IBM Content Manager Oracle limitations

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Oracle 11.2.0.2 is not supported. You must upgrade to Oracle 11.2.0.1 instead.

Verify the Oracle initialization parameter cursor_sharing is set to SIMILAR. Changes in the Oracle 11g optimizer might result in degradation to normal IBM Content Manager library server performance if the cursor_sharing parameter is not set to SIMILAR. The IBM Content Manager-provided DBCA templates for Oracle 10g and Oracle 11g set these to the correct value by default. You should verify this setting, especially if you did not use the IBM Content Manager-provided DBCA templates for the library server, or changed these values later. Remember to always perform periodic statistics updates, especially when there is a non-trivial change to the quantity or distribution of data.

Oracle 11gR2 bug #10396142: "External Procedure initial connection" waiting cause performance degradataion. IBM is currently working with Oracle to address a potentially serious degradation in the amount of time it takes the Oracle listener to launch its extproc process, which in turn loads the IBM Content Manager library server shared object library. At this time, Oracle has not indicated when this issue will be resolved and this issue is common to all versions of 11gR2. Strong recommendation: Perform acceptance testing of IBM Content Manager on Oracle 11gR2 in a non-production setting prior to upgrading any IBM Content Manager production environment from Oracle 10gR2 to Oracle 11gR2. Carefully weigh any potential performance tradeoffs you may find in Oracle 11gR2 against any support concerns regarding Oracle 10gR2's end-of-service. This degradation affects the following use-case scenarios:

• IBM Content Manager client application logon time degradation with Oracle 11gR2:
  End users might observe a potentially significant degradation in the time required to logon to a IBM Content Manager server, versus the same logon operation in Oracle 10gR2. A number of factors can affect the range of degradation experienced. The initial logon time degradation is most pronounced, appearing in IBM Information Integrator for Content and IBM Content Manager library server logs as calls to the ICMLOGON stored procedure. Successive library server calls also show minor degradation but, as the process is already loaded by Oracle, the amount is typically negligible. An indication that you are encountering this bug is if the 'External Procedure initial connection' wait event is among the top 5 wait events in an Oracle Automated Workload Repository (AWR) or Oracle Statspack report. Recommendation: If you use IBM Content Manager with the Oracle database and are considering using Oracle 11.2.0.1, test your application with Oracle 11.2.0.1 and assess its suitability based on your business requirements. The performance of your application may be adversely impacted if it performs a large number of connects and disconnects to the IBM Content Manager library server. If your testing reveals that this Oracle bug is significantly impacting your application, you should consider staying on Oracle 10gR2 until Oracle bug 10396142 for Oracle 11gR2 is resolved. At this time, there is no known workaround for this Oracle bug.
• IBM Content Manager query performance degradation with Oracle 11gR2:
  Client application queries that use execute() or executeWithCallback() methods might result in a performance degradation when upgrading to Oracle 11gR2 from Oracle 10gR2. IBM Content Manager Version 8.4.3 systems that use Oracle 10gR2 are not affected, and queries that use the evaluate() method are also not affected. The extent of the degradation depends on a number of factors such as retrieve options and result set size. Recommendation: Test your application using the evaluate() query method instead. The evaluate() query method provides a number of capabilities that can be advantageous to your application. For example, evaluate() allows you to retrieve only the results you actually need, versus an entire result set. Furthermore, evaluate() ensures that results are consistent relative to the connected IBM Content Manager user session. For more information, see Querying the IBM Content Manager server.

Oracle 11.2.0.1 text search workaround for Linux SUSE. Due to Oracle bug 9505765, text search fails with CTX_INDEX_ERRORS on Linux SUSE. Recommendation: Modify your current Oracle 11.2.0.1 listener.ora file to add $ORACLE_HOME/ctx/lib to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable; then restart the Oracle listener. See Oracle Article ID 1157903.1 for details. Alternatively, Oracle has fixed this problem in 11.2.0.2. If you decide to upgrade to IBM Content Manager Version 8.4.3, which supports Oracle 11.2.0.2, be aware that the performance degradations cited in this document also apply to Oracle 11.2.0.2. See above for details.

Oracle 11.2.0.1 text search workaround for Solaris with Microsoft Office documents. Due to Oracle bug 9908568, INSO cannot filter Microsoft Office documents. Recommendation: Modify your current Oracle 11.2.0.1 listener.ora file to add $ORACLE_HOME/ctx/lib to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable; then restart the Oracle listener. See Oracle Article ID 978143.1 for details. Alternatively, Oracle has fixed this problem in 11.2.0.2. If you decide to upgrade to IBM Content Manager Version 8.4.3, which supports Oracle 11.2.0.2, be aware that the performance degradations cited in this document also apply to Oracle 11.2.0.2. See above for details.

Oracle 11.2.0.1 and 10.2.0.5 text indexing problem for Microsoft Excel files. If you encounter an Oracle DRG-11221 error, refer to Oracle bug 10045060. Recommendation: As of this writing, there is no workaround for Oracle 11.2.0.1. Oracle has fixed this problem in 11.2.0.2. If you decide to upgrade to IBM Content Manager Version 8.4.3, which supports Oracle 11.2.0.2, be aware that the performance degradations cited in this document also apply to Oracle 11.2.0.2. See above for details.