Introduction

As a former Oracle LMS qualified auditor my opinion is sometimes requested before/during/after an Oracle LMS audit or simply to ensure a customer that his Oracle database is 100% in conformity with Oracle Licensing Policy. Even if

“The Oracle License Management Services (LMS) Group is the only Oracle group authorized to review and provide opinions on compliance status and will provide guidance, education and impartial opinions on a customer or partner’s compliance state. For more information please visit the following website: http://www.oracle.com/corporate/lms.”

I very do hope that you will find interesting tips in this blog.

Most of the time when a customer would like to check which Oracle options are used by his database infrastructure he is using the well known script “option_packs_usage_statistics.sql”. dbi services did checks of the options detected by the script provided by Oracle (My Oracle Support DOC ID 1317265.1). Depending on your database usage this script will detect the usage of different options, but could you really trust the output of this script and how to interpret the output ?

Can we trust the output of option_packs_usage_statistics.sql ?

The answer is quite easy and short: NO you can’t !

Why? Because as for any software there are some bugs and these bugs lead to false positive detection. The good news is that some of these false positive are documented on My Oracle Support. Indeed the script options_packs_usage_statistics.sql used and provided by Oracle has 14 documented bugs (My Oracle Support Doc ID 1309070.1) and some other non-documented bugs (eg. My Oracle Support BUG 17164904). These bugs are related to:

1.    Bug 11902001 – Exclude default users for Feature usage tracking for Securefiles option
2.    Bug 11902142 – Exclude default users for Feature usage tracking for Advanced Compression option
3.    Bug 19618850 – SOLUTION TO PREVENT UNINTENTED ORACLE OPTION USAGE
4.    Query against DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS is not a true test for use of SDO
5.    Bug 16088534 : RMAN default Backup BZIP2 Compression feature is reported wrongly as as an Advanced Compression feature
6.    Bug 22122625 – GETTING FALSE POSITIVES ON USAGE OF ADVANCED INDEX COMPRESSION
7.    Bug 24844549 – ADVANCED INDEX COMPRESSION SHOWS USAGE IN DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS WITH HCC
8.    Bug 16859747 – DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS SHOWS INCORRECT USAGE FOR HEAPCOMPRESSION
9.    Bug 16563444 – HEAT MAP FEATURE USAGE TRACKING IS NOT CORRECT
10.    Bug 19317899 – IMC: IN-MEMORY OPTION IS REPORTED AS BEING USED EVEN INMEMORY_SIZE IS 0
11.    Bug 19308780 – DO NOT FEATURE TRACK OBJECTS FOR IM WHEN INMEMORY_SIZE = 0
12.    Bug 21248059 – DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS BUG IN TRACKING “HYBRID COLUMNAR COMPRESSION” FEAT
13.    Bug 25661076 – DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS INCORRECTLY SHOWS SPATIAL USAGE IN 12C
14.    Bug 23734270 – DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS SHOWS PERMANENT USAGE OF REAL-TIME SQL MONITORING

These bugs may lead to the detection of features such as : Automatic Maintenance – SQL Tuning advisor & Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor, Real-Time SQL monitoring, Advanced security – Oracle Utility Datapump (Export) and Oracle Utility Datapump (Import), Advanced Compression – Heat Map, Advanced Compression – Oracle Utility Datapump (Export) and Oracle Utility Datapump (Import), aso….

Of course these bugs make the real options usage analysis especially difficult even for an experimented Database Administrator. Additionally the Oracle database in version 12 could make usage of options in maintenance windows without manual activation. That the case for instance of options such as : Automatic Maintenance – SQL Tuning Advisor, Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor and Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor.

14. Bug 23734270 – DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS SHOWS PERMANENT USAGE OF REAL-TIME SQL MONITORING
On a freshly created 12c database, DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS shows usage of Real-Time SQL Monitoring even if no reports have been run from OEM pages or with DBMS_SQL_MONITOR.
Reason :SQL Monitor reports are automatically generated and saved in AWR but should be considered as system usage.
This behavior is the same for all 12 releases and is not present in 11.2. – Extract of My Oracle Support Bug 23734270

Even if LMS team is not using option_packs_usage_statistics.sql script, the output of LMS_Collection_Tool (ReviewLite.sql) is quite the same. The direct consequence in case of an Oracle LMS audit is that the auditor could detect options that you simply never used and you will have to make the proof of non usage… if not you will have to pay the invoice following the final LMS report as stated in your LMS preliminary/final report.

“Based upon the information provided to License Management Services, the following licensing issues need to be resolved within 30 days from the date of the Final Report.”

“In accordance to Oracle compliance policies, backdated support charges are due for the period of unlicensed usage of Oracle Programs.
Please provide your feedback on this preliminary report within 10 days from the presentation of this report.”- extract of an Oracle LMS audit

Even if I do not have hundreds of cases where the LMS department made wrong detection, I’ve concrete stories where LMS team detected some false positives. Last case was related to the detection of more than 700 usage of Advanced compression due to unpublished BUG 17164904. Thanks to the metalink Doc ID 1993134.1, the bug is explained:

In 12.1.0.1,  the compression counter is incorrectly incremented (COMPRESSCNT=1) for compression=metadata_only (either explicitly or by default) due to unpublished BUG 17164904 – INCORRECT FEATURE USAGE STATISTICS FOR DATA PUMP COMPRESSION, fixed with 12.1.0.2.

How to interpret the output of option_packs_usage_statistics.sql ?

Sometimes this script could provide you some non sense option usage. That the case for instance for features provided only since database version 12c but detected on your old database version 11g. In such a case simply edit the option_packs_usage_statistics.sql script and have a look on the comments. A perfect example of that is illustrated by the detection of Heat Map usage in database version 11g whereas this option is available since version 12c. You can see below another example of wrong options detection related to “Automatic Maintenance – SQL Tuning Advisor” and “Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor”:


SELECT ‘Tuning Pack’                                         , ‘Automatic Maintenance – SQL Tuning Advisor’              , ‘^12\.‘                      , ‘INVALID‘ from dual union all  — system usage in the maintenance window
SELECT ‘Tuning Pack’                                         , ‘Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor’                            , ‘^11\.2|^12\.’               , ‘INVALID‘ from dual union all  — system usage in the maintenance window
SELECT ‘Tuning Pack’                                         , ‘Real-Time SQL Monitoring’                                , ‘^11\.2’                     , ‘ ‘       from dual union all

This INVALID clause explain that the detection of this option is due to system usage in the maintenance window in version 12 (Automatic Maintenance – SQL Tuning Advisor) and in version 11.2 and 12 for Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor. This is also explained few lines after in the option_packs_usage_statistics.sql script :


where nvl(CONDITION, ‘-‘) != ‘INVALID‘                   — ignore features for which licensing is not required without further conditions

    and not (CONDITION = ‘C003’ and CON_ID not in (0, 1))  — multiple PDBs are visible only in CDB$ROOT; PDB level view is not relevant
)

In such a case the option does not have to be considered since the normal behavior of an oracle database in version 12 is to use this option in the maintenance window. This is just an example to illustrate that some detected option does not have to be licensed as explained in the script.

Conclusion

I very do hope that this blog helps you to have a better understanding of how to detect what your database infrastructure really uses in terms of Oracle options. Anyway if you are convinced that you do not use an Oracle database option despite the output of scripts such as option-packs_usage_statistics or ReviewLite which proofs the opposite, have a look on My Oracle Support. Look for bug related to wrong detection of this feature and with a little bit of luck you will find something interesting. Oracle is definitively engineered for heroes…

Oracle Engineered For Heroes
Oracle Engineered For Heroes