IDS Forum

Re: Need ideas

Posted By: Fernando Nunes
Date: Friday, 8 October 2010, at 12:47 p.m.

In Response To: RE: Need ideas (John Adamski)

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 4:24 PM, John Adamski <adamski@graceland.edu> wrote:

> Fernando,
>
> As I said I'm new to OAT and do not know all the ins and outs of it. I
> think
> OAT will give suggested values for some of the parameters, is it a good
> idea
> to take these Yes/No? I'm not sure if all parameters are in OAT, I thought
> only the dynamic ones where, but I could be wrong as I haven't really
> checked.
>

OAT shows you ALL the ONCONFIG parameters (even the ones you haven't set,
and the ones that are not documented (!) ) and you can see a brief
explanation about them.
It allows you to change the ones that are dynamically changeable and you can
choose to change it in memory only or both in memory and in the file).
Not that there are some parameters that you can really change dynamically
BTSCANNER (using onmode) but OAT tells you they're not changeable (because
you can't change them with onmode -wm/-wf)

As with any suggested value (let it be OAT, the manual, an "expert" on the
net etc.) I will always take that with a grain of salt. I like to understand
the rationale behind the suggestion.
So, if you don't think differently you could use the suggestions. It doesn't
mean it will be the best choice for your environment.

> Since IBM seems to be pushing the use of OAT I wanted to know from an
> 'expert'
> when to use OAT, when to do it the old fashion way of manual editing the
> onconf file. Are the suggested values a good value to use, will using OAT
> and
> manual editing mess you up, should you do one or the other.
>

The way you change the parameters is irrelevant (either manually and
restart, or onmode -wm/-wf, or OAT, or SQL ADMIN API....). What really
matters is the change itself.

>
> It boils down to, OAT is a new tool I don't have time to learn, and was
> hoping
> for some warning on the land mines in using it.
>

I begun to look at OAT without to much trust... I should be honest about
this.... With time I changed my position radically. Today I love OAT. There
are other opinions from very respectable people here, so I think I should
take a few moments to make some considerations:

1- As anything, specially a relatively new tool, OAT is not perfect.
2- People tend to mix three components: DbScheduler, SQL Admin API, and OAT
(and maybe sysadmin). The truth is that these are all connected, but are
very different things:
- dbscheduler tries to work on the autonomics side of Informix. It's
something that other RDBMS have, something that the market wants and I
believe it's a good idea
- SQL Admin API was a necessary thing to allow remote tools to interact with
the engine in a "natural" (SQL) way. Many people don't like the fact that
IBM is using this to implement a lot of new functionality but I don't see
this as a big problem and I believe I can see the advantages (one of which I
won't talk to anyone outside IBM, specially because I may be wrong :) )
- OAT is a tool that we needed forever. Like we needed ISA, but the looks
and lack of SQL Admin API killed it (did I mention that OAT looks good?)
3- If you don't like the "autonomics" stuff you can stop the tasks or even
the scheduler and still use OAT and SQL Admin API
4- OAT is extensible. And I'm not just echoing IBM marketing.... I did
create two plugins for it. Easy, quick and powerful. It's a shame we could
not (yet) create a real community of OAT developers. I understand that
Informix "DBAs" (the quotes come from the fact that I rarely see one, only
sysadmins who manage a database) have more things to do, but it's still a
shame...
5- IBM have demonstrated over the two last years, that OAT is here to stay.
Every new engine functionality is mapped into OAT options.
6- OAT makes life easier for newbies... And we want to welcome them in the
Informix community
7- Me too used to be (I still am) an onstat/onmode addict. But it doesn't
necessarily mean I can't accept new/better ways to do some things.

Why did I wrote all this? Because I love OAT :)
It's incredible simple to install.... Do it and take a look in your free or
less busy time. Explore it using one of your test engines. I believe you'll
begin to like it. And please take note of what you don't like and post it
into the oat mailing list. It can be improved by us (the community).

Regards.

P.S.: I'm striving to have some free time so that I can post some tasks for
monitoring many components in our engines... At this moment I have tasks to
monitor extents, memory usage, condition waiting (locks, buffers, mutexes,
logical log buffers and even too many "active" sessions), space, backups....
All being used successfully in customer site.

Regards.

> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:ids-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of
> Fernando
> Nunes
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 7:32 PM
> To: ids@iiug.org
> Subject: Re: Need ideas [21591]
>
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:09 PM, John Adamski <adamski@graceland.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > I like the onconf file parameters idea and since I'm just starting to
> > us OAT; any good, bad and ugly of using or not using OAT to change
> > them.
> >
> >
> Can you explain this better? Are you referring to the fact that OAT may
> give
> you suggestions about the parameters, or simply the ability to change them
> (the ones which are dynamically changeable) using OAT?
>
> If you just mean using OAT to change them, it's exactly the same as
> changing
> them using "onmode -wm/wf" or changing the values directly in $ONCONFIG.
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Fernando Nunes
> Portugal
>
> http://informix-technology.blogspot.com
> My email works... but I don't check it frequently...
>
> --000325574d668d64310491fc03ad
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> *******************************************************************************
> Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.
>
>

--
Fernando Nunes
Portugal

http://informix-technology.blogspot.com
My email works... but I don't check it frequently...

--001636417525ae7e1404921dc297

Messages In This Thread

• Need ideas
  Art Kagel -- Monday, 4 October 2010, at 9:44 p.m.
  • Re: Need ideas
    Peter_Logan@spartanstores.com -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 1:35 p.m.
    • RE: Need ideas
      Wyza, Jonathon -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 1:41 p.m.
      • Re: Need ideas
        Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 2:09 p.m.
    • Re: Need ideas
      Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 1:55 p.m.
    • RE: Need ideas
      Knox, Ernest -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 2:04 p.m.
      • RE: Need ideas
        John Adamski -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 3:09 p.m.
        • Re: Need ideas
          Fernando Nunes -- Wednesday, 6 October 2010, at 8:31 p.m.
          • RE: Need ideas
            John Adamski -- Friday, 8 October 2010, at 11:24 a.m.
            • Re: Need ideas
              Fernando Nunes -- Friday, 8 October 2010, at 12:47 p.m.
  • Re: Need ideas
    FRANK -- Thursday, 7 October 2010, at 12:16 p.m.
    • Re: Need ideas
      Art Kagel -- Thursday, 7 October 2010, at 12:48 p.m.
    • Re: Need ideas
      Peter_Logan@spartanstores.com -- Thursday, 7 October 2010, at 1:09 p.m.
    • Re: Need ideas
      Art Kagel -- Thursday, 7 October 2010, at 1:30 p.m.
    • Re: Need ideas
      Art Kagel -- Thursday, 7 October 2010, at 2:15 p.m.

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