Kerry Osborne's Oracle Blog

Exadata storage software uses the cellcli utility as its command line interface. Unfortunately, although the documentation set that comes with Exadata does have many examples of cellcli commands, and even a chapter dedicated to cellcli, it does not include any reference material on the syntax itself (particularly the LIST command). So I thought I would write up a few of the things I’ve learned while picking around at it. But first a little bit of a rant on why they wrote yet another command line interface.

<RANT>They already had SQL*Plus for crying out loud. Why not just use that. SQL*Plus has all kinds of functionality for using variables, formatting output, etc… And on top of that, they invented a new syntax. Why use LIST instead of SELECT? They used WHERE and LIKE, so why not SELECT? I find it more than a little annoying (in case you couldn’t tell). I’m told that storage admins don’t like SQL and that’s one of the reasons for not using straight SQL syntax. That seems pretty silly since the storage is designed specifically for use with Oracle databases. </RANT>

So anyway, here’s my quick top ten list of things you should know:

1. cellcli does have a handful of SQL*Plus commands (START (@), SET ECHO ON, SPOOL, DESCRIBE, HELP)
2. SELECT is replaced by LIST and it must be the first key word on the command line
3. There is no FROM keyword (the LIST keyword must be immediately followed by the ObjectType which is equivalent to a table name)
4. There is a DESCRIBE command which displays the attributes (columns) that make up an ObjectType (table)
5. Column names are specified with the ATTRIBUTES keyword followed by the columns you wish to be displayed
6. There is a default set of columns for each Object that will be returned if the ATTRIBUTES keyword is not specified
7. There is a WHERE clause that can be applied to any attribute and multiple conditions can be ANDed together (no OR though)
8. There is no ORDER BY equivalent
9. The DETAIL key word can be appended to any LIST command to change the output from column oriented to row oriented
10. The LIKE operator works but instead of the standard SQL wildcard, %, cellcli uses regex – so ‘%’ = ‘.*’

So here are a few examples:

CellCLI> help 

 HELP [topic]
   Available Topics:
        ALTER
        ALTER ALERTHISTORY
        ALTER CELL
        ALTER CELLDISK
        ALTER GRIDDISK
        ALTER IORMPLAN
        ALTER LUN
        ALTER THRESHOLD
        ASSIGN KEY
        CALIBRATE
        CREATE
        CREATE CELL
        CREATE CELLDISK
        CREATE FLASHCACHE
        CREATE GRIDDISK
        CREATE KEY
        CREATE THRESHOLD
        DESCRIBE
        DROP
        DROP ALERTHISTORY
        DROP CELL
        DROP CELLDISK
        DROP FLASHCACHE
        DROP GRIDDISK
        DROP THRESHOLD
        EXPORT CELLDISK
        IMPORT CELLDISK
        LIST
        LIST ACTIVEREQUEST
        LIST ALERTDEFINITION
        LIST ALERTHISTORY
        LIST CELL
        LIST CELLDISK
        LIST FLASHCACHE
        LIST FLASHCACHECONTENT
        LIST GRIDDISK
        LIST IORMPLAN
        LIST KEY
        LIST LUN
        LIST METRICCURRENT
        LIST METRICDEFINITION
        LIST METRICHISTORY
        LIST PHYSICALDISK
        LIST THRESHOLD
        SET
        SPOOL
        START

CellCLI> help set

  Usage: SET  

  Purpose: Sets a variable to alter the CELLCLI environment settings for your
           current session.

  Arguments:
    variable and value represent one of the following clauses:
    DATEFORMAT { STANDARD | LOCAL }
    ECHO { ON | OFF }

  Examples:
    set dateformat local
    set echo on 


CellCLI> help list

  Enter HELP LIST  for specific help syntax.
    :  {ACTIVEREQUEST | ALERTHISTORY | ALERTDEFINITION | CELL 
                     | CELLDISK | FLASHCACHE | FLASHCACHECONTENT | GRIDDISK
                     | IORMPLAN | KEY | LUN 
                     | METRICCURRENT | METRICDEFINITION | METRICHISTORY 
                     | PHYSICALDISK | THRESHOLD }

CellCLI> help list FLASHCACHECONTENT

  Usage: LIST FLASHCACHECONTENT [] [] [DETAIL] 

  Purpose: Displays specified attributes for flash cache entries.

  Arguments:
    :  An expression which determines the entries to be displayed.
    : The attributes that are to be displayed.
                      ATTRIBUTES {ALL | attr1 [, attr2]... }

  Options:
    [DETAIL]: Formats the display as an attribute on each line, with
              an attribute descriptor preceding each value.

  Examples:
    LIST FLASHCACHECONTENT DETAIL

So as you can see, the help system allows you to see a bit of the syntax for each command. You may also have noticed a couple of SQL*Plus carry-overs. SET, SPOOL, and START work pretty much as expected. Note the @ is equivalent to START and that the only things you can SET are ECHO and DATEFORMAT. Now for a couple of queries (er LIST commands):

CellCLI> desc flashcachecontent
         ^
CELL-01504: Invalid command syntax.

