Database Maintenance / Best Practices

26 Jan Worst Practices – Part One

Posted at 16:30h in Business Continuity, Database Maintenance / Best Practices, Hardware Considerations, High Availability, Hints and tips, New DBA by Paul Koufalis

A catalog of wince-inducing practices to be avoided for the OpenEdge or, indeed any, database. We Won’t Need That! "Oops…" Do not EVER destroy your production database, even if it is badly damaged. In a recovery or migration situation it can sometimes be tempting to overwrite your database in...

13 Jan New DBA Series: Basics of Database Storage – Part One

Posted at 14:00h in Database Internals, Database Maintenance / Best Practices by Paul Koufalis

Why is storage so important in a world of 99.9% buffer hits? I'm glad you asked! Getting started This is a BIG topic, so we are going to break it out into a multi-part saga. First, let's talk about some basics. Database block size When you create an OpenEdge...

13 Dec ProTop Newsletter December 2021

Posted at 01:35h in Business Continuity, Database Maintenance / Best Practices, Hints and tips, OpenEdge by Paul Koufalis

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text] Welcome to our monthly ProTop newsletter, where you'll find out what's new, tips and tricks and other cool ways to use both the free and commercial versions of ProTop. Visibility is one of the key themes when it comes...

14 Oct New DBA Series: More Ways to CRASH Your Database

Posted at 08:00h in Business Continuity, Crash, Database Maintenance / Best Practices, Hints and tips, New DBA by Paul Koufalis

Nectar Daloglou's post on 99 Ways to Crash Your Database was so popular, we thought we'd bring you even MORE ways to ruin the upcoming holidays! The dreaded "abnormal shutdown" Sound familiar? Pretty much anyone who supports an OpenEdge database has experienced this. WDOG 6: (2522) User 22...

24 Nov Understanding UNIX Performance Metrics – Part Two

Posted at 08:00h in Database Maintenance / Best Practices, Performance Tuning by Paul Koufalis

In today's missive, we are going to talk about poor, misunderstood memory. How much is used? How much is free? How exactly do you define "used" and "free" memory? And the million dollar question: why should you care? A bit of background first Processes do not access...

09 Nov ProTop Newsletter November 2021

Posted at 08:00h in Business Continuity, Database Maintenance / Best Practices, Hints and tips, OpenEdge by Paul Koufalis

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text] Welcome to our monthly ProTop newsletter, where you'll find out what's new, tips and tricks and other cool ways to use both the free and commercial versions of ProTop. What is going on with the database!?! Lack of visibility...

02 Nov New DBA Series: DBA Checklist – Part Two

Posted at 08:00h in Business Continuity, Database Maintenance / Best Practices by Paul Koufalis

In part one, we examined routine tasks scheduled for different times. In this post we're going to look at special events and the checklists associated with them. OpenEdge Updates and Service Packs The basic procedure for installing an OpenEdge update or service pack is as follows: Shutdown...

19 Oct ProTop Newsletter October 2021

Posted at 15:30h in Business Continuity, Database Maintenance / Best Practices, Hints and tips, OpenEdge by Paul Koufalis

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text] Welcome to our monthly ProTop newsletter, where you'll find out what's new, tips and tricks and other cool ways to use both the free and commercial versions of ProTop. Today we're going to take a deep dive into ProTop's...

12 Oct Secrets of Database Startup Parameters – Part Two

Posted at 12:00h in Database Maintenance / Best Practices by Paul Koufalis

In Part One, we discussed some of the more well known startup parameters. In today's blog post, we'll dig into parameters that are often used incorrectly or simply forgotten. Table and Index Statistics -basetable <#>, –baseindex <#>, –tablerangesize <#>, –indexrangesize <#> By default OpenEdge only captures statistics for...

29 Mar Corruption and Crash Protection, Courtesy of After-Imaging

Posted at 00:24h in Business Continuity, Crash, Database Maintenance / Best Practices, High Availability, OpenEdge by Paul Koufalis

No one wants to think about a database crash, and even less about losing data, and yet every month or two I get a call from an IT Director in exactly that situation. Their OpenEdge system has been down for hours and stays down for...