Hi,
We are currently running on BaaN IVc0 (porting set 6.1c.07.04) with oracle 8. We are now planning on upgrading our database server to either oracle 9I or 10g.

My question is: Does the performance of BaaN or how much the performance of BaaN depends of the version of oracle? We are currently using level 2 driver to communicate with the current oracle server and my understanding of level 2 driver is that the database server (oracle in this case) is responsible for deciding the best path to get to the data. That being said, upgrading oracle to 9I or 10g will it have any effect on the performance of BaaN sessions?

Appreciate your input on this.

Thanks,
NS

Oracle 9i and 10g have the habit of generating poor execution plans
if not properly tuned. They like to use hash joins and various other mechanisms to give your poor performance.

Plus they each take successively more memory.

Tuned properly you shouldn't have a problem (other than the memory...)
A good start on the tuning quest is solution #166049 on the support
website.

Dave

Dave,
Thanks for the quick response.

I am also interested in finding little more details on the BaaN-Oracle architecture. For example, say if I am reading a big table in BaaN using index1 in the where clause, when the query gets passed to oracle (running on level 2 driver), will the oracle going to use index1 as the hint to read the table or is to going to decide itself which index to use to get to the data quickly?

Also, given the choice between oracle 9I and 10g, which would be the best option keeping only the performance gain in mind?

Thanks for your help,
NS

In Baan 4 you generally have to send an "order by _index1" to send a hint to the DB. The driver MIGHT choose it for you, but it might not. But if you have good statistics on the table, it shouldn't matter since the optimzier will realize that index1 is the right way to go...

9i has been said to be 20% slower than 8i (which was like 50% slower than 7) and 10g is said to be 20% slower than 9i.. so personally I'd go back to Oracle 7.. ;)

Dave

Dave,
That’s interesting point you bring up. I have also read somewhere that 9i is said to be 20% slower than 8i. Do you think this is largely due to the amount of metadata 9i has versus 8i and the amount of memory it consumes?

Thanks,
NS

Are you using the Oracle 8 driver? When we upgraded to 8i with Baan IV we kept using the 7 driver because of performance reasons. Now we are on Baan 5c with Oracle 9i using the Oracle 8 driver and performance is good but we did move to a slightly faster Alpha box with twice the ram, so we were able to more then double the size of the SGA.

We are using oracle 8 dirver. I did not know that we could use oracle 7 driver with oracle 8/8i. Is it somewhere in the setup you need to change to use 7 driver insted of 8? and does 7 dirver supports level 2?

The Oracle 7 driver does support level 2. Your system configuration has to include it, then you can add it to your database definitions and change it in the Tables by Database session.

Oracle 7 driver is no longer supported in Baan - at all. It is removed from the porting set in the latest (6.1c.07.05 i think). (much to my great sadness)

Oracle 9i is slower for 3 main reasons (IMHO)
1) Improperly configured. You can't take your 7/8/8i knowledge and implement it. You need to use undo tablespaces, locally managed tablespaces, etc. You also need to set new parameters db_cache_size and pga_aggregate_target.

2) In addition to the above - the 9i optimizer generates bad execution plans for Baan out of the box. I've had good results by setting parameters that influence it to act more like the oracle 8 driver (while still keeping some of its 9i perks). (for example hash_joins=false)

3) memory usage, it's much higher so if you don't upgrade your box at the same time, you will generally run into problems. The only thing I attribute this to is bloat, Oracle is unbelievably bloated. I'd use Oracle One or Oracle Standard Edition if I didn't have so manu CPUs..

If you can DB2 is a nice option...

Dave

Sorry for the mis-information. Our retired Baan IV production box is running with an old porting set.

Not mis-information! Just someting everyone needs to keep in mind who uses the good old oracle7 driver!

Dave

Dave,
The db_cache_size and pga_aggregate_target parameters you mentioned, are these oracle parameters need to be setup in oracle or is this something we need to configure in db_resource file in BaaN?

Thanks,
NS

Oracle parameters!

Dave

Thanks Dave.