An Oracle White Paper

February 2009

Oracle Database: The Database of Choice for

Deploying SAP Solutions
 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

Executive Overview............................................................................................................. 2
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
Database MARKET SHARE for Enterprise Applications .................................................... 1
Oracle-SAP Technology Relationship................................................................................. 2
Oracle 11g for SAP ............................................................................................................. 3
SAP Standard Applications Benchmarks ............................................................................ 3
Scalability and Performance ............................................................................................... 4
Reliability ............................................................................................................................. 4
Platform neutrality ............................................................................................................... 4
Real Application Clusters (RAC) ......................................................................................... 5
RAC affordable scalability............................................................................................... 6
Inherent High Availability ................................................................................................ 6
Simplified Administration ................................................................................................ 6
Disaster Recovery ............................................................................................................... 7
Oracle Features Important for SAP Customers .................................................................. 7
Partitioning ...................................................................................................................... 8
Index Key Compression.................................................................................................. 8
Addressing Backup and Recovery ................................................................................. 9
Addressing Disaster Recovery ..................................................................................... 10
Flashback database...................................................................................................... 11
Oracle Segment Shrinking ............................................................................................ 11
Database copy using transportable tablespace............................................................ 11
Manageability ................................................................................................................ 12
Automatic Shared Memory ....................................................................................... 12
Automatic Workload Repository ............................................................................... 12
Oracle Expertise in the SAP environment......................................................................... 15
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 15
Executive Overview
For almost 20 years Oracle has been the database of choice as the development
platform for SAP applications. A contract between Oracle and SAP had been signed in
November 1999 to ensure the future cooperation and the position of Oracle as “tier one”
platform for SAP. The contract was last renewed in January 2008.

SAP R/3 was originally developed on Oracle, and the companies have a deep
relationship at the technical level. Subsequent SAP products, such as SAP Business
Information Warehouse (BW) have also been developed using the Oracle database.
Oracle’s assistance during incorporation of new database features, performance testing,
bug fixing and customer problem escalations has been invaluable to the large number of
SAP customers running on Oracle.

Years ago, Oracle implemented the industry’s best concurrency model with non-
escalating row-level locking and multi-version read consistency; innovative features such
as self-tuning database components and enhanced indexing and partitioning schemes
have maintained Oracle’s reputation for performance and scalability for enterprise
applications. And Oracle has shown itself to be a leader in database availability and
security as well – an important consideration for managing critical data in an SAP system.
For our customer this means:

• There is plenty of Oracle expertise in SAP´s development, support and consulting

divisions.

• All certified SAP applications are optimized for Oracle database

 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

Introduction
This paper covers the business and technology factors driving customers to choose Oracle as the
underlying database for their SAP deployments. In the following sections we discuss Oracle’s
market position among databases for SAP applications, the SAP-Oracle technology relationship
including adoption of new Oracle database features by SAP.

Oracle database features important for SAP customers in the areas of

• Scalability
• Reliability
• High Availability
• Manageability
• Security

Database MARKET SHARE for Enterprise Applications

Analysts are unanimous in saying that the Oracle database enjoys dominant market share for
enterprise applications, including SAP.
Almost two third of SAP implementations are based on an Oracle database. Note that the bigger
the system (i.e. more users, more data) the higher the requirements are with regard to security
and high availability, the higher is the share of Oracle based systems. Very large systems are
almost exclusively based on Oracle.
Oracle dominates the SAP database market across operating systems, with success on various
flavors of Unix and Linux as well as on Windows.
Oracle’s market position has real advantages for customers considering database choices for their
SAP system. A large installed base indicates that Oracle is able to meet the database needs of
SAP customers across industries and geographies.
It also means that a large group of customers has tested the SAP-Oracle combination in
situations that no QA group at SAP could ever recreate. Both Oracle and SAP have learned from
this experience in the field, and both products have been enhanced as a result. Customers
choosing Oracle for SAP now will get the accumulated benefits of years of product testing in the
real world. The impressive large customers basis translates into several advantages:
• Proven technology
• Widest choice of solutions and systems