CellCLI> describe flashcachecontent
        cachedKeepSize
        cachedSize
        dbID
        dbUniqueName
        hitCount
        hoursToExpiration
        missCount
        objectNumber
        tableSpaceNumber

CellCLI> set echo on

CellCLI> @fc_content

> CellCLI> list flashcachecontent where dbUniqueName like 'EXDB' and hitcount > 100 attributes dbUniqueName, objectNumber, cachedKeepSize, cachedSize, hitCount, missCount
         EXDB    2       0       4194304         600     208
         EXDB    40      0       2424832         376     60
         EXDB    224     0       1802240         115     80
         EXDB    267     0       458752          128     9
         EXDB    383     0       2547712         157     27
         EXDB    423     0       1867776         180     41
         EXDB    471     0       4071424         552     85
         EXDB    472     0       1277952         114     22
         EXDB    474     0       13246464        286     326
         EXDB    475     0       5914624         519     124
         EXDB    503     0       5308416         669     455
         EXDB    5710    0       3735552         363     90
         EXDB    6207    0       393216          112     9
         EXDB    6213    0       3842048         359     147
         EXDB    6216    0       1245184         184     29
         EXDB    6373    0       3481600         222     61
         EXDB    56085   0       4194304         822     129
         EXDB    66849   0       438763520       1221    3322
         EXDB    71493   0       5636096         302     127
         EXDB    71497   0       1351680         320     22
         EXDB    71573   0       2760704         101     37
         EXDB    71775   0       1801412608      34994   46315

CellCLI> list flashcachecontent where dbUniqueName like 'EX.?.?' and hitcount > 100 -

> attributes dbUniqueName, objectNumber, cachedKeepSize, cachedSize 
         EXDB    2       0       4194304
         EXDB    18      0       1179648
         EXDB    37      0       622592
         EXDB    40      0       2424832
         EXDB    63      0       524288
         EXDB    104     0       688128
         EXDB    224     0       3407872
         EXDB    267     0       458752
         EXDB    383     0       2670592
         EXDB    420     0       1507328
         EXDB    423     0       1867776
         EXDB    424     0       720896
         EXDB    471     0       4071424
         EXDB    472     0       1277952
         EXDB    473     0       2351104
         EXDB    474     0       13574144
         EXDB    475     0       5521408
         EXDB    503     0       5308416
         EXDB    5702    0       262144
         EXDB    5709    0       2416640
         EXDB    5710    0       3735552
         EXDB    6207    0       393216
         EXDB    6210    0       131072
         EXDB    6213    0       4227072
         EXDB    6216    0       1245184
         EXDB    6373    0       3579904
         EXDB    56085   0       4194304
         EXDB    66849   0       438763520
         EXDB    71493   0       5636096
         EXDB    71497   0       1351680
         EXDB    71573   0       2801664
         EXDB    71775   0       1801412608

CellCLI> list flashcachecontent where dbUniqueName like 'EX.?.?' and hitcount > 100 and objectNumber like '.*775'
         2356637742      6       71775

CellCLI> list flashcachecontent where dbUniqueName like '.*X.?.?' and objectNumber like '.*775' detail                                      
         cachedKeepSize:         0
         cachedSize:             1801412608
         dbID:                   2356637742
         dbUniqueName:           EXDB
         hitCount:               34994
         missCount:              46315
         objectNumber:           71775
         tableSpaceNumber:       6

CellCLI> list flashcachecontent where dbUniqueName like 'EX.?.?' and hitcount > 100 and objectNumber like '.*775'
         2356637742      6       71775

CellCLI> list flashcachecontent attributes objectNumber, hitCount, missCount where dbUniqueName like 'EX.?.?' and hitcount > 100 and objectNumber like '.*775'
         71775   34994   46315

So DESC doesn’t work as an abbreviation of DESCRIBE. Notice that there are no headings for column oriented output. As you can see, you can run “scripts” and SET ECHO ON to display the commands in any scripts that you execute. One of the LIST commands was strung across two lines by using the continuation operator (-). The LIST commands look a lot like SQL except for LIST being used instead of SELECT and the regex expressions for matching when using the LIKE key word. Also notice that in the last command a number was matched with a regex expression implying a data type conversion, although all data may be treated at text. You can see that the ATTRIBUTES and WHERE key words can be anywhere on the command line after the “LIST objectName” keywords. In other words, these two key words are not positional, either one can be first. Finally, the DETAIL keyword turns the output sideways. Or as the help says, “Formats the display as an attribute on each line, with
an attribute descriptor preceding each value.”

So the cellcli interface is really not that bad, I just happen to like SQL*Plus better. 😉 I do think it would have been a simple matter to reuse SQL*Plus since they already have all the functionality built into it, but maybe there were other concerns that I’m not aware of. But cellcli works. And by the way, cellcli has the ability to scroll though previous commands and edit them via the arrow keys which is quite handy. The editing capability is definitely a step forward from SQL*Plus on unix like platforms (although you can use rlwrap to accomplish this – see this post for more details on that: Using rlwrap on Windows) And regex also provides a very powerful pattern matching capability although it’s still a little confusing to have SQL like syntax mixed with regex to my way of thinking. Maybe if they just added the ability to use the % wildcard in addition to the regex I would feel better about it.