10 Managing the Undo Tablespace

Overview of Automatic Undo Management

Oracle provides a fully automated mechanism, referred to as automatic undo management, for managing undo information and space. In this management mode, you create an undo tablespace, and the server automatically manages undo segments and space among the various active sessions.

You set the UNDO_MANAGEMENT initialization parameter to AUTO to enable automatic undo management. A default undo tablespace is then created at database creation. An undo tablespace can also be created explicitly. The methods of creating an undo tablespace are explained in "Creating an Undo Tablespace".

When the instance starts, the database automatically selects the first available undo tablespace. If no undo tablespace is available, then the instance starts without an undo tablespace and stores undo records in the SYSTEM tablespace. This is not recommended in normal circumstances, and an alert message is written to the alert log file to warn that the system is running without an undo tablespace.

If the database contains multiple undo tablespaces, you can optionally specify at startup that you want to use a specific undo tablespace. This is done by setting the UNDO_TABLESPACE initialization parameter, as shown in this example:

UNDO_TABLESPACE = undotbs_01

In this case, if you have not already created the undo tablespace (in this example, undotbs_01), the STARTUP command fails. The UNDO_TABLESPACE parameter can be used to assign a specific undo tablespace to an instance in an Oracle Real Application Clusters environment.

The following is a summary of the initialization parameters for automatic undo management:

When automatic undo management is enabled, if the initialization parameter file contains parameters relating to manual undo management, they are ignored.

Undo Retention

After a transaction is committed, undo data is no longer needed for rollback or transaction recovery purposes. However, for consistent read purposes, long-running queries may require this old undo information for producing older images of data blocks. Furthermore, the success of several Oracle Flashback features can also depend upon the availability of older undo information. For these reasons, it is desirable to retain the old undo information for as long as possible.

When automatic undo management is enabled, there is always a current undo retention period, which is the minimum amount of time that Oracle Database attempts to retain old undo information before overwriting it. Old (committed) undo information that is older than the current undo retention period is said to be expired. Old undo information with an age that is less than the current undo retention period is said to be unexpired.

Oracle Database automatically tunes the undo retention period based on undo tablespace size and system activity. You can specify a minimum undo retention period (in seconds) by setting the UNDO_RETENTION initialization parameter. The database makes its best effort to honor the specified minimum undo retention period, provided that the undo tablespace has space available for new transactions. When available space for new transactions becomes short, the database begins to overwrite expired undo. If the undo tablespace has no space for new transactions after all expired undo is overwritten, the database may begin overwriting unexpired undo information. If any of this overwritten undo information is required for consistent read in a current long-running query, the query could fail with the snapshot too old error message.

The following points explain the exact impact of the UNDO_RETENTION parameter on undo retention:

• The UNDO_RETENTION parameter is ignored for a fixed size undo tablespace. The database may overwrite unexpired undo information when tablespace space becomes low.

• For an undo tablespace with the AUTOEXTEND option enabled, the database attempts to honor the minimum retention period specified by UNDO_RETENTION. When space is low, instead of overwriting unexpired undo information, the tablespace auto-extends. If the MAXSIZE clause is specified for an auto-extending undo tablespace, when the maximum size is reached, the database may begin to overwrite unexpired undo information.

select to_char(begin_time, 'DD-MON-RR HH24:MI') begin_time,
to_char(end_time, 'DD-MON-RR HH24:MI') end_time, tuned_undoretention
from v$undostat order by end_time;

BEGIN_TIME      END_TIME        TUNED_UNDORETENTION
--------------- --------------- -------------------
04-FEB-05 00:01 04-FEB-05 00:11               12100
      ...                                          
07-FEB-05 23:21 07-FEB-05 23:31               86700
07-FEB-05 23:31 07-FEB-05 23:41               86700
07-FEB-05 23:41 07-FEB-05 23:51               86700
07-FEB-05 23:51 07-FEB-05 23:52               86700

576 rows selected.