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

• Highest consulting expertise on the market

• Best cooperation with hardware and tool vendors

Oracle-SAP Technology Relationship

Oracle has dedicated teams working with SAP in many different areas, including joint software
development, pre-sales and technology evangelism, customer technical support and professional
services. The Oracle-SAP technology is deep and goes back to 1988, when SAP R/3 was first
developed:

Table 1: Milestones in SAP-Oracle Technology Relationship

The Oracle development team working at SAP HQ in Walldorf, Germany assists SAP in:
• Performance testing of each release with the Oracle database to ensure there is no
degradation of response time, throughput and scalability between SAP versions.
• Fixing database bugs found during SAP functional testing, and including SAP
enhancement requests in the database product roadmap
• Incorporating new Oracle features in SAP releases
• Responding to escalated customer problems, when related to database issues
All SAP products are currently certified with Oracle 10g Database Release 2, 10g Real
Application Clusters has been certified in December 2006 and is general available for SAP
customers.

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

SAP is an enthusiastic adopter of new features in the Oracle database. We will discuss an extract
of the features supported by SAP later in this paper showing the main differentiators of Oracle
Database from DB2 and SQL Server.

Oracle 11g for SAP

SAP AG has participated in Oracle Database Beta Programs for many years. The joint Oracle
and SAP development teams in Walldorf, Germany, have completed extensive tests of Oracle
Database 11g Release 1 Beta and is testing with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Beta.
The release strategy of SAP AG for Oracle Database versions is to certify only the terminal
release of a new database version. This strategy is based on the overall requests of the SAP
customer community to minimize the number of version upgrades in complex SAP
environments. It has been proven a successful roll out process with previous terminal release
certifications of Oracle Database Versions 8i, 9i and 10g.
Therefore, SAP AG will skip Oracle Database 11g Release 1 and certify Oracle Database 11g
Release 2, at least 12 months before Oracle Database Release 10g goes into the extended support
cycle. According to the current planning SAP systems based on SAP Kernel 6.40 and higher will
be certified for Oracle 11g. Oracle Database 11g Release 2 will contain various specific
functionality designed and implemented for the needs of the SAP Application Product Suite.

SAP Standard Applications Benchmarks

SAP has created several standard benchmarks to compare the performance of various solutions
and components across different hardware platforms and technology stacks and to assist in sizing
customer systems. The most “popular” SAP standard application benchmarks are SAP Sales and
Distribution (SAP SD), Assemble-to-Order (ATO), SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP
BW) and Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO). SAP SD comes in three flavors: 2-
tier (database and SAP application on same server), 3-tier (database and SAP application on
different servers) and Parallel (3-tier with a clustered database). ATO has two flavors: 2-tier and
3-tier.
A Head-to-Head Comparison finds Oracle on Top with 3,600 More SAP SD Users than
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on Identical Fujitsu Hardware, (Oracle/Linux benchmark 2006071,
SQL Server/Windows benchmark 2006068). Another benchmark comparison on identical HP
Hardware, Oracle Database could serve 34% more SD users than SQL Server (Oracle/Linux
benchmark 2008064, SQL Server/Windows benchmark 2008026). This comparison shows that
Oracle 10g was even better than SQL Server 2008.
In November 2007, Oracle announced a world-record result on the SAP® Sales and
Distribution-Parallel (SD-Parallel) Standard Application Benchmark running on the SAP® ERP
6.0 application (Certification Number 2008013) with 37,040 SD users. With this result, Oracle

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters continues to demonstrate exceptional grid
computing capabilities, delivering excellent performance, scalability, and value.

Scalability and Performance

A production SAP system sees fluctuating user loads, contention on frequently used tables, a mix
of reads and writes, and occasional heavy batch jobs. The database platform for the system needs
to be able to scale easily on this mixed workload without requiring frequent and extensive DBA
intervention. SAP standard benchmark results as well as customer experience show that the
Oracle RDBMS distinguishes itself through an optimal usage of available system resources. SAP
certified a series of benchmarks that demonstrate the impressive scalability of Oracle Real
Application Clusters (RAC): The throughput increased by a factor of 1.9 whenever the number
of nodes was doubled (Certification number 2008010 with 2 nodes Cluster and Certification
number 2008012 with 4 nodes Cluster)

Reliability
Oracle was developed to minimize planned as well as unplanned downtime:
• Administrators can perform most management and maintenance jobs while the system
is online and full data access is possible.
• The individual components of an Oracle database server are extremely stable. Users can
access the database even if parts of it are unavailable.
• Should a system failure occur (e.g. because of hardware problems), recovery of an
Oracle database is fast and fully automatic in RAC environment.
• The management tools provided by Oracle can identify and solve potential problems
before they affect data availability.

