By Francisco Munoz Alvarez
Important points about LOGGING and NOLOGGING
Despite the importance of the redo entries, Oracle gave users the ability to limit redo generation on tables and indexes by setting them in NOLOGGING mode. NOLOGGING affect the recoverability. Before going into how to limit the redo generation, it is important to clear the misunderstanding that NOLOGGING is the way out of redo generation, this are some points regarding it:
- NOLOGGING is designed to handle bulk inserts of data which can be easy re-produced.
- Regardless of LOGGING status, writing to undo blocks causes generation of redo.
- LOGGING should not be disabled on a primary database if it has one or more standby databases. For this reason oracle introduced the ALTER DATABASE FORCE LOGGING command in Oracle 9i R2. (Means that the NOLOGGING attribute will not have any effect on the segments) If the database is in FORCE LOGGING MODE. NOLOGGING can be also override at tablespace level using ALTER TABLESPACE … FORCE LOGGING.
- Any change to the database dictionary will cause redo generation. This will happen to protect the data dictionary. An example: if we allocated a space above the HWM for a table, and the system fail in the middle of one INSERT /*+ APPEND */ , the Oracle will need to rollback that data dictionary update. There will be redo generated but it is to protect the data dictionary, not your newly inserted data (Oracle will undo the space allocation if it fails, where as your data will disappear).
- The data which are not logged will not be able to recover. The data should be backed up after the modification.
- Tables and indexes should be set back to LOGGING mode when the NOLOGGING is no longer needed.
- NOLOGGING is not needed for Direct Path Insert if the database is in NO ARCHIVE LOG MODE. (See table 1.1)
Table Mode
Insert Mode ArchiveLog Mode Result LOGGING APPEND ARCHIVE LOG REDO GENERATED NOLOGGING APPEND ARCHIVE LOG NO REDO LOGGING NO APPEND ARCHIVE LOG REDO GENERATED NOLOGGING NO APPEND ARCHIVE LOG REDO GENERATED LOGGING APPEND NO ARCHIVE LOG NO REDO NOLOGGING APPEND NO ARCHIVE LOG NO REDO LOGGING NO APPEND NO ARCHIVE LOG REDO GENERATED NOLOGGING NO APPEND NO ARCHIVE LOG REDO GENERATED Table 1.1
- The data which is not able to reproduce should not use the NOLOGGING mode. If data which can not be reloaded was loaded using NOLOGGING. The data cannot be recovered when the database crashes before backing the data.
- NOLOGGING does not apply to UPDATE, DELETE, and INSERT.
- NOLOGGING will work during certain situations but subsequent DML will generate redo. Some of these situations are:
- direct load INSERT (using APPEND hint),
- CREATE TABLE … AS SELECT,
- CREATE INDEX.
- If the LOGGING or NOLOGGING clause is not specified when creating a table, partition, or index the default to the LOGGING attribute, will be the LOGGING attribute of the tablespace in which it resides.
The following operations are a few that cannot make use of NOLOGGING mode:
- Table redefinition cannot be done NOLOGGING.
- Temp files are always set to NOLOGGING mode.
The FORCE LOGGING mode is a persistent attribute of the database. That is, if the database is shut down and restarted, it remains in the same logging mode state. FORCE LOGGING must be configured again after recreating the control file. If the database has a physical standby database, then NOLOGGING operations will render data blocks in the standby “logically corrupt” because of the missing redo log entries. If the standby database ever switches to the primary role, errors will occur when trying to access objects that were previously written with the NOLOGGING option, you will an error like this:
ORA-01578: ORACLE data block corrupted (file # 3, block # 2527)
ORA-01110: data file 1: ‘/u1/oracle/dbs/stdby/tbs_nologging_1.dbf’
ORA-26040: Data block was loaded using the NOLOGGING option”
That doesn’t sound good, and certainly I can’t imagine a happy DBA called at 3:00 AM to recover a database and that error message comes up.
The options UNRECOVERABLE (introduced in Oracle7) and NOLOGGING (introduced in Oracle8) can be used to avoid the redolog entries generation for certain operations that can be easily recovered without using the database recovery mechanism. This option sends the actual DDL statements to the redo logs (this information is needed in the data dictionary) but all data loaded, modified or deleted are not sent to the redo logs.
