entire backup sets created with Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) can be encrypted, before data leaves the database. M A N A G E A B I L I T Y: A U T O M AT I C W O R K L O A D R E P O S I T O RY Oracle: Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)
In Oracle Database 10g, Oracle replaced StatsPack with the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). The job of AWR is to collect database
SAP: DBA Cockpit for Oracle
SAP’s DBA Cockpit provides a single point of access to all database monitoring and administration functions. Instead of having separate transactions for the various administration tasks, for example performance monitoring, space management and job scheduling, you can access all these tasks using one central transaction. Although the well-known transactions like ST04 and, DB02 are still supported, it is no longer necessary to use them. They only serve as shortcuts into the DBA Cockpit in, that it starts up with an appropriate screen. But DBA Cockpit for Oracle is more than just a new interface for previously existing transactions. The AWR Reporting section, the brand new part, consists of reports that are based on Oracle’s Automatic Workload Repository: • •
workload report AWR DIFF Report: compares workload reports (difference report) • SQL Report: workload SQL report • ASH Report: active session history report • ADDM Report: automatic database diagnostic monitor AWR Report:
This may sound very technical, and indeed it is. But if you run into a performance problem or any other error situation, you will immediately recognize the benefits. The support engineer who is working on your issue will be able to solve it faster, because all data he or she needs is available. So the availability of all those statistics will translate into less downtime for your system.
Oracle Database – O r a c l e D a t a G u a r d a t Vi l e n e J a p a n Information is
D I S A S T E R R E C O V E R Y E N V I R O N M E N T B U I LT F O R S E C U R I N G B U S I N E S S C O N T I N U I T Y AT M I N I M U M C O S T B Y A D O P T I N G O R A C L E D ATA G U A R D Japan Vilene Company, Ltd. (“Japan Vilene”), a leading nonwoven fabric company in Japan, implemented SAP products in the enterprise system and Oracle products for its database system in 1997. Recently, at the time of system upgrading, Japan Vilene built a disaster recovery environment by replacing the previous server with PRIMEQUEST, a key IA server from FUJITSU LIMITED (“FUJITSU”), and introducing Oracle Data Guard. We interviewed Mr. Mikio Nakamura, the manager in charge of information system at the Management and Finance Department, and Mr. Tatsuya Sekiguchi, a section head at the same department, about the series of system building processes.
SAP adopted in the late 1990’s as a missioncritical system
Since its establishment in 1960, Japan Vilene has been building all their business systems in-house on its mainframe system. For parts of their other systems, they used systems from various affiliated companies. However, in the latter half of the 1990’s, the need to address the potential effects of the Year 2000 problem on their systems required them to begin considering using completely independent systems as well as system migration. “Under such circumstances and also driven by the call for downsizing, the company opted to migrate to an open system instead of the previous host system.” Looking back, Mr. Nakamura observes, “The year 2000 issue positively triggered the move toward system migration.” The company also made a decision to concurrently adopt SAP as their business system. They adopted SAP because it was the most complete enterprise package software available at the time that would operate in an open system, he explains. Although the company has adopted Oracle Database, it once considered migration to SQL Server when migrating from UNIX to Windows. “Compared to SQL Server, we felt there was greater operational difficulty involved with Oracle Database. However, eventually, we decided to continue to use Oracle Database because we were concerned about the risk involved in migrating to SQL Server as well as its low level of reliability,” Mr. Nakamura observes. According to him, the decision reflected an outlook that Oracle Database would provide products that would be as low
in operating load as SQL Server. “Actually, I see that is what is happening. Now we are glad that we have adhered to Oracle,” Mr. Nakamura says. Priority given to business continuity as a material manufacturer
Japan Vilene had a medium-term plan that included upgrading from SAPR/3 4.6C to mySAP ERP 2005. In the wake of this move, they also decided to build a remote backup system in order to implement a disaster recovery system that had been planned for some time in addition to implementation of a version upgrade from Oracle8i (8.1.7) to Oracle Database 10g Release 2, and the renewal of the IA server.
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Mr. Nakamura explains the background of the decision to build a backup system as follows. “As a material manufacturer, Japan Vilene has a mission to ship orders to our customer manufacturers in a timely manner. Under these circumstances, we would face a serious problem if our enterprise operations experienced a failure that resulted in suspension of order acceptances or shipping. For example, in the case our system breaks down even for one day, the estimated damage that would be incurred would reach several hundred million yen (million $) in terms of sales. However, the most threatening fact is the loss of trust as an enterprise, which cannot be measured in monetary amounts. For this reason, they had previously taken steps such as duplicating the equipment and the network to ensure the continuity of their business operations. Furthermore, backup measures had been taken by means of tape media and remote safekeeping of the tape media. Mr. Sekiguchi explains the reason why they decided to build a backup system despite such practices. “Carrying out a backup with tape media was indeed labor-consuming. From viewpoints of efficient backup and quick restoration in the case of a failure, replication seemed reasonable after all.” The key factor for adopting PRIMEQUEST from FUJITSU: Duplication
In the latter half of 2006 when Japan Vilene began studying a series of tasks for migration and system buildup, the company examined several manufacturers with regard to their ability to upgrade SAP, renew the server and create a backup system, and the performance of the server itself. As a result, they selected FUJITSU to carry out the project. Looking back, Mr. Nakamura says, “The key factor was that FUJITSU had rich expertise with SAP and Oracle products. Another important factor was that PRIMEQUEST, the IA server they proposed, satisfied our requirements.” One of the great features of PRIMEQUEST is the duplex structure covering everything else except the CPU, which has been built using proprietary FUJITSU technology. According
proprietary FUJITSU technology. According to Mr. Sekiguchi, it is critical to have a redundancy system for the server itself from the viewpoint of efficiency and stable system operation. “Replication can also be achieved by clustering. However, such system configuration is very complicated and poses a burden on management. In order to be able to operate the system with a limited number of personnel, as is the case with our company, the simpler the system, the better it is. From this viewpoint, it is essential that the server system is in a duplex configuration in itself.” Oracle Data Guard was adopted for its network-friendly features
A backup system can be configured in a variety of ways, using hardware and/or software solutions. Initially, FUJITSU proposed a system configuration technique that did not include the use of Oracle Data Guard. However, in the course of discussions between Japan Vilene and FUJITSU, the possibility of using Oracle Data Guard was raised. “Actually, we have known about the Standby Database function that preceded Data Guard. We have even tested it in-house. At that time, we gave up the idea of implementing it due to financial constraints as well as the existence of certain functional shortcomings. However, as we have been hearing recently that more and more companies are using the program, the product has attracted our attention anew. While Mr. Sekiguchi was worried about the adoption of Oracle Data Guard based on the above knowledge, his greatest concern was the issue of the network. “We were building a remote environment at the Ibaraki Plant. However, at the plant, only ADSL (the effective transmission rate: 1 - 2 Mbps) was available due to constraints specific to the area. Thus, we needed to consider introduction of a leased line, depending on the band required. That would mean a steep rise in running costs as well as in implementation expenses. However, as discussions progressed, it became clear that the band issue could be solved with Oracle Data Guard.
O r a c l e D a t a G u a r d a t Vi l e n e J a p a n
“The important factor was what volume of data should be updated at what frequency.” (Mr. Sekiguchi) So Japan Vilene reviewed the allowable amount of time that could be consumed for system recovery required at the company, setting as part of the backup policy that data must be updated once every hour. Also, data volume for a file was set to 50 MB and the transfer amount was assumed to be 5 – 10 files per hourly transfer task for daily operations. According to a simulation result, at this level, such system operations should cause virtually no impact on the network when viewed as a one-day cycle even though there would be a possibility of the occurrence of some network delays during peak hours. Having a backup system – A virtue in itself
In February 2007, the implementation scheme was finalized, and the actual system buildup process started in June of the same year. After repeated tests in a virtual environment built in the main office and the remote environment built at the Ibaraki Plant, full-scale operation of the backup system started in February 2008. In this configuration, Oracle Data Guard is used as the data transfer technology and FUJITSU provided the operational mechanism including hourly updating using their proprietary know-how. At present, this backup system is operating in a stable state without adding a load on the network, as was predicted initially. The efficacy of the implementation of the backup system cannot be evaluated unless a failure actually occurs. The most important thing is, however, not to “use” the system in such a situation. “A competent system is reliable. However, the important point is that we “have” this system, rather than we have to “use” it. The fact that we have a system to ensure business continuity provides a differentiation factor against our competitors, which will promote the relationship of mutual trust between customers and the company. Now that business operations cannot exist without a business system, a trend being noted is one in which “the level of system reliability is tantamount to perceived reliability as an enter-
prise.” Given these circumstances, we can reaffirm “the significance of possessing a backup system.” Meanwhile, Mr. Nakamura refers to cost performance. “Considering safety, we tend to input excessive amounts of investment. On the other hand, a backup system itself does not generate profits. That limits companies’ capacity to invest just in that. So costs must be reduced to some extent. Considering our backup system configuration with Oracle Data Guard from that viewpoint, no additional costs are involved as we use the standard features, except for the creation of the remote environment. That means we receive excellent cost performance. We are deeply satisfied with the fact that we were able to build a disaster recovery environment at minimum cost,” he says.
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“With Oracle 10g and the underlying file system GPFS you no longer need to install a third server as a quorum node, for example. For Oracle9i we used three host systems, each with one disk system. For 10g we only needed a third hard disk, what’s known as a tiebreaker, which controls the situation-dependent load distribution on the servers as a coordination instance. We still use GPFS as the file system. HACMP is no longer needed.” – M AT T H I A S S C H A E F E R , Global IT Manager, HR Group
M U LT I P L E R E L E A S E C H A N G E AT T H E H R G R O U P
Hamm-Reno Group Thaleischweiler-Fröschen
Industries: Retail, 1,700 subsidiaries in 20 countries
Sales (worldwide): 500 M euros
Employees: 6,000
Oracle Products & Services: • Oracle Database 10g • Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) • Oracle Clusterware • Oracle Support
Key Benefits • Improvement of high availability • Cost reduction • Long-term IT concept to ensure ROI • Streamlined DBA productivity • State-of-the-art high availability
Successful changeover from 9i RAC to 10g
Much more than just one project
RAC for SAP application on AIX
In spring 2007 a wide-scale release change was undertaken. In parallel to the introduction of new IBM hardware, the upgrade from Oracle 9i to 10g and the changeover to ERP 2005, it was necessary to convert to Unicode.
Around 1,700 outlets in 20 countries, 6,000 employees and 40 million pairs of shoes handled each year with just-in-time delivery – a few figures that reveal all too clearly the exacting demands made on the IT landscape at Reno Fashion & Shoes GmbH, the retail subsidiary of the Hamm-Reno Group. Tasked with delivering ‘high availability with zero compromise’, the IT team led by Matthias Schaefer, Global IT Manager for the HR Group (Hamm-Reno), decided back in the late 1990s to replace the existing heterogeneous mainframe setup with an SAP system featuring Oracle 8 in an HACMP cluster running on AIX. One of the reasons they chose Oracle, explains Matthias Schaefer, was that experience showed that key features were and are provided first – or exclusively – by Oracle. In October 2001 the organization began the gradual software transition to SAP modules for material management in parallel with the implementation of a Business Warehouse (BW). Within 12 months it had implemented SD (Sales & Distribution) and other material management modules. The migration to BW 3.0 with an adapted data structure and parallel database access was completed in early 2004 and the system became productive. During the course of 2004 the database was upgraded to Oracle9i. At the same time the HACMP cluster was replaced with Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters).
Because the previous 4.6C system had used different code pages, converting to Unicode was absolutely essential. In the face of ‘expert’ predictions of a dramatic increase or even doubling of system resources, the reality for the HR Group was quite different. “Because of the individual database structures you have to leave the familiar path and take a ‘handson’ approach at various points. For example, if you know how to parallelize by splitting extensive tables – which is by no means a standard step – the conversion will be a lot faster.” The reorganization and restructuring of indices and tables created the ‘space‘ needed in the tablespaces. The actual measurable growth turned out to be much less than ten percent. This was even despite the fact that the team had to export the entire database with the SAP installation tools and then reimport it, which was very time-consuming. The material management system alone amounted to almost 850 gigabytes. But, says Matthias Schaefer, you should never be mean with the main storage. The SAP system with several hundred users can quickly gobble up to 64 GB. If for paging reasons an instance doesn’t respond fast enough, another
Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at HR Group
RAC server quickly takes over the task, which of course takes up main storage capacity and can impact on system performance. But the demands made on the main storage by Oracle are relatively modest.
The parallelization of database queries through the automatic distribution of tasks to multiple processors is one of the features that no other database system can offer in such a technically mature form.
‘Tiebreak’ saves hardware resources
“It would be fully understandable if users of IBM hardware with AIX also opted for DB/2. There are some features – including the Real Application Clusters (RAC) – that aren’t available there. We do see approaches that are along the same lines but for operational, transaction-oriented environments like SAP R/3 and ERP 2005 these are of less interest. They’re more suitable for the Business Warehouse environment, where many users access data that’s seldom updated.”
The conversion was completed in just under three days on a long weekend around May 1, 2007, thanks in no small part to the help of a Unicode specialist from SAP. “With Oracle 10g and the underlying file system GPFS you no longer need to install a third server as a quorum node, for example. For Oracle9i we used three host systems, each with one disk system. For 10g we only needed a third hard disk, what’s known as a tiebreaker, which controls the situationdependent load distribution on the servers as a coordination instance. We still use GPFS as the file system. HACMP is no longer needed.” High availability can also be easily assured with the Oracle Clusterware SAPCTL. In the SAP environment the Group will eventually dispense with the HACMP solution for the stand-alone enqueue server. A test system with Oracle’s enqueue server and SAP Control recently won over the experts at the HR Group and is scheduled to start automating the transfer of enqueue tables in the productive system in November 2007 to safeguard the system. With AIX 5.2 ML 3 and the power CPUs, several logical partitions (LPARs) can be set up on one machine with virtual CPUs, making it possible to dynamically expand or shrink resources. Each partition is entitled to a minimum CPU capacity, which is however available to other partitions if not required. Never change a running system
“Put simply, the Oracle database is stable and delivers high performance. So there’s no reason to experiment,” says graduate computer scientist Matthias Schaefer, describing the confidence he has developed over many years in the stability, performance and innovation of Oracle.
