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Exadata Zone Maps

Just a quick post on a new Exadata feature called Zone Maps. They’re similar to storage indexes on Exadata, but with more control (you can define the columns and how the data is refreshed for example). People have complained for years that storage indexes provided no control mechanisms, but now we have a way to exert our God given rights as DBA’s to control yet another aspect of the database. Here’s a link to the 12.1.0.2 documentation which resides in the Data Warehousing Guide: Zone Map Documentation

Zone Maps are restricted to Exadata storage by the way (well probably they work on ZFS and Pillar too). Have a look at the Oracle error messages file:


>grep -i "storage type" $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/mesg/oraus.msg | grep -i "not supported"

/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/rdbms/mesg/oraus.msg:31969, 00000, "ZONEMAP not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type"
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/rdbms/mesg/oraus.msg:64307, 00000, " Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression is not supported for tablespaces on this storage type" 
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/rdbms/mesg/oraus.msg:64309, 00000, " Hybrid Columnar Compression with row-level locking is not supported for tablespaces on this storage type."
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/rdbms/mesg/oraus.msg:65425, 00000, "CLUSTERING clause not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type"
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/dbhome_1/rdbms/mesg/oraus.msg:65451, 00000, "Advanced index compression is not supported for tablespaces on this storage type."

So according to the messages file, there are a handful of features that are restricted in this fashion (Zone Maps, HCC, Attribute Clustering and Advanced Index Compression).

As a bit of totally irrelevant history, zone maps were actually included in the 12.1.0.1 release, but the documentation on them was removed. So they worked, but they were undocumented.

Here’s an example on a 12.1.0.1 DB on a non-Exadata platform.


SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.1.0 Production on Wed Aug 13 15:41:46 2014

Copyright (c) 1982, 2013, Oracle.  All rights reserved.


Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP, Advanced Analytics
and Real Application Testing options


INSTANCE_NAME    STARTUP_TIME      CURRENT_TIME         DAYS    SECONDS
---------------- ----------------- ----------------- ------- ----------
LAB1211          13-AUG-2014 09:54 13-AUG-2014 15:41     .24      20820

SYS@LAB1211> create table kso.junk1 (col1 number, col2 number) clustering by linear order (col1,col2);
create table kso.junk1 (col1 number, col2 number) clustering by linear order (col1,col2)
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-65425: CLUSTERING clause not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type


SYS@LAB1211> create table kso.junk1 (col1 number, col2 number);

Table created.

SYS@LAB1211> create materialized zonemap skew_zonemap on kso.junk1(col1);
create materialized zonemap skew_zonemap on kso.junk1(col1)
                                                          *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-31969: ZONEMAP not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type

Note that both zone maps and attribute clustering were disallowed with the “not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type” error message.

By the way, attribute clustering is another interesting new feature of 12g that allows you to declaratively instruct Oracle to store data on disk in a sorted order. This physical ordering can have big benefit for storage indexes or zone maps (or any btree index where clustering factor is important for that matter). Oracle’s new In-Memory column store also has a min/max pruning feature (storage indexes) which means physical ordering on disk is important with that feature as well.

Anyway, here’s a link to the 12.1.0.2 documentation on attribute clustering which also resides in the Data Warehousing Guide: Attribute Clustering Documentation

And here’s another example using 12.1.0.2 on an Exadata.


SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Wed Aug 13 15:42:18 2014

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle.  All rights reserved.


Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP, Advanced Analytics
and Real Application Testing options


INSTANCE_NAME    STARTUP_TIME      CURRENT_TIME         DAYS    SECONDS
---------------- ----------------- ----------------- ------- ----------
INMEM            24-JUL-2014 18:35 13-AUG-2014 15:42   19.88    1717600

Elapsed: 00:00:00.00
SYS@INMEM> @test_zonemap
SYS@INMEM> create table kso.junk1 (col1 number, col2 number) clustering by linear order (col1,col2);

Table created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01
SYS@INMEM> create materialized zonemap skew_zonemap on kso.junk1(col1);

Materialized zonemap created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.15
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> -- so as expected, we're able to create an attribute clustered table and a zone map on Exadata
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> -- Let's try creating a tablespace that is not on Exa storage (even though the DB is on EXA platform)
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> create tablespace KSO_NON_EXA datafile '/home/oracle/KSO_NON_EXA.dbf' size 100M;