Platform neutrality
Oracle has always been a platform-neutral database. Oracle9i/10g Database were released
simultaneously on all major platforms, and the database is the same across all platforms. Oracle’s
support for the major Unix platforms, Windows and Linux gives customers the assurance that
they can switch hardware vendors and operating systems with no penalty. SQL Server and, to a
slightly lesser extent, DB2, force the customer to pick a specific operating system or hardware
vendor. A SAP system on Oracle can scale up by moving to a different, larger hardware
configuration; the choices are far fewer for SQL Server or DB2 based systems.
Oracle has maintained platform-neutrality even as new chips and operating systems are
developed:

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

• Oracle Database provides unique portability across all major platforms

• Oracle is transparent to SAP (no application modification needed by changing the
Operating System)
• Oracle code base is identical across platforms
• Oracle has the same functionality on all Operating Systems
• Oracle has the same admin tools for all Operating Systems
• Easy migration to Oracle (R3Load or Transportable TBS)

Real Application Clusters (RAC)

Oracle Database 10g comes with an integrated set of High Availability (HA) capabilities that help
organizations ensure business continuity by minimizing the various kinds of downtime that can
affect their businesses. These capabilities take care of most scenarios that might lead to data
unavailability, such as system failures, data failures, disasters, human errors, system maintenance
operations and data maintenance operations
The cornerstone of Oracle’s high availability solutions that protects from system failures is
Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Oracle RAC is a cluster database with a shared cache
architecture that overcomes the limitations of traditional shared-nothing and shared-disk
approaches, to provide a highly scalable and available database solution for SAP applications.
RAC supports the transparent deployment of a single database across a cluster of active servers,
providing fault tolerance from hardware failures or planned outages. RAC supports mainstream
business applications of all kinds – these include popular packaged products such as SAP, as well
as custom applications. RAC provides very high availability for these applications by removing
the single point of failure with a single server. In a RAC configuration, all nodes are active and
serve production workload. If a node in the cluster fails, the Oracle Database continues running
on the remaining nodes. Individual nodes can also be shutdown for maintenance while
application users continue to work.
A RAC configuration can be built from standardized, commodity-priced processing, storage, and
network components. RAC also enables a flexible way to scale applications, using a simple scale-
out model. When more processing power is needed by a particular application service, another
server can be added easily and dynamically, without taking any of the active users offline. Based
on customer configurations, SAP Dialog instances and users connected to can be routed to
dedicated nodes in the RAC cluster.
Oracle Clusterware complements RAC, providing an integrated cluster software solution for
enterprise grids, for thousands of customer sites around the world.

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

RAC affordable scalability

Oracle RAC is designed on the principles of horizontal scalability, distributing the total database
workload across many smaller servers or Hardware (logical or physical) partitions. As demand
increases, additional servers are added to the cluster, a process that is seamless to both users and
applications. Oracle RAC uses a shared-storage cluster architecture, where every node in the
architecture enjoys concurrent and equal access to a single common database. Any node can add,
edit, or delete data. A single database means there are no replication or segmentation issues, no
ownership or redirection of SQL requests. Every node is equally capable of handling any
transaction directly.