Another example of Oracle’s technological edge, he believes, is Star Transformation, a software technology that enables the user to ‘work rationally with very complex joins’ in the Business Warehouse environment. Objectively tested quality
The Hamm-Reno Group, created in 2005 by Reno and the Hamm Group, founded a management company which incorporates the IT teams of both formerly independent companies. The data center in Thaleischweiler-Fröschen, Germany, the location of Reno’s headquarters, is soon to unify and manage the entire IT landscape of Reno Fashion & Shoes GmbH, the retail subsidiary of the Hamm-Reno Group. The corresponding applications at Hamm’s head office in Osnabrück will be gradually integrated into the Reno/SAP landscape. At the end of this process the company will have a uniform system for the entire global holding. The farsightedness of Reno’s IT crew and the wisdom of their IT strategy certainly had a considerable influence on this decision. This internal vote of confidence in the Reno data center was confirmed by neutral quality audits carried out by Price Waterhouse Coopers and experts at SAP Hosting.
Matthias Schaefer, Global IT Manager, HR Group
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“The priorities for our new SAP environment were high availability, scalability and flexibility. With Oracle 10g RAC for SAP, we have implemented a future-oriented SAP operating concept, delivering several tangible benefits.” – K A R L H E I N Z B R E I T, Head of IT Infrastructure and Services, Staedtisches Klinikum Munich GmbH
STAEDTISCHES KLINIKUM MUNICH: ORACLE 10g RAC FOR SAP – THE GUARANTEE FOR A NEW FAILSAFE SAP ENVIRONMENT
The merger of five hospitals to form Staedtisches Klinikum Munich GmbH included extensive IT consolidation: The five previous SAP environments were merged into one. Oracle 10g RAC for SAP is an indispensable cornerstone in failsafe applications in the company’s new system landscape.
Staedtische Kliniken Munich GmbH Industry: Healthcare
Workforce: Around 6800
Number of beds: Approx. 3600
Oracle Products & Services:
• • • •
Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle
Database10g Release 2 10g RAC for SAP OCFS Support
Key Benefits:
• • • • •
Sophisticated high availability Distinct scaling possibilities Performance optimization High investment protection Opportunities for increasing cost efficiency
Hospital merger – IT consolidation
Staedtisches Klinikum Munich GmbH came about when five hospitals in the state capital of Munich were combined. The new company includes the facilities in Bogenhausen, Neuperlach, Harlaching, Schwabing and Thalkirchner Strasse. The institute for nursing, blood donor service and central laundry were also incorporated. With around 3600 beds, 260 day clinic places and 6800 employees, the huge clinical center is currently the largest provider of healthcare services in southern Germany and one of the largest municipal hospital companies in the country. It goes without saying that the merger brought with it major IT changes, the main one being that the new company was to use one large consolidated central SAP environment in place of the five previous ones. As a result a totally new infrastructure landscape for SAP operations had to be set up. “In terms of the architecture concept, firstly we were able to make full use of our previous experience with SAP operations. Secondly we had to take account of a large number of conditions that arose from the establishment of the large clinical center.
These two facts produced a catalog of requirements in which the priorities were improved stability, scalability, flexible operations, investment protection and low operating costs,” explains Karlheinz Breit, Head of IT Infrastructure and Services at Staedtisches Klinikum Munich GmbH. The core application system used is SAP R/3 IS-H and i.s.h.med (version 4.7.2). The clinic is also using SAP BW (Business Intelligence) and HR (Human Resources). Even brief downtimes are not acceptable
“Improved stability” in SAP applications are key to Munich’s large clinical center. While special sub-systems are used in some areas, such as cardiology, the patient data from these areas is also incorporated for diagnosis and findings in the central key SAP component, i.s.h.med; all patient data and records are processed in the same system. “This core application must never fail. If operations ceased for even a couple of hours, the work of the clinic would be seriously disrupted. Under certain circumstances, we may even no longer be able to provide emergency services,” stresses IT expert Breit. The central SAP landscape that has been in use since the start of 2008 allows for stable system operations at Staedtisches Klinikum Munich in terms of both hardware and software. The sophisticated system concept sees the database server, application server and memory systems redundant and duplicated at two sites.
Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Staedtisches Klinikum Munich
The hardware is X86 standard server blades (BX620) from Fujitsu-Siemens, including FlexFrame technology. The storage systems came from Hitachi (HDS 55). The operating system platform is Linux SLES 10. The Oracle 10g database is used along with Oracle RAC for SAP (2 x 2 nodes). As Mr.Breit, the head of IT infrastructure, explains, “High availability, but also scalability, is achieved in an optimum and very distinct way, through a combination of FlexFrame and Oracle Real Application Clusters for SAP.” RAC launched in record time
Should problems arise, technical availability of the core applications is ensured within two to three minutes. For example if hardware in data center 1 fails, data center 2 takes over its tasks. And if a database node isn’t available, for example, others (including the RAC node in data center 2) take on its functions. In a nutshell “Oracle RAC guarantees us stable SAP operations,” stresses Breit. The important thing for him is that database recovery of three to four hours is made obsolete through the use of Oracle database clustering technology and that there is no scope for the high availability to be interrupted. This ensures that treatment is always recorded in the SAP system. If this didn’t happen, the company would suffer real financial consequences. Furthermore, the 2500 or so concurrent users (approx. 6000 SAP accounts, mainly working shifts) are never “aware”, so to speak, of the system being down. The IT department at Staedtische Kliniken Munich introduced Oracle 10g RAC for SAP in collaboration with its partners Siemens Medical Solutions/SBS, Fujitsu-Siemens and the service provider and Oracle partner IS4IT in a record time of just four weeks. According to Mr. Breit, “The support we received from IS4IT and the high quality of Oracle RAC for SAP were key to us being able to implement the Oracle solution in such a short time. During the launch, the Oracle support team didn’t make a single mistake.”
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Fast ROI, a solution fit for the future
The combination of X86 standard hardware in the form of blades with FlexFrame, Linux and Oracle RAC for SAP is paying off several times over for Staedtisches Klinikum Munich. The new system landscape satisfies all the requirements listed at the start. Various old systems can now be quickly migrated to the new platform. The new system environment will have no problems coping with the intended change to SAP ERP (ECC 6.0) and proving itself as a future-proof solution that can be extended at any time. Despite the redundant system design, the investment is worth it. Not including the costs of money transfer, depreciation and staffing savings, the return on investment (ROI) is around just 15 months. And what makes all the difference is that the hardware maintenance costs have been cut by no less than 94 percent. Also with Oracle RAC for SAP, performance is noticeably enhanced when compared with the previous setup. Head of IT infrastructure Karlheinz Breit adds, “All the hospitals are telling us that the response times are great.”
“High availability, but also scalability, is achieved in an optimum and very distinct way, through a combination of FlexFrame and Oracle Real Application Clusters for SAP.” – K A R L H E I N Z B R E I T, Head of IT Infrastructure and Services, Staedtisches Klinikum Munich GmbH
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“It’s very important for us that our mission-critical applications run smoothly. With Oracle Real Application Clusters, we have the assurance we need that these software systems will remain highly available. Not only that, but the database clustering technology has helped us achieve major increases in productivity and efficiency.” – P I E R A FA S O L I , Managing Director, and Fabrizio Grisoni, Systems and Architecture Manager
ORACLE RAC IS THE FIRST CHOICE FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY FOR MISSION-CRITICAL A P P L I C AT I O N S Gruppo Hera, Bologna www.gruppohera.it
Industry Utility Services
Annual Revenue Over € 240 million € 2.1 billion (2006)
Employees Approx. 6,000
Oracle Products & Services Oracle Real Application Clusters 9.2.0.7 (on Solaris 9) Oracle-To-Oracle (O2O) Transition Services Set Oracle DB Physical Partitioning Oracle Consulting Services Oracle Support
Key Benefits – Implementing Oracle Real Application Clusters to enhance the availability of the enterprise solutions SAP R/3 IS-U, SAP BW – Boosting mission-critical application performance, especially for the industry solution R/3 IS-U – Improving response times with the IS-U and Oracle DB Partitioning – Basis for enhanced system scalability and flexibility in resource deployment
Since the European utilities industry was liberalized in the early to mid-‘90s, it has been swept by mergers and acquisitions. To this day, the European energy sector remains awash with activity. One major player in the expansion game lies in Italy: Gruppo Hera, a Bolognabased corporation formed in November 2002 from 12 local utilities in the Emilia-Romagna region (6 provinces total). Its latest acquisition: Meta Modena, in 2006. Hera now has € 2.1 billion in revenues, 6.000 employees and over 2.5 million customers whom it supplies with energy, water and waste management services. Currently, the utility company ranks third in the Italian market. But that’s about to change. For Hera, one technology stood head and shoulders above the rest in ensuring business continuity and high availability for its firstlevel enterprise applications: Oracle Real Application Clusters. Its mission-critical applications are the industry solution SAP IS-U and the business intelligence system SAP BW.
Hera views a robust, well-engineered IT environment as the key to its past accomplishments and future plans. “You see, IT is a business backbone for our company. All our first-level enterprise software applications have to work flawlessly. If they go down – even for a short time – our company would have a serious problem,” explained Managing Director Piera Fasoli from Famula @on-line S.p.A., who is responsible for Gruppo Hera’s IT activities. Systems and Architecture Manager Fabrizio Grisoni added, “That’s right. We wouldn’t be able to do a lot of things – like issuing customer invoices on time or in the right quantities. And that would cut directly into our revenues.”
Oracle RAC for SAP at Gruppo Hera
“No Other Technology Compares“
With its current IT environment with Oracle RAC, Hera feels eminently equipped to tackle the full range of current and future business challenges. “We’re well equipped for further corporate growth because our current IT architecture and applications perfectly meet a wide variety of requirements. And Oracle RAC is one of the key elements in this mix,” explained IT system and architecture expert Fabrizio Grisoni. The Hera application environment has evolved continuously over the years, passing through three distinct stages. When the company was founded in 2002, it first deployed SAP R/3 as the enterprise solution, based on Oracle as the database management system. The solution consisted of the modules for Financial Accounting (FI), Controlling (CO), Materials Management (MM), Sales and Distribution (SD) and Human Resources (HR). There were originally 150 users. The second phase followed two years later to accommodate the new industry solution, SAP R/3 IS-U. At the same time, Hera implemented SAP BW (with SEM in a second phase) on Sun hardware with the Solaris operating system platform in a single instance database environment. To be specific, it used a large Sun computer with 3 Domains as a kind of ‘system in a system’. The resulting increase in SAP use also drove up user numbers significantly. “It was a stable system that essentially did what we wanted. However, the architecture did have one Achilles’ heel – if a node failed (active passive cluster configuration), we could not protect the continuity of the SAP applications running on it. It was something we simply could not and would not accept,” recalled Hera IT manager Fabrizio Grisoni.
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Hera approached the problem by examining various ways to ensure high availability. In the end, they picked a solution based on Oracle Real Application Clusters. As Grisoni explained, “No other technology in this class compares to Oracle RAC in terms of high availability, performance enhancement, scalability and flexibility.” Successful Oracle RAC Implementation
“We’re well equipped for
and Tests
further corporate growth
The overhaul with Oracle RAC started in the spring of 2006, when Hera Holding began meticulously planning the future system environment in close cooperation with Oracle’s Global Technology Center for SAP in Walldorf (Germany) and the Sun support team. This was followed by a rapid installation, the setup of the new environment and rigorous testing.
because our current IT
The project team built an Oracle RAC architecture (Oracle 9.2.0.7) with 2 database instances on 2 SunFire 25K hardware systems (two node clusters; Sun Cluster 3.1 with Sun QFS and Solaris 9). Each of these two connected nodes holds 3 separate “application Domains”, each with their own Sun domain and Oracle database: one SAP IS-U system (Release 4.6C, IS-U 4.64) and one SAP BW system (3.1). The SAP application servers were “outsourced” to Sun Blade 8000 AMD Opteron hardware, while a new storage architecture was implemented alongside a new SAN system (Hitachi HDS 9990). The O2O (Oracle-To-Oracle) Transition Services Set was used to migrate the 7 TB database to the new RAC system. Thanks mainly to O2O, the migration was completed in only 36 hours. Others keys tool in the project, on the same Go live, where the “full reorganization” of the DB on the target SAN, IS-U logical partitioning with Oracle DB Physical Partitioning for specific Billing and Invoicing Table. It split up IS-U tables and improved database access and performance during periods of high IS-U use.
architecture and applications perfectly meet a wide variety of requirements. And Oracle RAC is one of the key elements in this mix.” – Fabrizio Grisoni, Systems and Architecture Manager, Famula@on-line S.p.A., Gruppo Hera
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Oracle RAC for SAP at Gruppo Hera
According to Hera System & Architecture manager Grisoni, “The new Oracle RAC environment was implemented without any real difficulties. The comprehensive post-implementation tests were also extremely successful.” The tests ran through every imaginable scenario – from the sudden shut-down of a cluster node or database instance through to a hard disk crash or network failure. Considerable Benefits
“No other technology in this class compares to Oracle RAC in terms of high availability, performance enhancement, scalability and flexibility.” – Piera Fasoli, Managing Director, and – Fabrizio Grisoni, Systems and Architecture Manager, Famula@on-line S.p.A., Gruppo Hera
“The implementation of Oracle RAC has really paid off for Hera,” said Managing Director Fasoli and Architecture Manager Grisoni. They added, “In our business, it’s very important for our mission-critical applications to run smoothly. With Oracle Real Application Clusters, we have the assurance we need that these software systems will remain highly available. If one node or database instance is suddenly no longer available – for any reason at all – the other nodes take over. And the users hardly notice that there was a system problem in the first place.” Oracle’s database clustering technology enables Hera to achieve major increases in productivity and efficiency. For example, the utility company has boosted its processing/invoicing performance significantly. “Pre-RAC, we were generating 45.000 billing document x hour. “After the
partitioning we’ve doubled that amount, and with the AMD Opteron Application Server we can generating more than 250.000 document x hour” noted a satisfied Grisoni. With Oracle RAC, Hera has even more room to maneuver in terms of system scalability. The new environment already handles its approx. 1.500 users effortlessly on line. And it can be easily expanded if necessary – such as after the new strategical acquisition of the Group. Hera simply has to add other application server in front of the RAC Domain environment. Hera is already planning to switch over to Oracle RAC 10g in the near future. It also intends to deploy Oracle Dataguard in order to strengthen its existing disaster recovery mechanisms even more.
Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Stadtwerke Munich
“Running an Oracle RAC migration was the logical thing to do when upgrading SAP ERP. The improvements we achieved in terms of costs, availability, performance and scalability were obvious even with Oracle9i RAC for SAP. Oracle 10g RAC for SAP is allowing us to yet further optimize corporate applications that run on Microsoft Windows.”
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— RUDOLF BAYERL
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g
D AT A B A S E
Systems Operations Manager, Information and Process Technology Division, SWM Services GmbH
MUNICH PUBLIC SERVICES: ORACLE 10g RAC F O R S A P O P T I M I Z E S A P P L I C AT I O N S T H AT R U N O N M I C R O S O F T W I N D O W S Stadtwerke Munich Services GmbH Major release upgrade and database migration
The Stadtwerke Munich (SWM), the city of Munich’s public utility company, is the largest municipal enterprise in Germany with around 6800 employees and a group revenue of over €4.2 billion (2006). From the private individual or medium-sized company through to the global player, SWM is a partner to all sizes of customer, supplying them with energy, water and associated services reliably and cost-effectively. In addition to energy supplies and services, the company’s spectrum encompasses the complete energy and water value-added chain. SWM is also a municipal service provider offering high service quality and enhancing leisure opportunities in the world-famous city on the Isar with its indoor and outdoor swimming pools. And with the comprehensive mobility services provided by MVG (subway, bus and streetcar), SWM helps the citizens of Munich to travel in a way that is kind to the city and the environment. Stadtwerke Munich’s services to citizens and customers are available round the clock – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
This “all-round service” simply would not work without a sophisticated, well-functioning IT system. SAP systems play a key role in this respect, to the extent that Stadtwerke Munich describes them as “critical to success”. The company uses SAP ERP (ECC 6.0), including the IS-U/CCS solution designed specifically for the utility industry, for management of customer and vendor data, billing, procurement handling, maintenance management, and much more besides. SWM has a total of around 4500) users. Since the end of the mainframe era the preferred medium for SAP use has been the Microsoft Windows platform in conjunction with an Oracle database, though open-source platforms such as Linux have figured in the considerations for some time now. And the extent of SAP use has been – and still is – continuously increasing. The SAP database volume is growing by around 100 gigabytes per month, and currently totals around 4 terabytes. In addition to SAP, SWM has well over 100 other applications, most of which operate together on Oracle. Extensive experience has already been gathered with Oracle9i RAC for SAP and a large number of improvements have been introduced.
Industry: Utility/Public Sector
Annual Revenue: €4.2 billion
Employees: Around 6,800
Oracle Products & Services: • Oracle Database 10g Release 2 • Oracle 10g RAC for SAP Clusters (RAC) • Oracle OCFS • Oracle Support
Key Benefits • Opportunities for cost efficiency optimization • Greater stability • Enhanced scaling possibilities • Enhanced performance • Greater protection of investment • Efficient database management • Sophisticated system monitoring
Im
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Move to Oracle 10g RAC for SAP: A logical step
10
g
D AT A B A S E
“One of the aims of the SAP ERP upgrade was to reorient our SAP database with Oracle 10g Release 2. Given the very positive experience we accumulated with Oracle9i RAC for SAP, it was also a logical step to implement an Oracle RAC upgrade alongside the SAP major release upgrade and the database migration. In doing so we wanted to stay with the Microsoft Windows OS platform,” explains Rudolf Bayerl, System Operations Manager in the Information and Process Technology Division of SWM Services GmbH. In choosing Oracle RAC 10g, SWM – an SAP customer for many years – combined investment protection for its hardware, system stability, enhanced performance and extra scope for high scalability. The company also wanted to exploit a range of extended functions provided by Oracle 10g RAC for SAP, such as AWR (Automatic Workload Repository) tools for database diagnostics and system management for the entire database environment. “As was the case with the implementation of Oracle9i RAC for SAP, prior to deploying Oracle 10g RAC for SAP we talked to Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, EMC and the new hardware vendor Fujitsu Siemens Computers,” says Manfred Fischer, Systems Engineer/OCP at SWM Services GmbH. The RAC upgrade was implemented as a pilot project.
Because the company was using new, more powerful hardware (a blade server), it was possible to use a 2-node cluster instead of a 3-node cluster. FlexFrame 3.2B was chosen for central and dialog instances and an RAC configuration for the database. The plan was initially to run Oracle 10g RAC for SAP together with R/3, and then later with SAP ERP or ECC 6.0. Oracle 10g RAC for SAP together with SAP ERP were scheduled to go into productive operation in early November 2007. Oracle RAC installation took just one day
Beginning in the spring, the individual project phases were implemented one at a time. Throughout the process the Global Oracle Technology Center in Walldorf (Germany) served as preferred contact partner for the Oracle RAC team at SWM. SWM opted to set up the Oracle RAC for SAP environment afresh. After the system was set up, hardware and network tests were carried out and the new Oracle RAC system was installed, including the new Oracle RAC Clusterware running on the 10g database version. “This stage took only a day to complete and went off without a hitch,” says Fischer. Once this stage was complete Oracle 10g RAC for SAP was extensively tested. Particular attention was focused on function tests and the services of the cluster. When this work was successfully completed the next step was to transfer the data to the new database environment. The whole process took around 10 hours to complete as the database and the Oracle RAC environment were set up afresh. This was followed by further system tests (performance tests, OCFS tests, fail-over tests and others) with Oracle 10g RAC for SAP, in conjunction with SAP R/3. “These functionality tests for the complete environment passed off exactly as we hoped,” says Fischer. nization to
Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Stadtwerke Munich
Oracle RAC for SAP migration a logical move
In July 2007 the productive system was migrated to 10g Release 2 RAC, still operating on SAP 4.6C. This was followed in early November by the move to the new SAP ERP system, which has been in productive operation with the Oracle 10.2 database and Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters for SAP ever since. “It was only logical to implement an Oracle RAC migration together with the SAP ERP upgrade. Even with Oracle9i RAC for SAP, the improvements in terms of costs, availability, performance and scalability were clear to see. With Oracle 10g RAC for SAP we’ve managed to optimize the use of business applications on Microsoft Windows even further,” sums up Mr. Bayerl, the System Operations Manager. The new functions provided by Oracle 10g RAC for SAP ”make us more efficient and enable us to perform complex diagnostics or analyses more quickly and easily. As a result we are in a position to respond more specifically and appropriately to potential changes in the system,” says Fischer.
As he points out, the AWR tools, for example, allow the user to perform very in-depth analyses – including root cause analyses – with just a few clicks. “This is a tremendous asset. In a potential error situation, or if we were experiencing performance problems, we can respond immediately and we know instantly where we need to act. We can also draw on seamless documentation of all our performance data, for whatever purpose we need it.” SWM’s SAP team are also impressed by the new features of the SAP database Oracle 10g on Windows: “Database reorganizations, in particular, are much more efficient with the new 10g functions. This alone makes our workload considerably easier and therefore improves productivity.”
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Cat Logistics RUNS ORACLE 10g R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N C L U S T E R S Cat Logistics went production with SAP® Service and Asset Management in November 2007. Cat Logistics
The database server is running AIX 5.3 and the database is Oracle 10g with Real Application Clusters. The Oracle Cluster spans approximately ten miles utilizing a high-speed dark fiber
Configuration Details: SAP Application SAP Versions: ECC 6.0, SCM 5.0, CRM 5.0, NW2004s, BI 7.0, EP 6.0, XI Hardware & Operating System: IBM pSeries/AIX 5.3 SAP servers: Initial setup – 8 (4-way) pSeries hosting 14 SAP app server instances, handles up to 4,000 SAPS. End state – 100+ 4-way pSeries handle 170,000 SAPS Users: Initial setup – 200 named users, 40 concurrent users. End state – 3500 named users and 20,000 customer users Transactions: Initial setup – 600K dialog steps per day * User and Transaction metrics estimated Oracle Database Database: Oracle RAC 10.2.0.2 Hardware & Operation System: IBM pSeries / AIX 5.3 Stretch cluster: 10 miles (Gb ethernet over single mode fiber < 1ms latency) File System: IBM GPFS 2.3 with GPFS Replication DB Size: Single DB Totals Current: 10 Gigabytes to 200 Gigabytes, growing to 1.2Terabytes
connection between the nodes of the RAC cluster. This configuration ensures the high availability of Cat Logistics SAP applications. The Oracle Global Technology Center and Oracle Development team in Walldorf Germany in addition to the local Oracle account team provided key support during the implementation of Oracle RAC.
C AT L O G I S T I C S S E RV I C E S
Key Benefits
Taking Service Parts Management to the
• 25% to 50% improvement in warehouse productivity • 5% to 10% improvement in fill rates • 15% to 25% reduction in inventory • 20% to 30% reduction in IT support costs • More time for IT staff to spend on customer service and integration
Next Generation with SAP ® Software Summary
When Morton, Ill.–based Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc. (Cat Logistics) wanted to move its aftermarket parts operation to a next-generation platform, it joined forces with Ford Motor Company and SAP to develop a powerful service parts management application. Now part of the SAP® Service and Asset Management solution, the software is helping the company stay on the cutting edge. Key Challenges
CPU: 4 to 6 depending on SAP component (AIX virtualization)
• Provide continued support for increasingly sophisticated global operations • Eliminate costly legacy systems • Meet customer expectations for next-generation technology
Memory: 3 – 8 Gb depending on SAP component
Project Objectives
The following article "SAP – Cat Logistics Success Story” is a reprint from Cat Logistics Industry Article, with permission from Cat Logistics. The original article can be viewed at: http://logistics.cat.com/cda/components/ fullArticle?m=115228&x=7&id=394024
• Move away from in-house software development • Provide the functionality and power to manage complex service parts supply chains • Implement Web-enabled, standard technology
End State: 250 Gigabytes to 3 Terabytes, growing to 15 to 20 Terabytes Disk: 60% greater than size of db
Solutions and Services SAP Service and Asset Management Existing Environment
• Legacy systems • SAP software for supply chain management and SAP industry specific automotive solutions (functionality now found in the mySAP™ ERP application) Current Environment
Database: Oracle Hardware: IBM Operating System: IBM AIX Why SAP Solution?
Long-term stability of SAP as a company – as well as its industry and supply chain knowledge and global perspective and support
Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Cat Logistics
Cat Logistics Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc.’s expertise is in providing truly integrated logistics solutions, says Krish Srinivasan, manager of strategy and business development at the Morton, Ill.–based company. “We draw on the intellectual property developed in serving Caterpillar, our parent company, which has more 80 years of supply chain experience and one of the world’s largest and most efficient logistics operations,” he says. And a few years ago, with an eye on rapidly evolving information technology, the company wanted to rethink the systems that were helping it deliver that expertise to customers. “We decided that we should take a look at our technology strategy going forward – especially in our service parts business,” says Srinivasan. Commonly known as Cat Logistics, the company was formed in 1987 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc. – the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines. Today Cat Logistics provides integrated logistics solutions global companies in a variety of industries. It operates more than 105 offices and facilities in 25 countries on six continents and serves more than 60 client companies, including Caterpillar itself. The aftermarket parts business is key for Cat Logistics, which manages some 25 million SKUs annually. To support those vital operations, the company had been using legacy systems that it developed and fine-tuned over the course of several decades to support its sophisticated, and often complex, supply chain processes. “Some of our legacy systems were 10 to 15 years old, and they were getting expensive to maintain,” explains Srinivasan. In addition, the company had created variety of customized versions of service parts management software to meet the needs of various customers, which also drove up maintenance costs.
“To keep upgrading and enhancing those systems was not an option,” says Srinivasan. “It was becoming too time-consuming and difficult.” Instead, Cat Logistics began searching for a packaged service parts management application. “We took an exhaustive look at the solutions that existed in the market and found that were woefully limited in terms of capabilities, especially compared to the rich functionality of the systems Cat Logistics had developed over the years,” says Srinivasan. “We could see that buying the software in the marketplace would be a step backward for us.” Collaborating on a Solution
To keep its critical service parts business moving forward, Cat Logistics decided to create exactly what it wanted. The company joined forces with Ford Motor Company, which was also interested in a better service parts management solution, and the two began looking for a development partner. Soon, they decided work with SAP to develop an end-to-end, next-generation service parts management application – an effort that would eventually produce a key portion of the Service and Asset Management solution. Cat Logistics decided to work with SAP in part because of SAP’s stability as a company and in part because of the software vendor’s understanding of supply chain management – and service parts management in particular. “Service parts is one of the core key strengths of our business,” says Scott Koval, marketing director at Cat Logistics. “We could not entrust this effort to a company that might not be around five years down the road. We wanted to go with a vendor that the business, that had been around for some time, and that was going to be around for the long term.” Cat Logistics was also looking for a partner that, like Cat Logistics itself, was focused on the future. “We wanted a company that understood where the technology was going,” Srinivasan says. Just as important, Cat Logistics felt that SAP was committed to keeping its software on the leading edge.
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“SAP brought a genuine desire to make sure the software not only met the needs of Cat Logistics, but was also a best-inclass solution for the industry as whole.” – Kevin Nelson, Development Manager, Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc.
"With global available-topromise functionality, for example, we can do a complete network search for parts, across warehouses. That makes it possible to service customer orders more quickly and avoid going back to suppliers to order additional inventory you don’t need.” – Scott Koval, Marketing Director, Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc.
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“In a fast-changing business,” Srinivasan says, “we wanted a partner that was prepared to apply ongoing research and development to the product and market needs changed.” Cat Logistics, Ford, and SAP brought a wide range of complementary knowledge and experience to the effort. “Two heads are better than one, and, in this case, three were better than two,” says Srinivasan. “This development effort benefited greatly from the combined expertise of these three companies.” "SAP understood the needs of various market sectors and the challenges of global business – the cross-border issues, import/export regulations, local tax laws, and so forth. It was prepared to develop a solution that could work for many different regions of the globe.” – Krish Srinivasan, Manager of Strategy and Business Development, Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc.