Tablespace created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.38
SYS@INMEM> @tablespaces

TABLESPACE_NAME STATUS    CONTENTS  LOGGING   EXTENT_MGT ALLOC_TYP SPACE_MGT BLOCK_SIZE PREDICA
--------------- --------- --------- --------- ---------- --------- --------- ---------- -------
CLASS_DATA      ONLINE    PERMANENT LOGGING   LOCAL      SYSTEM    AUTO            8192 STORAGE
EXAMPLE         ONLINE    PERMANENT NOLOGGING LOCAL      SYSTEM    AUTO            8192 STORAGE
KSO_NON_EXA     ONLINE    PERMANENT LOGGING   LOCAL      SYSTEM    AUTO            8192 HOST      <=== 
SYSAUX          ONLINE    PERMANENT LOGGING   LOCAL      SYSTEM    AUTO            8192 STORAGE
SYSTEM          ONLINE    PERMANENT LOGGING   LOCAL      SYSTEM    MANUAL          8192 STORAGE
TEMP            ONLINE    TEMPORARY NOLOGGING LOCAL      UNIFORM   MANUAL          8192 STORAGE
UNDOTBS1        ONLINE    UNDO      LOGGING   LOCAL      SYSTEM    MANUAL          8192 STORAGE
USERS           ONLINE    PERMANENT LOGGING   LOCAL      SYSTEM    AUTO            8192 STORAGE

8 rows selected.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.02
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> -- note that tablespace KSO_NON_EXA is on local disk, not Exadata storage servers, so PREDICATE_EVALUATION is set to HOST.
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> drop table kso.junk1;

Table dropped.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01
SYS@INMEM> create table kso.junk1 (col1 number, col2 number) clustering by linear order (col1,col2) tablespace kso_non_exa;

Table created.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01
SYS@INMEM> select owner, table_name, tablespace_name from dba_tables where table_name like 'JUNK1';

OWNER                TABLE_NAME                     TABLESPACE_NAME
-------------------- ------------------------------ ---------------
KSO                  JUNK1                          KSO_NON_EXA

Elapsed: 00:00:00.01
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> -- wow - that's a bit of a surprise, clustered table create worked on non-Exa storage
SYS@INMEM> -- maybe the check is done on some other level than the tablespace
SYS@INMEM> 
SYS@INMEM> create materialized zonemap skew_zonemap on kso.junk1(col1);
create materialized zonemap skew_zonemap on kso.junk1(col1)
                                                          *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-31969: ZONEMAP not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type


Elapsed: 00:00:00.00

So as you can see, attempting to create the zone map on non-Exa storage failed as expected. But I was able to create a clustered table on non-Exa storage, which is a little weird. So while the error message for attribute clustering exists in the messages file, it doesn’t appear that there is a check in the code, at least at the tablespace level. I don’t have a 12.1.0.2 install on a non-Exadata platform at the moment to test it out, but if you do, please let me know.

That’s it for now. I hope to do some more detailed posts on In-Memory, Zone Maps, Attribute Clustering in the near future. As always, your comments are welcomed.

8 Comments

  1. chris_c says:

    Tried on 12.1.0.2 on a development server using regular filesystem storage and got the error ORA-31969: ZONEMAP not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type
    Checking the new features and data warehouse guide there is no mention of a restriction however it is mentioned in the licensing guide for 12.1 as requiring a supercluster or exadata.
    Attribute clustering works fine.

  2. Ilmar Kerm says:

    Tried on ZFS storage appliance with DNFS (in this database HCC works just fine) and creating zone map gets “ORA-31969: ZONEMAP not supported for table stored in tablespace of this storage type”.

  3. It’s a bit unfortunate they limited the feature to Exadata storage only. Zone Maps still work when the storage servers are in block I/O mode…so… 😉

  4. It seems this should also be useable on the DB server side; is it only processed for queries in the Exadata cell? Is the zone map created on the cell side?

  5. osborne says:

    It is evaluated on the DB server side. Just limited to engineered systems.

    Kerry

  6. Much appreciated this write up, helped me get my head around it

    Thanks

    Jamie

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