Inherent High Availability

In an Oracle RAC, each node in the cluster has equal access and authority to database tasks and
resources. With built-in load balancing, clients of failed nodes are automatically redirected to
another node in the cluster. Surviving nodes have continuous access to the database while they
reconcile the shared transition logs of failed nodes. Returning the database to full update
functionality takes a fraction of the time of a manual restart and recovery, or even an automated
failover to a standby sever, because the database is never down.
Contrary to Failover Cluster where every SAP instance is connected to a single database instance,
with an Oracle RAC cluster one or more SAP instances can be connected to each Oracle RAC
instance. If one RAC node crashes, the users connected to the other nodes will not be affected
since they are connected to a different database instance. The SAP dialog instances that were
connected to the crashed database instance (node1) will be automatically reconnected to a
surviving database instance (node2) within seconds. The failover happens quickly because only
the service within Oracle Clusterware and assigned to each SAP instance has to be started on a
surviving Database instance. One more advantage for SAP customers is the SAP high availability
of the Enqueue and the message server, made possible with SAPCTL, which is based on Oracle
Clusterware. This eliminates the need for 3rd party software to make SAP high available.

Simplified Administration
Multiplying the number of components in a solution can potentially increase the maintenance
burden. However, Oracle RAC features minimize this possibility. Resources, servers, and storage
can be managed as a single entity within a cluster-wide environment. Because the database
appears as a standard, single instance to applications and administrators, the same maintenance
tools and practices can be used. All standard backup and recovery operations work transparently
with RAC. Maintenance is simplified because RAC provides rapid, automatic failover for users if
any server crashes. This automatic failover capability overcomes the need to execute the complex
operations required to restore database access.

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

Disaster Recovery
Oracle Data Guard is the most effective and comprehensive data availability, data protection, and
disaster recovery solution for enterprise databases. It provides the management, monitoring, and
automation software infrastructure to create and maintain one or more synchronized standby
databases to protect data from failures, disasters, errors, and corruptions.
Data Guard standby databases can be located at remote disaster recovery sites thousands of miles
away from the production data center, or they may be located in the same city, same campus, or
even in the same building. If the production database becomes unavailable because of a planned
or an unplanned outage, Data Guard can switch any standby database to the production role,
thus minimizing downtime and preventing any data loss.

Data Guard delivers:

• Reliability– optimum data protection and availability. You always know the state of your
standby database and it can very quickly (in seconds), assume the primary role.
• Lower cost and complexity – Data Guard's mature capabilities and rich management
interface are included features of Oracle Enterprise Edition.
• Maximum return on investment – All standby databases can be utilized for production
purposes while in standby role. Idle resources are eliminated.
• Preventing data corruptions due to human errors (due to flashback and delay)
• Support of multiple Standby databases assigned to the same primary database
• Seamless back-and-forth conversion between a read-write database and a standby
database
• Standby database that can be used for backup to offload the primary database
• Primary and standby databases can be Real Application Clusters and/or single-instance
Oracle
• Integrated management interface

Oracle Features Important for SAP Customers

The Oracle database has succeeded as a platform for enterprise applications because it provides
the scalability, high availability and ease of management that are important for mission-critical
systems. Managing a complex application like SAP already requires significant effort on the part
of application administrators and business analysts; customers prefer a database that will
perform, scale and stay up without adding much administration overhead or technical risk. Sound

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architectural decisions made in early Oracle releases and a record of continued innovation have
allowed Oracle to give customers this assurance.

Partitioning
Improved scalability for partitioned objects: Dropping partitioned tables and indexes is now
substantially faster by using a new algorithm for identifying the blocks of a partitioned object in
the buffer cache and for cleaning these blocks in the buffer cache. The SAP BW application
benefits the most, as dropping partitioned objects is a frequently used operation in SAP BW.
Scalability is enhanced in a number of different ways:
• Data can be partitioned across time, thus providing the ability to store more historical
data in the analytic workspace without affecting performance or manageability.
• Calculations can be easily limited to a subset of dimension members, or they can be
parallelized. For example, aggregations, allocations and other calculations can be
performed on time periods within a particular partition.
• Data loading can be parallelized.
• When partitioned by the logical model, for example, by level of summarization, the
definition of the variable can be adjusted to account for changes in sparsity between
detail data and summary data.
• Disaster recovery tasks can be performed on subsets of data and can be parallelized.
• Partitioned variables can be partitioned across different data files and disks to minimize
I/O bottlenecks.
While Oracle provided Range partitioning for many years, SQL Server 2005 does this for the first
time and DB2 is actually supporting it since DB2 version 9. But it is unusable because:
• “The SAP Dictionary does not support range partitioning. During a conversion, range
partitioning settings are always lost.
• Range partitioning cannot be activated by the SAP Dictionary; you can only use native
DB2 tools for this purpose.
• Range partitioning can lead to problems in the SAP upgrade.”(Source SAP note 930487
as of September 09, 2007)

