Oracle unveils Exadata Version 2

One of the key ingredients of this Exadata Version 2 is the combination of Sun and Oracle storage technologies (Flash fire memory cards and ASM, advance compression, etc.) and of course Oracle 11g.  Exadata Smart Flash Cache addresses the disk random I/O bottlenecks moving hot data to Sun FlashFire cards.

Sun FlashFire Technology

Exadata Version 2 is available in four models: full rack (8 database servers and 14 storage servers), half-rack (4 database servers and 7 storage servers), quarter-rack (2 database servers and 3 storage servers) and a basic system (1 database server and 1 storage server)…. all available now.   The  “quarter rack,” is $110,000, while a “full rack” system carries a price of $1.1 million.

We do a lot of work with data warehouse demands so have already identified several clients/projects that would benefit just from the basic system.  We have concluded that when addressing data warehouse projects with performance needs, data warehouse users should give serious consideration to the Oracle Exadata Version 2 solution.

Quick recap of the highlights:

• 1 million I/O operations per second
• uses Linux, rather than Sun Solaris
• Intel-type processors, rather than Sun’s Ultrasparc T2 chips
• uses Sun Fire X4275 servers with Intel’s quad-core Nehalem processors
• new flash-based memory system from Sun that is used in the storage servers; called FlashFire

Last week I had installed Oracle XE on our Linux DEV box. I wanted to make some changes to the instance settings and realized I had misplaced the password for Internal workspace account. After doing some research, I found that Oracle provides us a “password change” script with APEX source code. We can run this script using the SYS account and it will reset the password for internal account. Here are the steps and an example:

1) Log into sqlplus using the SYS account.

2) Execute apxxepwd.sql script in the APEX source code directory with the new password.

3) Log back into Application Express INTERNAL workspace using the new password.

Here is an example:

[home@localhost]# cd apex
[home@localhost apex]# sqlplus sys/syspassword
SQL> @apxxepwd.sql password123
Session altered.
...changing password for ADMIN
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
Commit complete.
SQL> exit

The code in apxxepwd.sql looks like this:

Rem Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1999 - 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Rem
Rem NAME
Rem apxxepwd.sql
Rem
Rem DESCRIPTION
Rem Changes the password for the INTERNAL ADMIN user
Rem
Rem NOTES
Rem Assumes the SYS user is connected.
Rem
Rem REQUIRENTS
Rem - Oracle 10g
Rem
Rem
Rem MODIFIED (MM/DD/YYYY)
Rem jstraub 08/01/2006 - Created
Rem jkallman 09/29/2006 - Adjusted current_schema to FLOWS_030000
Rem jkallman 08/02/2007 - Change FLOWS_030000 references to FLOWS_030100
Rem
set define '&'
set verify off
alter session set current_schema = FLOWS_030100;
prompt ...changing password for ADMIN
begin
wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id := 10;
wwv_flow_security.g_user := 'ADMIN';
wwv_flow_security.g_import_in_progress := true;
for c1 in (select user_id
from wwv_flow_fnd_user
where security_group_id = wwv_flow_security.g_security_group_id
and user_name = wwv_flow_security.g_user) loop
wwv_flow_fnd_user_api.edit_fnd_user(
p_user_id => c1.user_id,
p_user_name => wwv_flow_security.g_user,
p_web_password => '&1',
p_new_password => '&1');
end loop;
wwv_flow_security.g_import_in_progress := false;
end;
/
commit;