Using Auto-Extensible Tablespaces

Oracle Database supports automatic extension of the undo tablespace to facilitate capacity planning of the undo tablespace in the production environment. When the system is first running in the production environment, you may be unsure of the space requirements of the undo tablespace. In this case, you can enable automatic extension of the undo tablespace so that it automatically increases in size when more space is needed. You do so by including the AUTOEXTEND keyword when you create the undo tablespace.

Sizing Fixed-Size Undo Tablespaces

If you have decided on a fixed-size undo tablespace, the Undo Advisor can help you estimate needed capacity. You can access the Undo Advisor through Enterprise Manager or through the DBMS_ADVISOR PL/SQL package. Enterprise Manager is the preferred method of accessing the advisor. For more information on using the Undo Advisor through Enterprise Manager, please refer to Oracle Database 2 Day DBA.

The Undo Advisor relies for its analysis on data collected in the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). It is therefore important that the AWR have adequate workload statistics available so that the Undo Advisor can make accurate recommendations. For newly created databases, adequate statistics may not be available immediately. In such cases, an auto-extensible undo tablespace can be used.

An adjustment to the collection interval and retention period for AWR statistics can affect the precision and the type of recommendations that the advisor produces. See "Automatic Workload Repository" for more information.

To use the Undo Advisor, you first estimate these two values:

• The length of your expected longest running query

  After the database has been up for a while, you can view the Longest Running Query field on the Undo Management page of Enterprise Manager.

• The longest interval that you will require for flashback operations

  For example, if you expect to run Flashback Queries for up to 48 hours in the past, your flashback requirement is 48 hours.

You then take the maximum of these two undo retention values and use that value to look up the required undo tablespace size on the Undo Advisor graph.

DECLARE
   tid    NUMBER;
   tname  VARCHAR2(30);
   oid    NUMBER;
   BEGIN
   DBMS_ADVISOR.CREATE_TASK('Undo Advisor', tid, tname, 'Undo Advisor Task');
   DBMS_ADVISOR.CREATE_OBJECT(tname, 'UNDO_TBS', null, null, null, 'null', oid);
   DBMS_ADVISOR.SET_TASK_PARAMETER(tname, 'TARGET_OBJECTS', oid);
   DBMS_ADVISOR.SET_TASK_PARAMETER(tname, 'START_SNAPSHOT', 1);
   DBMS_ADVISOR.SET_TASK_PARAMETER(tname, 'END_SNAPSHOT', 2);
   DBMS_ADVISOR.SET_TASK_PARAMETER(name, 'INSTANCE', 1);
   DBMS_ADVISOR.execute_task(tname);
   end;
/

Creating an Undo Tablespace

There are two methods of creating an undo tablespace. The first method creates the undo tablespace when the CREATE DATABASE statement is issued. This occurs when you are creating a new database, and the instance is started in automatic undo management mode (UNDO_MANAGEMENT = AUTO). The second method is used with an existing database. It uses the CREATE UNDO TABLESPACE statement.

You cannot create database objects in an undo tablespace. It is reserved for system-managed undo data.

Oracle Database enables you to create a single-file undo tablespace. Single-file, or bigfile, tablespaces are discussed in "Bigfile Tablespaces".

CREATE DATABASE rbdb1
     CONTROLFILE REUSE
     .
     .
     .
     UNDO TABLESPACE undotbs_01 DATAFILE '/u01/oracle/rbdb1/undo0101.dbf';

CREATE UNDO TABLESPACE undotbs_02
     DATAFILE '/u01/oracle/rbdb1/undo0201.dbf' SIZE 2M REUSE AUTOEXTEND ON;

Altering an Undo Tablespace

Undo tablespaces are altered using the ALTER TABLESPACE statement. However, since most aspects of undo tablespaces are system managed, you need only be concerned with the following actions:

• Adding a datafile

• Renaming a datafile

• Bringing a datafile online or taking it offline

• Beginning or ending an open backup on a datafile

• Enabling and disabling undo retention guarantee

These are also the only attributes you are permitted to alter.