Index Key Compression

Key compression allows repeating values for columns in a B*Tree index to be replaced by
shorter tokens in the index blocks. Key compression looks at the values of the leading columns
of the index and replaces repeating values by shorter tokens. To get the maximum benefit out of
key compression you need to compute the optimal mix of the length of the repeating values in

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

the leading columns of an index and the selectivity of these repeating values in the leading part of
an index.
The advantages of key compression:
• Saves disk space for indexes and reduces total database size on disk: Customer
experiences show that up to 75% less disk space is needed for key compressed indexes.
Even after index reorganizations have taken place an additional up to 20% total disk
space reduction for the whole database can be achieved using index compression.
Without any reorganizations done before the total space savings for the complete
database may be higher than 20% using index compression as index compression
implicitly reorganizes any index (Real world example: The size of the 'GLPCA~1' index
was reduced from 18GB 4.5GB ).
• Reduces physical disk I/O and logical buffer cache I/O improving buffer cache quality
• Higher CPU consumption: Every compression technique comes with higher CPU
consumption. The higher CPU consumption is more than compensated by doing less
logical I/O for index blocks in the database buffer cache.
• Improved overall database throughput: Early customer experiences have shown a 10-
20% better database throughput for an SAP system by using index key compression in a
non CPU bound environment.

Addressing Backup and Recovery

One of the major value propositions for Oracle 10g is a significant reduction in cost and time of
deploying and maintaining an Oracle-based solution. A number of major developments in this
area incorporate new techniques and methodologies across the entire database platform.
Very important features has been released, including:
• Backup Compression: If disk space is an issue, or your media-management software
does not support compression, RMAN provides the ability to compress RMAN backup
sets.
• Incrementally Updated Backups: You can now apply a RMAN incremental backup to a
data file image backup. This results in reduced recovery time, because fewer logs need to
be applied, and reduced time to back up the database, because you do not always have
to back up the whole database.
• Full Database begin/end Backup Command: It is no longer necessary to issue a separate
command to place each tablespace in hot backup mode. You can now use the ALTER
DATABASE statement to place all tablespaces in backup mode. Also the BEGIN
BACKUP command now runs faster than before.

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

• Change-Aware Incremental Backups: By using a new type of log file to track blocks that
have changed in the database, RMAN can avoid scanning the entire data file during an
incremental backup. Instead the amount of data scanned is proportional to the amount
of data changed. Block change tracking is supported in the SAP environment as of
Oracle 10.2.0.2 and BR*Tools 7.00

Addressing Disaster Recovery

Some of Oracle Database10g Data Guard new features are:
• Improved Redo Transmission: Several enhancements have been made in the redo
transmission architecture to make sure redo data generated on the primary database can
be transmitted as quickly and efficiently as possible to the standby database(s).
• Easy conversion of a physical standby database to a reporting database: A physical
standby database can be activated as a primary database, opened read/write for
reporting purposes, and then flashed back to a point in the past to be easily converted
back to a physical standby database. At this point, Data Guard automatically
synchronizes the standby database with the primary database. This allows the physical
standby database to be utilized for read/write reporting and cloning activities.
• Real Time Apply: With this feature, redo data can be applied on the standby database
(Redo Apply) as soon as they have written to a Standby Redo Log (SRL). Prior releases
of Data Guard require this redo data to be archived at the standby database in the form
of archive logs before they can be applied.
The Real Time Apply feature allows standby databases to be closely synchronized with
the primary database, enabling up-to-date and real-time reporting. This also enables
faster switchover and failover times, which in turn reduces planned and unplanned
downtime for the business.
The impact of a disaster is often measured in terms of Recovery Point Objective (RPO -
i.e. how much data can a business afford to lose in the event of a disaster) and Recovery
Time Objective (RTO - i.e. how much time a business can afford to be down in the
event of a disaster). With Oracle Data Guard, when Maximum Protection is used in
combination with Real Time Apply, businesses get the benefits of both zero data loss as
well as minimal downtime in the event of a disaster and this makes Oracle Data Guard
the only solution available today with the best RPO and RTO benefits for a business.
• Integration with Flashback Database: Oracle’s Flashback Database quickly rewinds the
database to a previous time, to correct any problems caused by logical data corruptions
or user errors. Flashback Database is like a 'rewind button' for your database. It provides
database point in time recovery without requiring a backup of the database to first be
restored. When you eliminate the time it takes to restore a database backup from tape,
database point in time recovery is fast.

