Lab128. New Features History.

Version 1.5.9.2 April 22, 2008 - current

This has been mostly a maintenance release. It includes few new features:

Filters added to the Sessions Window. Using regular expressions, you can customize the filter.
A tree of blocking and waiting sessions has been added to severeal windows.
Windows XP themes enabled. The application now can look more XP-like. If you prefer the classic look, themes can be disabled with the '-classic' switch in the command line, example: lab128.exe -classic
There are other smaller improvements and enhancements in this version.

Version 1.5.9.0 Jan 10, 2008

The Active Session History (ASH) collection has been enhanced with another 8 columns being recorded. The Activity Explorer has a new graph and new column for ASH data showing percentage of wait events in colors. This simplifies interpretation of top wait events for particular SQL statements or top wait events for any time period;
The new Session History window shows snapshot of active sessions at any moment in the past. A wealth of information is available for each session, including SQL, wait events, wait objects, info on blockers etc;
The individual session history can be seen in the new Single Session History window, which can be opened for a selected session;
The individual SQL statement and its history can be shown in the new Statement Details window. The history of all SQL statistics is presented graphically and in tabular view. ASH data is also available in this window;
The performance data recorded into .lab files includes object names, making analysis of recoded data more convenient;
The SQL Area window now allows search (Oracle 9i and later) of SQL statements by the type of access in the SQL plan (full scan, merge join cartesian etc), allowing easy search of potentially troubling queries;
There is real-time support for Oracle clusters (RAC) in this version. A number of Lab128 windows show data combined across all instances. These include Sessions, Locks, Longops, Transactions, Temporary usage, and Explain Plan windows. For collection and analysis of historical data, you still need to start a new monitor for each instance. We are rapidly moving towards the full support of RAC in future versions;
Setting up Lab128 is easier in this version. A number of settings have been simplified into Data History Length. Lab128 dynamically resizes its internal structure based on the specified history length.

Version 1.5.8.2 Mar 15, 2007

The snapshots of v$sql are collected, providing top SQL statements for any choosen time period. It also provides a basis for individual SQL statement tracking and graphing. The new SQL Explorer uses collected SQL statistics, allowing for SQL statistics-based tuning. This is a revolutionary new technique which complements ASH-based tuning;
Activity Explorer is enhanced with the dimensional analysis of Active Session History (ASH) data. User-defined dimensions and aggregated waits data are presented as a tree view;
Explain Plan is enhanced to include predicates, projections, sql statistics data;
SQL Area viewer has been expanded to include the latest SQL statistics;
Toolbar and Taskbar added to simplify navigation in the application.

Version 1.5.7.0 May 25, 2006

Improved login, the connections can be stored for later use;
Streamlined interface;
Data from tabular views can be copied into clipboard in tab-delimited format. Copied data can be inserted in Excel for custom processing and integration with other reports;
Elapsed Time column and 'SQL Text like' box added to the SQL Area explorer;
Improved support for LOB columns in SQL Central;
Minor bugs fixed in saving performance data and data mirroring;
Segment statistics shows now correctly in Oracle 10g Release 2;
The most polished version, streamlined internals, resulting in smaller, reliable and faster code;

Version 1.5.6.3 March 2, 2006

Functionally this version is very close to the 1.5.6.0. There were adjustments made to better support Oracle 10g Release2;
Saving performance data to the file is enhanced with the options to choose the default directory, customize file names and Auto Save option;
The option "10046 trace, level 12 for the selected session" was added to the pop up menu in the Session Details screen;
Additions and corrections to the Help file;

Version 1.5.6.0 December 30, 2005

Option to mirror Lab's in-memory data to the disk. Lab128 can exit and restart with performance data restored from the disk;
Collected performance data can be saved in the file and later opened for the performance analysis;
Support for large fonts (96+ DPI);
Active Session History (ASH): another 7 columns (OS User, Machine, Terminal, Program, Module, Action, ClientID) can be optionally recorded;
Activity Explorer, Active Session History (ASH) view: the Filters page has been added to enhance exploration of ASH data;
Tracking of Space Usage in tablespaces has been added. The usage of Temp and Undo spaces is also covered. Three new charts added to the list of predefined charts (View | Predefined Charts);
Login enhancements: the host name (or IP address), port, and service name (or SID) can be supplied during Login. Therefore the connection can be made even if there is no entry in tnsnames.ora or tnsnames.ora itself is missing;

Version 1.5.5 September 15, 2005

Active Session History (ASH) support added. This feature works in all Oracle versions 8 to 10g and is independent of Oracle 10g ASH. For version 10g, this feature optionally can use Oracle's ASH support, although Lab's own feature exceeds Oracle's built-in and there is no need to license Oracle ASH (which is a part of Oracle Diagnostic Pack);
The amount of memory used for performance data can be changed dynamically without need to restart Lab128;
Data from charts can be exported into the clipboard or comma-separated file for the analysis in third party tools;

Version 1.5.0 May 5, 2005

The very first release of Lab128 published on the Internet.

To download a free trial version: Lab128 Download.