2.10 Using Oracle ORAchk to Confirm System Readiness for Implementing Application Continuity
Application Continuity Checking for Application Continuity enables you to deploy Application Continuity easily and transparently.
- Overview of Application Continuity
- Checks for Application Continuity
- Application Continuity Protection Check
Parent topic: Analyzing Risks and Complying with Best Practices
2.10.1 Overview of Application Continuity
Oracle ORAchk identifies any references to deprecated Oracle JDBC concrete classes that need to be changed.
Oracle ORAchk analyzes the database operations in the application and reports the level of protection. It also reports where and why the applications are not protected.
Together, these checks can help you ensure that your application workload is covered by Oracle Application Continuity.
2.10.2 Checks for Application Continuity
Application Continuity Checking for Concrete Classes
Determine whether Java applications use deprecated Oracle JDBC concrete classes.
To use Application Continuity with Java, replace the deprecated Oracle JDBC concrete classes. For information about the deprecation of concrete classes including actions to take if an application uses them, see My Oracle Support note 1364193.1.
To know if the application is using concrete classes, use Application Continuity checking (called acchk
in Oracle ORAchk. Verify the application in advance while planning for high availability for your application.
For JDBC driver version 12.2.0.2 and below, Application Continuity is unable to replay transactions that use oracle.sql
deprecated concrete classes of the form ARRAY
, BFILE
, BLOB
, CLOB
, NCLOB
, OPAQUE
, REF
, or STRUCT
as a variable type, a cast, the return type of a method, or calling a constructor.
For JDBC driver version 18c and above, Application Continuity is unable to replay transactions that use oracle.sql
deprecated concrete classes of the form OPAQUE
, REF
, or STRUCT
as a variable type, a cast, the return type of a method, or calling a constructor.
Modify them for Application Continuity to work with the application.
Table 2-4 Application Continuity Checking for Concrete Classes
Command-Line Argument | Shell Environment Variable | Usage |
---|---|---|
|
|
This must point to a version of |
|
|
This must point to the |
|
|
To analyze the application code for references to Oracle concrete classes, this must point to the parent directory name for the code. The program analyzes |
|
|
JDBC versions 12, 12.0.1, 18, 18.2, 19, or 19.1. |
Example Application Continuity Concrete Class Checks Summary
$ orachk -acchk
-asmhome /path/orachk/asm-5.0.3/lib/all/asm-all-5.0.3.jar
-javahome /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64 -jdbcver 19.1
-appjar /scratch/nfs/tmp/jarfiles/app.jar
Outage Type Status Message
Concrete class checks Total : 114 Passed : 110 Warning : 0 Failed : 4 (Failed check count is one per file)
FAILED [ac/workload/lobsanity/AnydaaOut][[CAST]desc=oracle/sql/ANYDATAmethodname=getDataInfo,lineno=38]
FAILED [ac/workload/lobsanity/AnydataOut][[CAST]desc=oracle/sql/ANYDATAmethodname=getDataInfo,lineno=38]
FAILED [ac/workload/lobsanity/AnydataSelect][[CAST]desc=oracle/sql/ANYDATAmethodname=queryAnydata,lineno=32]
FAILED [ac/workload/lobsanity/AnydataSelect][[CAST]desc=oracle/sql/ANYDATAmethodname=queryAnydata,lineno=32]
Application Continuity Checking for the Protection Level Application Continuity is Providing Your Application
Measure Coverage
Destructive testing is a good thing to do. However, introducing failures is non-deterministic. The application can fail over in all the tests, and then in production a failure occurs elsewhere and unexpectedly some requests do not fail over.
Using AC Check Coverage Analysis averts this situation by reporting in advance the percentage of requests that are fully protected by Application Continuity, and for the requests that are not fully protected, which they are and where. Use the coverage check before deployment, and after application changes. Developers and management know how to protect an application release from failures of the underlying infrastructure. If there is a problem, then it can be fixed before the application is released or waived knowing the level of coverage.
Executing the coverage check is rather like using SQL_TRACE
. First run the application in a representative test environment with Application Continuity trace turned on at the server side. The trace is collected in the standard database user trace directory in user trace files. Then, pass this directory as input to Oracle ORAchk to report the coverage for the application functions. As this check uses Application Continuity, the database and client must be above 12c. The application need not necessarily released with Application Continuity. The check is to help you before release.
The following is a summary of the coverage analysis.
-
If a round trip is made to the database server and returns while Application Continuity’ capture is enabled during capture phase, then it is counted as a protected call.
-
If a round trip is made to the database server while Application Continuity’ capture is disabled (not in a request, or following a restricted call or a disable replay API was called), then it is counted as an unprotected call.
-
Round trips ignored by capture and replay are ignored in the protection-level statistics.
At the end of processing each trace file, a level of protection for the calls sent to the database is computed.
For each trace: PASS (>= 75)
, WARNING (25 <= value <75)
, and FAIL (< 25)
.
Running the Coverage Report
- Turn on tracing at database level.
Before running the workload, run the SQL statements as DBA on a test Oracle Database server so that the trace files include the needed information.
For more details on setting or resetting Application Continuity trace events, please refer to sections Setting Application Continuity Trace Events Online in Memory and Setting Application Continuity Trace Events Offline in SPFILE.
- Run through the application functions.
To report on an application function, the application function must be run. The more application functions run, the better the information that the coverage analysis provides.
