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Paul Koufalis is the President of White Star Software. He began his OpenEdge DBA career more than 25 years ago after completing a Computer Engineering Degree at McGill University. Today, he’s known for his pragmatic and ROI-centric approach when working with White Star’s global client base. When he’s not staring at his multiple immense computer screens (how much is too much?), you can probably find him speaking at a Progress event somewhere in the world or being roughed-up by his twin boys back home in Montreal.
There are a lot of metrics that “everyone knows” you should be paying attention to. But much like “common sense”, it sure would be nice if more people knew about these metrics and why you should pay attention to them!
When you first get started supporting an OpenEdge system, there are some things that you really ought to know about your environment. That way, when there’s a problem somewhere down the road, even though “nothing changed”, you’ll have the information you need to show that yes, something did in fact change.
What’s the best tool to backup the database? Do I have to shut it down? What does Progress recommend? What do experienced DBAs use? Should I hang it up, hire a resume writer?
After-Imaging (AI) is an OpenEdge continuous change logging system that stores database changes in specially formatted log files. It allows the DBA to restore a database from a backup then apply all changes from the end point of the backup to the point of the last AI archived change. AI is required to:
“It takes for-EVER to create an order!”
Hardware-based backups including OS backups, disk mirroring, “snapshots,” and third party tools are not the best way to back up the database as all of these require the database to be in a quiescent state. In order to get a snapshot of the database files, you have to shut down the DB server or use proquiet. Careful with proquiet: you need to wait until the “Quiet point has been enabled” message appears in the db.lg before proceeding.
Ahhh…Mike Tyson. You gotta love Mike Tyson. You, on the other hand, you are probably more like Marvis Frazier. I see the puzzled look on your face: no, not Smokin’ Joe Frazier, the first person to beat Muhammad Ali in 1971. I’m talking about Marvis Frazier, his son. Look it up: KO’d in 30 seconds. Nice uppercut in the first round. When people talk to me about their high availability measures, I think about Marvis Frazier. Good looking guy. He talked the talk and walked the walk, but when it came time to deliver, he failed. Twice. Most of your high availability planning is the same. It’s good enough to impress the 24-year-old junior auditor from Deloitte but will never deliver when you actually need it.