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 Oracle Database: the Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

Flashback database
The Flashback Database capability is similar to conventional point-in-time recovery in its effects
and it is accessible from both RMAN and SQL*Plus by using the FLASHBACK DATABASE
command, which has also been integrated into the BR*TOOLS (SAP notes: 1125923, 966117,
966073). To enable the Flashback Database capability a DBA configures the Flash Recovery
Area. The Flash Recovery Area is a new feature in Oracle Database 10g that provides a unified
storage location for all recovery related files and activities in an Oracle database.
Flashback provides Data Guard with an easy-to-use method to correct user errors. Flashback
Database can be used on both the primary and standby database to quickly revert the databases
to an earlier point in time to back out user errors. If the administrator decides to failover to a
standby database, but those user-errors were already applied to the standby database (for
example, because Real Time Apply was enabled), then the administrator may simply flashback
the standby database to a safe point in time.
Flashback database on the productive database server: SAP customers may be required to revert
the database to an earlier state if a logical data corruption occurred due to an application error,
user error, or administrator error.
Flashback Database also lends itself for cases where you anticipate a database reset in advance,
for example; if the import of an SAP Support Package or an SAP or Oracle upgrade to a new
patch set fails, which means that the database must be reset so you can repeat the process.
Flashback database on the standby Server: We can take advantage of Flashback Database
together with a Physical Standby in order to open the Standby Database in write mode, perform
testing/reporting activities, and once these activities are completed we can reinstate the standby
and synchronize it with the primary database. See:
http://blogs.oracle.com/AlejandroVargas/gems/PhysicalStandbyActivatedRead.pdf

Oracle Segment Shrinking

Segment shrinking offers the possibility of recovering the free storage space that is occupied by a
table without reorganizing it, whereby the entries within the segment are “moved together”.
Online segment shrinking is the preferred method for defragmenting a segment and recovering
free storage space.

Database copy using transportable tablespace

This new function allows customers to copy an SAP Oracle database between different hardware
platforms. This represents an alternative to the procedures that are based on Oracle
export/import or SAP's R3load utilities, and can offer advantages in terms of time.

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Manageability
Oracle Database 10g comes with a large set of optimizations, making the database run faster on
any type of hardware on which the database has been deployed. The database now has the
capability to use fibers, large pages, and Non Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) systems. Fibers
improve overall database performance and throughput. Large pages boost performance for
memory-intensive database applications, especially in cases when the buffer cache is several
gigabytes in size, a typical scenario for SAP configurations. Oracle Database 10g can
automatically detect NUMA hardware and optimize it self by efficiently utilizing NUMA node
affinities.
With every release, Oracle has included more features to automate database administration. Some
features that distinguish Oracle from its competitors and are often adopted by SAP customers to
enhance the manageability of their SAP systems include: Automatic Shared Memory
Management and Automatic Workload Repository.

Automatic Shared Memory

Oracle Database 10g introduces Automatic Shared Memory Management. DBAs can just specify
the total amount of SGA memory available to an instance using the new parameter
SGA_TARGET. The database server then automatically distributes the available memory among
various components as required. The Automatic Shared Memory Management feature is based
on a sophisticated algorithm internal to the database that continuously monitors the distribution
of memory and changes it periodically as needed, according to the demands of the workload.