- Use Oracle ORAchk to analyze the collected database traces and report the level of protection, and where not protected, reports why a request is not protected.
To control the Application Continuity checking for coverage, set the following 2 values through command line or shell environment variables (or mixed):
Table 2-5 Using Application Continuity Checking for Protection Level
Command-Line Argument Shell Environment Variable Usage -javahome JDK8dirname
RAT_JAVA_HOME
This must point to the
JAVA_HOME
directory for a JDK8 installation.-apptrc dirname
RAT_AC_TRCDIR
To analyze the coverage, specify a directory name that contains one or more database server trace files. The trace directory is generally,$ORACLE_BASE/diag/rdbms/{DB_UNIQUE_NAME}/$ORACLE_SID/trace
Setting Application Continuity Trace Events Online in Memory
You can set or reset events in memory using the alter system set events
command.
- To turn on tracing online for all sessions in one instance:
SQL> alter system set events 'trace[progint_appcont_rdbms]:trace[sess_signature] disk highest:10602 trace name context forever, level 28:10702 trace name context forever, level 16';
- To turn off tracing online for all sessions in one instance:
SQL> alter system set events 'trace[progint_appcont_rdbms] off: trace[sess_signature] off:10602 trace name context off:10702 trace name context off';
- To turn on tracing online per session:
SQL> alter session set events='trace[progint_appcont_rdbms]:trace[sess_signature] disk highest:10602 trace name context forever, level 28:10702 trace name context forever, level 16';
- To turn off tracing online per session:
SQL> alter system set events 'trace[progint_appcont_rdbms] off: trace[sess_signature] off:10602 trace name context off:10702 trace name context off';
Setting Application Continuity Trace Events Offline in SPFILE
You cannot set or reset events in memory using the alter system set event
command with SCOPE
set to memory; instead, run the alter system set event
command when you want to do changes to the SPFILE.
SQL> alter system set event='10602 trace name context forever, level 28:trace[progint_appcont_rdbms]:10702
trace name context forever, level 16';
System altered.
You need to restart the database instance after each change to the SPFILE.
Example Coverage Report
$ orachk -javahome /tmp/jdk1.8.0_40 -apptrc $ORACLE_BASE/diag/rdbms/{DB_UNIQUE_NAME}/$ORACLE_SID/trace
Reading the Coverage Report
The coverage check produces a directory named orachk_uname_date_time
. This report summaries coverage and lists trace files that have WARNINGS
or FAIL
status. To ensure all requests PASS (Coverage(%) = 100)
, check the PASS
report, acchk_scorecard_pass.html
. under the reports directory.
The output includes the database service name, the module name (from v$session.program
, which can be set on the client side using the connection property on Java, for example, oracle.jdbc.v$session.program
), the ACTION
and CLIENT_ID
, which can be set using setClientInfo
with OCSID.ACTION
and OCSID.CLIENTID
respectively.
orachk_.....html#acchk_scorecard
Outage Type Status Message
Coverage checks TotalRequest = 1088 PASS = 1082 WARNING = 1 FAIL = 5
FAIL Trace file name = orcl1_ora_30467.trc Line number of Request start = 1409 Request number = 6
SERVICE NAME = (srv_auto_pdb1) MODULE NAME = (SQL*Plus) ACTION NAME = () CLIENT ID = ()
Coverage(%) = 12 Protected Calls = 1 Unprotected Calls = 7
WARNING Trace file name = orcl1_ora_321597.trc Line number of Request start = 653 Request number = 1
SERVICE NAME = (srv_ac_pdb2) MODULE NAME = (JDBC Thin Client) ACTION NAME = () CLIENT ID = ()
Coverage(%) = 25 Protected Calls = 1 Unprotected Calls = 3
FAIL Trace file name = orcl1_ora_292714.trc Line number of Request start = 1598 Request number = 7
SERVICE NAME = (srv_ac_pdb2) MODULE NAME = (SQL*Plus) ACTION NAME = () CLIENT ID = ()
Coverage(%) = 16 Protected Calls = 1 Unprotected Calls = 5
FAIL Trace file name = orcl1_ora_112022.trc Line number of Request start = 1167 Request number = 3
SERVICE NAME = (srv_ac_pdb2) MODULE NAME = (JDBC Thin Client) ACTION NAME = () CLIENT ID = ()
Coverage(%) = 0 Protected Calls = 0 Unprotected Calls = 1
FAIL Trace file name = orcl1_ora_112022.trc Line number of Request start = 1353 Request number = 4
SERVICE NAME = (srv_ac_pdb2) MODULE NAME = (JDBC Thin Client) ACTION NAME = () CLIENT ID = ()
Coverage(%) = 0 Protected Calls = 0 Unprotected Calls = 2
FAIL Trace file name = orcl1_ora_112022.trc Line number of Request start = 1689 Request number = 5
SERVICE NAME = (srv_ac_pdb2) MODULE NAME = (JDBC Thin Client) ACTION NAME = () CLIENT ID = ()
Coverage(%) = 0 Protected Calls = 0 Unprotected Calls = 1
PASS Report containing checks that passed:
/scratch/nfs/orachk/orachk_rwsbj14_060219_184513/reports/acchk_scorecard_pass.html
2.10.3 Application Continuity Protection Check
The Application Continuity Protection Check (ACCHK) feature generates Application Continuity coverage report for your applications.
For more information, see Application Continuity Protection Check in the Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide.