3 Reasons to Hate Hibernate

Warning: this is a rant.

This is just a collection of observations of Hibernate, from the perspective of an Oracle developer/”DBA”. I’m aware of some of the benefits of using Hibernate to shield Java developers from having to know anything about the database or the SQL language, but sometimes it seems to me that we might generally be better off if they were required to learn a little about what’s going on “underneath the hood”. (Then I remind myself that it’s my job to help them get the most out of the database the client spent so much money getting.)

So, here are my gripes about Hibernate – just getting them off my chest so I can put them to bed.

Disclaimer: I know every Hibernate aficionado will jump in with “but it’s easy to fix that, all you have to do is…” but these are generalizations only.

Exhibit A: Generic Query Generators

As soon as I’d loaded all the converted data into the dev and test instances, we started hitting silly performance issues. A simple search on a unique identifier would take 20-30 seconds to return at first, then settle down to 4-8 seconds a pop. Quite rightly, everyone expected these searches to be virtually instant.

The culprit was usually a query like this:

select count(*) as y0_
from XYZ.SOME_TABLE this_
inner join XYZ.SOME_CHILD_TABLE child1_
on this_.PARENT_ID=child1_.PARENT_ID
where lower(this_.UNIQUE_IDENTIFIER) like :1
order by child1_.COLH asc, child1_.COLB asc, this_.ANOTHER_COL desc

What’s wrong with this query, you might ask?

Issue 1: Case-insensitive searches by default

Firstly, it is calling LOWER() on the unique identifier, which will never contain any alphabetic characters, so case-insensitive searches will never be required – and so it will not use the unique index on that column. Instead of forcing the developers to think about whether case-insensitive searches are required or not for each column, it allows them to simply blanket the whole system with these – and quite often no-one will notice until the system goes into UAT or even Prod and someone actually decides to test searching on that particular column, and decides that waiting for half a minute is unacceptable. It’s quite likely that for some cases even this won’t occur, and these poorly performing queries (along with their associated load on the database server) will be used all the time, and people will complain about the general poor performance of the database.

Issue 2: Count first, then re-query for the data

Secondly, it is doing a COUNT(*) on a query which will immediately after be re-issued in order to get the actual data.  I’d much prefer that the developers were writing the SQL by hand. That way, it’d be a trivial matter to ask them to get rid of the needless COUNT(*) query; and if they simply must show a total record count on the page, add a COUNT(*) OVER () to the main query – thus killing two birds with one efficient stone.

Exhibit B: Magical Class Generators (tables only)

Issue 3: No views, no procedures, no functions

When someone buys Hibernate, they might very well ask: is it possible to call an Oracle procedure or function with this product? And the answer is, of course, “yes”. Sure, you can do anything you want!

The day the Java developers peel off the shrinkwrap, the first thing they try is creating a Java class based on a single table. With glee they see it automagically create all the member attributes and getter/setter methods, and with no manual intervention required they can start coding the creation, modification and deletion of records using this class, which takes care of all the dirty SQL for them.

Then, the crusty old Oracle developer/”DBA” comes along and says: “It’d be better if you could use this API I’ve lovingly crafted in a PL/SQL package – everything you need is in there, and you’ll be shielded from any complicated stuff we might need to put in the database now or later. All you have to do is call these simple procedures and functions.” And the Java developer goes “sure, no problem” – until they discover that Hibernate cannot automatically create the same kind of class they’ve already gotten accustomed to.

“What, we actually need to read the function/procedure definition and hand-code all the calls to them? No sir, not happening.” After all, they bought Hibernate to save them all that kind of work, and who’s going to blame them?

So, you say, “Ok, no problem, we’ll wrap the API calls with some simple views, backed by instead-of triggers.” But then they hit another wall – Hibernate can’t tell from a view definition how that view relates to other views or tables.

The end result is that all the Java code does is access tables directly. And you get the kind of queries (and worse) that you saw in Exhibit “A” above.

There. I feel so much better already.

/rant


Write REF CURSOR to file

This is just a very simple procedure that makes writing a lot of files using UTL_FILE much simpler. It can be used to easily create simple CSVs or fixed-length files.

I’ve shown it here in a package body; it’s up to you to create a package spec.

To use it, all you need to do is create a query that concatenates all the data into a single string up to 4000 characters long. If you’re writing a CSV you need to concatenate commas and quotes as appropriate.