Automatic Workload Repository

One of the most positive aspects of the current Oracle release is the area of diagnosability and
supportability. Compared to any other database platform Oracle version 10.2 offers the most
sophisticated options for in depth analysis. The evaluation of the data provided by the Oracle
Advanced Workload Repository (AWR) and the Advanced Session History (ASH) allows root
cause analysis on every desired level. This is a huge benefit every time you run in e.g. a
performance problem or any other error situation. The SAP and Oracle support lines can act
very effectively based on those features. This situation is hardly measurable in numbers and
proven by several statements received from our support colleagues. The Automatic Workload
Repository (AWR) collects, processes, and maintains performance statistics for problem
detection and self-tuning purposes. This data is both in memory and stored in the database. The
gathered data can be displayed in both reports and views.
An excerpt of the statistics collected and processed by AWR include:
• Object statistics that determine both access and usage statistics of database segments
• SQL statements that are producing the highest load on the system, based on criteria
such as elapsed time and CPU time

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• Active Session History (ASH) statistics, representing the history of recent sessions
activity
AWR automatically generates snapshots of the performance data once every hour and collects
the statistics in the workload repository. You can also manually create snapshots, but this is
usually not necessary. The data in the snapshot interval is then analyzed by the Automatic
Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM).
AWR compares the difference between snapshots to determine which SQL statements to
capture based on the effect on the system load. This reduces the number of SQL statements that
need to be captured over time.

Oracle Advanced Security

The Oracle Advanced Security Option for Oracle Database 10g Release 2,released in February
2007, helps SAP customers address regulatory compliance requirements by protecting sensitive
data whether in transit or at rest from unauthorized disclosure. Transparent Data Encryption
seamlessly encrypts sensitive columns within the database, without any changes to the
application.
Oracle Advanced Security offers the following Transparent Data Encryption (individual columns
on data files and backup level). TDE is key based access control system where the data stored in
selected table columns is encrypted on disk. The keys for all tables containing encrypted columns
are themselves encrypted using a Database Master Key and stored in a dictionary table.
Oracle Advanced Security provides an easy to deploy and comprehensive solution for protecting
communication to and from the Oracle Database using both standards based network
encryption, and robust native encryption/integrity algorithms. SSL based encryption is available
for businesses that have deployed Public Key Infrastructure. For businesses with no PKI
deployment, Oracle Advanced Security provides native encryption and data integrity algorithms
to protect data in transit. The Oracle Database can be configured to reject connections from
clients with encryption turned off, or optionally allow unencrypted connections for deployment
flexibility. Configuration of network security is simplified using the Oracle Network
Configuration administration tool, allowing businesses to easily deploy network encryption, as
there are no changes required in the application

Database Vault
Oracle Database Vault, part of Oracle's comprehensive portfolio of database security solutions,
helps organizations address regulatory mandates and increase the security of existing applications.
Regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS),
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
and similar global directives call for separation-of-duties and other preventive controls to ensure
data integrity and data privacy. With Oracle Database Vault, organizations can pro-actively

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safeguard application data stored in the Oracle database from being accessed by privileged
database users. Application data can be further protected using Oracle Database Vault's multi-
factor policies that control access based on built-in factors such as time of day, IP address,
application name, and authentication method, preventing unauthorized ad-hoc access and
application by-pass.

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Oracle Expertise in the SAP environment

The Solution Center SAP Support and Service – located in Walldorf – offers SAP
customers the following services:
• Advanced Customer Services (ACS)
• Performance Analysis and Tuning
• Development of concepts for Backup/Restore/Recovery, and High Availability,
Administration
• Security concepts
• Optimizing of ABAP/4 programs (performance improvement)
• Migration service for customers, who want to use Oracle as the database for SAP
applications (from Informix, MaxDB, DB2, or SQL Server to Oracle).
• Migration services from “Oracle to Oracle” (e.g. Tru64 to HP_UX)
• Integration-Products and –Services
• Oracle Database: The Database of Choice for Deploying SAP Solutions

Conclusion
Oracle has a large and growing share of the market for databases used to deploy SAP. This is not
an accident – both companies invest in making Oracle technology work well for SAP, and Oracle
has a long track record of delivering the de facto standard database for enterprise applications.
SAP customers continue to choose Oracle because of the Scalability, High Availability,
Manageability and Security benefits they obtain.

15
Oracle Database: The Database of Choice for
Deploying SAP Solutions
February 2009
Author: Abdelrhani Boukachabine
Contributing Authors: Thomas Stickler
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