SAP contributed both technology and business knowledge gained through extensive experience in the supply chain management arena in a variety of industries. “Among other things,” says Srinivasan, “SAP understood the needs of various market sectors and the challenges of a global business – the cross-border issues, import/export regulations, local tax laws, and so forth. It was prepared to develop a solution that could work for many different regions of the globe.” The three companies worked closely together under a well-defined governance structure that spelled out details about roles, responsibilities, and timing in a highly collaborative process. “At the team level, people were meeting at least once a week and more often two or three times a week,” says Kevin Nelson, development manager at Cat Logistics. “Throughout the process,” he adds, “SAP brought a genuine desire to make sure the software not only met the needs of Cat Logistics, but was also a bestin-class solution for the industry as a whole.” Support for the Complex Aftermarket Supply Chain
The result of these efforts was a powerful service parts management application that gives Cat Logistics fully integrated order management, materials management, and warehouse management capabilities. The SAP software provides the full range of tools and functions the company needs to support its sophisticated operations, from planning to fulfillment and analysis, with real-time execution of logistics processes, including exception monitoring and alerts.
The SAP software supports a number of processes that are integral to both Cat Logistics and its customers. "With global available-to promise functionality, for example, we can do a complete network search for parts, across warehouses,” says Koval. “That makes it possible to service customers more quickly and avoid going back to suppliers to order additional inventory you don’t need.” The software also provides improved support for large, complex operations. “It lets us manage situations where, for example, you have orders coming in from tens of thousands of customers into a complex warehouse environment, with orders going to different destinations and potentially being cross-docked or consolidated after they leave the facility,” says Nelson. “The intelligence in the routing system is very effective.” At the same time, the company’s service parts management operations now run on a more flexible, Web-enabled platform that makes it easy to bring customers onboard and support them virtually anywhere in the world. “And,” says Srinivasan, “we now have multilanguage and multicurrency capabilities that we can use with global customers. These things will help us reach out to customers in different regions.” The Payoff for Cat Logistics – and its Customers
In the near future, Cat Logistics plans to roll the SAP Service and Asset Management solution out to a growing number of customers, with some 20,000 users expected to be on the system within three years. Currently, the company is implementing the software for one of its most sophisticated clients – its parent company, Caterpillar. “Caterpillar has placed a strategic emphasis on its aftermarket supply chain; it recognizes that significant repeat sales of its prime products happens because of the aftermarket support it provides for those products,” says Srinivasan. “For example,” he explains, “the company has a ‘no-orphan policy’ of supporting products as long as customers own them – which can be decades – and the
Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Cat Logistics
aftermarket supply chain achieves same-day shipping of parts 99.7% of the time.” Already experience shows that Cat Logistics’ customers are likely to see clear benefits from the SAP software. As an example, in facilities where the company has used the software’s warehouse management capabilities, productivity in terms of lines shipped has improved anywhere from 25% to 50%. “With the integrated solution supporting the service parts supply chain,” says Srinivasan, “we will also see significant benefits in inventory management, with an expected 5% to 10% improvement in fill rates and inventory reductions of 15% to 25%, depending on the customer’s industry.” Meanwhile the use of standard software and a reduced need for in-house development should lower IT support costs 20% to 30% – and allow Cat Logistics’ in-house IT professionals to focus on customer service and integration, rather than ongoing software development.
Overall the SAP Service and Asset
Management solution gives Cat Logistics the tools it needs to work effectively with its customers and help them streamline their aftermarket supply chains. Just as important, the software provides a technology platform that can keep up with an expanding and rapidly changing business. “Our customers like having the confidence of knowing their supply chains are supported by the latest standard technology,” says Srinivasan. “This is a system that we and our customers can grow with in the coming years.”
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“Oracle Partitioning is an effective lever for enhancing the long-term system stability of mission-critical SAP applications. It's associated with higher performance, optimizations in database reorganization, and savings in hardware resources."
– MANUEL HONEGGER, Head of Development, Member of the Management, Coop Switzerland
RETAILER COOP IS BENEFITING FROM ORACLE PA RT I T I O N I N G
Swiss retailer Coop has improved its SAP
Oracle: Strategic system partner
system stability thanks to Oracle Partitioning.
Manuel Honegger, Head of IT Development at Coop, explains: “We made a conscious strategic decision in favor of Oracle.” The highprofile company also relies on Oracle Advanced Customer Service for SAP, utilizing a range of made-to-measure support services.
The company is now in a position to respond Industry: Commerce/Retail
Turnover: Over 15,5 billion CHF 2006
Workforce: Around 45,800
Oracle products & services: • Oracle Database 10g • Oracle Partitioning • Oracle Advanced Customer Service (ACS) for SAP
quickly and effectively to any negative impacts on SAP system stability.
The Coop Group has one overriding objective - to become Switzerland’s number one retailer. And the company is certainly on the right track to achieving its goal, even despite ongoing changes in the industry and evolving customer behavior. The retail giant’s sales have risen continuously in recent years, reaching around 15.5 billion Swiss francs (CHF) in 2006. The workforce has also grown to more than 45,800 while the number of stores has mushroomed to almost 1550. Coop is also involved in a number of cooperations at international level. Making sure the huge range of goods and products arrives in stores or markets at the right time and in the right quantity requires a sophisticated logistics system. But it also depends on powerful and well-functioning IT. That's where Coop’s SAP corporate solutions combined with the Oracle database come in. The retail group completed the move to SAP ERP and Oracle 10g last year. There are also several SAP BW systems running on Oracle. The number of SAP users is around the 4500 mark, and the size of the Oracle database is currently about 8 TB. The hardware platform is Sun (Solaris) while the disk subsystems are from Hitachi.
But that’s not all. As an SAP user Coop decided to use Oracle Partitioning – and for very good reasons. “There's no question that the SAPOracle combination works brilliantly. But when you need to process very large volumes of data with SAP, the SAP table design quickly reaches its limits. If you don’t implement optimizations, you put system stability at risk. This can result in business processes no longer being correctly supported by corporate solutions, or in some cases not supported at all. Oracle Partitioning is an effective lever for enhancing or achieving the long-term system stability of missioncritical SAP applications,” says Honegger. Coop handles enormous volumes of data. Movement data alone accounts for a massive 10 TB. Every week the enterprise moves and processes five million order items. These are orders for local stores being transferred to headquarters and processed there in order to dispatch goods deliveries. For these processes Coop needs maximum system performance and availability from its SAP systems. If any difficulties arise during this stage, business continuity is put at risk.
COOP is benefiting from Oracle Partitioning for SAP
Oracle Partitioning: The winning card
Other focus of optimization
It was when two key problem areas were identified that Coop’s IT team decided to act to improve system stability. The first problem was reduced performance and the second was that data volumes were growing at an aboveaverage rate, particularly movement data. These problems were analyzed from different perspectives. A conclusion was soon reached: “We were able to show that an optimized data archiving concept using Oracle Partitioning would enable us to improve the situation. Most importantly, with Oracle Partitioning you can partition disproportionately large tables. This allowed us to efficiently split and archive logical structures in different physical segments, which had a positive impact on SAP system stability,” explains Honegger.
Having achieved all these improvements, which resulted in optimized data archiving, it was time to make further use of Oracle Partitioning. But this time the focus was different. The aim was now to increase resource capacities, and in particular to leverage Oracle Partitioning in such a way as to take the strain off the disk subsystems to the tune of around 2 TB. In this project, both tables and indices were optimized with the aid of Oracle Partitioning with the specific aim of cutting down on resources. This too was achieved in a team effort between Coop’s IT department and the Oracle database specialists. At the end of the day the 2 TB reduction was achieved thanks to more efficient means of database reorganization – all through the use of Oracle Partitioning.
In concrete terms the analyses revealed that a number of tablespaces were five times bigger than was normal. Some were growing to a volume of 800 GB, with a few even amounting to 1000 GB. Oracle database specialists at the Oracle for SAP Solution Center in Walldorf worked with Coop to develop a concept for implementing Oracle Partitioning with maximum efficiency. In a first step the team identified which tables were good candidates for partitioning. The partitioning criteria were then defined for each table. It was important that integration into the SAP system was as seamless as possible to ensure optimum functioning and keep administration as simple as possible. This is achieved by linking the partitioning criterion with the SAP number range table NRIV. This strategy ensures that both SAP archiving and the performance-critical SQL statements are optimally supported. Finally, tests were carried out to check the effectiveness of the various measures. “The result was exactly what we hoped for. Put simply, after implementing Oracle Partitioning the system wasn’t big and heavy any more. Oracle also helped us significantly increase our SAP system performance,” says Honegger.
Honegger sums up: “It was Oracle Partitioning that enabled us to enhance our system stability in the face of substantial growth in data volumes and therefore avoid potential downtimes. As an SAP user handling large volumes of data we benefited from Oracle Partitioning in several ways. SAP supported and verified our approach.” As part of an ongoing optimization process for system stability there are plans to use Oracle Partitioning as a kind of proactive early-warning mechanism. Should system stability be impaired, for any reason, Oracle Partitioning will be employed to nip the problem in the bud.
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“ We made a conscious strategic decision in favor of Oracle.” – Manuel Honegger, Head of Development, Member of the Management, Coop Switzerland.
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“Data warehouses have not only grown to be very large in many enterprises: their growth is accelerating. A data warehouse occupying a terabyte of disk- a rarity a few years ago– is now quite common. And many enterprises are now planning or implementing data warehouses occupying ten terabytes of disk or more". WinterCorp http://wintercorp.com by Richard Winter and Rick Burns, April 2007
FIELD EXPERIENCE WITH LARGE-SCALE D ATA WA R E H O U S I N G O N O R A C L E
Colgate Palmolive Company
The Colgate-Palmolive Company is a worldwide producer of consumer products that supply some of the world’s leading brands in oral care, personal care, household and fabric care and pet food. It operates in more than 200 countries and generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2005. Colgate-Palmolive has achieved dramatic growth in revenue and earnings in the past decade through rapid development and introduction of innovative new products that meet emerging consumer preferences. A key factor in Colgate’s ability to sustain such rapid business growth has been its commitment to continuous performance improvement. Colgate has established key performance indicators (KPI) globally and uses these to link forces driving its business to daily operating activities throughout the organization. For example, how do sales projections compare to actuals? Are customers receiving rebates as promised? Profitability analysis measures the efficiency of specific brands and marketing programs. The corporate-wide data warehouse, based on SAP’s Business Information Warehouse (BW) product, is used to report on a broad range of corporate performance. BW provides a unified reporting and analysis infrastructure that integrates sales and distribution information,
inventory and process managements, and financial and personnel data. Divisional managers, corporate staff, subsidiaries and partners for supply chain optimization and business intelligence use BW to keep their finger on the pulse of the business and look for improvement opportunities. In 2002, Colgate consolidated multiple data warehouses into a single warehouse to implement this unified corporate-wide reporting and analysis capability. Today, the SAP BW installation is based on Oracle9i Release 2 running on a 20-processor IBM p595 “Squadron” with 64GB of main memory and 10 Terabytes of IBM storage under AIX 5.2. The Oracle database contains 4.7 TB of raw data and has a total size of 8.7 TB. It incorporates data from many different sources including SAP R/3, and financial, sales, and manufacturing operational systems. BW provides a multidimensional capability through snowflake schemas called InfoCubes. Colgate’s data warehouse contains 400 InfoCubes ranging in size from one million to 370 million rows. It also contains over 5341 pre-computed aggregates. InfoCube and aggregate data is stored in more than 1,800,000 table partitions in the database resulting in one of the most complex database structures used worldwide.
L a r g e - S c a l e D a t a Wa r e h o u s i n g o n O r a c l e a t C o l g a t e P a l m o l i v e
One table contains over eight thousand partitions. Overall the BW database contains 69,600 tables containing over 25 billion rows, and 540,000 attributes. The aggregated data allows business managers to quickly discover performance metrics such as daily sales flash, inventory levels and account performance. Complex ad hoc queries, involving joins of up to 30 tables, comprise 80%90% of the system workload. The BW system services 10,000 users worldwide, about a quarter of Colgate-Palmolive’s employees, and handles 16,000 navigational steps on a typical day. The size of Colgate’s BW system presented Colgate’s IT staff with multiple scalability challenges. These challenges revolved around the large number of database partitions and segments in the warehouse and the extensive use of drop and create operations on partitioned objects, according to Deighton Weekes, a Colgate Technical Executive. Colgate undertook a performance analysis and tuning exercise, helped by collaboration from its system vendors, which quickly resulted in an overall performance improvement for the consolidated BW system of 80%. According to Mr. Weekes, the use of Oracle locally managed tablespace and parallel query features, as well as the automatic space management and PGA memory management features introduced in Oracle9i, were key factors in achieving this performance gain.
Additional performance challenges relate to the rapidly increasing number of users and the resulting utilization levels. Colgate is in the process of upgrading to Oracle 10g and is evaluating RAC for additional parallelism. These technology upgrades are expected to deliver additional performance enhancements, including more dynamic management of partitioning and effective partition elimination, critical to meeting the escalating utilization demands. Colgate has found Oracle to be fast, scalable, robust and easy to administer. It is a key component of Colgate’s IT infrastructure.
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Certified SAP on RAC Configurations for Windows and Linux
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C E R T I F I E D S A P O N R A C C O N F I G U R AT I O N S FOR WINDOWS AND LINUX We have separate scenarios for Windows and Linux, see also SAP Note 527843
Windows
Oracle RAC 10.2 on Windows x86, x86_64 and IA64
Linux
Oracle RAC 10.2 on Linux x86, x86_64, IA64 and Power for RHEL4, RHEL5, SLES9 and SLES10
• Only Oracle 10.2.0.2, no 10.2.0.3 • OCFS 10.2.0.2 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• Only Oracle 10.2.0.2, no 10.2.0.3
• Windows 2003 Release 2, Windows 2003 SP1 or SP2
• OCFS2 1.2.3 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Microsoft Cluster Services (SAP Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instance)
• EMC Celerra NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• iSCSI only supported up to 4 nodes Not supported:
– crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet, minimum two cards) – Infiniband – ASM – raw devices
• NetAppliance NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software • SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Oracle Clusterware (2 node configuration, co-location of SAP Central Instance with RAC Instance) • SAP Enqueue Replication covered by HP ServiceGuard or Red Hat Cluster (minimum 4 nodes are required, SAP central instance cannot be co-located with RAC instance on same node) Not supported:
– iSCSI – Firewire – crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet, minimum two cards) – Infiniband – Red Hat GFS – Veritas CFS, ASM, raw devices
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DELL-SAP on RAC Promotion
O R A C L E 1 0 g R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N C L U S T E R S FOR SAP PROMOTIONAL OFFERING FROM DELL
Dell offers a fully scalable solution for your SAP deployment to help simplify operations, improve utilization and achieve cost-effective scaling. The goal is to meet today’s SAP needs while preparing the company for the growth and accompanying needs of the future.
