Question

Oracle Database 11g: New Features for Automatic Memory Management

Answer 1

Oracle simplified memory management over the last few versions of the database. Oracle 9i automated PGA management by introducing PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET parameter. Oracle 10g continued this trend by automating SGA management using the SGA_TARGET parameter. Oracle 11g takes this one step further by allowing you to allocate one chunk of memory, which Oracle uses to dynamically manage both the SGA and PGA.

Automatic memory management is configured using two new initialization parameters:

•MEMORY_TARGET: The amount of shared memory available for Oracle to use when dynamically controlling the SGA and PGA. This parameter is dynamic, so the total amount of memory available to Oracle can be increased or decreased, provided it does not exceed the MEMORY_MAX_TARGET limit. The default value is "0".

•MEMORY_MAX_TARGET: This defines the maximum size the MEMORY_TARGET can be increased to without an instance restart. If the MEMORY_MAX_TARGET is not specified, it defaults to MEMORY_TARGET setting.

When using automatic memory management, the SGA_TARGET and PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET act as minimum size settings for their respective memory areas. To allow Oracle to take full control of the memory management, these parameters should be set to zero.