Many Support and Managed Services customers already have Xynomix’ monitoring technology in place. It enables users to:

• Monitor database environments in real-time
• Ensure maximum availability for all database environments
• Act before potential problems become an issue
• Analyse database usage trends

The technology can monitor database availability and performance 24x7x365. It delivers alerts and reports based on key performance indicators that have been set for the database, allowing internal DBAs and/or support DBAs within Xynomix to pre-emptively resolve potential issues.

According to Xynomix: “Our monitoring solutions are currently some of the best in class. We want to continue to deliver the most effective Oracle database monitoring solutions to market, including database cluster monitoring and incredibly accurate monitoring for Oracle and SQL server environments. We will back these up with our renowned proactive approach to system management and our industry leading Oracle support services”

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To achieve a wholly supportive, productive relationship with your Oracle and/or SQL Server support provider, it is important to:

1) Define how you want the contract to work.

Do you want a stock of pre-paid hours that can be drawn upon throughout the year when needed?

Or an ongoing contract that would allow you to define the hours of cover that you need and use unlimited ‘Second-Line’ support within those hours?

Perhaps a combination of contracted working hours support and a pre-paid pool of support to be drawn on out of hours?

Whatever your requirements, make sure that your ‘Second-Line’ Support solution fits them exactly. There is no reason that at all that your Oracle Database Support provider could not deliver support to your exact specifications. If they can’t, you could end up paying over the odds for Oracle and SQL Server support that you don’t use.

Tip: Check how much you will save on ad-hoc support hours/days by pre-paying. There should be a small saving at least!

2) Establish strict Service Level Agreements [SLAs] with your support provider.

For contracted ‘Second-Line’ Support in hours, you should be looking at a guaranteed response time set at around 30 minutes.

3) Make sure you can get in touch with the company quickly and easily.

If you have to wade through the typical talking and transfers of a call centre, the time it takes for you to receive any support will be greatly extended. In cases where support concerns a critical Oracle or SQL Server database environment, this delay can cost the business money.

Make sure that your support providers give you a direct, standard rate telephone number that will get you straight through to an Oracle or SQL Server DBA.

4) Ensure that the support provider you choose offers genuine 24×7 support.

Even if you don’t need access to 24×7 assistance yet, you never know when an issue with your Oracle or SQL Server database environment may arise. The last thing you want to do is engage one company for in-hours support only to find you will have to go elsewhere if an emergency occurs out of hours.

5) Make sure support can be delivered as securely and effectively remotely as it would be on-site.

An effective and secure connection method to your Oracle and SQL Server databases should be used to deliver remote support. Xynomix deliver remote ‘Second-Line’ Support functions such as health checks, Oracle and SQL Server installations and database upgrades over a guaranteed secure Virtual Private Network [VPN], which is as safe and effective as an on-site DBA connecting to perform administration from inside your building.

A host of some of the world’s most successful companies are taking advantage of Oracle 11g’s enhanced features for grid computing, storage management and administration.

Agenor Technology, the Ministry of Justice and Grupo Elektra are just a few of the new Oracle customers currently utilising 11g functionality.

Following the launch of Oracle Database 11g Release 2, Oracle have achieved a significant market share, with almost half of the entire relational database market using Oracle products.

Customers cite some of the most appealing features of Oracle Database 11g as:

• Enhanced application performance
• Lower overall IT costs
• Increased reliability
• Extreme scalability

Launched in September 2009, Oracle Exadata V2 is already in use at customer sites on an international scale: current Exadata customers include Amtrak, the Automobile Association of the UK and Screwfix.

Developed in conjunction with Sun Microsystems, features of Oracle Exadata V2 include:

• Extreme data warehousing performance
• Excellent performance in OLTP environments
• 10x average table compression for data warehouse data
• Faster access to business information
• ’Exadata Smart Flash Cache’ [Intelligent integration of flash storage with a database]

Utilised together, the second releases of Oracle 11g and Oracle Exadata provide users with highly a scalable database technology environment that delivers extreme performance at a relatively low cost.

Resources: Oracle

For more information on the latest information about Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Exadata V2, contact your Oracle Expert Xynomix.

Organisations using Oracle Database Support 11g are sometimes unaware of the effective Web application development functionality that they have at their fingertips.

However, Oracle Application Express, or APEX, is fast becoming a key part of Oracle users’ Web application development toolkit.

Oracle’s own ‘Oracle Store’ was developed using Oracle Application Express.

Oracle users can develop and deploy professional applications quickly and securely using only a web browser and basic programming experience.

What can Oracle APEX do?

Many organisations have utilised APEX to consolidate disparate data from separate spreadsheet and database sources, with an overall goal of saving money and improving business operations.

Others have utilised APEX to deliver advanced Web front ends to database applications, developing secure and scalable implementations of Software as a Service [SaaS].

Each Oracle Application Express version includes new features. The most recent, 3.2, includes Forms Conversion and additional security enhancements.

Source: Oracle