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Landmines

By Mike Ault

Introduction

At the peak there were an estimated 65 million landmines planted in killing fields worldwide. In the 1990s it was estimated that while 2.5 million landmines where beingdeployed per year only 80,000 were being removed. According to current estimates thismay have turned around in recent years with more being removed than have beendeployed per year. Of course with 250 million of the nasty devices stockpiled in arsenalsaround the world we have a long way to go to rid the world of landmines that usually endup killing and maiming more innocents than enemies. (All of these statistics taken fromthe Landmine Monitor Report 1999 - Toward a Mine-Free World,http://www.icbl.org/lm/1999/english/exec/.)

Now you may be asking, what in the world does this have to do with Oracle? It seems wehave some landmines of our own inside Oracle, what I call license landmines. When youinstall using the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) these insidious features areautomatically installed and turned on, just waiting for an innocent DBA to trip them,resulting in license fee explosions that could maim or cripple the budget.

Identifying License Landmines

So, what are these license landmines? Here is a list of their top level names:

Data Masking Pack Provisioning Pack

Database Change Management Pack

Database Configuration Management Pack

Database Diagnostics Pack

Database Tuning PackWhen you install Grid or Database control you get one quick warning about these muchlike the EULA documents we all read when installing software, and then nothing elseeven if you trigger one of them. Of course internally Oracle monitors usage of licensedfeatures and logs whenever a licensable feature is used. Then, at your most vulnerable

point, when you are filing an SR for a problem and send off a RDA report to support, theRDA report has a section on used features for Oracle to use against you.

Disarming License Landmines

However, at least in Grid and Database control it is easy to disarm these licenselandmines. In release 4 of Grid Control you use the Setup Menu Management PackAccess option to turn on, or off, any of the management packs for all monitored targets.In the Management Packs Access page you will un-select the packs for which you do not

http://www.icbl.org/lm/1999/english/exec/http://www.icbl.org/lm/1999/english/exec/

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have a license for and check those you are allowed to use. Now, if you dont have release4 of Grid Control, Oracle has provided a way to turn off AWR (no mention of the otherpacks) with the dbmsnoawr.plb download from Metalink. Once you have the downloadyou simply do the following to disable AWR:

SQL> @dbms_awr.plb

To execute the package use the command:

SQL> begin dbms_awr.disable_awr(); end;

What Will This Do To My Grid Control?

Now, what exactly happens when you turn off the various packs? Lets take a quick lookat just the top level items that are controlled by various packs.

Data Masking PackWhen the Data Masking Pack is deselected you will lose the following items from theAdministration Page from the Database Control area of Grid Control under the DataMasking header:

Definitions

Format Library

Provisioning Pack

When just the Provisioning Pack is deselected you will lose the following item from theMaintenance Page from the Database Control area of Grid Control under the MoveDatabase File Header:

Clone Database

However, the Clone Database option from the Deployments screen is still available.

Database Change Management Pack

When the Database Change Management Pack is deselected you will lose the followingitems from the Administration Page from the Database Control area of Grid Controlunder the Configuration Management header:

Dictionary Baselines

Dictionary Comparisons

Database Configuration Management Pack

When the Database Configuration Management Pack is deselected you will lose thefollowing item from the Maintenance Page from the Database Control area of GridControl under the Software Deployment-Configuration header:

Compare Configuration

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Database Diagnostics Pack

From the DBA point of view the most damaging pack to not have a license for is theDatabase Diagnostics Pack, with out this pack the entire Performance page of Grid andDatabase control is lost for the monitored databases. In addition to losing the entirePerformance page, from the Home page (and all others) you also lose the following links:

User Defined Metrics Alert History

Blackouts

Metric Baselines

From the Advisor Central page you lose:

ADDM

Database Tuning Pack

The Database Tuning Pack, when disabled, disables the following Advisor Central links:

SQL Access Advisor SQL Tuning Advisor

For a more complete list of the features in each pack have a look at:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/license.111/b28287/toc.htm

What Now?

Well, first off let me retract what I have been saying in some of my presentations (that itmay be okay to use strictly the features provided in OEM at the basic level), given myfindings during research for this blog I would have to say that the only way to not beresponsible for possible license charges regarding these License Landmines is to not use

any of their dependent features. I say this because of the fact that when you disable thelicense pack, the dependent features are also totally disabled in Grid and Databasecontrol.

So, if you are like most folks, you probably dont know what you may have been given orlicensed from Oracle when you purchased your database software, I suggest a detailedread of the purchase contract including the fine print, then use the Grid Control (inversion 4) to turn off the packs for which you dont have licenses for. If Oracle finds youin violation of license terms at a minimum they will charge you around $3000/CPU/Host/Pack for every instance host where the packs have been used, they will assume all ofthem monitored by Grid Control have had the executed packs run against them.

Please dont be responsible for causing a budget maiming, disable those Oracle LicenseLandmines today!

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/license.111/b28287/toc.htmhttp://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/license.111/b28287/toc.htm