CREATE OR REPLACE
PACKAGE BODY packagename AS
-- If no records are found in the cursor, no file is created.
PROCEDURE write_cursor_to_file
  (outputdir  IN VARCHAR2
  ,filename   IN VARCHAR2
  ,headerline IN VARCHAR2
  ,refcursor  IN SYS_REFCURSOR
  ) IS
  -- increase to make faster but use more memory;
  -- decrease to use less memory but run slower
  BATCHSIZE CONSTANT INTEGER := 100;
  TYPE varr_type IS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(4000) INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;
  varr varr_type;
  outf UTL_FILE.FILE_TYPE;
BEGIN
  -- note: don't open the file unless we actually get some
  -- records back from the cursor
  LOOP
    FETCH write_cursor_to_file.refcursor
    BULK COLLECT INTO varr
    LIMIT BATCHSIZE;
    EXIT WHEN varr.COUNT = 0;
    -- We have some records to write. Have we opened the file yet?
    IF NOT UTL_FILE.IS_OPEN (outf) THEN
      outf := UTL_FILE.fopen
        (file_location => write_cursor_to_file.outputdir
        ,file_name     => write_cursor_to_file.filename
        ,open_mode     => 'A'
        ,max_linesize  => 4000);
      UTL_FILE.put_line (outf, write_cursor_to_file.headerline);
    END IF;
    -- Write the batch of records to the file
    FOR i IN 1..varr.COUNT LOOP
      UTL_FILE.put_line (outf, varr(i));
    END LOOP;
  END LOOP;
  CLOSE write_cursor_to_file.refcursor;
  IF UTL_FILE.IS_OPEN (outf) THEN
    UTL_FILE.fclose (outf);
  END IF;
END write_cursor_to_file;
PROCEDURE sample IS
  OUTPUTDIR  CONSTANT VARCHAR2(100) := 'MY_DIR_NAME';
  FILENAME   CONSTANT VARCHAR2(100) := 'my_file_name.csv';
  HEADERLINE CONSTANT VARCHAR2(4000) := 'Name,Address,Date of Birth';
  refcursor SYS_REFCURSOR;
BEGIN
  OPEN refcursor FOR
    select '"' || name || '"'
        || ',"' || address || '"'
        || ',' || TO_CHAR(dob,'DD-Mon-YYYY')
    from persons;
  write_cursor_to_file
    (outputdir  => OUTPUTDIR
    ,filename   => FILENAME
    ,headerline => HEADERLINE
    ,refcursor  => refcursor
    );
END sample;
END packagename;
/

It appends to the file if it finds it. This makes it easy to write the result of several queries to the same file.

Note: if you’re on Oracle 8i or earlier, you’ll need to add a replacement for SYS_REFCURSOR, e.g. TYPE my_sys_refcursor IS REF CURSOR; either at the top of the package, or if you want to make the write_cursor_to_file procedure public, put the type definition in your package spec.


AUSOUG Perth Conference 2011 Day Two

The final day at Burswood was just as enjoyable as day one. Well done to all the AUSOUG committee!

I started with two APEX talks – first, Scott Wesley on APEX 4.1 Security. Personally I very much enjoyed the unique presentation style. You can experience it for yourself here. After that, Mark Lancaster from Queensland gave his analysis of the changes from APEX 4.0 to 4.1, and commented on a number of new features that have been added or improved.

Just before lunch I caught “Tips and Best Practices for DBAs” by Francisco Munoz Alvarez, who spoke less about actual DBA tasks (as I was expecting) but more about the “soft” skills – attitude, professionalism, working in a team, delegating tasks, and automating everything.

After lunch Vinod Patel moderated a discussion panel comprising Debra Lilley, Tim Hall, Connor McDonald, Penny Cookson, Chris Muir, and a guy from Oracle (whose name escapes me for the moment) – and they were plied with many questions about the art of presenting. It was encouraging to hear what they had to say, both about their success and their failure stories. I think I got away with taking this photo without them noticing 🙂

I took in Graham Wood‘s final presentation, a live demo of Exadata. He demonstrated how blazingly fast it is for loading huge amounts of data in a very short time (e.g. 500GB in about 10 minutes IIRC) and running horrible queries even faster (e.g. multiple full table scans with self joins, running in mere seconds). It was very impressive, although it did highlight that to get the full benefit of Exadata, some queries may need to be rewritten. For example, a big report you’re running now might get a modest x10 or x20 speed improvement on Exadata, but after rewriting you could get on the order of x100 to x200 speed improvements! If you don’t believe me, go ask Graham yourself 🙂

The day ended with Connor McDonald‘s talk, A Year in Purgatory – Diary of an 11.2 RAC Upgrade. It held a lot of promise, but unfortunately I was called away to an emergency at work so I missed most of it. I was quite disappointed to miss that one. By the way, Connor is now blogging – at connormcdonald.wordpress.com. Finally!

I’ve enjoyed each AUSOUG conference since 2000, and this year was one of the best in my opinion. It was great to catch up with colleagues, network with Oracle nerds and professionals, and get inspired by a variety of talks on topics I’m interested in.

In addition, the last few years I’ve also presented. This has been a good experience which I intend to continue. I hope that with practice I’ll get much better at it.


AUSOUG Perth Conference 2011 Day One

I had a most enjoyable* day today at the Oracle conference at Burswood, Perth.

* This is significant in light of the fact that the start of the day was quite hectic, having had to drop the car off to get a new alternator (the electrics died on the way home from work yesterday, so this morning I called RAC out to get the car started and charge the battery up a bit. I managed to drive the car within 100m of Ultratune, then it died completely. So I left the car in the traffic and walked the rest of the way, borrowed some kind of block box that was like a CPR machine for cars.), thereafter going with Rosalie to drop the eldest at her school, so she could then gift me a lift to Burswood.

I got to the conference in time to hear Graham Wood from Oracle talk about DB Time-based Oracle Performance Tuning, which was excellent, then Tim Hall on Edition-Based Redefinition which led to some excellent discussions with both Tim and colleagues from my current client.

My talk on a simple ETL method using just SQL seemed to go well and there were some good questions, comments and suggestions. If you missed something it was probably because I talk too fast – if you want to look something up from the talk you can look at the slides here, or have a play with a full SQL*Plus demo [ETL-by-SQL-sqlplus-demo.zip]. I also blogged about this technique back in February.

I finished the day with Graham Wood’s second talk, on Oracle Hidden Features – which indeed included info on some Oracle features that I’d either not yet come across, or had forgotten about. Doug Burns blogged about this presentation earlier. The bit about external tables, especially the new 11g feature for running the source file through a preprocessor, was particularly interesting.

I’m looking forward to the second day tomorrow.