If an undo tablespace runs out of space, or you want to prevent it from doing so, you can add more files to it or resize existing datafiles.

The following example adds another datafile to undo tablespace undotbs_01:

ALTER TABLESPACE undotbs_01
     ADD DATAFILE '/u01/oracle/rbdb1/undo0102.dbf' AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 1M 
         MAXSIZE UNLIMITED;

You can use the ALTER DATABASE...DATAFILE statement to resize or extend a datafile.

Dropping an Undo Tablespace

Use the DROP TABLESPACE statement to drop an undo tablespace. The following example drops the undo tablespace undotbs_01:

DROP TABLESPACE undotbs_01;

An undo tablespace can only be dropped if it is not currently used by any instance. If the undo tablespace contains any outstanding transactions (for example, a transaction died but has not yet been recovered), the DROP TABLESPACE statement fails. However, since DROP TABLESPACE drops an undo tablespace even if it contains unexpired undo information (within retention period), you must be careful not to drop an undo tablespace if undo information is needed by some existing queries.

DROP TABLESPACE for undo tablespaces behaves like DROP TABLESPACE...INCLUDING CONTENTS. All contents of the undo tablespace are removed.

Switching Undo Tablespaces

You can switch from using one undo tablespace to another. Because the UNDO_TABLESPACE initialization parameter is a dynamic parameter, the ALTER SYSTEM SET statement can be used to assign a new undo tablespace.

The following statement switches to a new undo tablespace:

ALTER SYSTEM SET UNDO_TABLESPACE = undotbs_02;

Assuming undotbs_01 is the current undo tablespace, after this command successfully executes, the instance uses undotbs_02 in place of undotbs_01 as its undo tablespace.

If any of the following conditions exist for the tablespace being switched to, an error is reported and no switching occurs:

• The tablespace does not exist

• The tablespace is not an undo tablespace

• The tablespace is already being used by another instance (in a RAC environment only)

The database is online while the switch operation is performed, and user transactions can be executed while this command is being executed. When the switch operation completes successfully, all transactions started after the switch operation began are assigned to transaction tables in the new undo tablespace.

The switch operation does not wait for transactions in the old undo tablespace to commit. If there are any pending transactions in the old undo tablespace, the old undo tablespace enters into a PENDING OFFLINE mode (status). In this mode, existing transactions can continue to execute, but undo records for new user transactions cannot be stored in this undo tablespace.

An undo tablespace can exist in this PENDING OFFLINE mode, even after the switch operation completes successfully. A PENDING OFFLINE undo tablespace cannot be used by another instance, nor can it be dropped. Eventually, after all active transactions have committed, the undo tablespace automatically goes from the PENDING OFFLINE mode to the OFFLINE mode. From then on, the undo tablespace is available for other instances (in an Oracle Real Application Cluster environment).

If the parameter value for UNDO TABLESPACE is set to '' (two single quotes), then the current undo tablespace is switched out and the next available undo tablespace is switched in. Use this statement with care because there may be no undo tablespace available.

The following example unassigns the current undo tablespace:

ALTER SYSTEM SET UNDO_TABLESPACE = '';

Establishing User Quotas for Undo Space

The Oracle Database Resource Manager can be used to establish user quotas for undo space. The Database Resource Manager directive UNDO_POOL allows DBAs to limit the amount of undo space consumed by a group of users (resource consumer group).

You can specify an undo pool for each consumer group. An undo pool controls the amount of total undo that can be generated by a consumer group. When the total undo generated by a consumer group exceeds its undo limit, the current UPDATE transaction generating the undo is terminated. No other members of the consumer group can perform further updates until undo space is freed from the pool.

When no UNDO_POOL directive is explicitly defined, users are allowed unlimited undo space.