What is the Promotional Offering?
• Oracle Database infrastructure exclusively for SAP application customers • Targeted to small and medium sized implementations for Microsoft® Windows® /Linux customers, sold via Dell channel • Sold as packaged new systems. • Available World Wide Products Included:
Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) option for SAP supports the transparent deployment of a single database across a cluster of hardware servers, providing fault tolerance from hardware failures or planned outages. Utilizing RAC with Dell hardware for your SAP environment provides the final component for scalability at every layer in the solution stack. Now you have available to you, from Dell special promotional pricing of Oracle technology for SAP customers on Dell.
• Oracle 10g Database Enterprise Edition • Partitioning • Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) For more information about this special Oracle for SAP pricing from Dell, contact your Dell sales representative. DELL
1 Dell Way, Round Rock, TX 78682-2222 or eMail to:
[email protected]
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ORACLE ADVANCED CUSTOMER SERVICES FOR SAP
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Oracle Database and SAP
More than two thirds of all SAP customers entrust their data to the Oracle database. Almost two million registered users at nearly ten thousand locations have come to expect the best technology and performance that the Oracle database brings to the SAP environment. Its outstanding attributes are a direct result of multiple years of intensive partnership between SAP and Oracle.
This area of service is fully integrated in Oracle’s Advanced Customer Service (ACS) model. In addition to Standard Product Support, ACS offers specific service packages tailored to customers needs. ACS provides three separate and distinct packages for your individualized Oracle/SAP support. Those three are: • Assisted Service • Business Critical Assistance • Solution Support Center
The SAP and Oracle cooperation does not end with the database technology integration. Customer support and satisfaction are tangible day-to-day benefits of this partnership. A key enabler of this level of customer support is SAP’s requirement for permanent on-site Oracle Support staff. This group staffs the Development Level Support queue and provides immediate assistance for a wide range of problems from semi-critical to critical priority 1 “production down” issues.
Assisted Services are support advisory services for customers who need customized assistance from Oracle’s SAP engineers. The concept is to provide Oracle engineers that are skilled with the SAP application system, tools, procedures and most importantly the Oracle database with SAP.
The SAP Support and Services group at Oracle was created to coordinate and staff this focused customer support team. We are a worldwide services group providing assistance in all aspects of SAP operation. Specifically our mandate covers tasks ranging from management of increasing data volumes, performance optimization, setup of high availability solutions, to data exchange between the SAP system and other Oracle Databases over a secure interface.
These support services are geared to optimize future support processes. Representative services are listed below:
Oracle’s offering of SAP-specific services focus on Oracle database expertise as it applies to your SAP environment. Our services include database centric core technology services as described above, database and platform migrations, integration services, and a workshop program for in-depth technical customer training. Oracle Services in concert with SAP leverages over fourteen years of experience in delivering R/3 solutions founded on the Oracle Database.
Assisted Services
An Oracle engineer is assigned to the customer for a predetermined period of time to deliver agreed upon support services for the efficient operation and management of Oracle software for SAP on Oracle.
• • • • • • • • • •
Database Design and operations Oracle Software configuration for SAP Performance Analysis High Availability/Backup Concepts Oracle RAC enablement for SAP Migration Service for SAP R/3 Oracle to Oracle Migrations (O2O) Oracle Workshops for SAP Technical Assessments Implementation of Partitioning in a standard SAP ERP system
Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP
Database Design and configuration of an SAP R/3 System
In the beginning of an R/3 project the application design and implementation is the focus of most activities. It is this time that is most critical for ensuring that the configuration and design of your database is configured optimally and flexible enough for meeting your future needs. Improper or suboptimal configuration means increased effort in terms of operational efficiency and management. We therefore advise you to engage the proper resources during the initial stage of your R/3 project to help you prepare and configure the database with current best practices and your design goals in mind. Of course, we also specialize in optimizing and improving existing database designs.
all with advantages and disadvantages (hardware clusters, mirror technologies, standby databases, RAC, data guard...). We can advise you on the right strategy for your company and of course help during implementation of the chosen solution. Oracle RAC enablement for SAP
Oracle provides the ‘Real Application Clusters’ (RAC) option. You can use this option to distribute the database instance on different servers (nodes). This offers new possibilities in the area of high availability of an Oracle database system, and also provides greater flexibility in the dimensioning of system resources (scalability). Oracle provides professional service to assist you with enabling RAC your SAP environments. These services include workshops, planning, and implementation of RAC software.
Performance Analysis
Performance is one of the keys to success in the introduction and operation of an SAP system for all SAP customers. Our specially trained staff not only know the Oracle Database in detail but are also trained extremely well in the SAP environment. Therefore, our staff is in a position to analyze any performance problem and to provide solutions. These solutions could be, for example, in the areas of index design, parameter optimization, ABAP optimization or adaptation of operating system parameters. Our staff is also of course able to deal with specific features of individual SAP solutions. Performance problems in SAP R/3-BW systems appear in various forms and therefore the approaches to solution-solving will vary. High Availability /Backup Concepts
Unavailability of the SAP system leads to massive problems for most customers (logistically and financially). In order to prevent this, every SAP customer should deal with the subject “high availability.” In particular customers who describe their system as mission critical must look thoroughly at this subject. However, in this area there are very different approaches,
Migration Services for SAP R/3
A great majority of all SAP R/3 installations run on an Oracle database. The Oracle SAP Support and Services group is certified by SAP for R/3 database migrations and can perform migrations for companies who wish to migrate their SAP R/3 installation from a non-Oracle Database to Oracle. Professional service can be provided for migrations of any SAP database. Many customer systems have already been successfully migrated by the Oracle SAP Support and Services group. We offer you the best migration service you can get, because we have the experience needed to handle any problems that may arise from the database administrator’s perspective. The Oracle SAP Support and Services group can also offer customers introductory training in using the new database. Oracle to Oracle Migrations (O2O) – Extremely fast and smooth Database Migrations for SAP Systems, Heterogeneous Database Migrations
SAP offers the R3LOAD program for database migrations. This program has been available for quite some time, but unfortunately, has
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D AT A B A S E
just one disadvantage: It is very slow because initially, the entire source system must be unloaded. The entire contents of the database are then stored temporarily in the file system in the form of flat files, so that it can be reloaded to the target system in a second step. The transfer speeds achievable with this process are around 500GB in 24 hours, depending on the hardware available and the tuning measures conducted. If you are dependent on this procedure, then for larger systems (> 1TB) downtimes of significantly more than 48 hours must already be planned for. In other words: A weekend is not long enough. In order to offer our Oracle customers a significantly faster process, we have developed together with Hewlett Packard a service set that can support a transfer speed of more than 100 to 150GB per hour. This means systems can now be migrated that could not be handled previously. The service set is based on Oracle technologies, which are deployed consistently to the migration at hand. It supports migrations of SAP R/3 as well as BW systems. After the migration is concluded, the systems migrated using our process are fully supported by SAP. Oracle Partitioning for SAP customers
Oracle Partitioning is an option to Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition. At a technical level, Oracle Partitioning allows tables and indexes within a database to be subdivided into smaller pieces. Oracle can ‘partition’ a table by ranges of values, so for example the data for Jan 1, 2008 through Jan 31, 2008 is in its own partition. Oracle can also partition a table by a list of values, so that North American data is in one partition, while the European data is in another partition. Partitioning is a critical feature for managing large databases. Growth is the basic challenge that partitioning addresses for large databases, and Oracle Partitioning enables a “divide and conquer” technique for managing the large tables in the database, especially as those tables grow. Although your database may have twice as much data next year as it does today, your end-users are not going
to tolerate their application running twice as slow, your database is not going to be given twice as much time to complete maintenance and batch processing, and your IT managers are not going to double your hardware budget. Partitioning is the feature that allows a database to scale for very large datasets while maintaining consistent performance, without an unduly increased need for hardware resources or administrative efforts. Oracle Partitioning is embedded tightly into the core database engine and supported by Oracle’s administrative tools. From an SAP application perspective, partitioning is completely transparent: no changes need to be made to the application or to the SQL statements in order to use partitioning. Oracle Services and Support for SAP is happy to demonstrate for you the benefits of Partitioning. Partitioning for SAP is supported since SAP Version 4.6C SAP Kernel 6.20 Please contact us for more information and see further more the Success Story for Partitioning at Coop Switzerland in this edition. Oracle Workshop 10g for SAP R/3 Customers – Oracle 10g and SAP
The Oracle Version 10g Release 2 has been available to SAP customers since mid 2006. This release offers significant extensions, as well as new features in the operation of an SAP system in various respects. The focus of this workshop is to make known the aspects of Oracle 10g, which are necessary for SAP customers to be familiar with and knowledgeable about in order to, have an effect on daily their work. Within four days of workshops additional documentation will be provided. In the following you will find an extract from the subject areas, which will be discussed during the workshop: • New background processes • Automatic SGA Management • Tablespaces management • Segment shrinking
Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP
• Enhancements for Automatic PGA tuning • Cost Based Optimizer with 10g and SAP • Creation of Optimizer Statistics – Changes/ Enhancements • SAP Oracle parameter recommendations • Extensions to Online Table Reorganizations (LONG to LOB) • Incremental RMAN backups • Undo Management – enhancements • Flashback • Resumable space enhancements in 10g • Extensions regarding Recovery • Automatic Workload Repository / Active Session history / Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor • Oracle’s wait interface – enhancements with 10g Get to know the fascinating possibilities of Oracle 10g in the SAP environment. Business Critical Assistance
This service includes all areas covered by Technical Assessment, as well as further critical areas such as: - Specialized training - Emergency support - Global analysis of the system - 24/7 availability (on arrangement) Solution Support Center
This is the highest possible level within the Advanced Customer Service architecture. This level includes all other levels and the Support Center also offers the following additional services: - Dedicated telephone number (24/7) for response to Severity 1 issues - Focused team of support engineers who may be reached directly via the dedicated number - Detailed analyses of the system - Specific system monitoring (not offered as standard component any longer) - Mission critical support - Production Assessments
- Oracle product Patch Assessments - Applied research - Knowledge transfer workshops - Emergency Support The benefits of the ACS concept result in regular customer care by a focused team. This way there is a close relationship with the customer and the customer’s systems. In the same way, the ACS concept focuses particularly on proactive services with the aim of not allowing problems to appear, or if necessary, to react as effectively as possible. We hope we have aroused your interest in our service. We would be glad to give you contact data for our customers upon request. For further information please contact in EMEA:
[email protected]
and in Americas
[email protected]
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“One of the biggest benefits of our Hyperion business performance management system is having information available in near real time. We no longer need to spend hours or days answering executive managers’ questions. We now literally have information at our fingertips and we can immediately provide the answers they need to make informed decisions.”
– JAN-WILLEM BELDMAN, team lead for analytical applications and data quality at Mentor Graphics
Electronic design automation
MENTOR GRAPHICS – HYPERION HELPS T E C H N O L O G Y L E A D E R M A N A G E F I N A N C I A L D ATA AND ITS MOST IMPORTANT ASSETS–PEOPLE
Summary
About Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics has relied on Hyperion solutions since 1998, when they first chose Hyperion Essbase® for global sales reporting. In the years that followed, the company has aggressively added to their solution with Essbase applications for executive reporting in 2001, budgeting and planning in 2002 and their most recent addition in 2005—a powerful system for managing worldwide human resources. Today there are more than 300 users, and the company has a clear vision to make information even more broadly available in the coming years.
Mentor Graphics Corporation is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world’s most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the about $700 million company employs approximately 3,950 people worldwide. Managing the most important asset
A fast-moving technology leader, Mentor Graphics firmly believes that people are its greatest asset.With employees across 28 engineering sites and a global distribution channel with 48 offices around the world, the staffing for both the finance and human resource (HR) departments. As with its other data-intensive requirements, Mentor Graphics turned to Hyperion to quickly meet the needs of both. The company’s finance department is primarily concerned with accurate headcount numbers. Since most of the company’s divisions and business units have employees all over the world, it is particularly important for management to have a reliable tool to determine how many people work for each group at any given time.
Mentor Graphics
When it comes to hiring, the finance organization has discovered over the years that headcount assumptions are notoriously optimistic. To ensure accurate data, they need to track actual hires versus planned hires, and be able to deeply analyze each separately. In addition to the finance department’s requirements, the HR department needs a simple tool to understand attrition rates, reasons for leaving the company, hiring trends, and other critical HR statistics. They also need to be able to view and analyze information in a variety of ways— by geography, division or specialty—so they can address sophisticated queries like “did we lose any key technologists this year?” or “how many sales people do we have in Europe?” To best understand, analyze and act upon global staffing needs, Mentor Graphics implemented a Hyperion Essbase multidimensional cube. With Hyperion Essbase, almost immediately, the HR department realized the ability to make better HR allocation decisions. Some teams, for example, operate more as service organizations, with fluctuations occurring as project needs increase and decrease. Essbase allows these groups to address the need to have 20 people work for three months on one project and then work for another group on a completely different project. “By making more informed staffing decisions, we are growing top line revenue by allocating people where the need is greatest, and managing the bottom line by making sure they are being deployed optimally at all times,” says Jan-Willem Beldman, team lead for analytical applications and data quality at Mentor Graphics. “One of the biggest benefits of our HR system is our ability to answer questions in near real time,” says Beldman. “We no longer need to spend hours or days answering very specific HR questions posed by executive managers. Once very hard and time consuming—with a process that involved multiple spreadsheets across departments, geographies and cost centers—we now literally have this information at our fingertips and we can immediately provide the answers they need to make informed decisions.”
