Executive Summary
IT leaders focused on Oracle compliance risks are often unaware of the challenges in preventing Oracle Advanced Compression options from being triggered unintentionally. Failure to identify and implement Oracle Advanced Compression options according to entitlements in the Oracle estate can lead to an audit failure and significant penalty fees.
Key Challenges:
- Determine which Oracle features and options are required for the organization
- Prevent employees from using Oracle options and features that the organization is not licensed for
- Continually monitor the usage of Oracle options and features to ensure licensing compliance
Recommendations:
- Refer to your service agreement to determine if you are appropriately licensed to use Advanced Compression
- Avoid using Advanced Compression options and features that the organization is not licensed for
- Contact an Oracle Licensing Management specialist such as Miro Consulting to determine Advanced Compression usage and discuss solutions to ensure a fully compliant environment
Oracle Advanced Compression
Oracle Advanced Compression is a licensable option that provides the ability to compress all types of data, backups, and network traffic to reduce storage consumption and improve performance. Unfortunately, many of our clients are surprised to learn that they have Advanced Compression usage and are therefore out of compliance.
The reason for the confusion is due to the fact that the Advanced Compression Option can easily be triggered by the use of some Oracle features, causing the organization to be out-of-compliance and fail an audit.
The Advanced Compression options that cause the most confusion include:
- Data Pump
Introduced in version 10g and is a faster and more flexible alternative to the traditional Export (exp) and Import (imp) utilities. - Recovery Manager (RMAN)
An Oracle utility that provides the ability to backup and recover the Oracle database. - Data Guard Redo Transport
Introduced in version 11gR1 and provides the ability to transfer redo data from a database destination to up to thirty destinations. - SecureFiles
Introduced in version 11gR1 and is an enhanced version of the original BasicFiles LOB storage architecture. - OLTP Table Compression (Advanced Row Compression)
Introduced in version 11gR1 and provides the ability to compress data during all types of data manipulation operations. - Flashback Data Archive (Formally Total Recall)
Introduced in 11gR1 and provides the ability to reference older versions of data in the Oracle Database or return older versions of data in the Oracle Database to a previous state without point-in-time media recovery.