Lab128
 Tools for Advanced Oracle® Tuning and Monitoring 		128 Consulting LLC 
New Hampshire, USA 
 

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Lab128. New Features History.

Version 1.5.9.10   April 28, 2011 - current

  • The Explain Plan has been changed to run faster and now optionally can provide query block names, outlines data, captured binds;
  • The SQL formatter has been added, so SQL text looks better in the Explain Plan and in the reports. It can be invoked Ctrl-Q in editor controls or through popup menu;
  • The reporting engine has been improved. New reports added. Object dependencies links added to some reports;
  • The AIX Unix is now supported in the Top Processes;
  • Better positioning of forms on next reopen after they were positioned outside the main window before closing;
  • All known bugs have been fixed.

Version 1.5.9.8   November 9, 2010

  • Secure Shell (SSH) connection added. This enables collection of performance data at operating system level;
  • A new Top Processes window added (HP-UX, Linux, Solaris) which shows top processes data collected from OS and Oracle sessions;
  • A new Alert File Viewer window added. The Alert log file can be viewed real-time. The incoming information is preprocessed identifying important events and placing them into the navigation list;
  • When several monitors are opened and connected to instances of same RAC database, there is a new option of not using GV$ views. GV$ views are more expensive to the monitored instances and sometimes have performance bugs. This setting is recommended for very busy databases. The information from different instances is combined internally in Lab128;
  • When several monitors are opened and connected to instances of same RAC database, common data sets (objects, segments, extents etc.) are shared between monitors to conserve memory used by Lab128;
  • The Lab128 Reference Guide / online Help has been reworked into .CHM format. Also it is available online;
  • Date and time format in Lab128 now can be changed;
  • Explain Plan window was enhanced with better SQL plan statistics presenetation. A new alternative "pipelined" option to show the plan has been added;

Version 1.5.9.6   December 14, 2009

  • Reports have been enhanced and new reports added. Some users have been asking to add a database object browser. Now this can be done in Reports. To see how it works, connect to Oracle, then from the Main menu: Reports | Schema | All Schemes;
  • Better compression used for performance history *.lab files making them about 30% smaller;
  • Auto delete of performance history files added;
  • 11g wait events have been corrected;
  • There was a user's feedback that in some installations, dba_extents view is not performing well. Lab128 collects extents data using this view. If that is the case in your database, now there is an alternative by granting access to the x$ktfbue fixed table (this table is used by dba_extents). Lab128 then will automatically use this table, which has better performance. In order to enable access (not necessary if you run Lab128 as SYS) run this as SYS: create view sys.x_$ktfbue as select * from x$ktfbue; grant select on sys.x_$ktfbue to PUBLIC; create public synonym x$ktfbue for sys.x_$ktfbue;
  • SQL Central (SQL editor) has been enhanced and now shows last execution statistics (similar to Autotrace in SQLPlus). For the first time ever (as far as we know), a framework for SQL Plan Statistics has been developed, providing a very powerful tool for diagnosing SQL problems. We plan on posting a dedicated article about using SQL Plan Statistics because this is a very efficient way of tuning SQL and has high significance.

Version 1.5.9.4   March 9, 2009

  • Reports added. There are dozens of built-in reports. We are going to capitalize on a new report engine and expand the list of reports. If you want to share ideas for useful reports, please send them and they will be considered for inclusion in future versions;
  • Statspack-style report added, which provides an instant report on any user-selected time interval. Here are brief instructions on how to invoke it: 1. Click in Main window on any graph; 2. In the detailed graph window, select a time interval; 3. Press Ctrl-S to view the report. Help is provided on different sections;
  • The Oracle AWR, ASH reports (10g+) provided by the dbms_workload_repository package are also available using same simple interface as described above;
  • ASH section has an improved tree view showing waits using graphical bars. A list of common dimensions used to explore ASH data has been added;
  • Explain Plan window now uses multiline tree components. As a result, it presents data more clearly;
  • Blockers/Waiters tree has more data now;
  • Lab128 is more efficient in caching data, using less memory and fewer Oracle resources.

Version 1.5.9.2   April 22, 2008

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.

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