Oracle Business Intelligence 11g

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Alastair Burgess
May 2014

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Agenda

Overview
Building the Aggregates
Test Results #1
Tuning TimesTen
Test Results #2
Conclusion

Peak Indicators Limited

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Overview

Peak Indicators Limited

Overview
Aim of Presentation
Since the release of TimesTen for Exalytics, many rounds of
enhancements have been made to:
Improve the performance of TimesTen analytical queries
Enhance Oracle BI 11g to generate efficient TimesTen structures and
queries

The aim of this presentation is to:

Demonstrate the query performance of TimesTen 11.2.2.6.3 on an
Exalytics server
Provide tuning tips that deliver significant gains in TimesTen
performance
Compare performance of TimesTen with an Oracle Database
Peak Indicators Limited

Overview
Architecture

Peak Indicators Limited

Overview
Building the Aggregates Simple !

Peak Indicators Limited

Overview
Implement Aggregates
nqcmd -d AnalyticsWeb -u weblogic -p welcome1 -s TTagg.sql

Peak Indicators Limited

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Test Results #1

Peak Indicators Limited

Test Results 1
Demonstration

We will now demonstrate how the TimesTen aggregates perform using the default
settings
Each test will compare against an Oracle Database running on the same Exalytics
server (with Auto DOP Typically 2 Px threads)
A fact table with 24M records is used for the tests, each test has slightly different
filters so that an increasing number of records are scanned during each test
Do you think TimesTen will be faster?

Peak Indicators Limited

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Tuning TimesTen

Peak Indicators Limited

10

Tuning TimesTen
1) RangeIndexType=0

TimesTen 11.2.2.5 provides support for a new type of "in-memory B-Tree"

style of index, it allows for much greater concurrency (as it does not require
[TT_AGGR_3]
latches for reads etc).
Driver=..../lib/libtten.so
DataStore=..../tt_aggr_3
LogDir=..../logs
ConnectionCharacterSet=AL32UTF8
LogFileSize=1024
LogBufMB=1024
LogBufParallelism=16
Preallocate=0
PermSize=25000
TempSize=25000
MemoryLock=4
CkptFrequency=30
CkptLogVolume=0
CkptRate=20
PrivateCommands=1
RecoveryThreads=40
DatabaseCharacterSet=AL32UTF8
RangeIndexType=0

You can activate this new feature by setting the

following parameter in the DSN attributes
[TT_HOME/info/sys.odbc.ini] :
RangeIndexType = 0

IMPORTANT: This parameter takes effect only when you connect to the database for the very first
time - so you must apply the parameter when you first create the database (and before anyone
connects to the database)

Peak Indicators Limited

11

Tuning TimesTen
2) Use Most Appropriate Data Types

TimeTen provides specific datatypes that can reduce data volumes when
compared to Oracle DB equivalent

Up to 300% reduction in the Lab

Customers have seen reductions from 80GB to 30GB

OBIEE 11.1.1.7 generated script is better at picking an efficient DT, however

improvements can be made, adjust the CT script accordingly :
CREATE TABLE ag_Fact_Sales
(
Customer_I00008CBF VARCHAR2(50 CHAR) NOT INLINE ,
Product_Id00008CC6 VARCHAR2(50 CHAR) NOT INLINE ,
Month00008CCD VARCHAR2(20 CHAR) NOT INLINE ,
Z_Orders00008CD1 BINARY_DOUBLE,
TT_INTEGER
Sales_Qty00008CD2 BINARY_DOUBLE,
TT_SMALLINT
Sales_Valu00008CD3 BINARY_DOUBLE
NUMBER(15,2)
)

Peak Indicators Limited

12

Tuning TimesTen
3) RAM Policy
By default TT may not always load your data into memory.
For BI we are looking to utilize in-memory for performance

We can force this with use of the ram policy configuration* :

[Manual]
$ ttadmin -ramload AGGREGATES

We have found that Always instead of Manual also gives the

desired effect
$ ttadmin -rampolicy Always AGGREGATES
* requires a second command to be run following DB startup
Peak Indicators Limited

13

Tuning TimesTen
4) Compression

TimesTen compression operates as data-duplication

No point on primary key columns,

No point on numbers , (Fact Columns)

OBIEE RPD Requires COMPRESS_COLUMNS feature enabled (on by

default):

Peak Indicators Limited

14

Tuning TimesTen
4) Compression

Compression Pointer size defaults to 4 bytes

This supports many distinct values!

