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Landmines

By Mike Ault

Introduction
At the peak there were an estimated 65 million landmines planted in killing fields world
wide. In the 1990’s it was estimated that while 2.5 million landmines where being
deployed per year only 80,000 were being removed. According to current estimates this
may have turned around in recent years with more being removed than have been
deployed per year. Of course with 250 million of the nasty devices stockpiled in arsenals
around the world we have a long way to go to rid the world of landmines that usually end
up killing and maiming more innocents than enemies. (All of these statistics taken from
the “Landmine Monitor Report 1999 - Toward a Mine-Free World”,
http://www.icbl.org/lm/1999/english/exec/.)

Now you may be asking, what in the world does this have to do with Oracle? It seems we
have some landmines of our own inside Oracle, what I call license landmines. When you
install using the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) these insidious features are
automatically installed and turned on, just waiting for an innocent DBA to trip them,
resulting in license fee explosions that could maim or cripple the budget.

Identifying License Landmines


So, what are these license landmines? Here is a list of their top level names:

• Data Masking Pack


• Provisioning Pack
• Database Change Management Pack
• Database Configuration Management Pack
• Database Diagnostics Pack
• Database Tuning Pack

When you install Grid or Database control you get one quick warning about these much
like the EULA documents we all read when installing software, and then nothing else
even if you trigger one of them. Of course internally Oracle monitors usage of licensed
features and logs whenever a licensable feature is used. Then, at your most vulnerable
point, when you are filing an SR for a problem and send off a RDA report to support, the
RDA report has a section on used features for Oracle to use against you.

Disarming License Landmines


However, at least in Grid and Database control it is easy to disarm these license
landmines. In release 4 of Grid Control you use the Setup Menu – Management Pack
Access option to turn on, or off, any of the management packs for all monitored targets.
In the Management Packs Access page you will un-select the packs for which you do not
have a license for and check those you are allowed to use. Now, if you don’t have release
4 of Grid Control, Oracle has provided a way to turn off AWR (no mention of the other
packs) with the dbmsnoawr.plb download from Metalink. Once you have the download
you simply do the following to disable AWR:

SQL> @dbms_awr.plb

To execute the package use the command:

SQL> begin dbms_awr.disable_awr(); end;

What Will This Do To My Grid Control?


Now, what exactly happens when you turn off the various packs? Let’s take a quick look
at just the top level items that are controlled by various packs.

Data Masking Pack


When the Data Masking Pack is deselected you will lose the following items from the
Administration Page from the Database Control area of Grid Control under the Data
Masking header:
• Definitions
• Format Library

Provisioning Pack
When just the Provisioning Pack is deselected you will lose the following item from the
Maintenance Page from the Database Control area of Grid Control under the Move
Database File Header:
• Clone Database

However, the Clone Database option from the Deployments screen is still available.

Database Change Management Pack


When the Database Change Management Pack is deselected you will lose the following
items from the Administration Page from the Database Control area of Grid Control
under the Configuration Management header:
• Dictionary Baselines
• Dictionary Comparisons

Database Configuration Management Pack


When the Database Configuration Management Pack is deselected you will lose the
following item from the Maintenance Page from the Database Control area of Grid
Control under the Software Deployment-Configuration header:
• Compare Configuration
Database Diagnostics Pack
From the DBA point of view the most damaging pack to not have a license for is the
Database Diagnostics Pack, with out this pack the entire Performance page of Grid and
Database control is lost for the monitored databases. In addition to losing the entire
Performance page, from the Home page (and all others) you also lose the following links:
• User Defined Metrics
• Alert History
• Blackouts
• Metric Baselines

From the Advisor Central page you lose:


• ADDM

Database Tuning Pack


The Database Tuning Pack, when disabled, disables the following Advisor Central links:
• SQL Access Advisor
• SQL Tuning Advisor

For a more complete list of the features in each pack have a look at:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/license.111/b28287/toc.htm

What Now?
Well, first off let me retract what I have been saying in some of my presentations (that it
may be okay to use strictly the features provided in OEM at the basic level), given my
findings during research for this blog I would have to say that the only way to not be
responsible for possible license charges regarding these License Landmines is to not use
any of their dependent features. I say this because of the fact that when you disable the
license pack, the dependent features are also totally disabled in Grid and Database
control.

So, if you are like most folks, you probably don’t know what you may have been given or
licensed from Oracle when you purchased your database software, I suggest a detailed
read of the purchase contract including the fine print, then use the Grid Control (in
version 4) to turn off the packs for which you don’t have licenses for. If Oracle finds you
in violation of license terms at a minimum they will charge you around $3000/CPU/Host/
Pack for every instance host where the packs have been used, they will assume all of
them monitored by Grid Control have had the executed packs run against them.

Please don’t be responsible for causing a budget maiming, disable those Oracle License
Landmines today!

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