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A constant source of accurate information
Mentor Graphics counts on Hyperion Essbase to provide executives with rich, informative and customized reports that make companywide information easy to see and act upon. Refreshed up to six times a day, the system is a constant source of accurate information that executives can trust, including detailed data like critical bookings and revenue performanceto-plan analyses. The company has increased the sophistication of this system over the years, bringing together SQL dimension builds, partitioning and MaxL scripting to ensure constant accuracy while completely eliminating the need for ongoing maintenance.
“Eight years ago, we had limited access to data. Today, with Hyperion, we have analytic power, worldwide access to information, true scalability and unbreakable processes. We make better, faster business deci-
“Because the worldwide reporting system is integrated with our sales, marketing, HR and finance applications, our executives have the ability to drill-down into report data for additional information and perform powerful ad hoc analysis,” says Beldman.“They value having the ability to not just see data, but to learn more about the genesis of numbers as needed.” Transforming the budgeting and planning process
One of the most dramatic transformations that Mentor Graphics has undertaken has been the worldwide budgeting and planning process. After its initial success with the Hyperionbased sales reporting system, in 2002 they began an effort to replace the time-consuming planning and budgeting process—an annual event involving more than 1,200 spreadsheets for each worldwide cost center—with a bottom-up,Web-based solution using Essbase. “We used to go through an exhaustive process for budgeting and planning,” recalls Beldman. “Every group had to tie out their budget, and when it all came together, it never quite matched. There were broken formulas, inaccurate numbers, version control issues, and a lot of back-and-forth to find where the errors happened and correct them before they proliferated throughout the process.”
sions that directly benefit the bottom line and keep us competitive.” – Jan-Willem Beldman, team lead for analytical applications and data quality at Mentor Graphics
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Today, Mentor Graphics plans quarterly instead of annually, using a bottom-up planning process that ensures that data is accurately collected as each person moves through the process. With an automated workflow for each cost center, plans are approved hierarchically—first by division, then by region and finally by the company controller. By the time the planning process is complete, there is a comprehensive model in place that includes details for each cost center and rolls all the way up to the top. “It only took 2.5 people and 4 months to implement the planning system,” says Beldman, “a small price to pay for a highly automated approach that ensures timely, accurate budgets and reports. It also provides us with the ability to do ‘what-if ’ scenarios and other sophisticated modeling and analysis.” Ensuring data consistency and version control
Hyperion Master Data Management (MDM) is integrated with each of Mentor Graphics’ Essbase applications, allowing them to manage hierarchical master data across these applications, as well as their transactional, reporting and analytics systems.
Implementing Hyperion MDM has allowed Mentor Graphics to streamline its change management process for updating its multiple systems’ master data in unison. After the initial roll-out in sales hierarchy management, the company expanded the technology to its cost center, statutory and management reporting, budgeting and forecasting product hierarchies. “Today, we use Hyperion MDM as the central server to publish master data across heterogeneous systems from our multidimensional database, SAP, Callidus and Oracle systems,” Beldman explains. “Hyperion MDM has enabled us to achieve consistency of our data and improve version control of various enterprise hierarchies.” constantly improving access to information Hyperion Essbase and Hyperion MDM provide timely information, speed of analysis and accuracy of data management that a geographically dispersed company like Mentor Graphics needs to remain competitive. To continue to improve the availability of information across the company, Mentor Graphics is currently exploring the use of dashboards as a way to bring timely, actionable data directly to the desktop. “We have seen incredible results,” says Beldman. “Eight years ago, we had limited access to data. Today we have analytic power, worldwide access to information, true scalability and unbreakable processes. Moreover, we have completely transformed the way we think about data.We are no longer dealing with a collection of abstract numbers, but we’re building intelligence around every single aspect of our business.We make better, faster business decisions that directly benefit the bottom line and keep us competitive.” For further information please contact: Jens Kaminski, Senior Technical Manager
[email protected]
SAP Standard Application Benchmarks
O R A C L E A C H I E V E S W O R L D R E C O R D R E S U LT O N T H E S A P® S D - P A R A L L E L S T A N D A R D A P P L I C AT I O N B E N C H M A R K
Tuesday March 25, 2008 Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters on IBM System p 570 with POWER6 Processors Demonstrates Superior Scalability and Performance. REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., March 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ – Oracle today announced a new world-record result on the SAP® Sales and Distribution- Parallel (SD-Parallel) Standard Application Benchmark running on the SAP ERP 6.0 application.(1) With these results, Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters continues to demonstrate exceptional grid computing capabilities, delivering superior performance, scalability, and value. Running IBM AIX 5L(TM) 5.3 on a 5-node IBM System p(TM) 570 Server cluster, each with 8 dual-core 4.7 GHz POWER6 processors, Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters achieved 37,040 SAP SD-Parallel Benchmark users, outperforming the previous world record of 36,000 SDParallel Benchmark users, held by Oracle on the same platform configuration. (2) This world record is the highest ever measured result on the SAP SD-Parallel Standard Application Benchmark based on the number of SAP SD-Parallel Benchmark users. In addition, Oracle and IBM also delivered excellent two, three, and four- node results on the IBM System p(TM) 570 Server cluster, demonstrating the exceptional scalability of Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters running on highly scalable SMP servers.(3) When measured from two, three, four and five-node configurations, as documented and certified by SAP, Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters shows an
impressive 93 percent scalability, achieving 15,520, 22,416, 30,016 and 37,040 SAP SD- Parallel Benchmark users, respectively, while providing a high level of performance and availability. “These benchmark results are vivid proof that Oracle Real Application Clusters delivers unique capabilities and outstanding value to customers. The stellar SAP benchmark result clearly demonstrates that Oracle Real Application Clusters provides near linear scalability as nodes are added to the cluster, even for highly advanced applications such as those from SAP,” said Juan Loaiza, senior vice president, Systems Technology, Oracle. “Further, Oracle Real Application Clusters provides availability benefits that cannot be achieved in single SMP environments. The combination of linear scalability, and high availability on leading platforms such as the IBM System p(TM) 570 Server cluster provides an outstanding platform for deployments of SAP solutions.” About SAP Standard Application Benchmarks
SAP Standard Application Benchmarks were developed by SAP AG to provide comparative load analysis of SAP solutions. These results, as of March 25, 2008, have been certified by SAP AG. The SAP certification number for the latest results was not available at press time and can be found at the following Web page: http://www.sap.com/benchmark. About Oracle
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL – News) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
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SAP Standard Application Benchmarks
Trademarks
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 1 – The SAP SD-Parallel Standard Application Benchmark performed on November 26, 2007 by IBM in Beaverton, OR, USA has been certified with the following data: 37,040 SAP SDParallel Benchmark users, 1.86 seconds average dialog response time, 3,749,000 fully processed order line items per hour, 11,247,000 dialog steps per hour, 187,450 SAPS. Server configuration: IBM System p 570, 8 processors/16 cores/32 threads, POWER6, 4.7 GHz, 128 KB L1 cache and 4 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB L3 cache per processor, 128 GM main memory, running AIX 5L version 5.3, Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters and SAP ERP 6.0. The SAP certification number was not available at press time and can be found at http://www.sap.com/benchmark. 2 – The SAP SD-Parallel Standard Application Benchmark performed on November 6, 2007 by IBM in Beaverton, OR, USA has been certified with the following data: 36,000 SAP SDParallel Benchmark users, 1.76 seconds average dialog response time, 3,673,670 fully processed order line items per hour, 11,021,000 dialog steps per hour, 183,680 SAPS. Server configuration: IBM System p 570, 8 processors/16 cores/32 threads, POWER6, 4.7 GHz, 128 KB L1 cache and 4 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB L3 cache per processor, 128 GM main memory, running AIX 5L version 5.3, Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters and SAP ERP 6.0. Certification number: 2007066 (http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/ pdf/Cert6607.pdf) 3– The SAP certification number for the following 2, 3 and 4-node results was not available at press time and can be found at http://www.sap.com/benchmark.
– The SAP SD-Parallel Standard Application Benchmark performed on November 14, 2007 by IBM in Beaverton, OR, USA has been certified with the following data: 30,016 SAP SD-Parallel Benchmark users, 1.86 seconds average dialog response time, 3,036,000 fully processed order line items per hour, 9,018,000 dialog steps per hour, 1151,800 SAPS. Server configuration: IBM System p 570, 8 processors/16 cores/32 threads, POWER6, 4.7 GHz, 128 KB L1 cache and 4 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB L3 cache per processor, 128 GM main memory, running AIX 5L version 5.3, Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters and SAP ERP 6.0.
Four-node Results
Three-node Results – The SAP SD-Parallel Standard Application Benchmark performed on November 16, 2007 by IBM in Beaverton, OR, USA has been certified with the following data: 22,416 SAP SD-Parallel Benchmark users, 1.94 seconds average dialog response time, 2,252,330 fully processed order line items per hour, 6,757,000 dialog steps per hour, 112,620 SAPS. Server configuration: IBM System p 570, 8 processors/16 cores/32 threads, POWER6, 4.7 GHz, 128 KB L1 cache and 4 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB L3 cache per processor, 128 GM main memory, running AIX 5L version 5.3, Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters and SAP ERP 6.0. Two-node Results – The SAP SD-Parallel Standard Application Benchmark performed on November 16, 2007 by IBM in Beaverton, OR, USA has been certified with the following data: 15,520 SAP SD-Parallel Benchmark users, 1.94 seconds average dialog response time, 1,559,330 fully processed order line items per hour, 4,678,000 dialog steps per hour, 77,970 SAPS. Server configuration: IBM System p 570, 8 processors/16 cores/32 threads, POWER6, 4.7 GHz, 128 KB L1 cache and 4 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB L3 cache per processor, 128 GM main memory, running AIX 5L version 5.3, Oracle 10g Real Application Clusters and SAP ERP 6.0.
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“The functionality of Oracle Data Guard gives us security and also the peace of mind of knowing that if a fault arises, we can carry on working with SAP within a defined period of time.” – HARALD NEUNER IT IS Data Center Manager at Swarovski
SWAROVSKI INCREASES SAP SYSTEM AVA I L A B I L I T Y W I T H O R A C L E D ATA G U A R D
When it comes to safeguarding SAP ERP applications, Swarovski, the world’s leading manufacturer of cut crystals, opts for Austrian Automotive Motorcycle and Touring Club HQ in Vienna www.oeamtc.at
Oracle Data Guard. By so doing the company is increasing its SAP DBMS availability and is also in a position to respond quickly to potential faults. In this interview, Swarovski’s IT IS Data Center Manager Harald Neuner tells us more about the implementation of Oracle Data Guard.
that uses SAP utilizes the scope for expansionwith the powerful SAP development tools. This involves the latent risk of data being deleted or accidentally changed through human error. With Oracle Data Guard we can employ an effective protection mechanism, because all transactions in the primary database are automatically and correctly transferred to the standby database after a delay of 4 hours. This time delay is a compromise between the logs created within a defined time and their integration into a secondary system, and the physical conversion process.
Was there a particular reason why Swarovski decided to address the issue of stability and DBMS high availability? Neuner: Any company that uses SAP needs to
look at the issue of stability. At the end of the day, non-availability of an ERP system puts business continuity at risk. Initially we implemented binary mirroring of our Oracle database with disk subsystems. But when a fault actually arose we realized that this measure wasn’t enough. It didn’t offer adequate protection. This was the main reason why we opted to switch from mirroring to a standby database concept. What does ‘protection’ or a protection mechanism mean to you? Neuner: We realized that physically backing
up a binary DBMS mirror wasn’t enough for our needs. The sticking point was the existence of logical errors. Almost every business
Why did you opt for Oracle Data Guard? Neuner: We had, and we continue to have, a
very good experience of the Oracle database in the SAP environment. So Oracle Data Guard was simply the logical choice. How did you go about implementing Oracle Data Guard? Neuner: The team at the Oracle for SAP
Technology Center in Walldorf (Germany) helped us with the implementation of Oracle Data Guard. Together we defined a project schedule and then implemented the core tasks one step at a time. The key to it all was the configuration of Oracle Data Guard. Everything worked extremely well. We’ve always found that drawing on the expertise of Oracle specialists is well worth it. Above all, it enabled us to build up valuable database expertise in-house. We are now in a position to install Data Guard ourselves.
Oracle Data Guard for SAP customer Swarovski
Were there any noteworthy incidents during the implementation phase? Neuner: Everything worked very well indeed.
What is your experience of Oracle Data Guard
Oracle: Strategic SAP database
in practice? What benefits has it brought? Neuner: Oracle Data Guard increased the SAP
Swarovski has been working with SAP R/3
DBMS high availability. The functionality of Data Guard gives us security and also the peace of mind of knowing that if a fault arises, we can carry on working with SAP within a defined period of time. With Oracle Data Guard we can switch easily to other DB servers and know that it works. We also carry out annual practice drills for the worst-case scenario. And, knock on wood, we’ve never had occasion to actually switch to a different host.
since 1995. Previously, the world-famous company based in Wattens, Austria, relied on SAP R/2. About two and a half years ago the company switched to Oracle on Unix, abandoning the Windows operating system for its database systems. In Wattens the company operates two physically separate data centers. SAP is used as the central system to which all branch offices and
Do you have any further plans in terms of Oracle Data Guard? Neuner: After the positive experience we’ve
had with Oracle Data Guard, which we’re using for our ERP systems, we’re endeavoring to support more SAP systems with this solution. We are also about to take a decision as to the next stage in system stability, and Oracle RAC is the front runner.
subsidiaries have access. Worldwide, an average of around 2000 users work with mission-critical
ERP
applications
at
Swarovski. Oracle (as yet 9i) is used as the strategic SAP database.
In 1895, Bohemian immigrant and visionary businessman Daniel Swarovski I took up residence in the Tyrolean village of Wattens (Austria) with his newest invention, a revolutionary machine for the mechanical grinding of crystal gems. This innovation, which would later captivate the international fashion scene, made Swarovski the world’s leading manufacturer of precision-cut crystals. Today, these crystals can be found in the fashion and jewelry industry and in the world of lighting, architecture and interior design. The global company, which still has its headquarters in Wattens in the Tyrol and is now managed by the 4th and 5th generations of the family, does business in over 120 countries. In 2006, with a total of 20,000 employees, Swarovski generated a turnover of €2.37 billion. Swarovski manufactures and markets crystal components under two brand names, CRYSTALLIZED™ – Swarovski Elements for fashion and design and STRASS® Swarovski® Crystal for architecture and lighting. While Swarovski crystals have become an indispensable part of the creations of international designers, the Swarovski jewelry and home decor collections are marketed in all the world’s major cities through more than 1150 of the company’s own stores and through authorized dealers. One example is the Daniel Swarovski Collection, the company’s couture line and flagship collection, which faithfully reflects the ideas and visions of the company founder. The Swarovski Crystal Society currently has almost 400,000 members, enthusiastic collectors of the popular crystal figures, and the Swarovski Crystal Worlds in Wattens have attracted over 7 million visitors since their opening in 1995. In the Chambers of Wonder at the Crystal Worlds, Swarovski celebrates the mystique of crystals and presents a fascinating, sparkling dream world that in the space of just a few years has become one of Austria’s most popular visitor destinations. The company also owns four independent entities: Tyrolit® manufactures grinding tools, Swareflex makes reflector systems for road traffic, Swarovski Optik produces high-precision optical equipment, and Signity is Swarovski’s brand for unique gemstones. Illuminating Fashion and Culture, Home and Leisure www.swarovski.com
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IOUG
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IOUG – SAP Special Interest Group (SAP SIG)
IOUG SAP SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP (SAP SIG)
Join us at Collaborate 2008
SAP SIG Events
in Denver Colorado, April 13 – 17.
The main events for the SAP SIG are held at the yearly Collaborate Conference. Each year there is a business meeting, networking reception, SAP/Oracle Development Update with representatives from both SAP and Oracle including Q&A. Also lunch time meetings offer informal discussions and formal technical sessions on various SAP/Oracle issues.
The Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) sponsors Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that are designed to assist members with specific Oracle products and products that are tightly integrated with the Oracle products they use. The goal of the IOUG SIGs is to offer technical information and peer-to-peer collaboration in order to facilitate the effective implementation of products. The SAP SIG provides a forum for open discussion and education on Oracle technology related issues associated with SAP running on an Oracle database.
The SAP SIG also sponsors quarterly technology forums. The forums are one hour dial-in calls or Web Casts, each forum focuses on a specific topic of interest to the SIG. This is a great opportunity to stay in touch with the Oracle and SAP technical communities. Web Site
During the 1998 IOUG conference a group of about 40 attendees started as a roundtable to surface issues and solutions to common problems. The group has grown every year since and officially became an IOUG SIG in 1999.
The SAP SIG web site can be accessed from the IOUG web site at: http://www.ioug.org/ Click the Special Interest Groups Tab, then followed by SAP SIG in the drop down lists. Or use the following link: http://www.ioug.org/networking/sap/sap.cfm
IOUG SAP SIG Mission
The mission of the SAP SIG is to provide a forum for open discussion, education and networking to meet the challenges of implementing, and maintaining Oracle databases with SAP Applications. The SAP SIG facilitates raising issues and providing enhancement suggestions to both SAP AG and Oracle development teams. The benefits of SAP SIG membership include; Offering open forums for discussion and networking opportunities among members, education sessions at Collaborate, periodic conference calls and web conferences with guest speakers covering a range of technical topics.
Membership
Membership in the SAP SIG comes with your IOUG membership. See details at: http://www.ioug.org/ Join IOUG: http://www.ioug.org/about/join.cfm For more information please contact: Thomas Stickler, IOUG SAP SIG Liaison Oracle Corporation
[email protected]
ODM Connector 2.1 for SAP BI Customers
O R A C L E 1 0 g D ATA M I N I N G C O N N E C T O R 2 . 1 F O R S A P N E T W E AV E R ™ B U S I N E S S I N T E L L I G E N C E
The Oracle Data Mining (ODM) Connector enables users of SAP Business Warehouse 3.5 and SAP NetWeaverTM Business Intelligence 7.0 to mine their SAP data using Oracle 10g Data Mining within the SAP Data Mining framework. This SAP-certified solution gives users the powerful and scalable Oracle 10g Data Mining in-database algorithms along with the Oracle Data Mining graphical interface to extend and complement the SAP analytics offering.
ODM Connector 2.1
With the integration of Oracle 10g Data Mining and SAP BW 3.5 / NetWeaver BI 7.0, the ODM Connector provides SAP customers with advanced analytics, embedded in Oracle Database 10g. Data and business analysts benefit from the wide range of state-of-the-art data mining functionality, present in Oracle 10g Data Mining to solve a wide variety of business problems. Oracle has certified its data mining server with the official BW-DMI 3.5 interface of SAP AG through the ODM Connector. Integration saves SAP users time and money to leverage Oracle’s in-database mining capabilities.
10 g D AT A B A S E
The ODM Connector 2.1 allows customers to make their SAP BW data available to the powerful Oracle 10g Data Mining and Oracle Data Miner (ODMr) graphical interface and integrates results with the SAP BW data. Because Oracle 10g Data Mining is embedded in Oracle Database, mining results can be accessed through other Oracle tools, including Siebel Answers, OLAP, and BI Publisher. Using Oracle 10g Data Mining, SAP customers lower their total cost of ownership (TCO) for data mining, including analysis, development and deployment, while being integrated with their SAP environment. Mining in the database provides SAP customers with increased data security, as data do not need to leave the Oracle Database environment. Moreover, in-database mining is scalable using Oracle’s Real Application Clusters (RAC), allowing more of the data to be mined.
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SAP BW Analysis Process Designer
Oracle Data Miner
ODM Connector 2.1 for SAP BI customers
Technical Specification
Regression
Data Preparation and Analysis
• Predict continuous numerical outcomes with supporting confidence and assess model quality using error statistics and scatter plots. Uses SVM algorithm.
• BW- and ODMr-provided analysis and manual transformations. • ODMr-provided Automated data preparations as part of model build, test, and apply (scoring). In-Database Mining
• All model build and apply operations occur within the Oracle 10g Database. • Default settings for all Oracle 10g data mining operations. Ability to override and specify settings.
Association Rules
• A Priori Algorithm – find the occurrence and likelihood of co-occurring events, e.g., Q, R, and S are associated with Z, 452 times, with 78% confidence. • Finds rules with support greater than a minimum support and confidence greater than a minimum confidence. • Filtered rules retrieval
Attribute Importance
Clustering
• Identify attributes as important for predicting a target attribute using Minimum Description Length algorithm.
• Enhanced k-Means Algorithm – this hierarchical, distance-based k-means algorithm partitions the data into a predetermined number of clusters.
Classification
• Predict binary or multi-class outcomes with supporting probability and assess model quality using Confusion matrix, Lift, Receiver Operator Characteristics.
• Orthogonal Clustering (O-Cluster) Algorithm – creates a hierarchical, grid-based clustering model. O-Cluster supports both numerical and categorical attributes. It is particularly good in high dimensional space. Feature Extraction
• Decision Tree Algorithm – a popular algorithm for providing human interpretable rules with fast scoring. • Support Vector Machine (SVM) Algorithm – a state-of-the-art algorithm recognized as superior to neural networks. Excellent for wide and sparse data.
• Naïve Bayes Algorithm – makes predictions using Bayes’ Theorem, which derives the probability of a prediction from the underlying evidence, as observed in the data. • Adaptive Bayes Networks Algorithm – builds models based on counts observed from data, supporting three modes of operation: pruned Naïve Bayes, single-tree, or boosted multi-tree. In the single-tree mode, ABN provides model transparency with human interpretable rules.
• Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) Algorithm – a state-of-the-art algorithm that generates new attributes using linear combinations of the original attributes. Supports attribute reduction and data understanding. Anomaly Detection
• One-Class Support Vector Machine Algorithm – normally, classification requires knowledge of all target classes. A version of SVM, new in 10g Release 2, can build a profile of one class and when applied, flag cases that are somehow different from that profile (that is, “abnormal” or “suspicious”). This allows for the detection of rare cases that are not necessarily related to each other.
Platform Requirements
Oracle 10g R2 Data Mining runs in Oracle 10g R2 Database on all supported platforms. SAP BW 3.5 SP05 including SAP J2EE Application Server 6.40, or SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 including SAP J2EE Application Server 7.00 are required.
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Delta Consulting
D E LTA C O N S U LT I N G Delta Consulting, Inc. is an SAP-focused consultancy offering extensive SAP consulting services and Software Components for it’s SAP Customer Base. Delta has a strong commitment to providing innovative and practical solutions that combine real-world business expertise and products designed to extend and enhance the value and performance of a customer’s SAP investment.
Delta For additional information regarding Delta Consulting, please visit our website at www.go-delta.com or contact Jack Tomb, Partner at 610-558-1730.
Our consulting services utilizes an extensive database of senior consultants which average over 9 years of SAP specific experience that spans all SAP solutions and business services that address the functional, technical and infrastructure requirements of an SAP solution. In addition, through our extensive Partner network we can provide worldwide deployment capabilities in the development area. As a certified SAP Services Partner for over 10 years and a member of the Oracle Preferred Partner Program (OPP), Delta Consulting is pleased to announce its selection by Oracle to extend its agreement to provide consulting services for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Using SAP with Oracle RAC offers a unique solution for SAP customers, already running Oracle by providing them with a total solution that provides high availability and scalability. Our team includes highly skilled and experienced Oracle DBA’s who are trained and certified in SAP basis administration. Oracle 10g RAC is the highly scalable and reliable database cluster for mission critical SAP solutions. Our commitment and focus on this technology enables Delta Consulting to bring the best practices for migrating an existing SAP R/3 4.6D installation from a single instance Oracle database to a multiple instance Oracle RAC cluster database configuration.
Services to be provided by Delta Consulting include: • RAC Implementations • Database Migrations • Tuning and Performance Optimization • System Healthchecks • Backup/Recovery and Hot Standby Solutions Over two-thirds of SAP customers run their applications on Oracle. With SAP’s endorsement and certification of Oracle 10g RAC, the motivation to implement RAC include: • Higher Availability – New Requirements – Maintenance window negotiation – More and more work places rely on SAP R/3 • More Flexibility – Dynamical growth by adding servers – Better re-use of equipment • Cost Savings – Buy cheaper servers (scale out) – Reduce maintenance costs Realize Real ROI…the Rewards of Innovation. Let Delta Consulting provide your organization with the infrastructure services required to power your SAP environment. Delta Consulting, Inc. 5 Christy Drive, Suite 109 Chadds Ford, PA 19317 eMail:
[email protected] Tel.: 610-558-1730
E2SCorp – Everest Business Solution, Inc
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E2SCORP (EVEREST BUSINESS SOLUTIONS, INC) BUSINESS PROFILE
• • • • •
Oracle Database Administration Upgrade expertise with Oracle RAC (9i, 10g) SAP Basis Administration SAP Netweaver Administration SAP R/3 administration with DB2, Oracle 9.2 & SAP DB 7.4 SAP Unicode migration experts Oracle & SAP certified consultants Oracle RAC subject matter experts
E2SCorp delivers flexible and custom built IT services and solutions to customers globally. We constantly explore, develop and adapt new ways to do this. We understand that one size most often does not fit all. It • is our constant endeavour to find the best • and most practical solutions to address our • customers’ unique business needs. Our services encompass a wide range of platforms Our key software development centre is located and industry segments backed by a highly at Herndon, Virginia. skilled and experienced work force. We have global Offshore Development Centers (ODCs) at Bangalore and Hyderabad, in India. Our eminent customers include Fortune Our offshore infrastructure provides our custo1000 companies like IBM, Northrop mers the benefits of: Grumman, Lockheed Martin, CACI, Verizon Wireless, Verizon Business, Sprint - Cost Savings - Secure premises Nextel, NASD, Blue Cross Blue Shield, - Secure connectivity Siemens etc. - Restoration, replication & business continuity We are an Oracle Partner and Reseller and - Maximum utilization of the time zones in the near future we hope to be an authori- - Dedicated Program/Project Managers, Technical Lead Developers and Quality zed SAP Technical services partner. Assurance personnel Our services include turnkey software deve- System and Database Administrators lopment, product development, consulting, - Resource availability to cover clients’ business hours testing, application maintenance and support. For more information contact: We offer onsite and offshore services as well Everest Business Solutions, Inc 459 Herndon Parkway, Suite 10, as a blend of both. Our flexible blended delivery models are tailored to meet our cli- Herndon, VA 20170 Sowmiya J Narayanan ents’ requirements.
[email protected] Our employees and consultants are profi- (O) + 1 703-673-7301 cient with Oracle/SAP applications and are (M) + 1 301-325-9407 based in India and in the US. Our Oracle and SAP experience includes: • • • •
Oracle iLearning Oracle BI Discover Oracle upgrade 9i to 10g Database migrations from DB2, MS SQL
E2SCorp Everest Business Solutions Inc. 459 Herndon Parkway
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U P W I n n o v a t i v e I T- S o l u t i o n s
P O L I C Y G U A R D M A N A G E R – P G M F O R S A P, O R A C L E A N D O P E R AT I N G S Y S T E M
UPW Innovative IT-Solutions –
CIO
secure solutions for professional business
- Can enhanced the maturity level of their change and configuration management and can benefit from an automated security reporting
The growing complexity of enterprise systems and the increasing requirements of the governmental agencies for them are requesting intelligent security providing solutions.
UPW Innovative IT-Solutions GmbH
Lilienthalstrasse 11, D– 64625 Bensheim E-mail:
[email protected] http://www.upw.de Tel. +49-6251 - 5828-0 Fax: +49-6251 - 5828-28
A central monitoring and documentation system for regulatory demands accordingly GOBS, SOX, EURO-SOX, J-SOX and 8th EU Directive is the insurance policy for CIOs and CFOs who are personal responsible by these regulations. PGM offers the fundament to reestablish a traceable and secure configuration of your ERP System on database, operating system and application level. The central repository permanently stores the status of your systems including all security relevant information. It also supports your ITIL processes like configuration and change management. Different product environments are treated uniformly. PGM is the right solution for all responsible managers who want to accomplish a considerable enhanced security. The advantages of PGM are versatile for all managers effected by SOX and other legislational laws:
Chief Security Officer
- The security policies are documented, administrated and monitored in a central system Revisor Auditor
- Can compare present sytems with the security policies. Sourcing Partner and Retained Organisation
- All parties concerned with a sourcing project can define and verify the Security SLAs Manager of Operation and Administrators
- Are relieved from permanent manual activities and can concentrate on more valuable tasks UPW Innovative IT-Solutions Ltd was founded in 1997. The idea behind: data always is the kernel of any system. The symbiosis of operation system, database and application is the heartbeat of any company. Since our early days we are working in the environment of high availibilty systems. Our customers are financial institutes, the German stock exchange, retailer and governmental organisations. As an Oracle partner we have extensive Oracle knowhow. Our chief engineer was more than 10 years responsible for security, planning and operating in an enterprise running SAP on Oracle database.
IS4IT – IT Consulting
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PEOPLE, KNOWLEDGE, PROJECTS, AND IS4IT = 4 SUCCESS FACTORS TO HELP YOU GET AHEAD!
The main task of IS4IT, as a manufacturerindependent IT-consulting firm, is solving our clients’ technical problems through the application of our IT-specialists’ expertise. We provide IT services individually-tailored to your specific requirements. With the help of around 85 consultants across Germany, we provide a full range of services, from analysis, conception, and planning, to final implementation to the production process. SAP Basis and SAP Infrastructure have successfully been our main focus for many years. From the very beginning, our activities have included solving problems of server- and storage virtualization, as well as HA cluster. In addition to handling such projects, we also provide our customers with SAP technical maintenance in accordance with Service Level Agreements.
IS4IT GmbH
Contact: Michael Jilg Area Manager IS4IT GmbH Gruenwalder Weg 28b 82041 Oberhaching/Germany Tel: +49 89 638 98 48 22 e-mail:
[email protected]
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TUSC – Oracle Partner for SAP
“The expertise and depth of TUSC allows us to focus on strategic projects…” – M A R S H A D U V D E VA N I Manager Database Administration IFF
INDUSTRY LEADER CHOOSES TUSC REMOTE DBA About TUSC TUSC is an Oracle Advantage Partner providing expert-level integrated solutions to Global 2000 customers since 1988. TUSC supports SAP clients running on the Oracle
Challenge
Solution
Results
An acquisition and turnover caused a dramatic increase in database administration and monitoring needs.
IFF chose TUSC Remote DBA to monitor its Oracle environments and mentor its Oracle DBA.
IFF maintains over 40 databases in 7 countries with one full-time DBA.
database through our Remote DBA organization. We have supported SAP running on Oracle for many years with our Remote DBA service while also helping SAP clients in performance tuning and other DBA tasks through our Database Administration group. TUSC provides a comprehensive set of consulting services in the areas of strategy, architecture, implementation, support and training. Get information about TUSC at www.tusc.com or send an email to:
[email protected] Phone +1 630-960-2909
IFF is a leading creator and manufacturer of flavors and fragrances used in a wide variety of consumer products – from fine fragrances and toiletries, to soaps, detergents and other household products, to beverages and food products. IFF is dedicated to The Pursuit of Excellence in every area of its business, using knowledge, creativity, innovation and technology to continually provide customers with the highest quality products and service and superior consumer understanding. IFF has sales, manufacturing and creative facilities in 34 countries worldwide and annual sales exceeding $1.9 billion. In 2000, IFF acquired Bush Boake Allen, formerly the industry’s 7th biggest player. To manage its Oracle systems environment, IFF relies on TUSC Remote DBA.
“IFF has over 40 Oracle databases, including a large ERP implementation,” stated Marsha Duvdevani, Manager, Database Administration. With systems in the United States, Australia, South Africa, India, Sweden, Turkey and Singapore, 24/7 monitoring, performance tuning and emergency support is essential. The four-year partnership with TUSC began when IFF acquired Bush Boake Allen, a former competitor and TUSC client. Duvdevani explained, “One of our DBAs knew of TUSC and we needed additional Oracle expertise, so it made sense to add our databases to the TUSC contract. TUSC enabled a smooth transition of incorporating support of the newly acquired system and by mentoring our DBA.” IFF has come to depend on Remote DBA and Managed Services, and benefits from TUSC’s technical knowledge and expertise. “We benefit from our TUSC DBA’s experience with countless other systems,” Duvdevani said. Through a web portal, which includes system reports and documentation on all work performed, “We know that our systems are being maintained,” Duvdevani continued, “The expertise and depth of TUSC allows us to focus on strategic projects, not system maintenance, knowledge gaps and turnover.”
SAP Press – SAP Database Administration with Oracle
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S A P D ATA B A S E A D M I N I S T R AT I O N W I T H O R A C L E André Faustmann, Michael Höding, Gunnar Klein, Ronny Zimmermann
SAP PRESS
Oracle is one of the most significant, DB platforms available for SAP systems – so why hasn’t someone written a book on how to configure the interaction? Well, here it is: With this in-depth reference book, administrators get much needed background knowledge, as well as complete details on architectural and software/logistics issues, in addition to stepby-step instructions for all of the most important administration tasks. Every aspect of system landscape planning and maintenance is covered, helping administrators hone their problem solving skills. Bonus chapters deal with Java, SAP NetWeaver BI, and the highly complex issues of Backup, Recovery, and Restoration.
818 p., 2008, bound, with reference card €89.95, ISBN 978-1-59229-120-5 Immediate delivery available
• Provides guidance on administration and background knowledge • Helpful advice for planning the system landscape, performance optimization and monitoring • Includes chapters devoted to backup, recovery and
What this book covers:
- Interaction of SAP and Oracle - Planning and expanding the system landscape - System life-cycle: Installation, system maintenance, upgrades - Performance: Analysis of hardware, operating system, database, SAP system, SQL instructions and much more - Backup, recovery and restore: Data backup methods, BR*Tools, Oracle Recovery Manager, backup strategies - Oracle and SAP NetWeaver BI
Press comments:
restore, Java and SAP NetWeaver BI
IT & Production (09/2007). The publication on the interaction of SAP and Oracle DBMS (Database Management System) provides administrators with basic knowledge about the SAP system and database, looks at architecture and software logistics issues and explains administration tasks in SAP landscapes. It combines background knowledge with practical guidance, helping the reader to address specific administration problems. For example, it contains advice on improving the performance of the system operation and improving availability and data security. The book is equally suitable for administrators who want to upgrade a legacy SAP installation and Oracle experts who wish to use their know-how in conjunction with SAP.
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“When it comes to technical challenges and opportunities, CSU Chico is the go-to school for the Alliances program in the Americas – many of our new initiatives are begun at and deployed from Chico. Chico’s NetWeaver/Oracle DB footprint is a model program.” – AMELIA MAURIZIO, Executive Director, Global University Alliances Program
C A L I F O R N I A S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y, C H I C O COLLEGE OF BUSINESS – HOSTING SAP ON ORACLE In 1996, SAP America selected the California State University, Chico College of Business as its first North American partner in the SAP University Alliance Program (SAP UAP). This program is designed to provide university faculty members throughout the world with the tools and resources they need to incorporate SAP in their curriculum. This allows a business process focus to the students’ coursework and allows faculty to use ERP technology in order to teach students how to integrate business processes and think strategically. CSU Chico has an active industry advisory board that was excited about graduates who have some SAP technical skills so Hewlett Packard donated the first computer to Chico. The choice for the database was easy – Chico was already using Oracle in all of the database classes taught in the MIS (Management Information Systems) program and there was a desire on the part of the faculty to have best of breed for both the Database and ERP. The fact that many of the industry partners also used SAP on Oracle did not go un-noticed. Since 1996, the SAP UAP has grown to include almost 800 campuses across the globe, providing professional development opportunities to faculty and supporting the development of course materials that are shared among member campuses. The SAP UAP also provides hosting services to member institutions, eliminating the need for costly investments in hardware and personnel.
In 2000, CSU Chico’s University Competency Center (UCC), the team in the COB who provide system support to the faculty, officially became a hosting center for University Alliance schools. In 2003, the UCC switched their operating system basis from HP-UX to SUSE Enterprise Linux and has remained on that platform since. The UCC has used Oracle as its database of choice since the beginning, starting with version 7.3 and currently on 10.2. Oracle was selected for many reasons. Since the College of Business is a member of the Oracle Academic Initiative and since Oracle is the industry leader in database technology, it is used extensively in the curriculum. Thus, all of the students are familiar with Oracle. Further, Oracle’s scalability and reliability made it a natural for hosting the multiple SAP instances that the UCC supports. Gene Edinger, the head of the UCC, credits Oracle and its tools, particularly OEM, with helping the UCC achieve 100% planned uptime for the past 3 years, and with helping to detect and alleviate database problems in a proactive manner. When CSU, Chico began hosting, Chico’s UCC was one of 7 hosting sites in North America but in January 2007 SAP streamlined their hosting foot print by concentrating resources in a few centers world-wide and reduced the number of world sites from over 20 to 5. Chico and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee became the mega-hosting sites for SAP in the Americas.
California State University-CHICO hosting SAP on Oracle
Chico went from hosting about 50 universities to over 100 during 2007. The hosted universities are located in the United States, Canada, South America and India. The UCC has also hosted collaborative academic projects between universities in the United States, Holland, Germany and Canada. Approximately 30,000 students and faculty log onto SAP through a Chico server each year. Our databases contain over 32 terabytes, while the hosting center has 100 terabytes available on 3 storage area networks.
This statement is confirmed by a study published in the Journal of Information Systems Education by Chico faculty that found students who complete even one of the SAP intensive classes in configuration or Basis are offered somewhere between $5K and $10K per year more than their non-SAP counter-parts*.
“Market Power of ERP Education – An Investigative Analysis”. By: James Sager, James Mensching,
While most of the schools using the servers at Chico are doing transactions in SAP applications, primarily ECC 6.0 and BW, some of the schools currently being hosted are in the research space for SAP. Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and others recently began using the Chico servers and expertise of the faculty in how SAP supports business processes. This has raised the profile of Chico from that of primarily a teaching facility to one that can also support research. For example, Oracle Corporation funded a research project in 2006-07 that provided a proof of concept for running SAP Applications on Oracle RAC using Linux. Sun and NetApps provided the hardware needed for the project and students used the project to fulfill course credit in an independent study project. In Fall 2007 the RAC team presented their findings and results at Oracle Open World. Perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the Chico UCC is that the entire operation is run using only 1.5 system’s staff with the remaining work all performed by student help. The students complete the only handson Basis Administration class offered by an academic alliances school before working part time for the UCC. We have even had a few students pass the SAP Basis certification exam in SAP/Oracle. According to Ray Boykin, the Associate Dean for the College, “we know we add value to the students through the UCC. The students with the technical background in SAP Basis and Oracle can go to work for companies with day one productivity.”
Gail Corbitt and James Connolly, Journal of Information Systems Education, v. 17, n.2, pp. 151-161
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Useful links Oracle Database for SAP customers
Oracle Global Technology Center for SAP http://www.oracle.com/sap
Oracle Support and Services for SAP customers http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap/service.html
Customer Success Stories, SAP on Oracle http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap/archive.html
Oracle for SAP http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/ora http://service.sap.com/dbaora-BC-DB-ORA-RAC http://service/sap/com-PAM
Events http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap/events.html
Some OSS Notes Oracle and SAP 1021844 Extension of Oracle 9.2 maintenance until July 31, 2008 105047 + 742243 + 722188 Partitioning and Oracle Functionality supported by SAP 156548 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Kernel version 4.6x 23875 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Kernel version 3.1I^ 407314 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Web Application Server 6.x 524816 Enqueue Service for RAC SAP-Enqueue-Service 527843 Oracle RAC support in the SAP environment 527843 10g and RAC for more details 527843 Oracle RAC support in the SAP environment 5740897 Licensing 581312 Licensing 581320 FAQ Oracle RAC for SAP 592393 FAQ Oracle 1125923 + 966117 + 966073 Flashback Database 598678 Oracle9i: New functions (composite SAP Note) 669902 Oracle9i: Setting the national character set to UTF8 (This note is valid also for Oracle 10g) 701235 Compressed Data Segments 705608 SAP RAC specific monitors 720886 Oracle Database 10g: Integration into the SAP environment 740897 Info about the Oracle license scope; required Oracle options 819655 Add. info.: Upgrade to SAP NW 2004s ABAP ORACLE 819829 Oracle Database 10g: Instant Client 10.x on Unix 819830 Oracle Database 10g: Additional Information on upgrade:UNIX 820062 Oracle Database 10g: Patch sets/patches for 10.1.0 828268 Oracle Database 10g: New functions 830576 Parameter recommendations for Oracle 10g 830982 HW fine tuning for SAP on RAC environment 836517 Oracle database 10g: Preparation for SAP-upgrade 838725 Oracle database 10g: New database statistics 841728 Oracle Database 10g: Software installation wizzard 10.2.0 85838 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Kernel versions 4.5x and 4.0x 871096 Oracle Database 10g: Patch sets/patches for 10.2.0 885167 Add. info.: Upgrade to SAP NW 2004s Java ORACLE 921594 Inst. SAP NetWeaver2004s SR1 - UNIX: Oracle 925871 'Customer Care Support' for Oracle 9.2 932722 Upgrade to Oracle 10.2 during a database copy 940794 Releasing Oracle 10.2 versions for older SAP versions 940811 Oracle Database 10g: Migration from 32-bits to 64-bits 973450 Advanced Security (Network Encryption) 974876 Advanced Security (Transparent Data Encryption) 998004 Update the Oracle Instant Client on Windows 990955 Oracle Datamining Connector 2.1 for SAP 1027012 Details about MOPatching 1109743 Index Compression 1086956 + 1058988 Instant Client
Imprint
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Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 U.S.A. Published by Oracle Corporation, Oracle for SAP Global Technology Center Albrecht Haug
[email protected] Altrottstr. 31 69190 Walldorf, Germany Tel. ++49 (0) 6227-8398 - 0 Fax ++49 (0) 6227-8398 - 199 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: http://www.oracle.com/sap http://www.sap.com/ partner/index.htm
Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. SAP, SAP NetWeaver, R/3 and all other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents here of are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. This document is provided for informational purpose only and the information herein is subject to change without notice. Please report any errors herein to Oracle (
[email protected]). Oracle Corporation does not provide any warranties covering and specifically disclaims any liability in connection with this document. Copyright © 2008 Oracle. All Rights Reserved. Published in the U.S.A.