Even though you can set the NOLOGGING attribute for a table, partition, index, or tablespace, this mode does not apply to every operation performed on the schema object for which you set the NOLOGGING attribute. See more details on which operations are supported to be executed in this mode in the following topics.
Why Oracle generates redo and undo for DML
When you issue an insert, update or delete, Oracle actually makes the change to the data blocks that contain the affected data even though you have not issued a commit. To ensure database integrity, Oracle must write information necessary to reverse the change (UNDO) into the log to handle transaction failure or rollback. Recovery from media failure is ensured by writing information necessary to re-play database changes (REDO) into the log. So, UNDO and REDO information logically MUST be written into the transaction log of the RDBMS (see below regarding temporary tables).
While the RDBMS logically would only need to write UNDO and REDO into the transaction log, the UNDO portion must also be kept online (on disk and accessible to the RDBMS engine) to enable rollback of failed transactions. If UNDO data was only stored in the transaction log, the log could get archived and the RDBMS would have to try and read it from tape. On some platforms, the tape could be sitting in the DBA’s desk drawer, so there are practical problems with this solution. Every RDBMS must meet the basic requirement of online access to undo data, and Oracle does this by storing UNDO data in what we call Rollback Segments (rollback = undo).
Because Oracle places UNDO data into a rollback segment and also must (logically) place this data into the transaction log, it is simpler to just treat rollback tablespaces like any other tablespace from a log generation perspective. That is, Oracle generates REDO for a Rollback Segment, which is logically the same as UNDO for a data block (i.e. your table, index, etc.).
Oracle’s transaction log is really called the REDO log because it only contains redo records. There logically MUST be UNDO records stored in the log, but they are stored in the form of redo for rollback segments. For temporary tables, Oracle will need to do things like facilitate rollback, but it is not necessary to bring back temporary tables following media failure.
The undo data is also needed for things like rollback to save point and read consistency, not just to reclaim space that was used by that temporary table.
Amount of redo generated for temporary tables
The amount of log generation for temporary tables should be approximately 50% of the log generation for permanent tables. However, you must consider that an INSERT requires only a small amount of “undo” data, whereas a DELETE requires a small amount of “redo” data. If you tend to insert data into temporary tables and if you don’t delete the data when you’re done, the relative log generation rate may be much lower for temporary tables that 50% of the log generation rate for permanent tables.
Can Redo Generation Be Disabled During Materialized View Refresh?
There is no way to turn off redo generation when refreshing materialized views.Setting the NOLOGGING option during the materialized view creation does not affect this, as the option only applies during the actual creation and not to any subsequent actions on the materialized view. Enhancement requests have been raised to be able to turn off redo generation during a refresh but these were rejected as this could put the database into an inconsistent state and affect options such as Data Guard as well as backup and recovery.The amount of redo generated can be reduced by setting ATOMIC_REFRESH=FALSE in the DBMS_MVIEW.REFRESH options.
Flashback and NOLOGGING
When using Flashback Database with a target time at which a NOLOGGING operation was in progress, block corruption is likely in the database objects and data files affected by the NOLOGGING operation. For example, if you perform a direct-path INSERT operation in NOLOGGING mode, and that operation runs from 8:00 to 8:15 on April 7, 2008, and you later need to use Flashback Database to return to the target time 08:07 on that date, the objects and data files updated by the direct-path INSERT may be left with block corruption after the Flashback Database operation completes.
If possible, avoid using Flashback Database with a target time or SCN that coincides with a NOLOGGING operation. Also, perform a full or incremental backup of the affected data files immediately after any NOLOGGING operation to ensure recoverability to points in time after the operation. If you expect to use Flashback Database to return to a point in time during an operation such as a direct-path INSERT, consider performing the operation in LOGGING mode.
Performance and Recovery considerations
The NOLOGGING mode improves performance because it generates much less log data in the redo log files helping in eliminating the time needed to execute the redo generation (latch acquisition, redolog writing, etc.). The user is responsible for backing up the data after a NOLOGGING insert operation in order to be able to perform media recovery. Be aware that this feature disables the recover mechanisms for this transaction: It will be required to repeat the process from the very beginning in case of a database or instance failure.
Wait for next part, I will talk about NOLOGGING: how, when and why to use.
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