Where it is known, a smaller pointer size can be more efficient

1 byte <= 255 (distinct values)

2 Bytes <= 65,535,
4 Bytes <= 4,294,967,295

CREATE TABLE ag_Fact_Sales ( Customer_I00008CBF VARCHAR2(50 CHAR) NOT INLINE ,

Product_Id00008CC6 VARCHAR2(50 CHAR) NOT INLINE ,
Month00008CCD VARCHAR2(20 CHAR) NOT INLINE ,
OBIEE Automatically selects
Z_Orders00008CD1 TT_INTEGER,
appropriate columns!
Sales_Qty00008CD2 TT_SMALLINT, Sales_Valu00008CD3 NUMBER(15,2))
COMPRESS ( Customer_I00008CBF BY DICTIONARY maxvalues = 255, Product_Id00008CC6 BY
DICTIONARY maxvalues = 255, Month00008CCD BY DICTIONARY maxvalues = 255 )
OPTIMIZED FOR READ;
Peak Indicators Limited

15

Tuning TimesTen
5) Index Advisor

Timesten contains an easy to use index advisor

From ttisql : call ttindexadvicecapturestart(0,31);

0 : just the current session
1 : entire database

Now provide the SQL to the advisor (obtained from BI Session logs)

Optional : advise only, no execution

WITH
SAWITH0 AS (select sum(T580.Sales_Valu00000060) as c1, sum(T580.Sales_Qty0000005F) as c2,
count(T580.Z_Orders00000059) as c3,
T550.Quarter0000004F as c4,
T550.Year00000051 as c5
from ...

Follow up with :

all ttindexadvicecaptureend(0);
call ttindexadvicecaptureoutput(0);

Peak Indicators Limited

16

Tuning TimesTen
5) Index Advisor
Output

< 4, create hash index AG_FACT_SALES_i1 on SALES_AGG.AG_FACT_SALES(MONTH00008CCD); >

< 1, create hash index AG_FACT_SALES_i4 on
SALES_AGG.AG_FACT_SALES(CUSTOMER_I00008CBF,MONTH00008CCD); >
< 3, create hash index SA_DETAIL00008D07_i2 on
SALES_AGG.SA_DETAIL00008D07(CUSTOMER_I00008CBF); >
< 3, create hash index SA_DETAIL00008D01_i3 on
SALES_AGG.SA_DETAIL00008D01(PRODUCT_ID00008CC6); >

Peak Indicators Limited

17

Tuning TimesTen
5) Index Advisor

OBIEE (Agg Persistence) will only create RANGE indexes.

Can be up to 40% slower for equality joins (=)

TT Index advisor will advise HASH indexes

It is important to review the DDL from OBIEE and switch to HASH indexes
for any columns used in equality joins

e.g Primary Key (Dimensions) and Foreign Key (Fact tables)

Simply alter the syntax with additional keyword

CREATE HASH INDEX

Peak Indicators Limited

18

Tuning TimesTen
5) Index Advisor

Note Be careful creating HASH indexes on empty tables !

Best to use the PAGES parameter as follows :

By default TT will size the index based on the current size of the table
An empty table will therefore give a non-optimal index size

CREATE HASH INDEX [name] ON [table] ([columns]) PAGES=[MAXROWS/256]

Demonstration

Peak Indicators Limited

19

Tuning TimesTen
6) Analyze Tables

OBIEE by default just estimates statistics to 5%

Use this command to gather stats on all tables

call ttOptUpdateStats('', 1);

: All tables for current owner

Peak Indicators Limited

Force cached query plans to

INVALID

20

Tuning TimesTen
7) Execute on Connect
Oracle BI now automatically runs 4 statements to alter query
optimisation settings to improve analytical performance:

Those session hints are standard / mandatory on Exalytics. They are

necessary in order for the special TimesTen optimisation options for
star-joins to kick-in
Fast Prepare (?)
Peak Indicators Limited

21

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Test Results #2

Peak Indicators Limited

22

Test Results 2
Demonstration

Now that we have applied at least 5 different optimisations to the aggregates in

TimesTen, lets see how it now performs compared to the Oracle Database

For each query, which one do you think will be the fastest???

Peak Indicators Limited

23

Test Results 3
Database Parallelism

Up until now, the Oracle Database has had Parallel Query enabled with 2 parallel
threads
What happens if we increase this to 4 or 8 parallel threads?
Will it make much difference???

Peak Indicators Limited

24

Tuning TimesTen for Aggregate Persistence

Conclusion

Peak Indicators Limited

25

Conclusion
Interesting Results?

Query performance with TimesTen (11.2.2.6.3 ) has greatly improved !

OBIEE Aggregate Persistence / Summary Advisor has also improved , making

better decisions on when to use compression and the choice of TT data types

Applying 5-6 simple tuning techniques will further significantly improve

response times (as shown in graph on next slide)

Our tests show that TimesTen can compete with and even beat the Oracle
Database with Parallel Query enabled (with low DOP)

Remember Oracle Times Ten is 1/3 licence cost of Oracle EE ($350 v $950)

Peak Indicators Limited

26

 Peak Indicators Limited

27

Helping Your Business

Intelligence Journey